Khikhani Fortress in Adjara, Georgia: the complete 2026 guide

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Updated 7 October 2026·30 min read·Prices and facts checked: September 2026

Khikhani Fortress stands at 2,236 m on the Georgia-Turkiye border ridge in mountainous Adjara, 113 km from Batumi, and you need a free Border Police permit before you set out. Here is which road to take, what the rebuilt 1 km trail really demands, what the day costs in 2026, and where to sleep and eat in the valley below.

Khikhani Fortress stands at 2,236 m on a rock spur above Zeda Tkhilvana village in Khulo municipality, mountainous Adjara, at the head of the Skhalta valley on the ridge that carries the Georgia-Turkiye border. It is 113 km by road from Batumi and 45.5 km from Khulo, and the coordinates are 41.5417, 42.5652. Entry is free, there is no gate and no ticket office, and the 09:00 to 17:00 opening hours Google shows for it mean nothing on the ground.

The ruin covers about a hectare on the Adjara tourism department's figure, and it is long and thin: 350 m from the first tower at the south-east end to the chimney building west of tower 4, and only 15 to 25 m wide, with cliffs on three sides and one difficult approach from the south-east. Four rectangular towers, a curtain wall, a palace, a hall church, a well and a wine cellar survive. The walls still reach 5 to 6 m in places and are 90 to 95 cm thick, rubble laid in lime mortar along the outer edge of the rock.

Tower 4 is the one to walk to. It is the best preserved of the four, three storeys high and 5 by 4.5 m, and its door sits 3 m above the ground because the only way in was a ladder that was hoisted up behind you. Tower 2 stands 45 m from tower 1 and measures 4.5 by 3.8 m; tower 3 is 185 m further along at 4.8 by 4.2 m.

The main buildings go back to the 11th to 13th centuries. The chimney buildings squeezed into the palace and the dwellings scattered across the slope are later: the national monuments register puts them in the late Middle Ages, and the excavated houses inside the walls are 17th and 18th century.

The altitude is the number other pages get wrong. Plenty of them print 2,635 m. It is 2,236 m: the Adjara tourism department, the national tourism administration and the national monuments register all put it at 2,235 to 2,236 m, and the Tourism Product Development Agency gives the same figure as the high point of its alpine route.

Bare stone walls along a narrow green ridge, with no roofs, no fences and no ticket booth. The ruin is about 350 m long and only 15 to 25 m wide, so it reads as a thin line of masonry along the crest, with cliffs falling away on three sides and the mountains of upper Adjara all around.

In summer, wildflowers grow between the stones and on the slopes below the walls. For clear pictures, be at the top in the morning: cloud builds on this ridge through the afternoon.

Khikhani was the seat of the Abuseridze family, the eristavt-eristavi (grand dukes) of Adjara, who held it from the 11th to the 16th century. "Kartlis Tskhovreba" names them as eristavi of Artanuji, Khikhata, Tsikhisjvari and Atskveri, and Abuser I Abuserisdze appears as the owner of Khikhata in the middle of the 11th century.

Its most famous resident was Tbel Abuserisdze, the 13th-century prose writer, hymnographer, scribe and astronomer who lived here and was later canonised by the Georgian Orthodox Church. His own manuscript A-85, dated 1233, survives, and he was writing it on site while the church below the towers was still being built. Historical documents credit the completion of the fortress to his wife, whom the Adjara tourism department names Bagula. Local legend gives the building to Queen Tamar instead, which is why people in the valley also call the place Tamar's Fortress.

Two dates matter. In 1191 supporters of Guzan Abulasanisdze seized Khikhani and handed it to the Turks, who destroyed the wine cellar of 43 kvevri cut into the rock; on the orders of Queen Tamar and David Soslan, Abuser and Sanano Abuserisdze took it back, and Tbel Abuserisdze built a new cellar of 28 kvevri in the 1220s. Archaeologists dug the church in 2013, the 28-kvevri cellar in 2014 and the 43-kvevri one in 2015.

The second date is 1815. Selim Khimshiashvili, Pasha of Akhaltsikhe, shut himself into Khikhani against the Ottomans, who sent 15,000 troops against him. The fortress fell on 3 June, he was captured and beheaded, and cannonballs of three calibres from that battle still come out of the ground. His prophecy that Georgia would not remain in Ottoman hands came true in 1878, when Adjara returned to Georgia.

The digs have also turned up the palace on the lower terrace, 15.70 by 8.70 m with walls 90 to 100 cm thick still standing 3.80 m high and a raised sleeping platform of 3.50 by 2.40 m in the north-west corner; a hall church 7.7 m long and 5.2 m wide with walls 60 cm thick; and semi-subterranean cellars surviving to 1.5 to 2 m. Local lore adds underground passages running from the crag to the river, to Potskhovi and Samtskhe, to Kvelis Tsikhe and to the Zarzma and Skhalta monasteries.

The grapes never grew up here. The kvevri cellars of Tkhilvana, Vernebi, Khikhadziri, Kalota and Khikhani all sit above the vine line, so the pressed juice came up from the lowlands by pack animal and finished its fermentation on the mountain.

The ethnographer Tedo Sakhokia came through in 1896 and described Khikhani as a solitary needle of rock, cut off on all three sides by ravines. The description still fits.

Yes. The Adjara tourism department lists "visiting the fortress Khikhani" among the four routes in the region for which permission from the State Border Protection Service is definitely required, because the route runs close to the Georgia-Turkiye border. The other three are Koslistavi to Ghoma, Didvake to Nakonaghvari, and reaching the Shuamta lakes from the Khikhani side.

The permit is free of charge and it is issued by the Border Police of Georgia. The group leader fills in the form approved as Annex No. 1 to the border regime rule and sends it to bpol@mia.gov.ge, or hands it in on paper. A tourism application carries two things: the planned route with its start and finish points, and scanned passports or IDs of every person in the group.

Three offices take applications:

• Central Office, 12 Kandelaki St, Tbilisi, bpol@mia.gov.ge
• N1 Division (Batumi), 154 Vakhtang Gorgasali St, +995 32 241 3012, the one to use if you are coming from the coast
• N2 Division (Akhaltsikhe), 38 Beka Jakheli St, +995 32 241 89 67, for travellers arriving over the Goderdzi pass from the east

Allow a week. Trek.ge has put the lead time at a week for a decade, and Photo Safari Georgia, which files these applications for its own tours, asks clients for their documents several days out. The border zone itself is a strip up to 5 km wide measured from the state border line, and the boundary line is the 500 m of it that touches the border directly. Both the permit and your ID have to be shown together, so carry the passport you applied with, and the Border Police also advise taking a GPS device on a border-zone trip.

On the ground the checkpoint sits on the Chachuni river, about 2 km past the Tsiplnara pastures, below the last stretch of trail. You register there and you do not drive past it: the rest is on foot. The inspection is brief.

Permission works the same way in the other direction. The link from the Shuamta lakes over to the fortress crosses towards the state border and needs the same document, and the department marks a bypass variant on its map for walkers who do not have one.

Only the final kilometre has to be walked, and it takes one to three hours depending on your legs, with about ninety minutes being normal for a fit walker. The Adjara tourism department gives 30 to 60 minutes, which is a fast time that few people match; walkers on the new staircases this September came up in 70 to 80 minutes, and a slower group took three hours exactly.

The trail was rebuilt in 2023. The Tourism Product Development Agency put the work out to tender in May 2021 with 865,000 GEL allocated, and the path opened to visitors in the second half of September 2023. What you walk today is 1 km with 254 steps and 14 metal staircases of different lengths bolted onto the hardest sections, plus benches, a gazebo and viewing platforms. Between the staircases it is a narrow stony path at something close to 45 degrees. About two thirds of the way up there is a rest point with a table, benches and swings.

The height gain on that kilometre is 400 to 420 m on the department's figure and about 500 m by the GPS of walkers who have measured it. The department advises people with heart or respiratory problems against it.

Water is the one thing to get right. There is a tap at the car park where the track ends, and nothing on the climb, so fill up before you start. On the longer loop over the Shuamta pastures the department tells cyclists to stock up in Kveda Tkhilvana, because there may be nothing to drink until the pastures.

The marked route from Khikhadziri is the department's own Khikhadziri to Shuamta lakes to Khikhani circuit: 33 km, one day, graded moderate. It reaches Kveda Tkhilvana after 3.3 km, meets the Goderdzi gorge junction after 6 km with the largest Shuamta lake 200 m away, drops 2.5 km south from the pastures to Tsiplnara, follows the Chachuni river 2 km to the checkpoint, and then climbs the last 1.5 km to the walls.

Drive the Batumi to Akhaltsikhe road as far as the Zamleti signpost, 77.1 km out, turn south into the Skhalta valley and follow it 36.2 km to the end of the track below the fortress. That is 113 km in total and a good three hours each way on mountain roads, so a self-drive day from Batumi runs 11 to 12 hours with the climb in it.

Two things surprise people. The Zamleti turn comes before Khulo when you drive up from Batumi: the junction sits 9.2 km west of Khulo centre and 9.7 km east of Shuakhevi, so the town is not on the way at all. Routing the drive through Khulo turns 113 km into 131 km and adds 18 minutes. If you are going to Khulo, go for the hotel or the supermarket, not because the road demands it.

The second is that Skhalta Monastery genuinely is on the way, at a zero-kilometre detour, 26.9 km below the fortress. The 12th-century hall church holds the only medieval wall painting preserved anywhere in Adjara, fragments of New Testament scenes uncovered by a Georgian expedition in 1997 and dated to the 14th or 15th century. It is free and open 09:00 to 19:00 daily.

Which road do you take: the Skhalta valley from Zamleti, or the Goderdzi track?

The Skhalta valley. It is asphalt from the highway as far as Khikhadziri, and our own how to get here page calls the same road the easier way into these mountains, fine for normal cars and minibuses.

The alternative is the high route from the Goderdzi pass at 2,025 m: 23.8 km of stony track over the Shuamta pastures, an hour and a half or more of driving, and a 4x4 from the first kilometre. It is a spectacular way in and a bad way to arrive if you have never driven a mountain track loaded. Take it only with a driver who knows it.

Whichever way you come, the fortress stands inside the border zone and the permit applies. On the Skhalta valley road the checkpoint is unavoidable: it sits across the track below the trail and you register there.

Do you need a 4x4 to reach Khikhani Fortress?

Not for most of the drive, and yes for the last part. The Adjara tourism department calls the route from Batumi well maintained and accessible by any type of vehicle, with only the final kilometre on foot. Its route page is stricter about the top: the 8 km from Khikhadziri to the foot of the mountain is walked or driven in a cross-country vehicle.

In practice a normal car gets to Khikhadziri comfortably and to Bako in dry weather. Above Bako the track is loose, steep and washed out in places, and a driver who came up in 2025 had to leave the car 1.6 km below the fortress because the surface had gone. Every organised trip to the fortress, ours included, runs in a jeep.

The Shuamta lakes loop is a different matter: the department states plainly that a car on that route must be a 4x4.

Car Rental - Batumi

Rent from a company that will put the mountain roads in the contract. FSTA publishes a Toyota 4Runner or Hilux from EUR 68 a day and a Jeep Wrangler or Lexus GX 460 from EUR 83 a day out of Batumi, with standard insurance at EUR 9 a day and full off-road cover at EUR 33 a day, and it is the one company in the region that sells the off-road cover at all. 4Drive Georgia rents AWD and 4WD cars from Batumi airport with no deposit and no credit card, and asks for your route at booking so it can match the car to it. High-season 4x4 hire in Batumi runs 80 to 180 USD a day.

Fill the tank in Khulo. There is no petrol station between Khulo and Zarzma, nothing at all up the Skhalta valley, and everything above Khulo is paid in cash.

Taxi - apps

Bolt, Yandex Go and Maxim all work as far as Khulo: about two hours for up to 175 GEL per car. None of them will take you up the Skhalta valley, and private drivers asked on the street usually want more than the app price.

From Khulo, hire locally. The Khulo tourist information centre knows which drivers are going up, and the guesthouses in Khikhadziri arrange the last leg for their guests.

Public Transport

You can reach the valley by minibus, but not the fortress itself. Two routes matter, both from the old bus station at 1 Mayakovsky St in Batumi:

• Batumi to Khikhadziri: daily at 10:00, returning from Khikhadziri at 09:00, on +995 423 27 00 95. The department's route page gives the fare as 7 GEL and its sight page as 15 GEL, so carry 15 GEL and expect change. This drops you in the village with 7.5 km of track and a 1 km climb still above you.
• Batumi to Skhalta: daily at 09:00 and 15:00 in both directions, 5 GEL, useful if the monastery is the point of the day.

The workhorse route is Batumi to Khulo: a marshrutka every 30 minutes from 08:00 to 20:00 for about 10 GEL, taking two and a half hours, plus a subsidised municipal bus at 07:00 and 18:30 for 6 GEL, daily except Sunday, which leaves from beside the Boni culture house rather than the bus station. Our Batumi to Khulo transport guide has the timetables in full. Above Khulo there is no scheduled service towards the fortress at all: from there it is a local car, and Georgia's national tourism administration puts a high-clearance vehicle hired above Khulo at 70 to 100 GEL.

Three kinds, and they solve different problems. A guided trip also takes the permit off your desk, because the operator files the group application.

Take and Hike in Batumi runs the only scheduled group day hike with a published price: 160 GEL per person including the transfer, the tour leader and meals, leaving Batumi at 08:00 and home about 20:00, with roughly three hours of driving each way, about 8 km of walking and 600 m of ascent. Groups run 10 to 15 people, they grade it level 2 (no experience needed, good fitness required), there is a 10% club discount if you have travelled with them before and follow their Telegram, and passports are carried for the checkpoint. Dates go up on their Telegram channel month by month; the shop at 27 Tbel-Abuseridze St is open 11:00 to 20:00 and rents boots, poles and packs if you have none.

Georgian Holidays sell a private full-day jeep tour from Batumi covering Makhuntseti, Skhalta Monastery, Khikhani Fortress and Khulo: 123 USD per adult for a group of 3 to 15, 181 USD each for two and 353 USD solo, with children under 6 free and 7 to 12 at half price. It runs June to October, 8 hours and 242 km, pick-up at 08:30 from your Batumi hotel, with lunch included at Glamping Tago in Village Tago.

From the mountains themselves the day is much shorter. We run our own Khikhani Fortress tour from Tago as a half day, graded challenging, for 1 to 14 people, with about ninety minutes of climbing at the end, and a longer off-road day that strings Skhalta Monastery, the fortress and the Shuamta lakes together in a GAZ 69.

If you want a licensed independent guide, the Adjara Tourism Department keeps a public register of guides that you can filter by language, region and tour type, including the Skhalta to Khikhani historical and cultural route. The office is at 84/86 Parnavaz Mepe St in Batumi, +995 422 270267, info@serviceajara.ge.

The fortress and the permit are both free. Everything you pay for is transport, a bed and food.

2026 prices

Two people driving their own car from Batumi and going home the same day spend the fuel for 226 km and whatever they eat. The same two arriving by minibus need a night in Khikhadziri and a local car for the track, which comes to roughly 100 to 150 GEL each for two days.

Cash is the whole story above Khulo. The last cash machine and the last supermarket are in Khulo, no guesthouse up the valley takes a card, and the minibus fares are cash too. Draw what you need for the beds, the food and the local jeep before you turn off the highway.

June to mid-October, and September is the best month of all. The Adjara tourism department gives the season as April to November, but the upper track is only dependable once the snow has gone off the pastures, and June and early July are when rain and fog sit on this ridge.

Whatever the month, start early and take a jacket. The fortress is well over a kilometre higher than Khulo, the wind on the crag is constant, and weather apps that show Khulo do not describe the ridge.

If the day turns wet, turn back. The stony section between the staircases is steep enough that rain makes it genuinely unpleasant, and there is no shelter on the climb beyond the gazebo. The wet-weather version of this trip is Skhalta Monastery, the Furtio bridge and lunch in Khulo, with the fortress moved to the next clear morning.

No. They look close on the map and they are not on the same road. Adding the fortress to a Batumi to Green Lake day turns 116 km and just over two hours of driving into 143 km and nearly four hours, a detour of 27 km and 98 minutes, because Green Lake sits above the Goderdzi pass and Khikhani sits in the Skhalta side valley.

Give each one its own day. Our Green Lake guide covers that trip in full, and our guide to mountainous Adjara lays out how the valleys connect.

What does pair with the fortress is the Shuamta lakes: five lakes at 2,150 m, 4 km from the walls in a straight line and 7 km on the mapped path, and 25 to 30 minutes by jeep. That link needs the same border permission.

Pitch in the villages below, not at the ruin. The fortress stands inside the border zone, where the Border Police permit governs where you may be and when, and the Adjara tourism department designates no campsite at or below it. Its own alpine route puts the overnight stops in Khikhadziri and Bakibako, in the guesthouses it names there.

Georgia has no general ban on wild camping outside private property, and the protected areas publish their own rules. The border strip is the exception: up here the permit decides where you may be.

The one organised way to camp your route to Khikhani is the regional hiking festival "From the sea to the mountains", which the Tourism Product Development Agency first ran in July 2024: a guided 45 km alpine walk, four hiking days between 1,800 and 2,236 m, Chirukhi to Khikhani Fortress to the Shuamta lakes to Beshumi to the Goderdzi Alpine Botanical Garden, with each hiker carrying their own tent and sleeping bag and three camp meals a day provided. Its route notes rate mobile coverage on the whole traverse as partial, which is the honest answer for the fortress too.

Whatever you carry, carry water. The tap at the car park is the last one.

There are no hotels at the fortress. The beds are in Khikhadziri and Bako at the head of the valley, and up on the ridge above Khulo where we are. Book by phone: most of these houses are not on the booking sites, and everything is paid in cash.

Glamping Tago

Where: the hill above Village Tago, Khulo municipality, at about 1,400 m. Drive to the fortress: 36.4 km, an hour and a half to two hours by jeep, down into the Skhalta valley and up past Skhalta Monastery, without going through Khulo. Drive time from Batumi: 2.5 to 3 hours. Capacity: 12 Lotus Belle tents for two plus a nine-bed dorm dome, 33 beds. Prices: they change with the date, so check today's prices. Season: 1 April to the end of October. Good for: doing the fortress as a trip with our own drivers and jeep instead of an 11-hour day out of Batumi, and eating properly before and after. Watch out for: the last road up to us needs a 4x4, and we close for the winter.

Guest House Khikhani, Khikhadziri

Where: Khikhadziri at about 1,239 m, the village where both marked routes start. Distance to the fortress: 7.5 km by road, 10 km on foot. Price from: 25 to 80 GEL a night. Capacity: 6 rooms, 16 beds. Good for: the closest bed to the fortress with a real review record, a family that has been hosting since 2014 and holds "Good Host" status from the Adjara tourism department, Adjarian home cooking off local produce, and a shuttle, excursions and cooking masterclasses arranged in the house. Watch out for: it is a family house, so ring ahead; the same family's Cottage Khikhani (2 rooms, 8 beds, 200 to 250 GEL) answers on the same number.

Khikhani Palace (Hotel Ire Palace Khikhani), Khikhadziri

Where: Khikhadziri, on the Zomleti to Khikhadziri road. Capacity: 14 rooms and 40 beds, the only place near the fortress that takes a large group. Price from: 40 to 150 GEL a night, cash only. Season: all year, with heating. Good for: groups, and guests report the hosts Ramaz and Rezi arranging a shuttle at short notice and running ski tours out of the house in winter. Watch out for: cash only and no card terminal, so bring the money up the valley with you.

Guest house Bako

Where: Bako at 1,469 m, on the Zomleti to Khikhadziri road, the last settlement before the fortress. Distance to the fortress: 7.1 km of track with 735 m of climb. Good for: the closest bed to the trailhead, a wooden house with a garden and home cooking, and a host, Marina, who is used to walkers doing the lakes and the fortress. The Adjara tourism department names the house on its alpine route. Watch out for: the rooms are plain, as guests say themselves, and the 19 Google reviews are one short of our normal bar, so it is here because of where it stands rather than what it offers.

Family hotel Khikhani View, Khikhadziri

Where: Khikhadziri. Capacity: 3 rooms, 8 beds. Price from: 30 to 90 GEL a night. Good for: arriving without a car. It sells an off-road transport service up towards the fortress along with a village tour, a picnic and cooking masterclasses, which is the shortcut if you came in on the 10:00 minibus. Ask the price when you book the room. Watch out for: 6 Google reviews is far too few to judge a house on, so it is listed for the transport rather than recommended as a bed.

Homestay Vardtsikhe, Khikhadziri

Where: Khikhadziri, lower in the village. Good for: travellers who want to book online rather than phone a village house; it sells through Booking.com and the food comes off the family's own cows and chickens. Emily Lush's Upper Adjara guide names it as the overnight to add if you want the Khikhani hike in your itinerary. Watch out for: 12 Google reviews, so it is below our bar on numbers even though every one of them is good.

Guesthouse Luka, Danisparauli

Where: Danisparauli on the Goderdzi pass road, not in the Skhalta valley. Distance to the fortress: 32.9 km and about 80 minutes, over the pass and down the track. Good for: the high approach, or a night on the way to Green Lake. Watch out for: it is named by the department on the alpine route, but it is not a trailhead base for the Skhalta valley road.

Khulo is a 17.6 km detour off the drive, so sleep there for the town and the shops rather than for the fortress. It is the last place with a supermarket, a petrol station and a cash machine.

Hotel Khulo Inn

Purpose-built rather than converted, at 11 M. Abashidze St: 9 rooms and 21 beds at 140 GEL a night, with a conference hall, a bar, free wifi, parking, cash payment, check-in at 14:00 and check-out at 12:00. Guests praise the family kitchen, the mountain view and how quiet it is despite standing on the road, and the house is dog-friendly. Emily Lush lists it as the alternative for this stretch of the valley.

Hostel 13

The budget bed in town, on Rustaveli St near the centre. Nineteen Google reviews is one short of our bar, so it goes in as the honest cheap option rather than a recommendation.

There is nothing to eat at the fortress and nothing on the track, so carry a picnic and eat properly at either end of the day. The guesthouses above all cook for non-residents if you ring ahead, which is the real answer in Khikhadziri and Bako.

Cafe Levon's, Khulo

Cafe Levon's is the one kitchen in Khulo with a real review record: gulash, khinkali, khashlama and home wine, open 10:00 to midnight daily, 4.8 from 77 Google reviews, and four people eat for 32 to 60 GEL depending on how much wine lands on the table. It is a family house by the market, and diners warn that the sign cannot be seen from the road, so ask at the market.

Yurtalicious, the restaurant at Glamping Tago

Our own yurt restaurant on the hill above Tago, fully vegetarian, 24 around the long table and up to 32 with extra tables, open 09:00 to 22:00. Day visitors can book a table, and our jeep trips leave with a picnic from the same kitchen. The breakfast buffet is 32 GEL and the dinner buffet 37 GEL, with lunch a la carte between 13:00 and 16:00. It is off the fortress road, on the Tago side of the valley.

Restaurant abx, Khulo

On Tbel Abuseridze St, upstairs, with the view that made it our favourite stop in Khulo for years. Six Google reviews next to Cafe Levon's 77 is not enough to recommend it on, so it is here as an option rather than a pick.

The drive is long enough that the stops are the point. Everything below is on the same road, and the Adjara tourism department's Skhalta to Khikhani route strings them together as a marked 90 km day graded easy.

Skhalta Monastery is the one unmissable stop, 26.9 km below the fortress and a zero-kilometre detour. Its restored frescoes are the only medieval wall painting preserved anywhere in Adjara.

The Furtio arched bridge, 12th century, with a spring and a cafe beside it, stands on the main road before the turn, along with the ruins of the Furtio church.

The Bako waterfalls, a big one and a small one in the river ravine by Bakibako on the way up, are loud enough that walkers hear them echoing off the rock near the ruin. The department lists them with a local contact on +995 591 66 65 50.

The medieval sites nobody signposts: the Vardtsikhe fortress and the Tsikhiskeli ruins, both 11th to 13th century, the altar ruins at Kalota, the 10th to 11th century Tikanauri altar at Khikhadziri, a natural refrigerator at Mtisubani, Sherif Khimshiashvili's grave there, Selim Khimshiashvili's execution site at Bakibako, and the Sherif Khimshiashvili Museum in the valley. Ask at your guesthouse which of them is open when you pass.

1. Pick the window. June to mid-October, and September if you want firm ground and clear air.
2. Apply for the permit about a week out. Email the Annex No. 1 form, your route with its start and finish points, and scans of every passport in the group to bpol@mia.gov.ge.
3. Book the bed before the car. Khikhadziri and Bako have a few dozen beds between them and they are phone bookings, not app bookings. Guest House Khikhani, Khikhani Palace and Guest house Bako all answer their mobiles; Homestay Vardtsikhe takes Booking.com.
4. Decide how you are getting up the last 7.5 km. Your own 4x4 with unpaved roads written into the contract, a local car from the village, a jeep trip from where you are sleeping, or the group day hike out of Batumi.
5. Call the road. The Khulo tourist information centre on +995 577 90 90 15 knows the state of the upper track; the Adjara tourism hotline is +995 577 90 90 93, which answers for the whole region.
6. Buy everything in Khulo. Last supermarket, last petrol, last cash machine. Above it, everything is cash.
7. Pack for the climb. Sturdy shoes are the one thing nobody gets away without; Take and Hike tells its clients to bring poles and a rain shell as well. Add a warm layer for the top, full water bottles, a picnic, your passport and an offline map.
8. Sleep in the valley and climb in the morning.

What people get wrong about Khikhani:

• That you can sort the permit at the checkpoint. The department says to arrange it in advance with the State Border Protection Service, and the checkpoint is two thirds of the way up a mountain road.
• That it is a stop on the Green Lake trip. It is a separate side valley and a separate day: 27 km and 98 minutes of detour.
• The altitude. 2,236 m, not the 2,635 m that keeps getting copied between blogs.
• The cable car. The Khulo ropeway has not run since 2024, so no route to the mountains starts with it.
• Google's opening hours. An unstaffed ruin has no 09:00 to 17:00. There is nobody there at any hour.
• That the walk is forty minutes. That is the fast end of the department's own 30 to 60 minutes, and few people match it. Plan on one to three hours up, and on the way back being faster.
• That a normal car gets you to the walls. It gets you to Khikhadziri, usually to Bako in dry weather, and no further.
• That there is water on the trail. There is a tap at the car park and nothing above it.

Glamping Tago for this

Glamping Tago as your base for Khikhani Fortress

We are on the ridge above Village Tago in Khulo municipality, at about 1,400 m on the same side of the mountains as the fortress. From here Khikhani is 36.4 km down into the Skhalta valley and up the other side, past Skhalta Monastery, without going through Khulo. That turns an eleven-hour day out of Batumi into a half day with time to eat properly at both ends.

Our Khikhani Fortress tour runs spring to autumn as a half day for 1 to 14 people, graded challenging, with about ninety minutes of climbing at the end. The longer off-road day adds Skhalta Monastery and the Shuamta lakes in a GAZ 69, and today's prices are on the tours page. We sort the jeep, the driver and the timing; the border permit is yours to apply for, and we will tell you when to send it.

You sleep in a Lotus Belle tent or the nine-bed dorm dome and eat at Yurtalicious, our vegetarian yurt restaurant. Evening sauna, campfire and tea come with every stay. Nights up here are cold even in August, and so is the ridge at 2,236 m, so bring layers and a rain shell.

Where

Village Tago, Khulo municipality, mountainous Adjara, about 1,400 m

Drive to Khikhani Fortress

36.4 km, an hour and a half to two hours by jeep

Beds on site

12 Lotus Belle tents for two plus a nine-bed dorm dome, 33 beds

Prices

They change with the date: see today's prices on glampingtago.ge/glamping

Khikhani Fortress tour

Half day, graded challenging, 1 to 14 people; today's price on the tours page

Season

1 April to the end of October

Transfer

Private 4x4 for up to 4 people, one way: 75 GEL from Khulo, 265 GEL from Batumi

Food

Yurtalicious, fully vegetarian: breakfast buffet 32 GEL, dinner buffet 37 GEL

Check dates and ratesContact us