Kutaisi to Borjomi and Bakuriani

What the local board brings to a mountain day

Two drives in one day: east along the main road to the mineral water town, then up the mountain to the resort above it. This is what the live Kutaisi board brings to that, read off a sample this morning.

About half

of the first page of listings is SUV or four wheel drive shaped, which is the half of the board this route actually cares about

Roughly one in ten

of the sampled cars is a Subaru Forester, second only to the Jeep Renegade on model count and a familiar shape on a Georgian mountain road

Around six in ten

listings can be cancelled free, which is worth having when the thing you booked the car for is a road that closes

Nearly all of them

include delivery at no extra charge, so the car can be sitting outside before an early start rather than collected during one

Counts shift as cars are taken and returned through the day, so the grid further down this page is the one that decides, not this strip.

What the road asks for, month by month

Altitude does most of the work on this route. The month you drive it decides the rest.

The easy version of the day

The valley is green and warm, the resort above it is where people go to stop being warm, and both legs are ordinary driving. Any car on the local board will do the whole route without being asked a difficult question. The only real planning is shade: the walk to the mineral spring is the part you came for, and you will be away from the car longer than you think.

Quiet roads, short light

This is the window when the gorge empties out and the climb has almost nobody on it. The catch is daylight. The light goes earlier than the plan usually allows for, which means the descent happens in the dark on a road you have only seen once, in the other direction. Good headlights and honest tyres matter more here than ground clearance does.

When the second leg becomes the point

The resort is the reason most people drive this in winter, and the climb carries snow while the valley below it is merely cold. Ask the supplier what the car is wearing before you confirm, keep the fuel topped up in the valley rather than above it, and treat the climb as the slowest part of the day rather than an afterthought bolted onto the end of it.

Two drives, told by the people who did them

The same route, two seasons apart. Both renters collected a car in Kutaisi and pointed it east.

SR

Sanna Ritola

Tampere, Finland

★★★★★

We did the spring and the park in the morning and only decided on the resort over lunch. The second half is a completely different road, and I was glad we had clearance under us.

PC

Pieter Claes

Ghent, Belgium

★★★★

We went up in February with snow sitting on the shoulders. The supplier confirmed the tyres before we paid, and that is the one question I would not skip on this route.

The town the water is named after

Borjomi is a spa town folded lengthways into a river gorge, and drivers arriving for the first time all make the same mistake: they look for a centre, fail to find one, and realise they have driven out the other side. The town is long rather than wide. The piece you want is the central park, where the mineral water is drawn out of the ground and handed over warm, faintly salty, and nothing whatsoever like the bottled version sold across the region.

Above the park the gorge turns into Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, a very large protected forest with trailheads that begin where the tarmac gives up. Downstream at Likani stands the old Romanov summer residence, screened by trees and easy to drive past twice. None of this is demanding driving. It is a valley floor, a river, and a road that follows both of them.

What the car buys you here is the freedom to treat the spa town as a stop rather than as the destination. Trains and minibuses both arrive, but they arrive on their own schedule and leave on it too. With Car Hire Kutaisi and your own vehicle in the car park, you can drink the water, walk as far up the gorge as you feel like walking, and still be climbing towards the resort while the afternoon is young.

Where to leave the car

Central park gate: Busiest, and the one you want
The river road through town: Usually something free along it
Likani and the palace road: Quiet, with a longer walk back
Resort side, up the hill: Depends entirely on the season

Nothing on this route needs a reserved space. It needs you to accept a walk instead of circling.

The far end of the day

Bakuriani sits above the spa town, and the gap between the two on this map is the only part of the route that changes character with the weather. Everything west of Borjomi is main road.

One long day, or a night in the mountains

Almost everyone plans this as a day trip, and in the warm half of the year that is the right call. The valley and the resort are close enough together that you can take the water in the morning, climb in the afternoon, and be back on the plain by evening without any part of it feeling hurried. The car makes that possible in a way that scheduled transport does not, because the return leg is the bit that public timetables handle worst.

Winter rearranges the arithmetic. The climb is slower in both directions, the light is shorter at both ends, and the stretch you least want to drive tired is the one you would be driving last. A night up at the resort removes that entirely. You arrive while it is bright, you ski or walk the next morning, and the descent happens in full daylight with a rested driver. That is a safety argument before it is a holiday one.

Where you sleep is a question of what you came for. The spa town suits people whose trip is about the park, the gorge and the water, and it stays open and ordinary all year. The resort suits people whose trip is about the snow or, in August, about escaping the heat, and it empties out noticeably between those two seasons. Neither place needs you to book months ahead outside the peak ski weeks, but both of them reward a phone call about parking.

One practical consequence for the booking itself: an overnight changes the rental length, and rental length is the one number you cannot adjust from the road. Decide before you confirm. If the decision is genuinely still open, choose a listing that can be cancelled free and settle it later, which is a cheaper form of flexibility than paying for a day you do not use.

Before you point the car east

Ask what the car is wearing

A board this size is not uniform, and the tyres are the one specification that changes the day. Put the question to the supplier in writing before you confirm, not at the handover. If the answer is vague between December and March, choose a different listing rather than hoping.

Fill up in the valley

Fuel is a valley-floor errand on this route. Do it on the way through rather than assuming the convenient option waits for you higher up, where prices and opening hours both get less reliable.

Photograph the wheels

Two minutes at handover, every corner of the car plus the wheels and the windscreen. Grit and gravel are part of this drive, and a dated photograph settles the conversation at the end of it.

Pack for two climates in one boot

You will start the day in a river gorge and end it a long way above it, and the difference between those two places is bigger than the drive between them suggests. A jacket and proper shoes live in the boot on this route even in July, because the resort does not care what the forecast said down in the valley.

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What people ask about the Borjomi and Bakuriani run

We do not print a figure for it, and it is worth being suspicious of pages that do. The first leg runs east on the main road across the country, and its timing depends on how much of that road is a construction site on the day you drive it. The second leg looks short on a map and is slow in practice, because it is climbing the whole way. Check the route in your phone on the morning you set off, then give the day more room than the estimate asks for.

It leaves the valley floor above the spa town and gains height steadily on a surfaced mountain road rather than a track. In dry months it is undramatic and any car on the local board will manage it comfortably. The difficulty here is seasonal rather than technical: snow, ice and meltwater are what turn it into a question, not the gradient.

Treat it as a question for the supplier rather than an assumption about the fleet. The one stretch where the answer changes your day is the climb above the spa town, and not every car on a board this size is dressed for it. Ask before you confirm and read the individual car page, because terms are set per supplier. A good share of the listings here can be cancelled free, so booking while you wait for an answer is not a trap.

In summer, not really: the valley and the resort fit into one long day without rushing either of them. In winter the calculation changes, because a night up there buys you the climb in daylight in both directions and turns a tight schedule into a proper day on the snow. The spa town suits people who came for the park and the water, the resort suits people who came for the slopes. Either way the car stands still overnight, so agree where it goes before you book the room.

Water in the morning, mountains by afternoon

Set your dates, read the live Kutaisi board, and ask the supplier about tyres before you confirm.

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