Why go
Borjomi-Kharagauli is Georgia's largest national park, spanning 85,000 hectares of pristine mixed forest where the Lesser Caucasus fold into deep river valleys. For centuries, the Borjomi springs drew Russian aristocrats—the Romanov family—Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich—built a palace at nearby Likani, and the water became the empire's most prized export. But beyond the famous mineral water, the park preserves one of Europe's last great temperate rainforests, with Colchic boxwood, yew, and fir untouched for millennia. Its 12 marked trails, including the demanding 54-kilometer Crossing of Borjomi, thread through bear and wolf territory, past medieval hermitages and seasonal shepherd camps. This is where Georgia's highland identity still lives in practice, not performance.