Tianeti

Tianeti is the part of Mtskheta-Mtianeti that almost no visitor sees, and the reason is honest enough: there is no single monument here worth crossing the country for. What there is instead is a wide, quiet upland basin at 1,100 metres, ringed by pine and beech forest, on the upper Iori — a river that will end its journey hundreds of kilometres away in the semi-desert of Kakheti.

The town is small, low and Soviet in plan: a central square, a market that runs in the mornings, and one long main street. Tbilisi families have kept summer houses here for generations, because the basin holds cool dry air while the capital sits at thirty-five degrees. That is the real reason to come — to breathe, walk in forest and eat, rather than to tick off sights.

Things worth building a day around:

• the Sioni reservoir south of the town, a long green-water lake on the Iori with fishing, rough shoreline tracks and almost no development

• the pine and beech forest on the surrounding ridges, laced with logging tracks that make easy walking and good mushroom ground in September and October

• the ruined fortress of Bochorma on a hill further down the Iori, a 10th-century site with the remains of a domed church inside its walls

• the drive itself, which is the real attraction: the road in from Zhinvali crosses a wooded ridge in a long series of curves with almost no traffic on it

Tianeti thins out in winter and much of what is open in August closes. Late September, when the beech turns and the air sharpens, is probably the best week of the year here.