A day later, I drove nine arduous hours, braved a windy road—stopping multiple times to dig through snow drifts—and finally arrived in Mestia, the biggest town in Svaneti, home of the Margiani ...

The road that links most villages of Upper Svaneti will soon be paved all the way to Ushguli. Frenzied construction has transformed the sleepy regional hub of Mestia into a faux Swiss resort town ...