Tusheti Road: What Is the World’s Most Dangerous Road Like?

From Cautious Planners to Reckless Adventurers: The Drunken Pact to Conquer Tusheti

Georgia is a country jam-packed with mountains. The Caucasus mountain range runs along the entire northern part of the country, thus making for a hiker’s wet dream.

Our friend from Berlin, Hannah, came to join us in Telavi, one of the bigger cities of Georgia’s wine region (alongside Sighnaghi), a few days after we had arrived from Azerbaijan. We had planned nothing of our Georgia travels aside from a loose idea that we wanted to hike somewhere and eventually get to bigger cities like Kutaisi and Tbilisi.

Sitting at a restaurant with a notepad for lunch, we tried to map out the days and the hiking possibilities. On the pad was written Svaneti, Kazbegi, and between bites, I added “Tusheti”, a national park unresearched by any of us but had been highly recommended by a waiter of ours a few days earlier.

As we looked into it further, we discovered that it was known as the rawest of all the options and required a casual 4-5 hour journey on a road that made it onto BBC’s World’s Most Dangerous Roads.

“Hmm, maybe we will save this for another time.” We reassured ourselves we wanted to survive this trip, so Hannah put a big 'X' through Tusheti, and we went on to do some wine tasting.

A few wines and some chacha (a spirit like grappa) later, and we somehow ended up in a tiny bar downing some Telavi beer. The owners were conversational, so I decided to put our options to the test.

“Svaneti or Kazbegi?”

Immediately they fired back, “Wait, but what about Tusheti?”

As since this was the second time we had heard this from a local, we knew that this had to be a sign.

Could the road there really be so bad?

We drunkenly made a pact that we would head to Tusheti the next day.

One of many legs of this terrifying road.

The Hangover Fade and the Tusheti Gamble: No Turning Back at 2:15

Fast-forward to the next morning and a hungover daze, our corpulent guesthouse owner shouted in an unintelligible mix of Russian and Georgian that she could get us the 4x4 and driver we needed to safely get over the most dangerous road in the world.

“1 time!” she yelled, which we eventually interpreted to mean “1 o’clock.” We set out for lunch and got back to the guesthouse right on time. But “2 time” came around, and our trusty driver still wasn’t there.

I was honestly relieved. Maybe he wasn’t coming in the end. It was getting too late, so we’d just have to hike around Telavi and put this Tusheti madness to rest.

But then at 2:15 on the dot, a man named Temo appeared through the guesthouse gate. Older, calm and collected, he led us to his dirt covered Mitsubishi 4x4, and we got in with apprehension. At this point, there was no turning back, we were driving due north towards the mountain range in the distance.

My palms were sweaty. I had to stop Temo to pee twice out of sheer nerves.

A 72-Kilometer Nightmare: Prayers, Precipices, and the Haunting Reality of the World’s Most Dangerous Road

We turned right at a sign for Omalo, the base town in Tusheti, which was at that point 72 kilometers away.

Only 72 kilometers. That didn’t seem too far. But alas we were about to enter onto the most dangerous road in the world, so it was time to expect the unexpected.

As we started to wind our way up the dusty road, the driver not once, but twice made the Sign of the Cross with his hands, as though he was praying doubly to the gods that we would all survive this journey.

All was flat for a while and I just convinced myself it would be like that the entire way.

But then the conditions of the road started to change just a few kilometers in after the turn off. Smooth and flat were replaced by bumps and gradients. The holes in the road grew increasingly girthier and deeper, often filled with up to a foot of water.

Many worst case scenario fears bounced back and forth through my head as we bounced along, which I would then try and soften with the best case scenario situation.

As I looked out my right window, the precipice was steep and without an end...surely it would be a lethal drop, but maybe if we did drive off one of the trees would catch our fall.

As I looked to my left, I saw the jagged cliffs we were hugging, sometimes coming across a stray boulder in front of us that had fallen from above. I was painfully sensitive to the idea that a boulder could fall onto our roof and crush us at any time, but maybe it would just fall on the hood and spare us being pulverized.

Crushed to death or hurling into an abyss. Which way was the better way to go?

Looking thrilled, but at the same time, having inner-panic attacks.

Our friend, Hannah, didn’t make things any better when she pointed out a mix of crosses and tombstones on the side of the road, some of them bearing realistic etched faces of a victim (or 5), who had likely fallen off the road to their peril. They started to become more and more frequent as the road became more and more precarious.

Road side memorials became an all-too-common affair.

 Small bouts of Relief came in the form of an occasional paved portion of road with a guardrail, usually only lasting for a few meters before returning to the previous treacherous conditions.

From Fear to Awe: Trusting Temo and Embracing the Beauty Beyond the World’s Most Dangerous Road

But suddenly some words muttered by Temo, the driver, flipped a switch in my brain:

“Good roads...10 minutes”

And he was spot on with his words. After ten minutes or so, the gaping potholes in the road became less and less, and although we were still rising up the mountainside by means of hairpin turns, I began to relax.

I realized Temo knew what the hell he was doing. Even if he seemed to go a little fast sometimes and did the seemingly impossible by passing other vehicles on whatever narrow space was available, he was a pro on these roads — having probably done them thousands of times. And thanks to a mix of relinquishing my tendencies to be in control and feeling a sudden sense of full trust in Temo my fears turned into joy and awe.

We eventually came across the Abano Pass, where we stopped in the clouds to use probably the highest restroom in the world and grab a coffee at a makeshift café a friendly and courageous young Tushetian woman ran 3,000 meters up, before continuing on.

You can imagine that a toilet 3,000 meters up is chic and luxurious

The hardest part truly was behind us. Even with the thick fog and the steep descent towards Omalo on more roads lacking guardrails, I started to savor every moment. From the deep green slopes, to the occasional waterfall, to the impressively deep valleys and ravines. The clouds opened up to utterly raw and natural beauty.

Ultimately, we rolled into the picturesque valley containing Omalo village intact and alive and with a smile Temo parted ways with us.

Views from above Omalo, the gateway to Tusheti National Park

The next few days hiking through Tusheti would prove to be some of the most incredible of our time in Georgia and that’s thanks to the initial risk we put ourselves in by taking the world's most dangerous road.

Three hikers, joyous to have survived.

The Moral of the Story

Sure this road is dangerous and comes with plenty of risks, but embarking on something unknown like this teaches you a wealth of lessons that go beyond the road - that you need to occasionally give up control, trust that everything is going to be okay (but of course trust your intuition first), do things that make you nervous as they tend to be growth opportunities, and ultimately embrace the chaos that is the everyday of this world.

A photo with our trusty driver, Temo. He also took us back the other direction.