I missed my son while he was backpacking the world, so I joined him

I’ve been looking forward to this journey for a while, with apprehension. My son, Hamish, is a 24-year-old, Sydney-born university graduate on his rite-of-passage backpacking trip around the world. For months he’s been wandering from Sri Lanka to Egypt, Tunisia to Armenia, and now he’s in Georgia.

The distance between us has been unimaginable in a world marred by conflict. So, a few months ago, I suggested bridging geographic and generational divides by joining a 10-day trek on the Transcaucasian Trail across the Greater Caucasus mountains.

“Let’s meet in Tbilisi,” I suggest.

Hamish hesitates. I sweeten the deal, offering to pay the costs.

“That’d be good,” he says.

“Get ready,” warns a Sydney friend who recently completed the same odyssey. “There’s a helluva lot of ‘up’.”

That’s like saying childbirth is a bit uncomfortable.

INTO THE MOUNTAINS

The Greater Caucasus is a colossal 1200-kilometre chain of snow-capped peaks forming a natural barrier between Europe and Asia stretching through Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea.

It’s July. The sweltering season. A heat-wave grips Tbilisi as we come together in the merciful cool of the Clocks Hotel. Hamish is “a bit hungover” from last night’s celebrations. I’m “a bit jet-lagged” with a sprained ankle after slipping on a cobblestone.

“It’ll be fine,” he says, armed with the indestructibility of youth.

In the lobby, we encounter fellow trekkers from America, Britain and Australia, some just back from the Armenian section of the trail. The Georgian section poses greater challenges with more rugged terrain on poorly marked paths so World Expeditions, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, provides a welcome sense of security for our 10-strong trekking group.

“Little and beautiful things come together here,” says guide Lasha Udzilauri, tracing a wriggly line on a paper map from the jaded Silk Road capital towards the Black Sea.

“Just how hard is this trek?” asks the stickler-for-details, Eva. Lasha looks up, and seems to notice Hamish is the youngest hiker, by several decades. “Not difficult, but not easy,” he winks.

THE ROAD TO SVANETI

Georgia is a nation of 3.7 million people powered by a national narrative of heroic resistance against the invaders. That’s the spirit we’ll be striving towards in a country conquered over centuries by Arabs, Mongols, Persians, Ottomans and Russians.

We’ll feel our pulse hiking 70 kilometres in the crucible of peaks that cling to the southern shoulders of the Caucasus in the remote Svaneti region. Vehicle support across sections of the Mestia-Ushguli route will help navigate logistical and luggage challenges along the way.

On the first day, we rise early, scramble aboard a coach and head west from Tbilisi. Hamish is wired to music on his phone. I’m wired to the metallic kerchunk of clanking suspension through endless traffic chaos.

In less than an hour, we’re jumping off again, at Mtskheta. The World Heritage Svetitskhoveli Cathedral is one of the most sacred sites in Georgia, immaculately preserved with dazzling frescoes, and the supposed burial site of Christ’s robe. “We don’t know exactly where it is beneath our feet,” says Lasha, and in the stifling heat, none of us challenge this belief.

We drive on, towns whizzing past, through sinuous groves of walnut, fig and pomegranate. Reality dulls with cattle roaming freely as avoidable road hazards along broken bitumen and, finally, we pull up for the night at a modest family-run guesthouse in Kutaisi.

Hamish and I are old hands at stuffing bags to breaking point, but my son treats every hotel room floor as his closet. His clothes cascade across carpets, mingle with chargers, boots flung in far corners. There’s something oddly endearing about his disregard for convention and his skill at excavating belongings to emerge on time for departure every day.

I’m keen to avoid mother-son standoffs over boundaries. I’ve anticipated the inevitable tug-of-war between a son who wants to roam and a mother who wants to keep close but, still, it catches me off guard when the serious hiking begins.

CLOSE TO THE EDGE

It’s a chill, clear morning driving into Shikhra village then setting out on foot beneath the spectacular spire-shaped summit of Mount Ushba. I’m awed by this crumpled landscape of fracture, rift and upheaval until I realise that I’ve lost sight of Hamish. We are south of the Russian border, running unseen kilometres away, through mountains high above us. There is no active fighting here.

It’s not the first time that my son has vanished into thin air at the first whiff of wilderness. Last time, he was swallowed for hours in a dismal shroud of mist ascending Ben More on the Isle of Mull in Scotland.

“We are really happy to have this natural border of the Greater Caucasus mountains with Russia,” says Lasha, combining skills as navigator, naturalist and historian through this hard-going climb.

“Sorry Lasha,” I interrupt, with rising anxiety, “but I can’t see Hamish anywhere.”

A wilderness path is more sinister where it runs against a border with Russia. These woods are crowding inwards. Turning mountain passes into shaded cloisters in my mind.

“Hamish is a bolter,” I blurt out. “You’ll have to keep him in line.”

“He’s young,” replies Lasha. “I can only ask once.”

“If he gets lost we will leave him here,” says Eva. She’s not joking.

We’re approaching the border control point through trees knotted like muscled body builders. I’m furious knowing that my boy trusts too easily in improvisation with little calculation of risk. Just wait till I get to him, I seethe, enumerating every calamity in falls and broken bones, avalanches and altitude sickness.

Suddenly, he appears on a high, jagged outcrop, shirt billowing in the breeze.

“You are OK?” calls Lasha. “Yep,” says Hamish, with an infuriating Tom Sawyer up-to-no-good grin.

I cannot hold back and, when he descends, give him a tongue lashing. Hamish simply raises one hand calling a truce. “It’s perfectly safe, Mum,” he says, oblivious.

We emerge into a clearing with an active Georgian guard encampment. Eyes are watchful, but there is no razor wire. “Is this it?” I ask. Lasha makes a vague gesture suggesting the border is “just up there out of reach in the mountains where we are disinclined to go”. We retreat along the 12-kilometre return trail back to Mestia.

The town sprawls across the valley floor in a delightful confusion of centuries: medieval stone towers pressed hard up against alpine chalets advertising “free Wi-Fi”; bareback horse riders jostling for space between gas-guzzling rough-terrain vehicles.

Our guesthouse has a fully operational shower and soft mattress. Boots off. “You beauty,” says Hamish.

By nightfall, we are gathered around a rustic table tucking into khachapuri (frigate-sized cheese bread), khinkali (soupy dumplings), pots of beans and crispy pan-fried cornbread. The table symbolises the spirit of supra – the ritual of communal feasting – so we take full advantage of ancient Georgian winemaking techniques with a dry, natural wine fermented in a clay vessel kept underground.

Then Hamish and I retreat to our room to sprawl on twin beds, swapping stories about old friends, old flames, old travellers. By morning, the air is calm, the sky is blue. Hamish perfects his shuv-it-in repacking routine, collects clean laundry and unplugs the phone-charger before departure.

ADISHI IS GEORGIA

On the fifth day, the trail towards Mount Tetnuldi rises up and tumbles down like a rollercoaster, bending tightly into loops, skirting ravines and rockfaces, inducing sickly vertigo above boisterous rivers surging with glacial rapids. We’re wading through a Seurat-like landscape daubed with blue bellflowers and pink anemones.

“You’ve forgotten about yesterday with this Alpine meadow amnesia,” says Eva. She’s right. Hamish and I are perfectly in step through fragrant glades of beech and pine, stopping in one movement with the mournful howl of a wolf behind us in a ravine.

“It’s a sad sound,” he laments, pondering the paradox of our presence that both preserves and erodes what draws us to this wilderness in the first place.

By sunset, we’ve hiked more than 15 kilometres in five hours, descending into remote Adishi. It’s an astounding village bristling with ruined fortress towers scattered like broken teeth down a steep mountainside. Fearsome avalanches literally shook lives to their foundations here, in 1987, leaving only four households in the spaces between the stones.

We trip down ruined, muddy streets spotting small gestures of normalcy amid the remnants of catastrophe.

The gate to our guesthouse opens onto a lush haven that feels like the Garden of Eden itself, spooling with butterflies, and a natural spring for splashing water on faces. My footslogger’s dream is a jug of fresh milk on the table and cream rising to the surface for a cup of tea.

“What would we do if we lived here, Hamish?” I ask, wistfully.

“Leave,” he says of this stunning yet challenging landscape.

Winter besieges this region with the ancient test of isolation for months at a time, and the medieval towers that make Adishi historically significant – some of the oldest in the Svaneti region – are crumbling without hope of restoration.

Ketevan Kaldani, the 71-year-old matriarch of our guesthouse, stands at her kitchen window cutting into a cauliflower with a sharp knife. She looks impenetrable and suspicious, part of a fiercely independent subgroup with its own distinct language, but her words are infused with memories. She was born upstairs in the creaking ancestral home that’s weathered two centuries, maybe more.

“Do you think of yourself as Adishian first and Georgian second?” asks Hamish. She smiles for the first time. “Adishi is Georgia,” she says. “Georgia is Adishi.”

Nature is spectacular but not always kind here. Our flimsy tenure on the Earth’s crust might end with the slightest adjustment beneath our feet, but it’s a storm, not an avalanche, that keeps us awake all night. Lightning flashes across walls, rain thickens across roofs, and Hamish has a nosebleed.

“Do you often get nosebleeds?” I ask, dubious about emergency medical care in high-altitude outposts. It’s a shadow from his childhood. “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he snuffles. My mind darkens at this hour as I lie awake listening to the Adishchala River roaring in the valley below. The sun rises, Hamish is “fine”, but the guesthouse has lost power and eggs must be cooked on an open fire in the kitchen.

THE HIGHEST POINT

The trail ahead winds like a secret along a flat plain where it intersects the river. There is no bridge so we must cross on horseback with icy white torrents breaking in short, steep waves up to our thighs, and that’s the easiest part in a brutal day, scrambling over boulders on a thin ridge edged by sharp inclines.

“Just think about the step ahead,” says Eva, wishing for stronger legs on the trail corkscrewing into clouds. Up, more up, as we join the conga-line of other nationalities converging on the track ahead.

The hardest hike to Chkhutnieri Pass lifts us to the highest point of our trek at an elevation of 2730 metres. We stand at the top – panting, jubilant – a glistening arena of silvery peaks encircling on all sides for our lunch stop on the sixth day. Hamish captures the Adishi glacier on his phone – “before it disappears” – beneath the frozen summit of Mount Tetnuldi (4858 metres).

STONES OF ANCIENT USHGULI

Day seven hits with another one of those “see-it-before-you-die” sights arriving in the World Heritage-site of Ushguli. There are welcoming signs along the way, tattered and sodden, held rigid by the wind: “Horse” and “Nice Place Short Way″⁣.

Few places capture the human will to survive like Ushguli.

For centuries, this remote ethnic Svan stronghold remained virtually autonomous within the Georgian kingdom. Now it has the slightly forlorn air of a mountain settlement preserved in stone and slate barely clinging to the 20th century.

We’re grateful to find a simple, cosy hotel room in one of Europe’s highest permanently inhabited settlements at 2160 metres with a panorama of discordant clouds oncoming. Through the window, we watch the staggering bulk of Mount Shkhara disappear then reappear, dancing through seven veils of mist and rain. Opening the window, the wind howls, like that wolf on the trail to Adishi.

The final day of hiking follows Enguri River, past the remnants of a bridge washed away in last night’s tempest, to the base of Georgia’s highest peak – 5201 metres.

Mount Shkhara is a divine chalice held up in a blue sky, but I’m sweaty and footsore shouldering my backpack up another punishing incline. I’m finally defeated, wondering ‘will I even make it?’. Then I see Hamish ahead. Just waiting. For me.

We tackle last tumbled boulders together, then sink down beside roaring meltwater, gazing at the gargantuan pewter smudge of Shkhara glacier. He flings lunchtime leftovers to a dog that resembles a small polar bear.

“What are you thinking about, Hamo?”

“The future,” he says.

“Wondering or worrying?” I ask.

“Both.”

My son is preparing to take possession of his new life and our journey arcing over two generations is over. Tomorrow we head back for Tbilisi. He will go his way and I will go mine.

I know I’ll wake in a sweat flying high above Dubai, feeling hollow with the absence of my son, wandering deep down below somewhere in the Fann Mountains of Tajikistan.

It’ll be all right, though. This won’t be our last adventure.

THE DETAILS

FLY
Turkish airlines to Tblisi via Istanbul

HIKE
World Expeditions’ 10-day Transcaucasian Trail Hike Georgia includes accommodation in comfortable, often basic, hotels and guesthouses; guided hikes with one guide (sometimes supported by a local guide); transfers and local meals cooked by guesthouses and restaurants, from $3890 a person. See worldexpeditions.com

HEALTH
A good level of fitness is required with a recommended training schedule before hiking at a steady pace of six to eight hours daily. Luggage is transported to accommodation, but trekkers carry their own daypacks with daily essentials.

SAFETY
Exercise normal safety precautions in Georgia overall. Travellers should avoid the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. See smartraveller.gov.au

FIVE EMERGING HIKING TRAILS

Gidjuum Gulganyi Walk, NSW
The “Old People’s Track” starts at Unicorn Falls in Mount Jerusalem National Park near Uki in northern NSW and ends at Minyon Falls in Nightcap National Park, 45 minutes from Byron Bay. It’s the newest of 13 multi-day walks being rolled out by NSW National Parks, featuring the Northern Rivers’ first-ever glamping experience. See visionwalks.com.au

Atlas Mountains Trek, Morocco
It offers diversity in landscape, culture, cuisine and history. A nine-day premium hiking adventure takes you through the Atlas Mountains, across semi-desert landscapes to the Atlantic coastline in Essaouira, staying in high-end riads and hotels. From mountain views to the open ocean, you’ll experience Morocco’s highlights with an expert local leader and home-cooked meals within the community for unique cultural insights. See intrepidtravel.com/au

San’in Region Walking Tour, Japan
A pioneering guided tour explores west Honshu’s little-visited San’in region beside the Sea of Japan. Ancient coastal paths wind through historic castle towns and villages, with traditional inns offering onsen hot springs and regional cuisine. Walk Japan’s nine-day itineraries include lodging and meals across Shimane and Yamaguchi prefectures. See walkjapan.com

Tian Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan
This journey begins in capital Bishkek, weaving cultural discovery by road with a five-day trek through mountains, staying in traditional yurts, tented campsites and local guesthouses. Trails lead along sweeping ridgelines to glacial lakes and wildflower meadows. Balance wilderness time with visits to vivid Skazka Canyon, Soviet-era Bishkek, and alpine Issyk-Kul Lake. See worldexpeditions.com

Madeira’s 25 Fontes Trail, Portugal
Six days across Madeira featuring volcanic rock pools at Porto Moniz, sweeping ocean views from Vereda da Ponta de São Lourenco, and the climb to Pico do Ruivo, the island’s highest peak. Mountain villages dot routes where locals maintain traditional ways. Year-round walking weather makes this accessible anytime. See intrepidtravel.com/au

The writer travelled courtesy of World Expeditions.