Khvamli Mountain, Georgia - The Stone Wall I Watched for Four Years
For four working years the limestone wall of Khvamli marked the halfway point of my commute between Tbilisi and the Black Sea coast. From 2017 to 2021 I lived in Georgia, delivering ADB-financed water and wastewater infrastructure for Ludwig Pfeiffer, and the road to our coastal construction sites ran right past this 2,002-metre massif above Lechkhumi. Khvamli was never a mountain I discovered. It was a mountain that watched me drive by, month after month, until ignoring it became impossible.
This story is the payoff of that long acquaintance: the drive up from Kutaisi, the climb to the summit plateau, the caves that legend ties to Prometheus and the Argonauts, and what the Rioni lowlands look like from the top of a rock that most travellers only ever see from the highway. Field notes and photographs from an engineer who finally stopped the car.
If you want the context behind those years on the road, the projects and the neighbouring mountains are all here:
- WWTP Ureki - the treatment plant behind all that mileage
- WWTP Anaklia - a biological kidney for a coastal paradise
- Tetnuldi - Svaneti's secret ski mountain