The Kukushka narrow-gauge railway and the Tsagveri bridge

This is the only working narrow-gauge railway left in Georgia. The line opened in 1902, the track is 900 millimetres wide, and the whole distance from Borjomi to Bakuriani is 37 kilometres. The train needs about two and a half hours to cover them, because in the same stretch it has to lift itself some eight hundred metres. The nickname Kukushka, the cuckoo, comes from the whistle of the old steam engines.

The line was electrified in 1967 and was among the first electrified narrow-gauge railways in the Soviet Union; two or three carriages still run under the overhead wire. The track winds through forest along the valley side, often slowly enough that you could almost pick raspberries through the window.

The set piece of the route is the steel bridge over the Tsemistskali river near Tsagveri — an elegant lattice span of 1902 traditionally credited to Gustave Eiffel's company. The attribution has never been documented, but the bridge is genuinely a fine piece of period engineering, and you can see it perfectly well from the road if you are not taking the train.

The intermediate stops are Tsemi, Patara Tsemi, Tsagveri and Sakochavi: small wooden station buildings, some of them still original.

What not to expect: this is not a heritage attraction but an ordinary local service. The seats are hard, the carriages are cold in winter and often full of villagers with their shopping. In exchange the ticket costs almost nothing and the views on the middle section are genuinely good. There are usually two departures a day in each direction, though the line is suspended from time to time for track repairs, so check locally before planning a day around it.