Day Trips from Tbilisi

The classic mountain escape: a snaking Georgian Military Highway delivers you to a village where slate roofs sit under the icy crown of Mt Kazbek. A steep hour-long hike or 4WD track lifts you 400 m above the valley to the well-known church, stone walls cracked by centuries of wind.

Half-cave, half-fortress, the 6th-century David Gareja spreads across a semi-desert ridge that forms the Azerbaijan border. Pale sandstone cells turn honey-gold at noon, while frescoes inside Lavra Church still flicker with lapis and cinnabar after 1,000 desert summers.

Georgia's wine heartland delivers cobbled hill towns above emerald vineyards and cellars that smell of chacha and toasted oak. Sighnaghi's pink walls catch sunrise over the Alazani Valley, while Bodbe Monastery drips with myrrh-scented candle wax.

Georgia's former royal capital compresses 1,500 years into a riverside promenade. Jvari's 6th-century stone cross rises where two rivers the colour of green glass collide; below, Shio-Mgvime's cliff caves echo with dripping water and faint incense.

A sampler of the Georgian Military Highway: turquoise Zhinvali Reservoir, fairy-tale Ananuri fortress mirrored in the water, then up to Gudauri's alpine meadows where paragliders drift over patchwork pastures.

Pine forests swallow the sound of traffic as you follow a sulphur-scented river to Borjomi's famous warm springs. Locals queue beside the source to fill plastic bottles with naturally carbonated water that fizzes like weak champagne.