Tusheti's road is a mid-June to end-of-September proposition, which makes this a planning post, not a trip

Abano Pass is at 2,850 metres and the road to it is unpaved, narrow and cut into a hillside with steep drops and a landslide risk. At that altitude snow arrives early and leaves late, and there is no realistic winter maintenance of a single-track gravel road serving a few hundred people. Mid-June to the end of September is not a tourist season imposed by operators; it is the period in which the road physically exists as a usable road. Anyone being offered a Tusheti trip outside it should ask exactly what is being promised.

The guide is blunt that the main risk is not the road itself but the drivers on it, that fatal accidents happen on this route every year, and that alcohol is a recurring factor. Its advice is to use a sober, experienced driver and not to accept a lift from an unfamiliar one. A guesthouse-arranged minivan from Alvani to Omalo is around 100 lari a person one way, with another 100 to 150 lari to reach Alvani from Tbilisi. Self-driving is described as suitable only for people experienced in mountain terrain, and most rental agencies forbid the road outright, which also means an insurance problem if anything goes wrong.

A marshrutka from Tbilisi to Alvani or Telavi is 12 to 15 lari, and a shared taxi onward from Alvani to Tusheti about 100 lari a person. Inside Tusheti there is no public transport at all, and a taxi from Omalo to Dartlo is quoted at 200 to 250 lari for the car. That last figure is what turns a cheap-looking trip expensive: the villages people actually come to see are not within walking distance of each other for most visitors, so either the transport inside the region is budgeted for or the trip becomes a stay in one village. At least three vans a day run back down, with one leaving Alvani at 2pm.

Anyone running experiences or a guesthouse up there is pricing a season that cannot be stretched, and a single bad weather week in a four-month year is a far larger proportion of revenue than it would be in Batumi. The practical consequences are a booking policy that is honest about the opening and closing dates rather than optimistic, deposits that account for the real chance of a washed-out road, and a transport arrangement named in the confirmation. Guests who arrive having been told the drive is five hours and find it is eight tend to write about that, and the review outlasts the season.