This day was meant to be a drive back to Tbilisi. Nothing more than a return journey on paper. In reality, it turned out to be one of those days where the road quietly takes over the narrative.

Instead of the direct route, we left our guesthouse near Vardzia and climbed onto a narrow, winding road towards the village of Apnia. This detour had been planned by Lasha — his way of making sure the journey back was not just about getting from one place to another. He couldn’t join us that day due to urgent personal work, but his brother-in-law took the wheel instead, following the route exactly as Lasha had described it to us.

The road to Apnia rises steadily, offering wide views of the valley below. From certain bends, the Vardzia cave complex appears in the distance — not dramatic or imposing, but quietly present, etched into the rock face across the valley. There isn’t much to see in Apnia itself apart from a small church and a handful of houses, but the drive up feels purposeful, as though the village exists mainly to justify the road that leads to it.

From Apnia, we continued towards Akhalkalaki, a drive that took a little over an hour. The landscape here begins to feel different — more open, more austere. From Akhalkalaki, we drove south towards Ninotsminda, a town barely twenty-five kilometres from the Armenian border. Named after Saint Nino in 1991 (and earlier known as Bogdanovka), Ninotsminda has a population made up largely of Armenians, with a smaller presence of the Doukhobor community from Russia.

What stays with you, though, are the storks. They are everywhere. No pole or post seems unused, each crowned with a large nest. It’s impossible not to slow down here, scanning rooftops and wires, spotting movement against the pale winter sky.

Our first stop of the day was Saghamo Lake. Set in the Samtskhe–Javakheti region on the eastern slopes of the Javakheti volcanic mountains, the lake sits at an altitude of just under 2,000 metres. By early winter, the water had already begun to freeze. The surface was partially sealed in ice, the lake quiet and still, stretching out in its distinctive trapezoidal shape across the Paravani river basin.

The name Saghamo roughly translates to “evening,” a reference to the sunsets that light up the lake in warmer months. We didn’t see that version of the lake, but what we saw felt no less striking — a vast, cold expanse edged by muted colours and an early winter light.

A short drive later brought us to Paravani Lake, larger and higher than Saghamo, and even more exposed. It is the largest lake in Georgia by surface area and sits surrounded by snow-clad mountains that seem to hold it in place. The Paravani River begins here, flowing out towards the Mtkvari.

Six villages circle the lake — Paravani, Aspara, Vladimirovka, Tambovka, Akhali Khulgumo, and Poka — but the lake itself dominates everything. The wind was sharper here, the cold more insistent. At one point, our driver stepped casually onto the frozen surface, testing the ice with an ease that made us nervous. We stayed back, watching from solid ground, suddenly very aware of where we were and how unfamiliar this landscape still felt to us.

From Paravani, the road gradually turned north, carrying us back towards Tbilisi. It felt like the closing stretch of the journey — not abrupt, not sentimental, just quietly conclusive. Lasha wasn’t there, but his presence lingered in the choice of route, in the pauses he would have insisted on, in the way the day unfolded. By the time the city began to reappear, the wide spaces of the plateau and the frozen lakes already felt distant. The drive had done what it needed to do — not add highlights, but ease us gently out of the journey.