About WanderWheels — Who We Are & Why We Drive

About WanderWheels

In Brief

We are a couple of road trip obsessives who write guides for self-drive travel in Georgia and Montenegro. Every route on this site has been driven by us. We do not take sponsorships, we do not publish content about places we have not visited, and we do not pad our articles with generic advice you could find on page one of any travel forum. That is the deal.

Where This Came From

The honest origin story is that we did not set out to build a travel site.

In the spring of 2022, we booked a one-way rental car from Tbilisi airport because it was cheaper than a transfer to the hotel. We had no itinerary. The plan was: pick up the car, drive to the hotel, return the car in the morning. Instead, we kept the car for eleven days.

Those eleven days took us from Tbilisi to Kazbegi in fog so thick we navigated by the sound of the river below, through the Kakheti wine region where a farmer insisted we take home five liters of homemade chacha (we did, and we regretted nothing), and finally to the Black Sea coast on a road that Google Maps described as “partially paved,” which turned out to be optimistic.

We came home with two thousand photos, a notebook full of distances and diesel prices, and a car covered in a fine layer of Caucasus dust. Friends started asking for our notes. Then friends of friends. Then strangers on Reddit. At some point, a spreadsheet of fuel stations and guesthouse phone numbers turned into WanderWheels.

Montenegro came next. Someone on a forum said it was “Georgia but with an Adriatic coastline,” which is not exactly accurate but not entirely wrong either. We spent three weeks driving every road we could find, from the tourist-packed Bay of Kotor to the empty mountain roads above Lake Skadar, and we understood why this tiny country punches so far above its weight.

What You Will Find Here

Self-drive itineraries. Route guides with real distances, real driving times, real fuel costs, and specific notes on road conditions. We tell you where to stop, where to skip, where to fill up, and where the viewpoint everyone photographs is actually located (because it is never where Google says it is).

Car rental guides. Renting a car in Tbilisi or Podgorica is straightforward if you know what to expect and exhausting if you do not. We compare agencies, break down insurance, and explain the local quirks that catch first-timers off guard.

Practical driving tips. What to pack, how to handle mountain roads, and a plain-English breakdown of rental insurance so you can stop worrying about the small print and start worrying about more important things, like whether the road to Ushguli is open this week.

Who This Is For

You, probably, if you are reading this far.

More specifically: independent travelers in the 25-to-40 range who prefer driving over guided tours, who find adventure in navigating rather than being navigated, and who are comfortable with a certain amount of improvisation. People who pack light, eat where the locals eat, and measure a trip’s success by the stories rather than the stamps.

You do not need to be a seasoned overland traveler. You do not need a special vehicle. Most of our routes work fine with a standard rental car. You just need to be the kind of person who sees a turnoff to an unmarked village and thinks “why not” instead of “that is not on the itinerary.”

What We Promise

We will not waste your time. Every sentence on this site exists because we think it will help you plan a better trip or avoid a mistake we already made for you. We keep things updated – prices shift, roads get repaved or deteriorate, rental companies change their terms. When we know something has changed, we update the guide. When we are not sure, we say so.

We also promise not to pretend we know everything. Georgia and Montenegro are both evolving quickly. New roads open, old guesthouses close, regulations change. We write about what we have seen firsthand and flag the things we have not verified recently.

Talk to Us

Questions about a route. Tips we missed. A correction. A photo from your trip. Whatever it is, we would like to hear it.

hello@wanderwheels.life

We read every message and reply to most. If you drove one of our routes and found something different from what we described, we especially want to know – that is how we keep the guides honest.

See you on the road.