The Caucasus sits where Europe stops being Europe, and it has been fought over by every empire in the neighbourhood — Roman, Persian, Ottoman, Russian, Soviet — while remaining stubbornly itself. Georgia has its own alphabet, used by no one else. Armenia has the oldest state church in the world. Both have mountains higher than anything in the Alps and a fraction of the visitors.
It is also, still, among the cheapest and most hospitable travel in the wider European region.
Georgia
Tbilisi is the anchor: sulphur baths under brick domes in the old town, Persian-influenced wooden balconies, Soviet concrete, and a contemporary scene — restaurants, wine bars, a techno club in a stadium basement that is internationally known — that has grown fast in the last decade.
Wine. Georgia has an eight-thousand-year continuous winemaking tradition, the oldest known anywhere, and it is made in qvevri — enormous clay vessels buried in the ground. The result, particularly the amber wines made with extended skin contact on white grapes, tastes like nothing else. Kakheti, two hours east, is the region; Sighnaghi and Telavi are the bases, and almost every family makes their own.
The Greater Caucasus. Kazbegi (Stepantsminda), three hours north on the Georgian Military Highway, with the Gergeti Trinity Church on a ridge under a 5,000m peak — it is the photograph of Georgia. Svaneti, in the north-west, is harder to reach and better: medieval defensive tower-houses in villages under glaciers, and the four-day Mestia to Ushguli trek, which is among the best walks in Europe and requires no permit.
Tusheti, reached over a pass that is open about four months a year on a road with a formidable reputation, is the remotest part.
The Black Sea coast at Batumi is a strange mix of palm trees, casinos and Soviet sanatoria.
Armenia
Smaller, drier, and landlocked, with a diaspora larger than its population.
Yerevan is a pink-tufa city built largely to a 1920s master plan, with a strong café culture and the Cascade, a monumental staircase that is also a sculpture gallery.
The monasteries are the reason to travel here, and they are placed with an eye for drama: Geghard, partly carved into rock; Tatev, reached by the world’s longest reversible cable car over a gorge; Noravank, in a red canyon; Khor Virap, with Mount Ararat filling the sky behind it — a mountain that is Armenia’s national symbol and is in Turkey.
The Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan is essential and difficult, and understanding it is necessary to understanding the country and the region’s closed borders.
Lake Sevan and the Dilijan forests for landscape.
Azerbaijan
Baku is a Caspian oil city: a walled medieval old town, a boulevard of 1900s oil-boom mansions, and the Flame Towers above it. The Absheron peninsula has mud volcanoes and burning natural-gas outcrops. Sheki in the north-west, with its khan’s palace of stained glass set without nails, is the most beautiful town in the country.
The borders, which constrain the route
This is the practical thing to understand.
Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed. You cannot cross directly between Armenia and Azerbaijan at all.
Georgia connects to both, and is therefore the hub: Tbilisi to Yerevan and Tbilisi to Baku are both straightforward by road or rail.
Azerbaijan refuses entry to anyone with evidence of visiting Nagorno-Karabakh, and has done so consistently.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Georgian territories under Russian control; entering them other than from Georgia is illegal under Georgian law.
Conditions in this region change. Check current advice for each country before booking.
Practical
Visas: Georgia allows many nationalities a full year visa-free, which is unusual and is why it has a large remote-working population. Armenia and Azerbaijan have e-visas for most.
Language: Georgian and Armenian each have their own script and are unrelated to anything. Russian is widely understood by older people; English by younger ones in cities.
Transport: marshrutkas — shared minibuses — are the network, cheap and frequent, leaving when full. Trains between Tbilisi, Batumi, Yerevan and Baku are slow and comfortable.
Season: May–June and September–October. The high mountain villages are only accessible roughly June to September. Winter is a serious proposition in the Caucasus and Georgia has genuinely good, cheap skiing at Gudauri.
Costs are low: this is among the cheapest travel in the wider European region, comparable to the Balkans.
Hospitality in Georgia is a formal cultural institution — the supra, a feast with a tamada leading toasts — and being invited to one is common and should be accepted. Pace yourself; the toasts are numerous and the chacha is strong.
A route that works
Two weeks: Tbilisi (3), Kakheti wine country (2), Kazbegi (2), Svaneti (4), Batumi or back to Tbilisi (2), with a flight or overnight train between the ends.
Three weeks: add Armenia — Yerevan (3), the monasteries and Tatev (3), Lake Sevan (1) — entering and leaving via Tbilisi, because the Armenia–Azerbaijan border is closed.
Four weeks: add Azerbaijan as a separate leg from Tbilisi, and accept that you will backtrack.