Khada Valley

Khada is a side gorge of the Aragvi with more medieval towers in it than any other valley on the Military Highway, and almost nobody turns off to see them. The mouth of the valley is at Kvesheti, about ten kilometres below the start of the Gudauri climb; from there a rough road follows the Khadistskali stream south-west between steep grass slopes for close to twenty kilometres.

Scattered along it are a dozen small villages, several with only two or three families left, and around sixty towers and tower fragments. These are not the tall slender towers of Svaneti but squat square structures of three or four storeys, built of undressed shale, with a single high entrance and hardly any windows. Some stand in villages you drive through — Tskere and Korogo are the usual first stops — while others stand alone on spurs, watching a length of the path.

The reason for so much fortification is the route. Before the Russians cut the modern road over the Jvari Pass in the 1810s and 1820s, the Khada valley was one of the ways over the ridge to the Ksani, and traffic through it had to be controlled and taxed. The towers, the ruined chapels and the graves belong to that older economy, which ended the moment the highway moved.

Two practical notes about the present. The Kvesheti–Kobi road project, a long tunnel scheme meant to bypass the highest section of the Military Highway, has its southern end near the mouth of the valley, so expect heavy machinery and construction traffic on the approach. And the valley road is unsurfaced beyond the first villages: rutted, stony and crossed by streams that swell after rain.

Late June and September are the good months, when the grass is high or the light is low and the towers throw shadows down the slopes.