Everywhere ● Horseback Adventures Reviews

Amazing trip now in Vashlovani! We had an amazing time riding through Vashlovani! Soso was so welcoming, making sure we felt at home the whole time. The horses were just awesome—strong and ready for anything. The whole experience felt genuine and relaxed, like spending time with friends in a stunning place. Can’t recommend this enough!

Borjomi is great, but go through another provider I would definitely recommend a trip to this region, as the forests of Borjomi are beautiful and the vistas over the mountains are spectacular, but I would strongly recommend booking through a different provider for two key reasons: the ill-humored and unprofessional guide and the terrible post-sales customer service. *The guide* Our guide, Suso, is not made for hospitality. When he arrived he did not greet us or care to look us in the eye. He was incredibly unhelpful, answering questions we had passive aggressively. For example, when we asked him how far it was while we were on our way, he asked “Why? Are you tired? How?”. He did not join us on a horse of his own but walked, making it feel as if we were children on a pony camp, and spent the entire time walking behind us while shouting at someone on his phone. When we had questions about how we should command the horses he just told us they wouldn’t listen to us anyway, and when a horse would do something unexpected like suddenly break into a trot he would not intervene, leading to a few situations in which we were uncomfortable with the measure of safety. On the following morning, he was still in his sleeping bag at 08:30 and when we woke him to ask when we would be leaving he aggressively responded with “Why do you want to leave now? Either you wait here an hour or you wait down there, what do you care?”, only for him to tell us 10 minutes later to get on the horses. We felt as if this man did not care about safety, was (passive) aggressive throughout the trip and a thoroughly unpleasant person to be around, and definitely not someone who should work as a guide. When I expressed some of my concerns with the company, they themselves acknowledged that he was weird, which made me question ever more why they line him up for tour groups knowing that he isn’t a good fit for this line of work. *Customer service* We received a pleasant WhatsApp message a few days ahead of the tour informing us that we should pack food, water and sleeping bags. We did so, and arrived at the hut after the first day of riding… only to find out that there were no mattresses at the hut where we would be sleeping. Instead of undertaking any initiative to alleviate the problem, our guide just looked at us apathetically. We finally convinced him to call the company, only for him to call a friend instead and spend 20 minutes discussing his frustrations with that friend. Afterwards he finally called the company, but after 10 minutes it became clear he was making no progress and so I requested the phone. Having gotten Datia on the line, I was then subject to an attempt to gaslight me, with Datia telling me that it was written in the terms and conditions that we should bring mattresses ourselves, even though they had omitted to include it in the messages they had sent us about what to pack. They then tried to convince us that it was only natural to pack mattresses when packing sleeping bags, as if that is the most natural thing in the world. At that stage I wasn’t concerned about whose fault it was, but wanted a solution - whereas all our guide and Datia were doing was trying to cover their ass instead of trying to help us find a solution (like send up a car from the village, only a 30 min drive away). We found a discarded mat in the forest, and the guide found another in the attic of the hut, and so we had something to lie on, but notwithstanding the questionable hygiene of these mats they were paper thin and resulted in me and my wife having a terrible night’s sleep, having basically had to sleep on the floor. The next day we called the company to demand a refund for the terrible trip. The company acknowledged they should have provided mattresses and eventually apologized, but refused to provide a refund, saying that they considered the mats that we and the guide found to have been sufficient. And to add insult to injury, they offered us a 20% discount on the next trip we would book with them, knowing fully well we would never work with this tour provider ever again. I can’t speak to the other tours they do, so perhaps the other guides are great. But I would avoid Borjomi because of Suso. But I can speak to Datia and the company, and the unwillingness to look for a solution, the panicky pointing of fingers and late apology, the refusal to provide any form of compensation and the unwillingness to speak over the phone all suggest that this is far from a professional company, and I would urge any prospective customer to look elsewhere. One positive point: the driver we had (Dima) is a sweetheart, and one of the nicest people I had the pleasure of meeting in Georgia. They should put him in charge.

Amazing Amazing tour, beautiful nature, sweet horses and people (The Vardzia tour)! The only missing part was that we couldn't choose to use helmets. Also very good service from the travel coordinator.