Gamarjoba Ask us

Ushguli · Svaneti · Georgia

The house at the top of Ushguli

A family guesthouse beside Lamaria church, fifty metres below the highest point of the village, where the trail to the Shkhara glacier begins.

Ask us about a room Where it is
  • Hot shower
  • Bathroom in the room
  • Wi-Fi and heating
A photograph of the Ushguli valley with one of Fridon Nizharadze’s paintings set into the sky: a golden face inside a sun, with turquoise rays and red beneath it.
The family’s own sign

When the family made its first website, this is what they put at the top of it — the valley they live in, with one of Fridon’s suns in the sky above it.

Stay

If you have just walked here

Four days from Mestia end in this village. These are the things you probably want to know first.

  • Hot showerYes, in your own bathroom. All six rooms have one.
  • RoomsSix, on two floors. Fourteen beds in all.
  • FoodDinner and breakfast are cooked to order. Ask for them when you book — they do not come with the room.
  • HeatingAn electric radiator in every room.
  • Wi-FiYes, and there is no charge for it.
  • PriceAsk us. We will tell you before you come.
  • OpenMessage us before you set out, and we will tell you.
  • AskingWhatsApp, or Booking.com. Both reach the same family.

Sleep

Rooms

Six rooms on two floors, under the wooden ceilings of the house.

Downstairs there are two rooms, each with three single beds. Upstairs there are four: three of them have a double bed, and one has two single beds.

Fourteen people can sleep in the house. Tell us the night you want and how many of you there are, and we will tell you which room is free.

An upstairs guest room with a double bed, wooden ceiling, two windows and a chair beside the bed.
An upstairs guest room.
A green guest room with a double bed and the door to its private bathroom open.
A room with its own bathroom.

You sit on wooden chairs of the kind traditionally used by the village elder, and on a bench that Fridon carved.

The table

Meals are cooked to order

Dinner and breakfast are made by the family, in their own house beside the guesthouse — the same house the gallery is in. The food is home-cooked and regional, and it is eaten at one long table.

Neither meal comes with the room. Ask for them when you book, and say how many of you there are.

Next door

The paintings of Fridon Nizharadze

The family lives in the house beside the guesthouse. Upstairs in it is a room hung wall to wall with paintings by Fridon Nizharadze, and Fridon is one of the family.

Every house in Ushguli looks out at the same mountains.

This is the one with Fridon’s gallery beside it.

A small room with bare wooden walls and floor, hung from floor to ceiling with framed paintings: faces, figures, suns and mountains. More canvases stand leaning against the walls, beside a carved wooden chair and two carved stools.
The gallery room

The room is upstairs in the family’s own house, next to the guesthouse.

Ushguli

Where it is

At the upper edge of the village, close to St George church and Lamaria church.

The guesthouse: a two-storey building of grey and ochre stone under a wide wooden gable, with a balcony running the width of the upper floor and a bench beside the front door.
The guesthouse

Two floors. The rooms with the double beds are on the upper one.

A wide view of the country around Ushguli: bare ridges, green pasture and the road running along the valley floor.
The country around Ushguli. This is a photograph of the village area, not a promise of a view from a particular room.

Ushguli is a group of villages at the head of the Enguri valley in Svaneti, at about 2,100 metres, and its stone towers are a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Fifty metres away there is a hill, and it is the highest point of the village. From the top you see the whole of Ushguli one way and Shkhara, the highest peak in Georgia, the other.

The trail to the Shkhara glacier starts here. So does the last day of the walk from Mestia, in reverse. There is an ethnographic museum near the house, in an old Svanetian house — a machubi.

  • Lamaria churchBeside the house
  • Highest point50 m away
  • Shkhara trailStarts here
  • From MestiaFour days on foot
  • ElevationAbout 2,100 m

Before you set out

Ask us

Ask before you set out, and the family will answer. The house takes bookings on Booking.com, where it is listed as Gamarjoba Guest and Art House — the same house, the same family.

Tell us the night you want, how many of you there are, and whether you will want dinner.

We answer in English. The same number takes an ordinary phone call, if you have no signal for data.