Kintrishi Protected Areas

Kintrishi was designated in 1959 and is one of Georgia's oldest protected areas. It begins east of Kobuleti, follows the Kintrishi river valley, and covers roughly thirteen thousand hectares, from around two hundred metres above sea level to nearly two and a half thousand. The value here is botanical. The Kintrishi forest is Colchic relict woodland: a surviving fragment of Tertiary vegetation that the Caucasus range sheltered through the glaciations. That is why a single slope can carry chestnut, beech, yew, rhododendron and Colchic ivy together — a combination that exists nowhere else in Europe. Three things in the valley deserve a stop of their own: - Khino church, a small medieval basilica in the village of Khino, one of the few surviving Christian monuments in Adjara - Lake Tbikeli, a glacial lake at about two thousand metres, reached on foot or on horseback from Khino — three to four hours each way - Arched bridges in the lower valley, of the same type as those on the Adjaristsqali Infrastructure is minimal: waymarking is patchy, some paths are washed out, and visitor services are thin. This is not a park you drop into for a two-hour stroll. Either give it a full day or leave it for another trip. In exchange, compared with the other protected areas in Adjara, there is almost nobody here.