It started as a bet
in the mountains
In the summer of 2019, Nino Kalandadze — a Tbilisi-based biologist with an unhealthy obsession with topographic maps — convinced seven friends to spend a week in Tusheti. No itinerary, no gear list, just a hand-drawn route and a bag full of churchkhela. They got rained on for three days straight, a horse ate someone's jacket liner on day four, and by the last night around the fire, everyone agreed it was the best week of their lives.
By 2021, the group chats asking "when's the next one?" had gotten out of hand. Nino spent six months walking every route she planned to offer — Kazbegi ridges at 5am, the Svaneti traverse in September snow, the semi-desert around Mravaltskaro she'd been visiting since childhood. Then she launched Geotripster with one rule: every trip must be something she'd genuinely want to go on herself.
Today there are four of us: a mountain guide from Mestia who grew up speaking Svan, a cook who believes camp food should be embarrassingly good, a logistics person who somehow makes the impossible happen in the most remote corners of Georgia — and Nino, still with too many maps. We walk every new route before opening bookings. We eat the same food as our guests. We carry our own packs.
