Travel Guide Tsalka

It is advisable to take a guide to visit the area. Travel agencies organize tours to see the canyons and waterfalls. The region is 110 km from Tbilisi and is isolated. Tensions between Greek-Armenians and Svano-Adjares make the area unstable. This region, populated until independence by Greeks and Armenians, has experienced a significant exodus. At the end of the 1990s, Svanes and Adjares (West Georgians) were settled in the deserted Greek villages, which led, as a result of poor resources, to great tensions with the Armenian villages. The region remains conflictual. Tsalka is a Greek "ghost town". It used to have a Greek population of 20,000 people (out of a total of 30,000), which has been reduced to 1,500 today. The very turbulent period after independence in 1991 led to the Greeks emigrating to Greece, where they were offered the right of residence.