Ushguli

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Ushguli is a village in the Svaneti region of Georgia.

Ushguli claims to be the highest village in Europe, with some houses on altitudes higher than 2.200 meters. In summertime, there are all the time as many inhabitants as tourists in the village, as it is the finishing point of one of the most famous hikes in Georgia. That means that hitchhikers will be seen as a walking wallet there, and everybody wants to make some money off you.


Sleeping

Go to the tower approx. 50 metres above the village (right hand if you come from Mestia) where you can pitch your tent. Attention: When see slept here, a big dog stood the whole night next to his tent, barking very loudly every 30 minutes....

There are a lot of stray dogs and, more dangerous, stray cows wandering around the village so it's not really a super nice place to just camp. However try to find some kind of fence and pitch your tent inside the fence.


Get out

Road to Mestia

Main road although as this is a pretty isolated village it's still likely to take a while.

Road to Lentekhi

The road isn't really a road, there is literally no traffic and your average speed in a vehicle is about 5 km. However if you have time and patience it is a lot of fun and extraordinarily beautiful. Somewhere 10 or so kilometers after Ushguli you'll cross a mountain pass and descend quite a lot on a serpentine road. There's a beautiful glacier there (how about a snowball fight in August?) but the real interesting thing with this place is the abondonded Soviet war-poison factory which, literally, has just been left to rot with poison spread out everywhere on the ground. It's probably not harmful to just go there for a quick visit. Atleast hitchhiker Theo didn't metamorph yet.

Personal experience from the Lentekhi road: We started from hitching from Ushguli and after 1 hour the first car that came stopped and gave us a 5 km ride to the middle of nowhere. Then we ended up waiting for 3 hours before the next car came and he took us about 30 km to his village /Theo