Ten days in Georgia: from the sulphur baths to the Black Sea, over the mountains

Drop your bag and walk. The lanes climbing from the river towards Freedom Square are the part of Tbilisi that survived everything: crooked houses round courtyards, carved wooden balconies over the pavement, churches wedged between apartment blocks and the odd abandoned tram left where it stopped.

Then go down to Abanotubani, where the bathhouses are dug into the slope so that only their brick domes show above ground and the water comes out of the spring beneath at about forty degrees. There is a public bath for a couple of lari and private rooms by the hour for a few tens. Take a towel and something for your feet, and pay the extra for the scrub, which is administered rather than offered.

Come out useless and eat khinkali nearby. Hold them by the twisted top, bite, drink the broth, and leave the knot on the plate.

Cross to the left bank early for Metekhi, the small church on the rock directly above the water. There has been a church and a royal residence here since the fifth century; the present building is late thirteenth century, and the terrace outside gives you the baths and the fortress lined up across the river.

From Rike Park below, the cable car crosses to Narikala in about two minutes for a couple of lari. The fortress has held the ridge since the fourth century, most of what stands is far later, and there are no railings, no ticket and no queue.

Walk the crest west to Mother Georgia: twenty metres of aluminium put up in 1958 for the city's fifteen hundredth birthday, holding a bowl of wine for guests and a sword for everybody else. Then walk down through Sololaki into dinner.

Mtskheta was the capital of Iberia for the better part of a thousand years and is twenty kilometres north where the Aragvi runs into the Mtkvari. Marshrutkas leave Didube constantly and take about half an hour.

Go up to Jvari first, on the hill opposite, built around the year 600 over the spot where St Nino is supposed to have raised a wooden cross. It is the building every Georgian church copied for the next five hundred years: a compact cross plan, bare stone, no decoration and perfect proportions, with the two rivers meeting below.

Down in the town, Svetitskhoveli was founded in 1010 on the site of the country's first church. Georgian kings are buried under the floor and the pillar in the middle is said to stand over the robe of Christ. Samtavro, ten minutes' walk on, is a working convent with the graves of the king and queen who converted the country in the fourth century.

The road north is the best three hours in the country. It follows the Aragvi out of Tbilisi, past the reservoir and the walled monastery at Ananuri, then climbs into the Gudauri ski bowl and crosses the Jvari Pass at nearly 2,400 metres, where a Soviet friendship arch stands on the lip of a gorge covered in mosaics that nobody has had the heart to remove.

Just below the pass, stop at the travertine springs: cold sulphur water bubbling out of the mountain and staining the whole slope orange, at over 2,000 metres, with the road below and the peaks above. Drivers know it and will pull in.

Then down into Stepantsminda, which is a village of guesthouses either side of a river with a 5,000 metre mountain at the end of the valley. Arrive, eat, sleep early. Tomorrow starts uphill.

The church on the ridge is why you came. Gergeti Trinity was built in the fourteenth century at 2,170 metres on a spur above the village, alone, with the glaciers of Kazbek behind it, and in times of invasion the treasures of Mtskheta were carried up here for safekeeping.

Walk up if you can: about two hours by the path through the woods from Gergeti village, steep but not technical, and infinitely better than the alternative. The alternative is a queue of 4x4 taxis grinding up the track and depositing everybody at the top at once. Start by eight and you will have the church to yourself for half an hour before they arrive.

In the afternoon go east instead, up the Sno valley. The road runs through a defile past a row of enormous carved stone heads, and the hamlet at the end of it sits at 2,200 metres under the Chaukhi massif, which is where the best walking in Georgia starts. A taxi from the square will take you and wait.

Photography is not allowed inside the church and shoulders and knees must be covered, including for men. There are wraps at the gate.

This is the long leg: back down the military highway to Tbilisi or Gori, then west along the main road to Kutaisi, six hours or so all in. It is worth booking a shared taxi the night before through your guesthouse rather than fighting for a marshrutka seat, and worth breaking at Gori if the timings allow, where the cave town of Uplistsikhe is cut into a bluff above the Mtkvari.

Arrive in the afternoon, cross the river and walk up to Bagrati. King Bagrat III had it consecrated in 1003 as the church of a Georgia unified for the first time; an Ottoman army blew the roof off it in the 1690s; it was rebuilt between 2009 and 2012 with new stone and a glass lift, and UNESCO struck it off the World Heritage list for that in 2017. It is the only Georgian site ever delisted and Georgians are still arguing about it.

Come down for the bazaar, which sells cheese, spices, walnuts and homemade wine in reused plastic bottles from about two lari, poured for you to taste before you buy.

Take a taxi for the day. Gelati is up in the hills northeast of town, founded in 1106 by David IV, called the Builder, at the height of the Georgian golden age, with an academy attached that taught philosophy and astronomy. He is buried under the south gate at his own request, so that everybody entering steps over him. The mosaic of the Virgin in the apse is twelfth century and the frescoes run across four centuries without ever being painted over.

Motsameta is a few kilometres back and then along a spur: a small church of the eleventh century on a rock in a loop of the Tskaltsitela gorge, with a drop on three sides, far fewer people and arguably the better setting. It is named for two brothers killed by an Arab army in the eighth century and thrown into the river below.

In the afternoon cross to the other side of town for Sataplia, a wooded hill of karst caves with a slab of rock under a pavilion holding more than two hundred dinosaur footprints, left in mud around 120 million years ago. There is a lit cave walk below and a glass platform over the valley above.

Two hours on the marshrutka and the landscape changes completely: tea plantations, palm trees, humidity and the Black Sea. Batumi is where Georgia goes on holiday and it does not look like anywhere else in the country.

Start on Europe Square under the statue of Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis and the reason Jason got the Golden Fleece out at all. The streets around it are two and three storey houses with iron balconies, put up when the oil money arrived and restored in the last fifteen years.

Five minutes north is the Orta Jame, built in 1866 and the only mosque left in central Batumi, small and painted inside. Adjara was Ottoman for three centuries and the mosque is the plainest evidence of it.

Finish on the cable car up to the ridge behind the town for sunset, then walk the boulevard back in the dark past the casinos and the tower with the Georgian alphabet spiralled up it.

The botanical garden is nine kilometres north at Green Cape, planted from 1912 on a headland that drops into the sea, and divided into the regions of the world its collections came from: you walk out of Japan into Himalayan bamboo and then into Mexican cactus with the Black Sea below the whole way. Three hours minimum. Buses run there from the centre in twenty minutes.

In the afternoon take the coast road south to Gonio, where the Romans put a garrison in the first century to hold the mouth of the Chorokhi valley. The rectangle of wall and its eighteen towers have since been held by Byzantines, Genoese, Ottomans and Russians; inside is grass, excavated foundations and a grave that tradition assigns to the apostle Matthias. The Turkish border is a few kilometres further.

Come back for dinner at the fish market by the port. Buy the fish by the kilo from the stalls and hand it to one of the restaurants around the edge to grill for a few lari. It is the best meal in Georgia for the money.

The archaeological museum in the centre is small, better labelled than most in Georgia and full of what this coast was famous for before oil: Colchian bronze and gold, classical pottery and coins from every empire that traded through here. An hour is right before a flight.

Then walk the boulevard. It runs about seven kilometres along the shore, it is the best public space in the country, and it is free. Buy churchkhela for the plane.