In Ushguli—one of Europe’s highest permanently inhabited villages and a UNESCO World Heritage Site—stone towers rise above the snow, relics of medieval blood feuds that still watch over a landscape where Mestia and the wider Svaneti now balance ancient culture with a surge of post-COVID ski tourism.

Christianity has threaded quietly through life here since the 4th century, while today a new kind of pressure builds—more visitors, more development, more strain—drawing people like me for the same reasons: big terrain, good snow, and a culture that still feels intact, if increasingly tested by overtourism.

Days unfolded alongside old, legendary friend Giorgio Daidola, still charging 1000-metre backcountry ski days into his eighties, and among the region’s quietly charismatic street dogs—products of a humane tag-neuter-vaccinate system—drifting between cafés, ski tracks, and villages with him, Cristina, Carmelo and Roberto. Special thanks to Guro Alaphishvili for your entertaining, informative guidance.