How Five Strangers Became a Crew
I've done this before—the whole "book a group trip with randos" thing—but it never gets less weird. You sign up. You show up at a hostel in Tbilisi with your phone in one hand and low expectations in the other. Then somehow, by day three, you're arguing about qvevri fermentation like you've got skin in the game.
The crew was: Roo, an Australian photographer with the patience of a saint and the snark of a tabloid editor. Maz, a British food writer who could find a meal worth writing about in a petrol station (and nearly did). Finn, a German adrenaline tourist who'd quit his job to do stupid things in mountains. Jana, a Dutch architect obsessed with old stones. And me—here to steal stories and break my liver in equal measure.
We met on day one at a dingy wine bar in Vake that served natural wine so weird it tasted like the grapes had been fermented in an abandoned library. That's when we decided: proper Georgia, no five-star nonsense, everything on our terms.
Kakheti: Where the Wine Actually Lived
Maz was obsessed with eating food cooked by people who gave a shit. So we booked the Kakheti - Small wineries and family-cooked lunch • Private tour Kakheti - Small wineries and family-cooked lunch • Private tour, which meant loading into a minibus and heading northeast toward actual wine country.
Kakheti is Georgia's answer to Tuscany, except nobody's trying to sell you a villa and the wines come in orange, amber and brown—none of that prissy clear stuff. Our guide, Giorgi, was the kind of bloke who'd spent forty years watching grapes turn into reasons to argue about flavour. He took us through small family operations where the owners were genuinely shocked we wanted to talk about their process instead of just posing for photos.
The lunch hit different. We sat in a family kitchen—no restaurant, no plating, no nonsense—and watched the grandmother move through her work like she was conducting an orchestra only she could hear. Khachapuri, khinkali, salad, wine, more wine, bread, cheese, dispute about whether we were eating correctly (we weren't). Maz was scribbling notes. Finn was eating like he'd been released from prison. Jana kept photographing the light on the wine glasses instead of the wine itself, which made Roo laugh so hard she nearly choked.
By the third small winery, we'd stopped talking like tourists and started talking like people. That's when you know you've got a crew.
The Sacred Bits: History Gets Real
Jana dragged us toward the architecture. She'd already done the UNESCO Gems of Mtskheta - Old Capital of Georgia UNESCO Gems of Mtskheta - Old Capital of Georgia run on her second day in-country, and she kept banging on about the sixth-century churches and the way the light hit the stone. So Roo—our photographer, our driver, our logistics wizard—booked the Mtskheta-Gori-Uplistsikhe Mtskheta-Gori-Uplistsikhe private full-day tour and dragged the whole crew along.
This is where you get to move at your own pace, which is what separates a tour from an experience. We lingered at Jvari Church because the view of three rivers meeting below made Roo swear in Australian, which we'd learned meant she was genuinely moved. We sat in Svetitskhovloba Cathedral in near-silence because Jana wouldn't let anyone speak and honestly, sometimes silence is the most punk thing you can do in a church.
Uplistsikhe—this wild ancient cave town carved into rock—absolutely fractured us. It's the kind of place that makes you feel small and old at the same time. We raced down the stone corridors like idiots. Finn tried to climb somewhere he shouldn't have. A guard told him off in Georgian and we all pretended we didn't understand (we didn't). Maz kept muttering about how the stonework would've taken "fucking years, mate, actual literal years."
That night in a bar near Metekhi Church, Roo said: "I came here to photograph churches. I'm leaving with you lot." Nobody knew what to say, so we ordered more wine.
Mountains: When Things Got Properly Feral
Fingers crossed: Finn had been twitchy about doing something genuinely mad. Not Instagram mad, but genuinely risky. So when Roo mentioned the Svaneti Mountain Villages 4x4 Safari, tour from Kutaisi Svaneti Mountain Villages 4x4 Safari, tour from Kutaisi, Finn's eyes went bright as a kid's on Christmas morning.
Svaneti is where Europe plays hard mode. Rolling into it, we were bouncing across tracks that barely qualified as roads, heading toward Ushguli—basically the end of the world with a population of about 200 people and roughly 400 defensive towers. The kind of place where there's no mobile signal, no Starbucks, no Instagram stories. Just mountains, sky, and whatever's in your own head.
We stayed the night in a guesthouse where the owner cooked on a wood stove and showed us old photographs of relatives we'd never meet. Maz and Jana got into this extended conversation about traditional tower construction. Roo climbed a hill at sunset and came back quiet. Finn disappeared entirely for two hours and when he returned, he wouldn't say where he'd been, which we all respected.
The drive back was different. Quieter. Like something had shifted.
Flight and Falling
Finally—finally—we made it to Gudauri, that high-altitude town near the Russian border where you can do genuinely reckless things in a relatively safe manner.
Finn was determined to throw himself off a mountain. The Paragliding Tandem Flights in Gudauri Paragliding Tandem Flights in Gudauri is exactly what it sounds: fifteen minutes of your life where you're suspended above the Caucasus with nothing between you and geology but fabric and luck. We watched him get strapped in, watched the pilot do safety checks, watched him shuffle toward the cliff edge like a man walking toward his future.
The moment he launched, everything got stupid and beautiful. Jana was photographing the wrong thing (the sky instead of Finn). Maz was swearing in three languages. Roo was steady, photographing the actual jump because she's a professional who doesn't panic even when her mate is falling upward into the clouds.
Finally, he landed. Got out of the harness. Walked toward us with the face of someone who'd just rearranged his entire understanding of gravity. "That," he said, "was absolutely mental. Who's next?"
Nobody signed up. But we all got it.
The Last Night
Back in Tbilisi, we did what all good crews do: went to a dingy bar that served terrible wine and great stories. We talked about what we'd do differently, what we'd see again, whether we'd actually stay in touch (you always say you will, sometimes you do).
Georgia had done something to us. Not in a spiritual-retreat way—we're not those people. But in that rare way where a place and a crew and a moment all line up and suddenly you're someone slightly different than when you arrived.
Roo raised her glass: "To Georgia, and to finding your people in the Caucasus."
We drank to that.
