Trekking in Georgia’s most beautiful province Svaneti is exquisite experience. I wish I could find more words to describe the beauty of Caucasus mountains, but my literacy skills are not proficient enough to convey its beauty with words. With photos I’m far more confident, so check them out.

Svaneti is a beautiful province in northwestern part of Georgia. It is situated on the southern slopes of the central Caucasus mountains and surrounded by 3,000–5,000 meter peaks, Svaneti is the highest inhabited area in the Caucasus. Its people are Svans, an ethnic subgroup of Georgians who speak Svan language and have rich history and tradition. Their population is less than 30.000. Except beautiful mountains, Svaneti is famous for protruding tower houses, dating from 9th-12th century. The towers are, at the same time, a good representation of tremendous architecture skills and human stupidity. Many families, within the same village, were divided among themself. The towers basically provided protection from their own neighbours. Blood revenge was a common thing in Svaneti up until recently, when Georgian government finally put an end to it. Unfortunately most of the towers are deteriorating and Svans are failing to conserve them to become a tourism asset. It is heartbreaking to see those towers become rubble. It seems that everything there is made to take your money today and with little thought of tomorrow. Lots of plastic, garbage and drainage goes straight into mountain creeks, with very little or none awareness for the environment.

We have hiked from valley to valley and mostly used homestays for sleeping.  It is really easy to get along, there are many GPS treks online so finding a route is not a problem. Locals speak quite bad English, but luckily Russian is somewhat similar to Croatian, so it helped us quite a bit. The food generally leaves nothing to be desired. Therefore, I can recommend this region for hiking to anyone.

I also got an oportunity to test Hoka Speedgoat Mid WP, a really light and comfortable pair of hiking shoes, whose full review is coming up soon on Iglu Šport website. For photos I’ve used Fujifilm X100F, my favorite camera to date.