I'll Be There Dreckly: The Beginning of the End

Tbilisi, Georgia (map)

In this blog: some flights, a return to Europe, an ancient monastery and a roller coaster

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The ultra modern new Doha airport

Flying over Doha city, Qatar

Georgia isn't an obvious tourist destination I must admit, and it came about on a bit of a whim. It was a total change from my original plan of Korea and Canada, but I've always said the plan for this trip was very flexible. The change came about from two things. Firstly that I was starting to get a bit tired and jaded of life on the road - the constant moving, the lack of stability, the being careful with money, the planning, the lack of friends and family around, the lack of normality. Imagine eating your favourite meal in your favourite restaurant, then imagine doing it every night for a year - you get the picture? On top of this there was a lot happening at home in August - a ball, a birthday, a wedding and a few other things. My travel insurance was also about to run out and was too complicated to extend, and I plan to work abroad for a while after this trip which will require more than a rucksack full of souvenirs and ripped t-shirts.

I thought about this decision for weeks before and no matter how much I thought about just continuing travelling, the mental magnet always pulled in the homewards direction. I'd always planned to go right round the world on this trip but decided it was frivolous just doing it just for the sake of it, not to mention expensive, so looked for a final stop on the more direct route between Indonesia and England. Realising a stop in Dubai was fairly inevitable, after a lot of searching for cheap flights from there Georgia came up as one of the options and at that moment I thought back a few weeks to the Swiss couple I met on Mt Semeru who spoke highly of Georgia, saying how beautiful and interesting it was. I looked into it and it seemed they were right on both counts, as well as being somewhere a little different to visit. Within two days that was it, a flight was booked.

I left Dubai after a fun couple of days, on an Air Qatar flight bound for Doha, Qatar; another city in the oil rich U.A.E., and taking off got to clearly see the almost surreal sight of Dubai from the air before an hour later we landed in Doha. Doha airport was almost brand new and brilliant piece of contemporary architecture, a pleasant place to spend an hour or two. Taking off on the next flight soon revealed a lot of desert, some beautiful blue sea, and lots of shiny new skyscrapers and infrastructure projects partly in the name of the 2022 World Cup, the former pretty pointless when you consider how much space they have but hey, to be a new big glamorous city I guess it's top of the checklist. After some time over the sea we hit land again and flew over Iran for the next hour or so, a country that contrary to popular opinion isn't actually particularly dangerous to visit, the fears are mostly at high governmental level. We passed over stony deserts, mountains, valleys, small towns, the odd oasis and some patches of arable land. It all seemed quite mysterious. A short flight over the Caspian see later and we landed briefly in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan where I stayed in my seat whilst people came and went and like a bus, we soon headed on again. I love the feeling of take off, the feeling of acceleration pushing your back into the seat even if it is terribly bad for the environment, and three take-offs in one day was pretty greedy on both counts. The scenery started to green-up and some mountains emerged, and an hour or so later we finally started descended into Georgia.

Walking out of the airport felt like I'd returned from a mission to another planet and was finally back on the earth I knew, for after eight months I was back in Europe. Geographically, Georgia is technically outside of Europe but culturally it is most definitely inside, and the latter is the definition most people consider. Outside the airport caucasian faces surrounded me, the cars were European made. I headed into town on the rickety bus and inhaled a lungful of first impressions. Every man seemed to be big and tough looking (not suprising after Asia), no-one smiled, everyone seemed to drive a Mercedes, and soviet-style tower blocks lined the road. Signs and adverts were not in roman script (our alphabet) but in Georgian - a set of characters about as recognisable to me as Chinese.

Tblisi

I took a rough guess where to get off the bus in town and spent a few minutes trying to orientate myself on the map by the roadside, before searching for a hostel in the narrow old streets of the old town area. I found a decent place and relaxed on the balcony feeling not exactly jetlagged, as I'd only moved through three hours of time zones, but certainly a bit disorientated after the three flights that day. It was the night of the World Cup final between Germany and Argentina, and having barely watched any of the competition so far I headed to a local bar to watch the only one that counts. It was run surprisingly by an Irish lady, and full of a lot of Germans who brought a buzzing atmosphere. I sat on my own but a guy next to me soon started chatting who turned out to be the deputy Greek ambassador to Georgia! He was a middle aged guy with an American accent who puffed constantly on cigars whilst talking loudly and brashly to friends, and enquired at length about my trip whilst telling me about his previous diplomatic posts and life in the embassy, an interesting guy. When Germany won the game there were huge cheers, and I was glad I made the effort to see it.

After months of having my own room in cheap guesthouses throughout Asia, it was back to sharing rooms in dormitories since I was now on the edge of Europe. The following morning in the hostel I chatted to a Swedish couple in the dorm room and they invited me for breakfast with them at a cafe nearby, after which I ended up spending the whole day hanging out with them. With with David and Malin, a bridge engineer, and secondary school language teacher respectively, I went on the short funicular railway up the nearby hill to what we thought was a viewpoint but turned out to be a small theme park which had been recently renovated; a pleasant but unexpected surprise. The big wheel gave great views over the city which is set within a few valleys, then the water flume didn't just splash us but soaked us completely. Good job it was a warm sunny day. To my surprise there was even a smallish roller coaster and since it didn't seem too wild I thought I'd video the experience, which with a loop the loop and corkscrew was surprisingly fun. When the solemn young attendant saw the camera in my hand at the other end however he was not at all amused, and stood there for a few moments shaking his head at me in disgust like a disappointed schoolteacher. We exited quickly and laughed it off in an outdoor cafe, where we spend a couple of hours talking away and drinking strange lemonade.

On a rollercoaster with Swedish David and Malin in Tbilisi

Tbilisi Sameba Cathedral

Back down in the town we wandered about for a while, seeing the heavily armed parliament building, some big busy boulevards which were difficult to cross, and the recently built cathedral built on top of another hill. It was a magnificent looking building with it's many tiered roofs, but the proportions all seemed a little weird, being all height and no floor. Georgians are a very religious nation, with 82% of the population being Orthodox Christians, and the cathedral was decorated with a huge amount of paintings of biblical scenes that were more intense than any I'd seen before. Just down the road we walked past the fairly swank and new presidential palace, complete with huge hoardings behind so the president can't see the swathes of crumbling old buildings that stand just behind. It was interesting to see how many contemporary buildings in the town below had been built recently, I guess to reflect Georgia's growth and aim to be seen as a modern country, even if the crumbling backstreets and countryside show that it's still pretty poor.

On a narrow old street we passed Tblisi's very own crazy cat lady, an old woman who slept rough in a tent and herded about twenty small kittens around on the pavement with a stick whilst talking to herself, which was amusing if a little sad. A nearby restaurant served us up some tasty khinkali - a staple Georgian dish of dumplings made from pasta sheets stuffed with meat of vegetables, and we tried their homemade red wine which was a bit on the rough side. Later that evening we all went out again along with Steve, an English computer game programmer who was more interesting than he sounds, and shared a couple of bottles of decent wine whilst watching a live jazz band. Not my normal territory, but after eight months in Asia where life is quite different, it was a clear and quite pleasant reminder I was back in Europe.

Arriving in Georgia was a return to the world I knew, and over the next few days I realised how nice it was to be back to:

Potatos

Cheese

Wine

Bread

No cockerels and noise at night

Bathrooms with hot water, soap, hand dryers, toilet rolls, bins and western toilets (often missing in Asia)

European cars

Being able to drink water from taps

Long days

Stone buildings and craftsmanship

Not getting bitten by mosquitos

Eating with a knife (it's been just fork and spoon)

Not sweating at night

The Swedes left the following morning, and after a lazy morning I explored another part of the old city, passing lovely leafy avenues, cafés, wine shops, churches with painted frescos inside, and a big meandering river. I saw a small waterfall in a gorge, wandered up to a nice old fort on the hill, saw the huge 'goddess of Georgia' statue and slowly wandered back down on a long walk across town, along more huge tree lined streets built originally by the Soviets during USSR times. In opposition to this niceness I saw a sadder side though. Behind the well presented main streets, the many nice old buildings on the back streets were often in a poor state and often crumbling away, and many cars were bashed up and missing bumpers. A few times I encountered beggars, peculiar for they were often tidily dressed and wandering the streets, sometimes as families where the parents left the kids to do the talking, and often of gypsie appearance.

David Gareja monastery complex

In the dorm room that night I got chatting to Emilie, a fascinating French-American girl, and we decided to take a bus trip out the next day to the ancient UNESCO-listed David Gareja monastery complex, named after it's founding monk and a couple of hours bus ride from Tblisi. Chatting with Emilie was so fascinating that for once I barely noticed the scenery pass by on the way. After studying and quitting both medicine then science at universities in France, she moved to Utah at 17 and started studying linguistics, and is now coming to the end of a PHD in Arabic studies. She's lived in Austin, Texas since then and speaks perfect English, as well as six other languages fluently. She comes from a Mormon family, is a vegan, has been a missionary in Cyprus, has lived in Syria and Turkey, is married to a Mexican singer-songwriter, and turned down a place at the prestigious Georgetown university. She's also a bit of a reptile fanatic, who used to make money at tourist attractions letting people hold her snakes and lizards, and needless to say chatting to her was enthralling, one of the most interesting people I've ever met.

We arrived at the 9th century monastery around lunchtime, and wandered up a stony path into a narrow valley containing ancient cave houses carved into the rock, and a variety of other churches, chapels and living areas, some buildings still used by a few monks - an impressive sight. A short walk up a hill behind it we reached many older cave buildings carved into the cliff, facing out onto the plains of Azerbaijan below, in fact, we were literally on the border between the two countries and straddling the small steel fence with a foot each side, I can now theoretically claim I've visited Azerbaijan. Actually, I hate it when people make such tedious claims so I take that back! At the highest point on the ridgeline was a small church, and we were amused to see two Georgian border guards lying in the shadow sleeping away, missing out on my brief illegal border crossing. Back in the car park a Georgian girl was cutting up a huge melon and kindly gave us a piece, and I chatted for a few minutes to a nice young English couple who had travelled from England in their transit van, en-route to their final destination of Outer Mongolia (!) where they'll give it away. The trip out to the monestary was interesting and worth the effort, even if I wasn't blown away by the experience. The journey back was equally interesting, passing first fairly desolate steppe then slightly more productive arable fields, a dried out salt lake, rusty abandoned vehicles, and a number of very run down concrete-box villages; my first insight into rural Georgia.

Davit Monastery, some buildings built, some carved

Georgia under my right foot, Azerbaijan under my left

Chapel at Davit monestary

Back at the hostel, a group of guys staying there that I'd not previously met were asking round if anyone wanted to go to the nearby natural thermal baths. It was something I'd considered before and sounded fun so I went for it, meeting up with some of their other friends along the way. Going down some steps into this traditional basement spa, the six of us headed into a private room where I alternated between sulphuric pool - relaxing if not as hot as the one I went to in India, a cold water plunge pool, and a sauna. In the sauna, an American girl came in with a bucket of cold water and tipped half of it on the hot coals without warning seemingly for fun. The now-boiling water immediately spat all over us and we sprinted out before we got burnt, jumping straight into the cold plunge pool, stupid girl! Switching between the hot and cold for an hour sent my mind a little crazy, and by the end of it I felt like I floated out the door, like some drug-fueled trip.

It was an enjoyable few days to mark my return to Europe, and I was really impressed with Tblisi as a city. But whilst pleasant to experience, after the crazy stories from Asia over the past few months maybe a little less interesting to read about I suspect. As uncomfortable as travelling around Asia could be at times, it was infinitely fascinating and interesting, but I couldn't live with it forever, and Georgia was proving to be a good re-acclimatisation to the world I know.