High in the mountains of Mtskheta-Mtianeti.

The day before I drove up, one of the locals of Omalo village toppled off the road to his death.

They were so common on this road I thought they were distance markers.

The river ran loud enough to drown out the noise of the 4-kilogram Inspire 2 drone used to shoot these pics.

The aluminum monument (which looks a lot better from the back than the front) has a sword ready for enemies, but a bowl of wine ready for friends.

These are churchkelis, made by dipping a string of walnuts into a gooey mixture of grape juice. Looks like earwax, tastes like heaven.

Looking like a little slice of Tuscany in the evening sunlight.

Another of Georgia’s little treats for drivers are the roadside springs spurting out crisp, cold springwater. They’re so frequent I hardly had to buy any drinks.

When plagues swept through the region, infected villagers were banished to these stone buildings to wait for death.

Inside, the remains of apparent plague victims can still be seen today.

The fertile plains of Kakheti are in background.

This is the hardscrabble town of Chiatura, where manganese is mined.

The town’s dizzying geography inspired Soviet engineers to install a network of "rope roads" to transport workers up to their mines. This cable car has been running since 1954.

The monk has his food winched up by volunteers from the monastery below.

After a bitter separatist war in Abkhazia in the early 90s, Batumi, with murkier water and less appealing beaches than the breakaway region to the north, has gone all out to attract tourism with casinos and high-rise buildings.

The quiet hills around Batumi’s Convent Of The Holy Trinity.

Sheep in the highlands of Georgia are penned in overnight while two or three fearsome Caucasian shepherd dogs prowl the perimeter to protect the flock from wolves.

This is a spot on one of the highways where it’s some kind of tradition for drivers to toss coins out their window -- a whole squad of people, with magnets on sticks, race to scoop up the coins.

It was of one of the earliest settlements in Georgia.

Pretty to look at, horrifying to drive to. #slipperymountainroads

Beneath the monastery lies the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers, and Mtskheta, the ancient capital of Georgia.

The odd-looking structure (my wife described it as looking like “a dead snake on a rock”) was built on the site of a Word War II memorial. During the demolition of the memorial, a woman and her eight-year old daughter were killed by chunks of flying concrete.

I don’t know if that’s skin or not. I’ll upload the full res version of this if there’s enough interest in the post.

and tastes… meh.

These are traditional woolen hats, worn by mountain people of the Caucasus, up for sale on the side of the road.

A glorious plunge into a mountain stream after hours hot, harrowing Cliffside 4WDing near the end of the trip.