Route Notes — By the SLW Travel team
There is a small, persistent question that comes up whenever someone tries to plan an overland journey from Europe into the Caucasus: how do you actually get from Istanbul to Tbilisi without flying? The honest answer is that there is no single train, no clean three-leg route, and no operator who treats it as one journey. There are pieces. They fit together. This is what we know about how, compiled from the sources we trust most.
Two things to set up front. First, this is route research, not field notes — nobody on the SLW Travel team has personally made this trip in 2026. What follows is desk work, drawn from Seat61, Caravanistan, the official Turkish State Railways (TCDD) timetables, recent traveller reports on r/Caucasus and r/overlanding, and the FCDO and US State Department travel advisories. Sources are listed at the bottom. Second, things change. Border crossings reopen, ferries get cancelled, train services get suspended for track works that were supposed to last six months and are now in their third year. Verify everything before you book.
The shape of the route
There is no direct train. There has not been one for a long time. The Trans-Asia Express, which once ran Istanbul to Tehran with a ferry across Lake Van, is the closest historical equivalent — and it is not the route we are talking about here.
What does exist, broken into legs, is roughly this:
Istanbul → Ankara → Kars → Tbilisi.
Ankara is reached by high-speed train. Ankara to Kars is the long, slow eastern run on the Doğu Ekspresi — one of the most well-known scenic train journeys in Turkey, and one of the few legs of this route most travellers actually look forward to. From Kars, the only practical onward option is by road across the Türkgözü or Sarp border into Georgia, then a marshrutka or train down to Tbilisi.
There is also a southern variation that goes Istanbul → Trabzon by long-distance bus, then crosses the Sarp border on the Black Sea coast and continues to Batumi and Tbilisi. It is faster overall and avoids the Kars detour. It is also less interesting.
Leg one: Istanbul → Ankara
The cleanest leg of the journey. The YHT (Yüksek Hızlı Tren) high-speed service runs between Istanbul Söğütlüçeşme or Halkalı and Ankara several times a day. Booking is through TCDD’s site, which is functional in English most of the time and frustrating the rest. Tickets sell out, particularly on weekends — book in advance.
Travel time: roughly 4.5 to 5 hours, depending on the service.
This leg is the one we would label Verified in the SLW Travel app. It is run by a major operator, on a published timetable, with online booking, and reports from travellers in the last six months consistently describe a working service.
Leg two: Ankara → Kars
This is the famous one. The Doğu Ekspresi (Eastern Express) runs from Ankara to Kars on a long, deliberately slow overnight route through the Anatolian interior. Total journey time is around 24 hours. There are two variants: the regular Doğu Ekspresi, which is the cheaper everyday service used by locals, and the Turistik Doğu Ekspresi, which is the tourist-marketed version with stops at scenic points and a higher price tag. As of recent reports the tourist version runs seasonally; the regular service runs year-round.
Tickets, again, through TCDD. Sleeper compartments book out weeks ahead in the high season. If you are flexible, the seated cars are perfectly survivable, and the dining car culture on this train is part of why people take it.
This leg is also Verified, with a caveat: the Turistik variant’s schedule is seasonal and the operator has been known to change it without much notice. Check within two weeks of travel.
Leg three: Kars → Tbilisi
This is where the route gets honest about itself.
There is no train. There used to be talk of a Kars–Tbilisi line via the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK) railway, which opened in 2017 as a freight corridor and was meant to eventually carry passengers. As of our last check, it does not carry passengers. Services on the BTK line have been “imminent” for several years and remain so.
So the realistic options from Kars are:
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Marshrutka (shared minibus) to the Türkgözü border, change to a Georgian marshrutka on the other side, continue to Akhaltsikhe, then bus or train to Tbilisi. This is the most-reported option in traveller forums. Total time roughly a full day with the border crossing. The crossing itself is generally described as straightforward for EU, UK, US and most Schengen-area passport holders, but the marshrutka schedule on either side is informal and depends on the day.
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Taxi from Kars directly to the border, hire onward. Faster, more expensive, requires negotiating.
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The southern alternative: skip Kars entirely. Take a long-distance bus from Istanbul or Trabzon along the Black Sea coast and cross at Sarp into Batumi. From Batumi, regular trains run to Tbilisi (around 5 hours). This is the route most non-rail-enthusiast travellers actually take.
We would label the Kars → Tbilisi leg Verify before booking. The journey is genuinely doable and people do it regularly. But there is no single timetable, no online booking, and the on-the-ground details depend on which day of the week you arrive at the border and whether the marshrutka driver feels like running a service that morning.
A note on the southern route
For most travellers, particularly first-timers on this corridor, the southern route via Trabzon and Batumi is probably the more sensible choice. It avoids the marshrutka uncertainty, uses the Sarp border crossing (which is busy enough that there is always onward transport), and gives you a stop in Batumi, which has its own appeal. The Batumi → Tbilisi train is comfortable, modern, and bookable through Georgian Railways’ site.
The Kars route is the romantic one. The Doğu Ekspresi is the journey, not the means. If your reason for going overland is the train itself, take it. If your reason is to get to Tbilisi without flying, the Black Sea route is shorter, cleaner, and more honest about what it is.
Visas and borders
Most EU, UK, US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand passport holders do not need visas for Turkey or Georgia for short stays. Check the official sources before you travel — entry rules change, and the FCDO and US State Department pages are kept current.
The Türkgözü border (Posof crossing) is open to foreigners and used by the marshrutka services from Kars. It is a smaller, quieter crossing than Sarp. Sarp, on the Black Sea, is the main road border between the two countries and is busy with both passenger and freight traffic.
Safety context
Both Turkey and Georgia carry standard travel advisories rather than active conflict warnings as of this writing. Eastern Turkey, particularly the provinces bordering Syria and Iraq, has more restrictive guidance — but the route described here passes well north of those areas. The Türkgözü and Sarp crossings are both within the standard-advisory zone.
Current advisories:
What we don’t know
A few honest gaps:
- Marshrutka schedules from Kars. We have second-hand reports but no live data. If anyone reading this has crossed the Türkgözü border recently, we would genuinely like to hear about it — the field-notes version of this post is the one we cannot write yet.
- Whether the BTK passenger service has actually started. Every six months, news cycles say it is about to. Treat any report with scepticism until you see a published timetable and live ticket sales.
- Doğu Ekspresi sleeper availability. The pattern from previous years is that it sells out fast. Book as soon as your dates are firm.
If we had to assemble this trip today: book the YHT to Ankara through TCDD, book the Doğu Ekspresi to Kars as soon as your dates are fixed, and leave the Kars → Tbilisi leg flexible. Bring cash in lira and lari for the border crossing. Allow a buffer day on either side.
Sources
- Seat61 — Turkey — the standing reference for trains in Turkey, including the Doğu Ekspresi and YHT
- Caravanistan — the standing reference for overland travel in the Caucasus and Central Asia
- TCDD official site — Turkish train schedules and booking
- Georgian Railways — Batumi–Tbilisi service
- Recent traveller reports on r/overlanding, r/Caucasus, r/solotravel
- UK FCDO and US State Department advisories for Turkey and Georgia, current as of publication
If you have made this journey and any of the above is out of date, tell us — we update route notes as we learn.
Plan this route in the SLW Travel planner. Every leg is labelled with a confidence badge so you know what we know and what we don’t.