Javakheti and Vardzia Tour from Tbilisi (3 Days)

At Dashbashi the Tsalka plateau suddenly tears open into a green canyon, and a diamond-shaped glass bridge, with a cafe suspended at its very centre, spans the void 240 metres across. Below, waterfalls slide over mossy basalt into a turquoise river, reachable by walking trails. The engineering is startling; the landscape more so. It is Georgia's newest wonder and already one of its most visited.

Javakheti is Georgia's volcanic roof: a windswept plateau of extinct cones, black-stone villages and mirror lakes where thousands of birds stage over on migration. Paravani, the country's largest lake, sits here at 2073 m like a sheet of sky fallen to earth. Medieval churches and petroglyphs punctuate a landscape that feels closer to Central Asia than to the Black Sea. For lovers of big, empty horizons, nothing in Georgia compares.

In the 12th century Queen Tamar's builders carved an entire city into a cliff above the Mtkvari: thirteen floors of dwellings, chapels, refectories and wine cellars, home to thousands of monks. An earthquake later sliced the mountain open, exposing the honeycomb you climb through today. Frescoes from Georgia's golden age still glow in the rock-cut Church of the Dormition. Walking its tunnels and stairways, with swallows wheeling over the valley below, feels like entering a legend that happens to be real.

Rabati Castle in Akhaltsikhe is a city within walls: a Georgian church, an Ottoman mosque, a synagogue quarter, gardens, towers and a keep, restored into one fairytale labyrinth. Every staircase opens a new courtyard; every rampart a new view over the town and hills. The mix of styles tells the true story of Georgia's south, where empires met for centuries. Come late in the day, when the stone glows and the crowds thin.