On this day, we spent eight hours traveling from Borjomi to Kazbegi on the Georgian Military Highway. It's a 132 mile highway between Tbilisi and Vladikavkaz, Russia. It follows the traditional northern route of the Silk Road and is the same road used by traders, invaders, and pilgrims for thousands of years. The name reflects the roads current form that was built 200 years ago by Russian soldiers. It was improved and used as a crucial military link between Russia, Europe, and Asia. It's played an important role in numerous conflicts and invasions throughout history.

Today, the highway is an important trade route between Turkey, Georgia, and Russia and has an enormous amount of truck traffic. It has its problems, however, and they involve narrow roads, Jvari Pass, and challenging weather conditions. We found that out but it's a beautiful mountain road. It weaves through some of Europe's largest mountains and includes sections that are steep, narrow, and winding plus narrow switchbacks. Our guide warned us that motion sickness could be a problem for some people, but honestly, much of the time we were moving along very slowly.

The Georgian Military Highway includes many dramatic views, captivating medieval sites, old castles, battle sites, and more. The problem with our trip up this road was the weather. We were told that Georgia was all a solid spring green color at the start of the week.

I'll start with why motion sickness wasn't always a problem. The highway is narrow with little room to maneuver, for vehicles and other users. I suppose that back when this was the Silk Road, the road would have been full of camels. We didn't see any camels, but animals still use the road. There is no other place for them to move from pasture to pasture but the road. You can also notice that the rain had started. But hey, it's the journey, not the destination.

I wasn't bothered by a little rain...but then there was more than a little rain. I could only get some moving bus photos, and I'll only include a few. In the first photo, rain was pouring off the mountains and there were waterfalls all over the mountain, where there aren't normally any waterfalls. It was just that so much water was raining down at once. We could probably see a dozen of these waterfalls but this one was the biggest.

Near Jvari Pass, we had to go through one really long tunnel. I was in the front of the bus and I couldn't imagine that there was enough room for us to pass many of the big trucks, not to mention all the rain and dripping coming down on the bus. We had a 45-passenger bus by the way. And in addition to the rain, we were in a thick fog as well.

We finally got out of the rain, but we weren't out of the weather. We consequently didn't stop for any views or medieval sites.

It was a wild ride, but we finally made it to Kazbegi and The Rooms Hotel Kazbegi, as you can see below.

The Green Georgian Mountains, the Greater Caucasus Mountains, had been transformed from green to white.