Utsera Mineral Springs

Utsera is the place in Racha where the water comes fizzing out of the ground, and it is free. The village sits on the left bank of the Rioni about fifteen kilometres above Oni, at roughly 1,030 metres, on the road towards Shovi.

The water here is naturally carbonated, of the sodium-bicarbonate type, and has been used since the Soviet period for digestive complaints. Several outlets exist in the village — pipes and simple catchments from which water runs continuously. The taste is salty and faintly metallic; it comes out cold and so heavily gassed that a bottle foams for the first minute. People pull up here with plastic canisters and fill the boot of the car.

Utsera was formalised as a resort in the 1930s. Part of the sanatorium still functions and part stands abandoned, which is an ordinary sight in Racha. Around it is mixed conifer and broadleaf forest, the air cool and dry, and the valley noticeably tighter here, with the slopes of the Racha range rising to the north.

The village is small and the services minimal: two or three guesthouses, a small shop, a few seasonal stalls in summer. There is effectively no cafe, and no ATM.

Utsera is not worth a journey in itself, but on the way up to Shovi or Ghebi it is a logical and pleasant stop — half an hour at the spring, a walk under the pines, then on up the valley.

Utsera is not the only spring in this valley. Carbonated outlets follow one another in a chain along the upper Rioni — Shovi has its own, so does Sori. They mark the line of the deep Racha fault, where carbon dioxide rises into the groundwater and reaches the surface already gassed. Below the village, by the river, traces of the old bottling works survive. Within the sanatorium grounds a few paths run through the pines and make a good half hour, and to the north the outline of the Shoda-Kedela ridge shows above the trees.