Georgia on a shoestring
Georgia is the rare country that is cheap without being difficult. The buses run, the guesthouses are warm, and nobody minds that you turned up without a booking. What catches people out is not the budget — it is the calendar.
At a glance
- Total spend
- EUR 47811 days, two people
- Best months
- May-Junand late September
- Nights
- 10guesthouses
- Longest leg
- 9 hrsTbilisi to Mestia
When to go, and when not to
The country has two seasons that matter to a traveller on a budget, and they are not summer and winter. They are road open and road closed. The high passes into Svaneti and Tusheti are shut for roughly half the year, and no amount of planning gets you over them in March.
BestShoulderAvoid
July and August are not marked as best, and that is deliberate. The weather is fine. The prices are not, and Kazbegi in August is a car park with a view.
What it cost, line by line
Two people, eleven days, sharing rooms. Everything below was paid in lari and converted at the rate on the day.
| Line | Detail | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Beds | 10 nights, guesthouses | EUR 172 |
| Food | Roughly EUR 13 a day | EUR 143 |
| Transport | Marshrutkas, one 4×4 | EUR 68 |
| Everything else | Entry fees, a sim card, one bad souvenir | EUR 95 |
| Total | EUR 43 a day | EUR 478 |
The single biggest saving is not accommodation. It is refusing to hire a driver for the Tbilisi to Mestia leg. The shared minibus takes nine hours and costs a tenth as much, and you will be fine.
Getting to Svaneti
The marshrutka leaves Tbilisi early and arrives in Mestia in the evening. Book it two or three days ahead in high season; in May you can usually turn up. Take food, because the stops are short and unpredictable.
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What we would do differently
- Three nights in Mestia, not two. The day walk to Chalaadi glacier deserves its own day.
- Skip Batumi. It is a casino town with a beach of grey pebbles.
- Carry cash. Card machines exist and fail often, and the mountain villages have neither.
Prices here are what we paid in June 2026. Georgian transport fares move, and the mountain roads close without much notice — check before you commit money to anything above.