The Abano Pass closes for about six months, and October is when the window shuts

The route into Tusheti runs about 72 kilometres over the Abano Pass at 2,926 metres, described by the protected-areas administration as the highest motor crossing in the Caucasus. It takes four to five hours in good conditions. There is no public transport: reaching Omalo means hiring a driver with a four-wheel drive. The surface is unpaved for most of the climb, and landslides and rock debris have to be cleared repeatedly even during the open season.

The official line is that the pass operates only a few months a year, from late May to October, and is closed for roughly six months by snow — in winter the villages are reached by helicopter. Travel guides describe the opening as typically late May with closure in late October or early November, and note that in some years the opening slips into June after landslide damage. Neither end of the season is a fixed date, which is the whole point.

Late season trips are the ones that go wrong. A booking taken for mid or late October can be cancelled by a single snowfall at 2,900 metres, and the decision is made by the weather rather than by you. If you sell Tusheti in autumn, sell it with the closure written into the terms, an alternative itinerary already priced, and a refund position the guest has read before paying. Guests forgive a cancelled pass; they do not forgive finding out about it at the roadblock.

Do not drive it yourself in a rented saloon car, and do not treat a dry morning in Kakheti as information about the pass. Hire a local driver who does the route regularly, leave early, and build a spare day into the trip in case you cannot come back down on the day you planned. Book beds by phone where guesthouses have no website, and carry cash. The reward is a region that most visitors to Georgia never see; the cost is accepting that the mountain sets the schedule.