With 10 days in Georgia, both halves of the country fit: the high Caucasus and the wine valleys in the east, then Kutaisi, Borjomi and the cave city of Vardzia in the west and south. A week does not quite manage it. This itinerary starts and ends at Tbilisi airport, gives the driving time of every day, and puts a cost against each one.
Itineraries tend to stop at the route. This one adds the cost, which is not one number repeated ten times: six of these days involve real driving, two are city days that need no car, and two are airport runs. Each is priced differently, and an honest quote keeps them apart.
Why ten days, and not seven
The seven-day version makes a choice: stay in the east, or give a day to crossing west. For a week, that is the right call. Three more days change the answer, because the west is not three more destinations. It is one long drive out and one long drive back, and ten days can absorb both without losing the days in between.
Svaneti still does not fit. The road to Mestia is a trip of its own, and folding it into this one would cost the days that make the rest work.
The 10-day route, and the driving time of each day
- Day 1, arrival. Tbilisi airport to the hotel at the fixed airport fare, twenty to thirty minutes outside peak hours. Nothing else.
- Day 2, Tbilisi. No car. The old town and the sulfur baths are on foot.
- Day 3, Mtskheta and the Military Highway. About three and a half hours. Mtskheta is twenty kilometres out and holds two churches on UNESCO’s World Heritage list: Jvari, a 6th-century church on the hill, and Svetitskhoveli, built between 1010 and 1029. Then north to Stepantsminda for the night.
- Day 4, Kazbegi and back. Three to three and a half hours. Gergeti Trinity in the morning, before the midday crowds, then the drive down. Kazbegi with a night in it is an easier trip than the same-day round trip.
- Day 5, Kakheti. Ninety minutes to two hours each way. The wine roads are a day of cellars, and qvevri winemaking, in egg-shaped earthenware vessels buried in the ground, has been on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list since 2013. Nobody in the party drives.
- Day 6, Tbilisi. No car, or three hours. A rest day before the long half. If the party wants a car, three hours in Tbilisi is an hourly hire, not a day.
- Day 7, west to Kutaisi. About three and a half hours. Kutaisi by early afternoon, then Gelati, the monastery King David IV began in 1106.
- Day 8, Kutaisi to Borjomi. About two hours. Georgia’s protected-areas agency puts Kutaisi to the Borjomi-Kharagauli park at about 130 kilometres and a little over two hours. Borjomi itself is a short day: the park, the water, an early night.
- Day 9, Vardzia, then Tbilisi. About six hours. Two hours to Vardzia, two or three on the rock, about four back to the capital. The cave city was mainly built in the 12th century, under Giorgi III and his daughter, Queen Tamar. This is the longest day of the ten.
- Day 10, departure. Hotel to the airport, twenty to thirty minutes.
The six driving days add up to a little over twenty hours at the wheel. The seven-day eastern week has eight to ten. That difference is the west, and it is the reason this trip needs ten days rather than seven.
A driver is not a guide. If Gelati or Vardzia needs explaining, a guide is a separate booking.
Swapping the cave city for the coast
If the sea matters more than Borjomi and Vardzia, day eight runs from Kutaisi to Batumi, about two hours, and day nine is the crossing back to Tbilisi. That crossing is where the train earns its place. Georgian Railway runs two trains a day in each direction, listed on its ticket site, and since track work finished in the summer of 2026 the trip takes about four hours, less than the drive.
Be clear about what the swap buys: an afternoon and an evening by the sea. A beach holiday needs its own week.
What the itinerary costs at published rates
Separate the days before adding them up. A day covers one driver for eight to nine hours, door to door, and a trip that takes the whole day to go and come back is priced at the day rate. A city day needs no car, or an hourly hire on a three-hour minimum. The airport runs are fixed fares.
At the published rates for the four cars we run:
- Six driving days: 8 100 ₾ in the V-Class, 9 000 ₾ in the S-Class, 15 000 ₾ in either Maybach.
- Arrival and departure: 700 ₾, 1 000 ₾ or 1 500 ₾ for the pair, in the same order.
- A city afternoon, if the party wants a car: 600 ₾ for three hours in the V-Class or the S-Class, 900 ₾ in a Maybach.
Day nine is the one likely to run past nine hours, and longer routes are quoted with the extra hours already included: 135 ₾ an hour in the V-Class, 150 ₾ in the S-Class, 250 ₾ in a Maybach. The V-Class seats seven; the S-Class and both Maybachs seat three, so a party of four has one column to read.
Those figures are the published rates multiplied out, which is arithmetic, not a quote. A trip with nights away from Tbilisi is quoted as one multi-day booking, in writing, before it starts, and the written number is the one that counts.
A Georgia itinerary without a car: which legs work
Most of this route can be done on public transport. The parts that cannot are the reason to pay for a car, and it is worth knowing which they are.
What works. Mtskheta is a short minibus ride from Didube station in Tbilisi. Borjomi has minibuses from Didube through the day. Batumi is the train above. Kutaisi has minibuses from Didube too, but no direct train into the city: the main line passes outside it, at Rioni, and the last stretch is a bus or a taxi.
What does not. The Kazbegi minibus reaches Stepantsminda, but the stops on the way are the point, and a scheduled minibus does not wait at Ananuri. Minibuses reach Telavi and Sighnaghi, but a cellar day moves between villages, and whoever is tasting should not be the one driving. Vardzia is a few minibuses a day from Akhaltsikhe, about an hour and a half each way, which turns one long day into two.
The cheap, honest version of this itinerary uses the minibus and the train where they work, and a car for the Military Highway, the wine day and Vardzia. Renting is the other cheap answer, and a sound one except on the wine day; the split between rental and chauffeur explains why.
Send the dates, the size of the party and the version of the route to booking@soitblack.com. What a multi-day brief should include is set out separately, and the quote comes back in writing.