The Most Treacherous Road of All?

The road to Tusheti, Georgia

An express post coming up. Project or no project, somehow, I have my hands full (which is a good sign in times like these).

On the home front, summer’s ended and school has resumed, with FULL attendance (yeah, no kidding). I guess the UAE’s just decided to screw COVID-19. Heck, almost everyone is vaccinated now, and new cases are less than 500 per day. (Fingers-crossed, I hope this downward trend will continue). It’s nearly 2 friggin years now of this blasted pandemic! Will we ever get back to normal?!?

Anyway, here’s a little something from our holidays when times were better. A continuation of our holidays in Georgia in 2018. (I’ve kept the photos ready just for busy times like these, hehe). Here goes.

These photos are of what a blogger called, the most treacherous road of all when we were planning our Georgia trip back in 2018. Now, it isn’t even featured in any of the Google searches for most treacherous roads. Besides, how do you measure treacherousness?? (If there’s such a word). But one road that features prominently in the most treacherous roads list, is a road which I’ve travelled through before – the Zoji La Pass Road in India that connects Ladakh to the Kashmir Valley. It was in ummm 2004 if I’m not mistaken, and I was with my brother Jason and friend Wai Yen. We were travelling from Leh in Ladakh, to Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir and boarded a public bus in Kargil. The entire Zoji La portion was traversed at night, and we didn’t see a thing, just that the dratted ride was super bumpy and I didn’t sleep a darn minute, except for the time when the bus stopped with many other vehicles and waited for ages in complete darkness in God knows where. Maybe the vehicles have to take turns to cross the pass, who knows?

Anyway, back to my post, here’re the pictures of our road trip to Tusheti, high up on the Caucasus mountains in Georgia. Enjoy!


About an hour in from the start of the road to Tusheti, near a roadside waterfall – still surrounded by forests – cool!


That's the car that took us up to Tusheti, a Mitsubishi Delica, the 4WD car of choice in Georgia – We hired a car from the guesthouse we booked in Tusheti to take us up there as our rented car’s insurance did not cover the road up to Tusheti. Besides, the blogs that I read while planning for the trip scared me so much (with fantastic stories about how treacherous the road is), that I decided not to take that risk with the family. Now thinking back, I could’ve driven up. It’s mainly rocks and boulders. The Gergeti Trinity Church Road (earlier post) felt tougher with wet slippery soil and steep inclines, and I overcame that with our Great Wall 4WD! We left our rented car in the friendly guesthouse at Telavi where we were staying before visiting Tusheti.


That’s the driver of our hired car. Nah, don’t remember his name, just remember that the children at the hotel called him Mama (meaning Dad in Georgian – yup, it’s the opposite. Mum is Deda). He happens to be the very owner of the hotel / guesthouse up in Tusheti!




The road to Tusheti (now with no more tree cover)




Looking back at the road we came from – nice, but it was a dizzying friggin ride. Anu didn’t wanna look down at all! (She has a fear of heights). And we were almost all down with motion sickness (told ya I should've driven)


We reached the pass (Abano Pass). It’s downhill from here onwards!


Crossing a melting glacier


No trees, but the slopes are covered with mountain flowers


Whew! Finally, our hotel – Guesthouse Javakhe, Lower Omalo, Tusheti – What’s that Chinese flag doing in a remote place like this?


Jayden at Guesthouse Javakhe, Lower Omalo, Tusheti, Georgia


Tusheti Protected Area (Tusheti National Park), Georgia - And here's a photo of little Jayden at Tusheti


There’re horses all over the place – the biggest building in this photo (middle slight right) is the Guesthouse Javakhe where we stayed

That’s it for the day folks!