After almost getting denied entry by Georgian immigration officers at the Sarpi border, I have to say that my view of the country is pretty biased. The Caucasus country has become one of the places I don’t want to return to, at least not with my own money.
You can take this information with a grain of salt, but as someone who has traveled to Georgia (the country, not the state), I feel I can share what I’ve learned from my trip there.
It’s the kind of country where you may need an extra precaution to travel to, because I’ve learned the hard way about the things I wish I knew before traveling there.
From the visa application to the public transportation, here’s what you need to know before traveling to Georgia!
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If you’re American, you may mistake Georgia, the country in the Caucasus, for the state in the south with Atlanta as the capital. Before you read any further, I just want to clarify that I'm talking about Georgia, the country—one with Tbilisi as its capital.
Georgia has never been on my travel bucket list, but I went there recently because it was convenient to go there from Turkiye.
I took the bus from Trabzon, but there’s also a daily bus from Istanbul to Tbilisi that passes through other major Georgian cities like Batumi and Kutaisi.
Not to mention, there are a lot of flight options from other Turkish cities to Tbilisi—whether you want to fly with their respective national carriers or prefer the low-budget airlines like AJet or Pegasus Airlines.
On paper, traveling to Georgia shouldn't be that hard, even if you’re a weak passport holder like me with an Indonesian passport.
But in reality, just like me writing this post, dealing with immigration in Georgia forces you to suffer with a bit of prejudice. And this is not something I experience often when I travel overseas.
Whether you’re planning to go to Tbilisi only or considering extending your trip to other places in Georgia, here are some fun facts about tourism in Georgia—as well as not-so-fun ones!
1. A visa application may take 5 to 14 days to proceed.
If your passport ranking is strong, chances are you won’t have to worry about the visa application to enter Georgia.
Most EU passport holders can enter Georgia visa-free for up to a year, as do Western country passport holders such as the US, UK, and Canada.
I don’t have that privilege, so my two cents may be useful if you’re on the same boat with me—traveling to Georgia as a citizen of a third-world country.
One of the things that attracted me to visiting Georgia was that I could enter the country only with an e-visa. The entire process can be done online through the Georgia e-visa portal, and it costs only $20 USD.
You need to submit a passport photo for your visa application, and they’re pretty strict about the photo requirement.
If I could easily upload a passport photo from my mobile for my UAE visa, the same photo was rejected when I tried to use it for my Georgia visa.
Quick tip: Make sure to take a proper studio photo or photo box for the Georgia visa application. The required photo size for a visa to Georgia is 4×5 centimeters.
The visa application process may take up to 14 business days to finalize, so I recommend applying for it ahead of your travel plan to secure your visa first.
Once your visa is approved, make sure to print all required documents. These may include your hotel reservation or a confirmed ticket to prove that you’ll leave Georgia.
This is important because I think this is exactly why I got stuck in immigration at the Sarpi border—I didn’t have the hard copy of my Airbnb confirmation or my ticket back to Turkiye.
Also, it’s worth checking Georgia's public holidays to minimize potential delays in your visa approval.
2. Georgia Immigration can be… pretty racist.
Source: Depositphotos.
As much as I don’t want to generalize, I’ve been pretty active in the travel community—and ever since my experience in being interrogated by the immigration at the Georgia border in Sarpi, I’ve met more and more people who experienced the same thing with Georgia immigration, and I see a pattern there.
Honestly, when it happened to me, I genuinely thought it was just a case of my weak Indonesian passport being prejudiced. I personally didn’t find it fair, but I tried to brush it off because it’s just the downside of traveling with a poorly ranked passport.
But then I saw a post on Backpacker Buddies Malaysia group: a Malaysian female traveler was refused entry into Georgia when she wanted to travel there from Armenia.
She specifically mentioned that she heard the immigration officers explicitly mention “Indonesia and Malaysia” in their conversation to the point we came up with a conspiracy theory: it was just their norm to question all Indonesian and Malaysian travelers.
Unlike the Indonesian passport, the Malaysian passport is ranked among the top 10 most powerful passports in the world, so clearly the only thing that makes sense in the situation is that Georgian immigration doesn’t really do their job because of the paperwork, but they go for racial profiling us because we look similar to each other.
Even crazier, because one of the commenters on her post agreed that the Georgian immigration is racist because her husband holds a Canadian passport, but his background is of Indian descent.
At the border, despite holding a Canadian passport, the immigration officer in Georgia insisted on asking him where he really came from.
So, as much as I don’t want to generalize, more and more people from the global south seem to experience the same prejudice against Georgia immigration, so if you’re one of us… Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
3. Be mindful of what you photograph.
As a travel blogger who often writes about my experiences taking public transportation, I occasionally take pictures of the facilities to use in my article when I publish it on my blog.
I try to be mindful to only take pictures without exposing anyone without consent, but it wasn’t the case in Georgia.
When my friend Lili and I took the train from Kutaisi to Tbilisi, we arrived early. I was pretty surprised that they didn’t have an elevator or escalator at their central train station in Kutaisi, so I took a picture of the stairs.
One of the officers probably saw me pointing my phone at the stairs, and he approached me to tell me I couldn’t take a picture there.
It was a public area, and the station was practically empty. I could only take that maybe it’s the post-dictatorship under the Soviet Union upbringing that makes it forbidden to take pictures in public areas.
Either that, or they just don’t want to get exposed for the lack of public facilities in their central station.
4. Georgia is NOT disability-friendly.
When the officer approached me to not take pictures of the staircases in Kutaisi, I genuinely thought it was only because Kutaisi is not the capital city—so maybe that’s why the facilities are outdated.
I thought the facilities of the central station in Tbilisi would be so much better.
Joke’s on me, because the staircase at Tbilisi Central Train Station was even higher and steeper than in Kutaisi.
So much so that there was an Egyptian family traveling with us by train to Tbilisi, and the mom basically had to stop on her way to get to the top carrying her luggage and asked us, “What do they really expect the disabled people to travel here if the facilities are like this?” And I think the question was valid.
If you’re planning to travel to Georgia by train, be prepared to carry your bags up the stairs. If you don’t have the strength to carry things on your own, consider taking a BlaBlaCar or a marshrutka for an easier way to travel inter-city in Georgia.
When we arrived in Tbilisi, some old men approached us, offering their services as porters, but they looked like they were in their retirement years, so we didn’t have the heart to let them carry our big luggage.
5. Wine is high-quality and very cheap.
Source: Depositphotos.
This is one of the few positive things I find about Georgia. If you love good wines, you’ll love Georgia because of how good and inexpensive the wine is in the country.
You can get a glass of wine in Georgia for as low as 3 Georgian laris (around $1 USD), and you’ll be surprised by the quality.
If you’re looking to buy a bottle to bring back home, there are plenty of wines you can choose at the supermarket for only around 6 to 8 laris. Whether you prefer white, red, or rosé, Georgia is an absolutely must-visit place if you’re a self-proclaimed wine sommelier!
6. Be cautious about your hotel reservation.
While on paper you can easily book your accommodations online via platforms like Booking, Agoda, or Expedia, you may want to be careful about the potential scam that seems to happen often in some listings.
Based on my experience, Airbnb is pretty seamless to use in Georgia but I had some problems with some hotel bookings through Agoda.
As I stayed in Kutaisi as my home base in Georgia at the time, I planned a weekend getaway from Kutaisi to Batumi with a 2-night stay.
Of course it was suspicious to me, because not only did I use my credit card to confirm my reservation—based on Agoda, the price was only around $35 per night.
Because of this message, I called Agoda customer support right away and asked for cancellation and a refund. Thankfully, Agoda was super helpful in processing my request, and I got the refund just a few days later.
In the end, I booked an Airbnb in Batumi without any issues. After that, I strictly only use Airbnb for accommodation reservations in Georgia.
7. Consider hiring a private driver for the best experience in Georgia.
Although public transportation in Georgia's cities is generally good, my friend Lili and I had a hard time validating our bus card in Kutaisi after buying it at the Daily supermarket.
Tbilisi is possibly the best place in Georgia for a tourist to rely on public transport to get around, but I definitely recommend renting a car or hiring a private driver to make the most of your trip outside the capital.
We initially booked a taxi via the Maxim app in Kutaisi, but ended up hiring him for the rest of the day to explore most places in the city. It was convenient, and the price was reasonable too.
Uber is not available in Georgia, but in addition to Maxim, you can also use Bolt or Yandex Go for ride-sharing services.
8. In many places in Georgia, you need coins to use the elevators.
This came as a bit of a shock to us, because it was our first time seeing an elevator that looked like a coin telephone.
We never had to deal with it in Batumi or Kutaisi, as all the accommodations we booked there had no elevators. However, we booked an apartment on the 9th floor in Tbilisi with an elevator as one of the facilities—except you had to pay for it.
I don’t know how common this practice is, but be prepared if you book accommodation via Airbnb, as it may be located in one of the apartment buildings with these facilities.
Even after I left Georgia, I don’t know how much it cost exactly because there’s no instruction about it, except that the elevator won’t work unless you put at least 10 tetri (cents in Georgian lari) into the coin slot. But annoyingly, it won’t dispense any change if you put 2 lari coins into it.
So if you happen to stay in one of these apartments, make sure to always have some coins with you—especially if your accommodation is located on the high floor!
9. Georgians celebrate Christmas on January 7th.
Just as in Serbia, Georgia is predominantly Orthodox Christian. Instead of December 25th, they celebrate Christmas on January 7th, so you may want to consider visiting Georgia during Christmas for a different experience.
In addition to different Christmas celebrations, around 45% of Georgia the country is covered by forests—making winter the best time to visit the country.
If you love nature, it’s a good place to go. Even better if you love winter sports, as it’s home to a lot of ski resorts that are much more affordable compared to other winter resorts in Europe.
From Gudauri to Goderdzi, consider to visit Georgia in January for the best experience exploring the country!
10. It’s not as cheap as many travel content creators claimed it to be.
One of the reasons I decided to visit Georgia was that I often heard how cheap the country was—based on what I saw or read online.
In fact, Lili also ended up traveling with me to Georgia because, at the time, she was looking for a new place to make her home base. Turkiye got more expensive, and she joined in to see if Georgia could be her next stop as a digital nomad.
Surprisingly, we actually found Georgia very expensive. Keep in mind that we’re not budget-conscious travelers. We didn’t mind paying extra for convenience, but even the cheapest option available was still pretty expensive for us.
I’m not sure if the people who said Georgia was cheap belong to a differrent tax bracket than I do, but even when I started doing groceries there I thought Serbia was still cheaper than that. Even the apartments in Tbilisi were, on average, more expensive than those in Belgrade.
At the time, I thought maybe it was because I visited Belgrade a few years prior. But I recently visited Belgrade again, and I stand corrected: I think Georgia is not cheap at all, and, in comparison, Serbia seems pretty reasonable in terms of living costs.
11. People drive on both sides of the car.
While technically you drive on the right-hand side of the road in Georgia, not all cars in the country are left-hand drive.
It’s not unusual to see right-hand wheeled cars in Georgia, so you may want to adjust to it if you’re planning to get a rental car when exploring the country.
Since I have a local friend and I keep noticing right-hand-drive cars in Georgia—just like the ones we have back home in Indonesia and the UK—I asked my friend if it's common to drive a right-hand-drive car in Georgia.
Apparently, it is pretty common there because Georgia often imports second-hand cars from the rest of Europe, including the UK and Ireland where they drive on the left-hand side of the road.
12. Watch out for the cattle when driving.
Georgia is traditionally an agricultural nation, and with more than 30% of the country containing forest, don’t be surprised if you pass by some cattle, like cows or bulls, when you drive.
Maybe not in Tbilisi, but the chance of you encountering cows in cities like Kutaisi or Batumi is never zero.
13. Get an esim to use specifically in Georgia for the internet.
I made a mistake by relying on the roaming package when I entered Georgia via the Sarpi border from Turkiye. As it turned out, Georgia wasn’t included on my Indonesian SIM provider's list of roaming destinations in Europe.
While I managed to get a refund, I wish I could get mobile data in Sarpi—especially after the bus left us behind at the border.
So if you’re planning to visit Georgia and considering a regional package for your roaming data or eSIM, always double-check that your provider actually includes Georgia in their service area.
Honestly, given the unpredictability of Georgia's immigration, it’s worth having mobile data that actually works as soon as you arrive in the country.
Some providers I recommend for Georgia esim include Airalo and Yesim. Personally, I prefer Airalo since it’s usually cheaper, but depending on the destination, they don’t have 5G everywhere.
If you don’t have any devices that support esim, you can also consider getting a local SIM card. I used Magti when I was there, as recommended by my local friend.
FAQs
Can I travel to Georgia with a Schengen visa?
It all depends on your nationality, but Georgia applies visa exemptions under certain conditions.
Since I’m an Indonesian passport holder, on paper we can enter Georgia without a visa if we hold a valid visa from several countries, including Schengen, the UK, the USA, Australia, or New Zealand.
If you live in the Middle East and hold a valid residence permit in the UAE or any GCC countries, you can also enter Georgia visa-free for up to 90 days—although it doesn’t mean you’re immune to entry refusal at the border.
Is Georgia safe to travel to?
Once you pass the immigration, I think Georgia is pretty safe.
While there’s a lot of room for improvement in public transportation, it’s relatively easy to get around the country.
Marshrutkas and trains are reliable for inter-city travel; just be mindful of some unwritten rules you may need to follow in public areas.
Is tap water in Georgia drinkable?
Yes, but personally I don’t like the taste of tap water in Georgia. Lili and I ended up purchasing bottled water for drinking during our stay in the country.
Conclusion
Traveling to Georgia comes with its fair share of challenges, especially if you're from the global south.
From strict visa requirements to questionable immigration practices, it's definitely not the easiest destination to visit.
That said, once you're in, the country has its perks—affordable wine, beautiful nature, and decent public transport in major cities. Just don't expect it to be as cheap as many travel bloggers claim it to be.
The key is to be prepared: print all your documents, get proper mobile data, and have cash on hand for unexpected costs. These small preparations can save you from major headaches at the border and during your trip.
Would I go back? Probably not with my own money, but your experience might differ from mine.
Every traveler has their own journey, and what didn't work for me might be perfect for you.
If you found this guide helpful, feel free to share it with anyone planning a trip to the Caucasus region.
Safe travels, and I hope your Georgian adventure goes smoother than mine did!
Marya The BeauTraveler
I am the founder and main editor at The BeauTraveler. I spent 4 years working in the aviation industry but ironically got to travel more right after quitting the industry in 2015. Born and raised in Indonesia, I started working remotely in 2017, and while I stay at home most of the time, I also regularly spend 2-3 months living a semi-digital nomad life elsewhere every year.
