6 Days (Kutaisi) – West, Adjara and the South

Gelati was medieval Georgia's Oxford: an academy founded in 1106 by King David the Builder, where philosophers translated and taught beneath golden mosaics. The great Virgin mosaic of the main church survives, one of the finest in the Caucasus, alongside layers of superb frescoes. David himself lies buried under the gateway stone, so that all who enter step over their king. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and, for many travellers, the most moving building in western Georgia.

Batumi is Georgia's exhale: palm trees, a seven-kilometre seaside boulevard, belle-epoque facades and a skyline of playful towers. The moving steel statue of Ali and Nino embraces and parts every ten minutes above the harbour. On the cliff north of town, the Botanical Garden layers subtropical forests from around the world above the sea. Add fish markets, adjaruli khachapuri and long sunsets, and the Black Sea earns its riviera title.

Behind Batumi's beaches rises another Adjara: rain-fed mountains where Ottoman-era stone bridges arch over rushing rivers and villages cling to tea-green slopes. In Khulo a tiny cable car strings across an entire gorge, one of the most improbable commutes in Europe. Waterfalls, highland pastures and the Goderdzi pass complete a landscape that could not be more different from the coast twenty kilometres away. This is the green heart of the Georgian subtropics.

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.

Borjomi's lightly sparkling mineral water made this forest gorge famous across half the world; you can still drink it warm, straight from the source, in the town's landscaped park. All around rises Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, one of Europe's largest, with hiking trails threading endless conifer forest. Romanov princes built their summer palace here for the climate. It remains the classic Georgian spa town, pine air included.