Gori, Borjomi & Vardzia

Shida Kartli, "inner Kartli", has been settled for millennia along the Mtkvari. Uplistsikhe, carved into a sandstone bluff east of Gori, was a pagan religious and urban centre in pre-Christian times and remained in use into the Middle Ages, when Mongol raids left it abandoned. Gori itself grew around its fortress on the road between Tbilisi and the west, and churches such as Ateni Sioni and Samtavisi show the wealth of the medieval kingdom here.

To the south-west, Samtskhe was ruled by the Jaqeli family, who governed it almost independently as atabegs from the late thirteenth century. Vardzia was carved into the cliffs of the Erusheti mountain under George III and his daughter Queen Tamar in the late twelfth century as a monastery and refuge against invaders; an earthquake in 1283 damaged it heavily, and it was later sacked by the Persians. From the sixteenth century Samtskhe fell to the Ottomans and Akhaltsikhe became the seat of a pashalik, with much of the local population converting to Islam, until Russia captured the town in 1828.

Joseph Stalin was born in Gori in 1878, and the town built a museum to him in the 1950s. In 1944 Stalin's government deported the Muslim Meskhetians of Samtskhe to Central Asia. Tskhinvali, the main town of South Ossetia, lies just north of Gori, and after the August 2008 war Russian forces briefly occupied Gori; since then South Ossetia's Russian-backed authorities have held the territory, and the boundary fences have crept close to Georgian villages.

Shida Kartli is Kartlian country, speaking standard eastern Georgian, farming fruit and holding its supras around family wine. Gori's relationship with Stalin is complicated: his museum still presents him largely as a local son, while many Georgians regard him with embarrassment or hostility, and the town also keeps memorials to the victims of 2008.

Samtskhe-Javakheti is one of Georgia's most mixed regions. Javakheti, around Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda, has an ethnic Armenian majority, and Armenian is the everyday language in many villages. Russian Doukhobors, a dissenting Christian sect exiled to the Caucasus in the nineteenth century, still live in small numbers around Gorelovka, while Catholic Georgians have long lived in villages near Akhaltsikhe. Meskheti's Georgian dialect and its traditions of Orthodox monasteries, such as Sapara and Zarzma, reflect a long border history.

Borjomi has its own identity as a spa town built by the Russian imperial family, with its Romanov palace at Likani and a nineteenth-century park laid out around the springs. Family holidays taking the waters remain part of Georgian life, and Bakuriani has been a winter sports centre since Soviet times.

Gori is the largest town in the region and the centre of Shida Kartli's orchards, where apples, peaches and other fruit are grown. Khashuri and Kareli are the other main towns on the east–west highway. Akhaltsikhe, with around 17,000 people, is the capital of Samtskhe-Javakheti; Borjomi has about 11,000, and Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda are the Javakheti market towns.

The Borjomi bottling plant and spa tourism support the gorge, while Javakheti lives from potatoes, dairy and livestock on its high pastures, and many men work seasonally in Russia or elsewhere. Road improvements and the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway, which passes through Akhalkalaki, have tied the south more closely to Turkey.

Villages along the South Ossetian boundary live with fences, restricted fields and the risk of detention, and many have lost population. On the plateaus, winter shapes the rhythm of life, with livestock kept indoors and roads sometimes blocked by snow, while summer brings families to Borjomi and Bakuriani.

Shida Kartli is fruit country, and its markets sell apples, peaches, plums and dried fruit. The Ateni valley near Gori produces Atenuri, one of Georgia's appellation wines, and the region's khinkali and mtsvadi follow eastern Georgian traditions.

Meskheti has distinctive dishes of its own. Tenili is a fine, stringy cheese pulled into thin threads and packed tightly into clay pots, and the region is also known for chiri, dried fruit, and tklapi, a fruit leather. Javakheti is known for its potatoes and dairy, and Armenian and Georgian cooking mix in its towns, with lavash flatbread alongside Georgian breads.

Borjomi's naturally sparkling, mineral-rich water has been bottled since the nineteenth century and was exported across the Soviet Union; in the town park visitors can drink it straight from the spring. Other mineral waters rise in the gorge at Likani, and the nearby forests provide mushrooms, berries and honey.

Gori's sights are the Stalin Museum, with his birth house and private railway carriage, and the hilltop Gori fortress. Uplistsikhe, about 10 kilometres east, has rock-cut halls and a street leading up to a ninth- or tenth-century church, and nearby Ateni Sioni holds fine medieval frescoes. Samtavisi Cathedral lies east of Gori on the road towards Tbilisi.

Borjomi sits in the forested gorge of the Mtkvari, with its mineral water park and the Likani palace, and is the gateway to the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, one of the largest in Georgia. The narrow-gauge railway from Borjomi climbs to Bakuriani, a ski resort on a high wooded plateau with pistes on Didveli and Kokhta.

Akhaltsikhe is dominated by the Rabati fortress, rebuilt and restored in the 2010s, with a mosque, madrasah and church within its walls; the monastery of Sapara is in a wooded valley nearby. South along the Mtkvari are the Khertvisi fortress on its rock and Vardzia, where the Church of the Dormition has an important series of wall paintings among tiers of cave rooms, tunnels and stairways. The Javakheti plateau beyond has volcanic lakes, including Paravani and Tabatskuri, among the largest in Georgia, as well as wetlands and the Doukhobor villages.