Bazaleti Lake

About this place

Bazaleti Lake lies on the Bazaleti plateau, 5 km south of Dusheti town and about 40 km north of central Tbilisi as the crow flies. At 879 metres, it covers 1.22 square kilometres but is at most 7 metres deep, fed by rain and springs. It is a favourite summer escape from the capital. The plateau was settled in the Stone Age and later prospered under the Dukes of Aragvi. In late autumn 1626 the shore saw the Battle of Bazaleti, in which King Teimuraz I defeated the commander Giorgi Saakadze, who fled wounded to the Ottoman Empire. Legend puts a golden cradle with a sleeping child on the lake bed, and in one telling the child will wake to save Georgia; Ilia Chavchavadze retold it in an 1883 poem named after the lake. Hotels, cottages, glamping sites and a beach club line parts of the shore, with reeds along the south and west. In summer people swim, go boating and fish, and Tbilisi tour operators offer horse riding and paddleboarding. Locals credit the water and dark mud with healing powers, a belief rather than proven medicine. The lake is about 50 km from central Tbilisi by road, roughly an hour's drive via the Georgian Military Road and the Dusheti road; Tbilisi day tours also run here. Swim near the developed beaches, as reeds and waterweed grow in much of the lake. Ananuri Fortress, 20 km further by road, pairs easily on the way north to Kazbegi; Mtskheta, with Jvari Monastery, lies about 22 km south as the crow flies.