Tkibuli Reservoir

Tkibuli reservoir is part of a hydroelectric scheme rather than a resort, which is exactly why it is quiet. The lake lies south-west of Tkibuli at about 520 metres, and to the north the white limestone wall of Nakerala marks the boundary between Imereti and Racha.

The town sits between two reservoirs whose difference in level is more than six hundred metres: Shaori above on the edge of Racha, Tkibuli below. That drop is what generates the power. The arrangement is typical Soviet-era engineering and still works.

Tkibuli itself is a mining town. Coal has been dug here since 1846 and the settlement was made a town in 1939. More than twenty thousand people lived here in Soviet times; the population roughly halved in the 1990s. The mines still operate and have been suspended more than once after fatal accidents. Tea is also grown in the surrounding hills.

What you actually do at the lake:

• fish, as the locals do along the shore

• picnic in the shade on the north-eastern bank

• photograph the Nakerala wall across the water, best in the evening

Nothing on the shoreline is developed: no cafe, no changing rooms, no marked trail. Water levels move with the demands of the power station and by late summer a muddy band is exposed. Think of it as an hour's stop on the way up to the Nakerala pass or into Racha, not as a destination in itself.

There is a second reason to come up here, and it is the drive itself. The road from Kutaisi to Tkibuli climbs steadily through tea terraces and beech forest, and the reservoir is the point where the landscape changes character: below it everything is Colchic lowland, above it the limestone of Racha begins. If you are heading for Nakerala or Ambrolauri, this is the natural place to stop and look back at where you have come from.