Heading Home

Mestia, Georgia to Tblisi, Georgia to Moscow, Russia to Launceston, UK

In this blog: homeward bound via a sweaty night train and a sleepover in a Russian airport
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After a cracking final few days in the Caucasus mountains, it was time to head back to Tbilisi - the capital of Georgia, and indeed time to start making my way home to England.

In Mestia, I said goodbye to the other travellers I'd been hanging around with over the past few days and as ever exchanged contact details, knowing full well I probably wouldn't speak to most of them again, as no matter how well you get on and how much you intend to stay in touch, most travel friendships are fairly transient and often built on situation and convenience. That said, there are a good number of people from this trip that no doubt I will keep in touch with for years to come and hopefully see again one day.

The finest host of all, Roza

I'd booked a night train for that evening, so had most of the day to tidy up loose ends, write, and chat with Roza, my great host at the homestay who spoke excellent English. I'd managed to stay in homestays almost the whole time in Georgia and really enjoyed it, since you get a real homely feel and a good insight into the local area and culture. Mid-afternoon I headed to catch a minibus back to the town of Zugdidi where the nearest station is. Roza had booked it up with the driver and told me where to wait, but upon getting to that spot none of the three drivers waiting seemed to say it was them who'd received the booking, and confusion ensued. A woman in her late thirties eventually got out from the back of the minibus and offered to help, funnily translating my English into Russian, which her boyfriend then translated from Russian into Georgian - a real life Chinese whispers it seemed! 

We were soon on our way, and the woman started chatting to me, who turned out to be a Russian who had lived in Manchester, UK for the past seven years, on holiday with her Georgian boyfriend who she'd met over the internet. Her parents were also with her, who live in the very north of Russia but come from the Crimea and Ukraine originally, having lived in Cuba for four years along the way - a very colourful and interesting background from all of them I thought. All of them were very well educated, working as metallurgists, meteorologists and pharmaceutical researchers, and fascinating to talk to via the daughter, and I asked them for their thoughts on life under communism (it had some benefits), the Crimea (it's right that Russia has it) and the current war in Ukraine (sad). Stopping for a break, they invited me to join them and insisted on buying me a tea and some khachapuri (cheese bread), all of which rightly blew away some of the nonsense stereotypes of Russians that I formerly had.

Night Train

Arriving in Tblisi, thankfully our train looked a little better than that one

The night train waited on the platform at Zugdidi and I found the sleeper carriage which I ended up sharing with three young Israelis. Travelers from Israel are always interesting, as whilst always friendly, they only tend to hang around with other Israelis, and in this case their group of three had slowly merged over their trip into a group of thirty-odd. The train left on time, and whilst clean and tidy enough was swelteringly hot inside, lacking both air-con and a fan which made sleeping pretty difficult.

Tblisi

The crooked clock tower, Tblisi

We arrived at Tbilisi at 6.30am, and with my flight not until 7pm I headed to the hostel I'd stayed at previously and persuaded them to let me leave my bag there for the day. After abusing their generosity a little by using the WiFi and making a cup of tea, I took advantage of the time of day and went for a wander through some parts of the city I'd missed a couple of weeks before, whilst the sun was low and the streets quiet. It was just fantastic, a good time to potter about and a good time to start reflecting on the fact that a day later I'd be back on British soil. I passed a cathedral, a crooked clock tower. I walked into a brand new funky citizens information building  for a nose about, wandered along the river, and found an antiques market in a park which was great to look about, and bought some old Russian maps and military badges, because I could.

A Swiss horn band were busking in a nice public park which was entertaining for a while, before I went shopping for a souvenir or two, before eventually having my final Georgian meal in a nice cafe I came across. I'd left my tablet charger in a guesthouse a week or so before, and two of my hosts thereafter had arranged for it to be delivered back to Tbilisi by minibus. It seemed a bit of a long and protracted way of getting it back, and in fact it was, involving taking the Metro across town to the station, and spending nearly an hour showing bus drivers a piece of paper which said in Georgian 'do you have my phone charger', which inevitably resulted in the sort of confused looks you'd expect from a foreign man asking strange questions. Just as I was about to go though, a minibus roared in with a driver waving a charger in my direction and all was well.

I headed back to the hostel to get my bag and shower, before that was it. I was at the end of 12 1/2 months on the road, and I was now actually heading home. I remembered the same feeling, stood on a beach in Fiji five years before after a long trip, struggling to comprehend that there was another world of rain, bills, work and routine out there, and I was heading straight towards it. But since it felt fairly over-stimulated by having seen and done so much this past year, it didn't worry me as much as you might think. 

Departures

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Thoughts on Georgia
Georgia had proved to be a good choice of country to end this trip - European enough to feel a bit like home, but rugged and raw enough to still be exciting and different. I experience kindness from some locals and generally felt safe, but I really can't say they I found them on the whole to be particularly nice or friendly people, certainly not compared to in some of the other places I'd visited on this trip.

Tbilisi was a total surprise as a capital city, being clean, tidy, and full of lovely old buildings and interesting sights, but was a total contrast to rural Georgia which felt quite poor and run-down. In fact, with some of the nasty toilets and the sight of cows and wild dogs wandering the roads sometimes, I was occasionally reminded of being in India. The Caucasus mountains however were just stunning, and Georgia wouldn't be half as interesting to visit without them. Interestingly I probably met more travellers in Georgia than I did in two months in Indonesia, despite Georgia being less well known, and I was particularly surprised by the amount of Americans I met, a nation that travels surprisingly little who'd I'd only really seen before in popular tourist places like Petra and Paris. Most people were just on holiday for a couple of weeks though, and following a bit of a set trail around the fairly small country so. However despite these tourists, the Georgian economy did seem very over-reliant on tourism though, which means they're a bit screwed in times of recession.

Georgian food, which included dishes such as cheese bread (khachapuri), dumplings (khinkali), and fried pork and chips (ojapuri) was excellent, though I felt like their repertoire of dishes was a bit limited once you'd tried everything on the menu. It was also interesting to see them so keen on growing and drinking wine - many people would grow vines in their gardens and make their own home-made grog, in this, one of the oldest wine-growing regions in the world. The roads were a mixed bag, sometimes excellent and at other times far from it, and the standard of driving atrocious - at least the bad driving in India happened as much slower speeds. Three vehicles amusingly dominate the road, in my mind at least: the Ford Transit, the Russian open back lorry, and the Mercedes saloon, the latter a funny choice since very few people can really afford them.

Georgia was well worth visiting.

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Flying back
Leaving the hostel, I took the bus to the airport and wandered to the terminal, getting accosted in the car park by a group of well-dressed gypsy-like ladies who were begging for money, before checking in for my flight, destination: Moscow. The Siberian Airways flight took me back over the Caucasus mountains, and with the sun setting and snow-capped mountain peaks sticking up through the clouds it was a really powerful moment, especially with a bit of Led Zeppelin playing in my ears. We soon entered Russian airspace, and when the clouds occasionally parted all I could see below were huge rectangular fields of corn below, which as we neared Moscow changed more to huge green forests, scattered with villages and odd-shaped fields of crops. The landing was a little dodgy but nothing to worry about, though to my surprise everyone broke out in applause, a first for me after quite a few flights now.

Moscow airport

Moscow airport was one of the stranger ones I'd been to, with a huge graveyard of old Soviet places left on one side of the runway, which itself seemed as bumpy as a farm track, alongside what seemed like ten other runways but probably wasn't. The security staff were as dour-faced as I expected but I got through with no stress, and even the the terminal itself was a bit strange, laid out a bit like an ocean liner. I needed a drink, but everything was priced in roubles and there were no ATM's. Thankfully they took cards even for such small items. It was now 11pm, and with seven hours before my connecting flight, I had to sleep there the night. Luckily, the airport seating was made in Cornwall (Zoeftig) so I felt right at home.

It was not intentional, but I flew the final leg home on British Airways which felt pretty patriotic; the first time I'd used them since they were for once the cheapest. The staff were British, the on-board TV shows from the BBC, and the food from brands I'd forgotten about such as Yeo Valley - my acceptance that the trip was over was increasing by the minute. As we flew over London the planed banked over the city and I saw The Houses of Parliament, Canary Wharf and then Wembley. It was almost as if the pilot just wanted to remind me I was nearly home. 

London
I collected my bag and took the train to the main terminal with the intention of trying to hitch-hike home - not because I'd spent every last penny but more because it felt like a fitting ending, one last bit of adventure. Besides I was curious to see if British people would actually pick me up, after the ease of doing it in Malaysia and Indonesia. The airport itself was way too busy for anyone to stop for me, so at the advice of a couple of cyclists who both stopped to ask if I needed help, I took a bus to the main road outside. There, no-one stopped for me in nearly an hour of trying so I tried by a petrol station, before a taxi driver told me I'd be better off at another spot again and drove me there for free on his way to collect someone. I found what seemed like a safe and sensible spot and tried my luck, before fifteen minutes later in the corner of my eye I saw a car roll up and stop nearby. It turned out the AA had seen me on CCTV and sent someone out as they didn't like pedestrians around that area as it supposedly disrupted the flow of traffic. Whilst they told me I was doing nothing illegal they also said I needed to move somewhere else, even offering to drive me there if I could think of a sensible spot.

I'd managed to go over a year abroad with no trouble at all, and within an hour of being in the UK I was having the finger wagged! They were very friendly and even curiously asked a few details about my trip. Eventually, after an unsuccessfully three hours of trying to hitch-hike I went back to Heathrow bus station and caught the next coach to Exeter. It was the most comfortable bus and smoothest road I'd been on in a year, but also the most boring. As if by magic when arriving at Exeter, the connecting bus that went onto Launceston pulled up in the next bay to where I was standing, and just a couple of minutes later I was on my way again. I contrasted this with the hassle of Georgia and some of the other places I'd been, and they seemed a million miles away already.

The bus journey to Launceston was a strange one, as by chance it mostly followed the route that I'd cycled on my way to Sweden just over a year before. Along the way, the entire previous year flashed before my eyes, like a movie on fast forward. The people, places, experiences. Highs, lows, food. The weird and wonderful, the beautiful and ugly. I started seeing changes that had happened since I'd last been home, a few shops had come and gone, lots of windmills that have popped up everywhere in the countryside. I realised that finally the names of Indian restaurants suddenly all made sense to me.

At Launceston my sister picked me up for the final few miles home, the first familiar face I'd seen in a very long time, and not long afterwards I saw my parents for the first time in a year, which was as nice as you'd imagine. It was great to be home.

Fields near Moscow

Flea market, Tblisi

Outdoor art market, Tblisi

 

Flying over the beautiful Caucasius mountains, heading for Moscow

Flying home in style

British soil. It's been a while.

Glaciation

Mestia, Georgia (map)

In this blog: travel nightmares, a walk to the hills, an adventure to a glacier, and a strange hilltop festival

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Walking in the cross above Mestia

9th to 12th century defensive towers in Mestia town

It was a terrifying journey but thankfully the last of it's kind I'd encounter on this trip, as the driver of the share taxi went flat out along the main two-lane road across Georgia, despite driving a right-hand drive car on the right side of the road, making overtaking pretty difficult and dangerous. A car had gone into the back of an artic truck and another car into that back of the first, so we slowed to a crawl and passed around it before getting back to full speed again, our driver unshaken by the sight of mangled metal. I smiled again when we passed an abandoned petrol station full of cows, stood motionless as if queuing up for fuel. The air-con was broken and the journey sweaty, so it was with relief when we reached the city of Kutaisi. I'd planned to stay there a day, but spotting that it was a bit of a concrete mess I changed my plans instantly, deciding to head to the mountains again instead. Whilst the roads have been pretty bumpy and the driving too fast, Georgia has probably been the easiest country on my trip to get around as minibuses run everywhere, all the time, and finding a minibus on to the town of Zugdidi was no exception.


Zugdidi
Getting there late afternoon, things got a little less straightforward. Stupidly, I decided to walk the mile or so to the hostel in my guidebook which it transpired no longer existed, but discovered only after a lot of walking around the suburbs in 32 degree humid heat, knocking on wrong doors and asking people in the street. After an hour of this I was pretty peeved so flagged down a taxi. The driver didn't have a clue what I was on about but drove me to the centre anyway, then let me use his phone and kindly refused to take any money for the journey. I changed plans and wandered to the train station where I hoped I might get a bus onto the town of Mestia, and a minibus driver who spoke no English first shook his head to indicate no, he wasn't going there, then a few minutes later changed his mind and waved me on-board. We slowly drove around nearby small streets for a while whilst he dropped off things, spoke to people and joked around, before ten minutes later dropping me off just around the corner. We were supposed to have driver for three hours so I now had no idea what was going on, before he pointed to his mate outside the van and said 'guesthouse' before asking for £2 fare - enough for a 3 hours journey here normally. It was obvious he was a chancer so I shook my head and walked off annoyed. It was also now obvious I would have to stay in Zugdidi for the night, with no other options for guest houses around I reluctantly took a look at his mate's place. Walking into what looked like an empty monastery complex, then passing a lone chicken stood half way up the stairs, it turned out to be less of a guesthouse and more just a house with a spare room, but tired and with few other options it would have to do, even if it was a bit weird.

I spent what was left of the sunny evening wandering around a nice park, past a castle, then through the large, grassy town square where I ate and wrote for a while. Even by night Zugdidi was still humid and sweaty, and with no fan available I had to leave the bedroom window wide open to avoid drowning in my own sweat, whilst oddly this guy and his brother sat outside on the balcony chatting then watching TV with the lights off 'til gone 3am. The bed springs were so knackered that when I sat on the mattress, it seemed to almost touch the floor, and the bedroom door had neither a handle or a lock either, so I leant a jam jar against it to wake me if someone entered. I had a terrible nights sleep as you might expect.

At 7am the next day I hopped on a minibus and got out of there, heading into the Caucasus mountains again, this time in the west of Georgia in the area known as Svaneti. The scenery was beautiful as we climbed a windy road into the hills whilst following a wild, glacier-fed river below. We stopped at a cafe halfway where with no breakfast available we had to make do with an ice cream, whilst some of the Georgian passengers had a beer... at 10am. I got chatting to David and Claire - an English couple on the bus who were heading the same way, and decided to go to the same homestay as them when we reached Mestia since it sounded good. The owner, a lovely lady in her fifties called Roza was as kind, friendly and helpful as you could ever expect, one of those rare people where nothing whatsoever is too much trouble.

Mestia
David and Claire were both very pleasant and chatty, a Lawyer and a speech therapist, and on their invitation I decided to join them for the day. Whilst I've met a few other English people on this trip it was strange to spend such a long time with my natives, and since the trip was almost over, almost a re-acquaintance with the world I know as they talked of home. We went for a lazy lunch in the main square of Mestia, a nice grassy area full of trees. The town centre was surrounded by buildings that the government had recently put up in an attempt to turn Mestia into a holiday hub for the country, a noble gesture except it now looked like a naff version of an alpine ski resort - not the first time I'd seen poor new development in Georgia. We decided to go on a half day walk up to a cross that we could see high on the hills above, a lovely jaunt through the town then up through steep woods, passing grazing cows, and picking wild strawberries from beside the path. The views at the top were tremendous, a full 360 degree panorama of snow capped mountains, all of them higher than anything in the Alps and I'm fairly sure I spotted Mt Elbrus - the highest mountain in Europe which stood just over the border in Russia. I sat down in the afternoon sun for a rest whilst they made their way back down, and to my surprise fell asleep for 45 minutes - I blame the night before!

That night Claire and David introduced me to Giovanni and Alesandra; an Italian couple who they'd met elsewhere the day before. They were so smiley and so Italian, with their long hair and stylish clothes, and turned out to be an actor and director respectively - he's starred in movies, on stage and in TV series including BBC's 'Rome', broadcast a few years ago - you can see his IMDB profile here. Despite success, they were  very modest people; friendly and curious and only talking about their fascinating lives when we asked. It was only mildly surprising then that despite having homes in Sicily, Rome and Milan, they were travelling around Georgia on public transport and that their car at home was a Fiat. We had a couple of beers sat outside a terrace bar in town, before walking a mile or so to a restaurant they'd been recommended where we were given menus and took our seats, carefully picking what we wanted and ordering. The waitress first came back to say certain items weren't available then after all this, ten minutes later she returned again saying 'sorry, the kitchen is actually shut'. How would you not realise your own kitchen is shut?!

To the glacier
The next morning I was invited to join the guys on a horse ride to the foot of a nearby glacier. I hate horses so thought about it for about a second before deciding to hire an iron horse instead -  a mountain bike. Unfortunately though, after an hour of walking around the town I found that the only two places that supposedly hired bikes no longer did. As a second-best, despite being a little stiff from the previous days walking I decided to head out on foot for the day anyway, heading to Chalaadi Glacier. I could only get hold of a large scale map which told me almost nothing, but had a rough idea where to go so took a chance - how could you possibly miss a glacier I thought?

Unfortunately, the answer was quite easily. Early on I took a path on the left side of the valley - the side the glacier was on -  when in fact I should have walked on the right and herein in things got extremely tricky because of it, the five or six hour walk turning into eight and a half. For the first two or three miles things were straightforward, just a nice flat gravel road. The path then narrowed considerably and I had the choice of heading uphill or into the grounds of a seemingly abandoned house. The uphill route led nowhere so I started heading for the house before I heard a bark and a large vicious-looking brown dog starting to move towards me, collarless and owner-less, and seemingly protecting a herd of nearby cows, before a few moments later an Alsatian-type dog appeared in the background, also barking. I'd read that most dogs in the mountains were trained to kill wolves, and with no owners around I don't mind admitting I was a little scared at that moment, on my own with nothing but a rock in my hand. 

Fortunately, walking away seemed to do the trick but left me with no clear onwards route. I went into a field, rock hopped across a stream, got lost in some meadows nearby for twenty minutes before scrambling down a bank to the original path I'd come on where I branched off to walk along the riverbank. I considered turning back but felt disheartened by the thought of coming all that way for nothing so continued. The path was merely a cow track and started getting worse, sometimes turning into a bog, and sometimes disappeared meaning I had to beat my own way through the bushes. After another hour, to my relief a clear path appeared when I reached a forest, along with litter on the ground telling me people had been there, so I guessed it may head towards the glacier. Eventually though it faded to nothing and I felt proper stuck. The forest had little undergrowth so I decided to make my own path and followed the contour around, eventually spotted a couple of tourist vans parked on the other side of the valley. The white-water river was way too big and fast to wade across so I headed up the valley my own way, walking over piles and piles of rocks left there by the glacier before it retreated years before. Walking was tough going as I clambered over rocks and pushed small trees out the way, but eventually to my relief the glacier came into view and despite going the wrong way initially, my navigating thereafter had led me to the right place. It was well worth all the effort - the sight of the huge snaking mass of ice looked stunning. The final section involved walking through long grass with jagged rocks underneath, followed by clambering across and down a steep scree slope neither of which were easy, but I eventually made it to the underground river which flowed out from underneath the bottom end of the glacier itself.

Sight of the glacier after a very long walk

I was still on the wrong side of the valley though, so carefully made my way up one side of it, and a hundred metres behind its crumbling ice and rock edge, crossed quickly over and down the other side before breathing a sigh of relief. After a wooded descent, most of the walk back was on a flat dirt road which was a pleasure after the journey I'd taken there, and just before dusk I made it back to Mestia, even turning down a lift from a local along the way (I couldn't cheat could I). Totally knackered, I opted to have dinner at the guesthouse where I sat with two Spanish 'alpinists' as they call themselves who I'd been sharing a room with and soon learnt my exploits were nothing compared to their stories of climbing cliffs without ropes and sleeping the night in a tent on the glacier. One of them had even attempted to climb K2 before - the second highest mountain in the world, so they were pretty experienced and full of fascinating tales.

The following day I'd planned to take it easy, which was just as well the way my legs were feeling. David and Claire were doing the same, so a morning of reading in the lovely garden followed a long lazy breakfast chatting with them. It was great to just kick back with no plans or expectations for the day, the first one I'd had in ages in fact and the day soon disappeared in a daze of music, reading, eating and napping.

Hill Festival
The end of my whole trip was nigh and I now had just one full day left in Mestia. It was a slightly strange feeling to know that the lifestyle I'd become so accustomed to over the past year was soon due to come to an end, but just like a man with a comb over, I was still in denial so postponed any thoughts and replaced them with another trip out. Over the previous day I'd met three girls in the guesthouse who were travelling together; Fiona, Natalie and Benedicte - Australian, German, and French - a combination of nationalities so ripe you might think a joke might be coming, but sorry, I can't think of one. This trio had been talking about visiting a traditional music festival a few miles away they'd heard about, an annual event which we could get no further information on other than it's location. I love a good festival and we were all curious about what it might entail, so I decided to join them for the day to see.

Our fine host Roza had booked space in a minibus for us and we headed off at 9am that day, the bus climbing from one mountainous valley to the next and the nice concrete road soon turning into a potholed gravel mess, whilst the driver's son drove us all mad by constantly skipping from one song to the next on the stereo. We'd only travelled thirty miles, but it took a pretty bouncy and uncomfortable two hours to reach the tiny hamlet of Kala. The four of us all had visions in mind of reaching a field full of stalls, stages, musicians, local food, and entertainers, but what we found could not be much different.

Heaps of cars and jeeps were parked up along the track for quite some way, and people were making their way up a steep path through the woods to a small church, set on top of a hill high above us. We were both bemused and confused following the crowd up the slippery and awkward path, passing very old and very young along the way. Eventually we reached the church, built on top of a rocky outcrop and surrounded by a wall. There was a huge queue of people waiting to go in, but for what we still weren't sure. Georgians it seems are terrible queuers and loads of people were jumping the line, or simply climbing the steep old stone bank and wall to get in. It was total chaos, and we realised this wasn't really the organised event we were expecting. Eventually inside this walled courtyard we  breathed a sigh of relief and took a look around.

Rock lifting at the festival

Out for the day with French Benedicte, German Natalie and Aussie Fiona

There were characters galore in the crowd, and some of them wore clothes often so out of fashion I thought I'd been transported to the forties. Young men were taking part in a rock-picking-up competition, lifting a huge lump of granite that must have been nearly 100kg. Various people were lighting candles and sticking them to the wall inside the church, and a guy occasionally played a guitar-like instrument. Nearby, chunks of meat were being boiled in a 45 gallon steel drum heated by burning logs, and it turned out that to save them carrying the meat to the top, they simply walked live sheep and goats to the top and killed them there and then. An old guy plied French Benedicte with a shot of chacha that they were drinking - a type of clear Brandy unique to Georgia distilled from grapes, and she made the sourest face you'd ever seen, whilst beside us a group of men sung traditional songs in an acapella style when they felt like it.

It was all very peculiar, obviously not a music festival in the truest sense of the word but more a rebellious a celebration of some sort. After a while we sat back on a wall and watched everyone enjoying themselves, when a Georgian girl in her mid-twenties came along, speaking to us in both fluent English and German -  a doctor who'd made the long journey from the capital for this annual event which she explained was to commemorate a saint. In fact it turned out many people travelled across the country for it, and another guy had even driven for four days from Holland to be there! I have no idea why.

Back in the valley the four of us had a few hours to burn until the bus left, so took a hike up through some overgrown meadows to an old defensive tower and abandoned house that we'd spotted, leaving us stung by stinging nettles and out of breath. nearing the bottom a woman started talking to us, explaining that whilst she lived away now, the buildings we'd visited were left to her by her parents, and to our surprise was pleased we'd made the effort to see them. Her son then came along and plied us all with the more aforementioned chacha to drink, a custom at these festivals we were learning, which left us all a bit dazed for the rest of the afternoon. Lovely people.

Last night
After another walk around the village to pass time we headed back to Mestia, a good time to be inside as it hammered down with rain. It was my last night proper, and back at the homestay Roza cooked up a cracking home cooked meal consisting of fresh khachapuri bread, rice salad, home made chips, and aubergine & walnut salad. The girls and I headed into town for some beers in a local bar, watching some traditional local dancing, and chatting to three local chaps who again pressed us to join them in drinking chacha, this time out of a hip flask from behind the table. One of the had his keys on the table and I asked if he was planning to drive home, to which he answered 'yes, it's a hundred metres away so I'm only having five beers' to which I smiled politely at him, whilst looking at the girls in bemusement. It was a fun night and a perfect near-end to the trip.

Festival

Last night of the trip

Just a few of the many defensive towers in the Svaneti area

Harvest time

Claire, myself, David, Natalie, Fiona and Benedicte out for a beer

Cave City

Gori and Borjomi, Georgia
 
In this blog: Stalin's birthplace, a forest hike, dinner with some Poles and a cave city

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The Stalin museum, Gori

Whilst people naturally associate Stalin with Russia, the controversial former Russian leader was actually born in Georgia in the town of Gori, and there remains the house he was born in as well as a shrine-like museum on his life. Before visiting Gori I must admit I knew little about him bar the controversy so thought it might be an interesting stop for a day.

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I left the mountainous town of Kazbegi on a packed minibus, the guy beside me constantly leaning on me as he fell asleep much to to my annyance. Luckily the scenery was a good distraction as we drove through dramatic huge green valleys and the occasional rusted old Soviet military vehicle.
Because of the shape of Georgia, I had to go back to the capital city Tblisi again to change bus, and waited around a while in the packed and confusing bus station until the people carrier to my destination filled up. The journey to Gori was for once straightforward and fast, and the first time I'd been on a proper dual carriageway for about six months meant it was refereshing not to just be plodding along for once. As we passed filling stations I noted petrol was just 63p per litre, surely some of the cheapest in Europe, as well as seeing road signs for both Tehran and Istanbul; a firm reminder of how far south Georgia actually is.

The bus dumped me off at Gori, but with no map of the town I had little idea how to get to the guesthouse I'd picked out in my guidebook. I took a stab anyway and started walking north in the midday sun, but arriving in a fairly poor neighbourhood I relised I had no idea where to go next. I pointed at the address in the guidebook and showed it to a local, who grunted to his mate sat in a nearby car, sat idle with his shirt open and his gut hanging out. This guy then went and asked a friend, made a phonecall and to my suprise ushered towards the car to say he'd take me. Sat in the car I realised it felt a a bit dodgy since Georgian men all look dodgy, but thankfully he took me there without problem and wanted nothing for his help. The homestay was run by a lovely couple, who's three three daughters spoke excellent English and welcomed me in, wanting to chat for a while to improve their skills further. 

Stalin museum
After an hour or so I set out for the Stalin Museum, a short walk away, and waited for the guided tour to commence which is where I got chatting to Luke, a touring cyclist from Texas. The museum was a grand old place, little changed since it's last re-fit in the seventies, and is now described as a 'museum of a museum' since it's still full of the sort of Soviet propogranda that was used during USSR times, not so effective on the population these days funnily enough. The fact the museum was preserved as-is is not necessaily a good thing though, and I learnt barely anything about Stalin or the Soviet era during my visit, bar the fact he was a very powerful leader who lay responsible for a famine that killed millions.

Once the tour had finished Luke and I had a wander across Stalin square and down Stalin Street but didn't find much so retired for an ice cream. He was nearing the end of a two month cycle trip from Lubjuana, Slovenia to Tblisi, Georgia, and after eight days since his last shower (which  strangley enough, was quite noticable) and a proper bed he decided to fork out and stay at the same homestay that night. At that point it bucketed down, so we relaxed under a parasol for an hour chatting away and comparing cycle touring notes, as well as talking to a passing tour guide and a local boxer who stopped for a chat, his face and ears covered with scars from a life of beatings. The only other sight in town worth a look was the old castle, set on a small hill in the middle of town and a very apt place for us to discuss US gun laws, and how the gun culture there makes sense to no-one but Americans themselves. According to Luke it's the gun-totting, power-tripping Police that you should fear most. 

Back at the guesthouse we met some other guests from France who had shown up, and after a while I invited two of the lads out for dinner with us - it's amazing how quickly these little groups form sometimes. At a small restaurant in town we all shared a fairly traditional Georgian meal of cheeses, bread, salad, meat salad, beans, bread and chicken, then sunk a couple of beers in an outdoor cafe back in Stalin Square. Luke was gracefully self-aware of both himself as an American and the shortcomings of his nation, and the French guys who's names I forget were really interesting , one of whom had lived in Cornwall for six months in the past, and the other an in-house journalist for Marsaille FC. It was a fascinating evening, the sort of which don't happen often enough, chatting in this square 'til late with a group of well educated guys, about American culture, travel, Islam and the recent Air Malaysia crash.

The next morning I said goodbye to the others who were all heading off, and spent the morning catching up with uploading pictures and writing. Staying in a family home as I was, it was a good insight into how real Georgian life ticked by, and I was invited to watch their Mum making khachapuri - a stuffed cheese bread which they let me try afterwards. At 4pm it was time to leave, and they kindly offered to drive me to the bus station where I headed on to the town of Borjomi a couple of hours away. We passed alongside the main dual carriageway that passes through the country being built, people selling huge piles of melons by the road, heaps of people selling hammocks, men everywhere stood around looking dodgy even if they weren't, and lots of fields on the plains laying to waste whilst a few grew wheat. Borjomi struck me well on first appearance; a spa town nestled in a wooden valley, and with little left of the day I relaxed and read.

Mrs Luka making home-made Khachapuri - stuffed cheese bread

Hiking
The next day was a walking day. Borjomi has a beautiful national park on it's doorstep and I was keen to take a look inside, so after breakfasting with a friendly young German couple, I headed to the park office to get a map. Thankfully unlike in Kazbegi there was information galore, and I was soon on my way a couple of miles along the road to the park entrance. I walked along a narrow wooden valley before climbing steeply to a ridge from which you could see for miles, then down to another wide grassey valley. Nothing much happened, but it was a very pleasant walk through forest and I saw just a couple of people all day making it pretty tranquil. After seven hours on foot I was tired though not shattered, and found myself at a main road where I managed to flag down a passing minibus heading back to Borjomi for a well earned rest.

Vardzia
Fourty miles south of Borjomi lies the ancient cave city of Vardzia, first built in the 12th century and at one point home to up to 2,000 monks in the form of a monestary. In fact, a handful of monks still live and worship there in the caves today. I enquiring for a minibus to get there at the nearby tourist information centre in Borjomi, but not before the exceptionally helpful main man Artur shook my hand, gave me a CD of local folk music, and pointed out the local sights before I'd barely even said hello. The next morning, along with three friendly couples from Holland and Poland, we headed there for the day, stopping briefly at a small local monestary for a quick look before spending an hour or two at the huge castle at near-unpronouncable Akhaltsikhe. The castle dates from the 12th century and has a curious mix of styles, but sadly  has recently been so over-restored that it now looks straight out of the Disneyland school of fakeness, which it might as well be given the hotel and restaurants they've built from scratch in the grounds. 

Akhaltsikhe castle, part old, part over re-built

Khertvisi Fortress

 A few miles south we stopped again at Khertvisi Fortress which was much more like it - an imposing fort on a hillock in the valley which has been all but abandoned, save for some cattle who now appear to call it home, and it was intersting to have a poke about for a few minutes, though not so nice to discover possibly the worst toilet on this whole trip nearby. And that takes some doing. At lunchtime we finally reached the afformentioned cave city of Vardzia, and after a nice lunch by the river went for  a look inside. Over four hundred rooms had been carved into the soft rock of the cliff, along with paths joining them together, wine cellars and a number of churches. Over the years the caves have been invaded by raiders and destroyed by earthquakes so they're not exactly pristine, but were very intersting to look around. Having visited Cappdadocia in Turkey a few years ago though which are much more extensive and striking, I wasn't quite as blown away as I could be. Probably the mark of a jaded travel snob who should probably go home soon!

Vardzia cave city

The final stop for the day was at what we were told were hot springs, an excellent end we thought, but in reality we found before us a crumbling concrete building. We all questioned it with the driver but alas it was true, and inside was little better - a building barely suitable for cows and sheep. It was only a quid to go in the baths though so we went for a bathe, finding it to be about a quid too expensive. With no swimming gear I went in in just my boxers, and consequently spent ten minutes outside drying in the sun whilst getting bitten by every big fly around, who apparantly like skin marinated in sulphuric waters. Neither of which was a pretty sight. The journey back to Borjomi was beautiful, driving through a lovely river valley in the 28° evening sun. The driver was quite a nice guy but a scarily fast driver though, especially given that we was driving a right-hand drive car in a country where they drive on the right. Meaning any time he wanted to overtake, which was most of the time, he had to lean across the car to check for traffic and jerkily swerve out. The third near miss that day came when we rounded a corner to find an arctic truck coming towards us on the wrong side of the road, andafter braking hard and skidding briefly off onto the dirt hard shoulder, I shouted at him to slow down, to get the response that 'that was his fault, and these things are just normal here'. Thanks, reassuring.

Back in Borjomi, everyone went their seperate ways except for Justyna and Lukasz, a lovely couple from Poland who were very clever and spoke excellent English. They met whilst working for Microsoft in Wawsaw, and he now works as a sales manager for Samsung and she for an NGO that helps put disabled people into work. They were really engaging to talk to and gave me a new insight into Polish society, since most of the Polish people that we encounter in Britain generally just work in menial jobs and keep themselves to themselves. Being 35, Lukasz was old enough to just remember living under Soviet rule, and recounted tales of queing up for rations, paranoia about spying during communist times, as well as Poland's relationship with Russia today and a brief history of the Ukraine, all of which led to a compelling evening and me being brieflfy locked out of the homestay for getting back too late.

Borjomi is known throughout the former USSR states for it's drinking water, a hit with former Soviet leaders thanks to it's rather different, slightly salty and mildly sulphuric flavour. The following morning I filled a bottle from a fountain in the park and tried it - nice to try but I won't be an addict. The park is popular with holiday makers from all over the region and it was intersting to see how much money was being thrown at redeveloping it. Though seeing that they'd copied (I reckon) architecture from Cornwall's famous Trago Mills should be enough to put anyone off visiting. Trago's influence travels far it seems.

American Luke, cycling from Ljubljana to Tblisi. Probably just cause both names sound weird!

Scenery on walk

Farm shed full of calves

Ojapuri - typical Georgian dish of basically fried pork and chips

Khertvisi Fortress

Vardzia cave city

Polish Lukasz and Justyna

Run To The Hills

Kazbegi, Georgia

In this blog: hiking to a glacier, drinking cheap wine with some Ukranians, and cycling to the Russian border.

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Caucasius mountains

View of Kazbegi, Caucasius mountains

Whilst Tblisi was nice, there were two problems for me:
1. It was stinking hot
2. It was a city

There was only one solution, to head to the mountains, the Greater Caucasus mountains to be precise, a three hour minibus (or marshrutka as they call them) to the north. From the hostel, I took the metro a few miles north to the bus station - one of only four metro systems built by the former USSR, an extravagant decision given the relatively small size of Tblisi but apparently swayed by the fact that Stalin was born in Georgia. The bus station was chaotic, with hundreds of minibuses haphazardly parked in no particular order, people wandering everywhere, and with the destination signs written in Georgian script and therefore totally illegible to me, a lot of asking around ensued. Eventually I squeezed into a very sweaty red Ford Transit van, the tool of choice for Georgian public transport, and half an hour later off we went. We passed heaps of fruit stalls on the roadside, many selling huge watermelons which are very popular throughout the country, and cows wandered along the verges and often onto the road. The roads themselves were bumpy and the driving a bit fast and erratic for my liking, and as we passed churches or crucifixes many people closed their eyes and did the sign of the cross, touching their their chest, head and stomach. The Georgian Military Highway as it's known, climbed through hundreds of turns up into the big green mountains, and eventually a few snowy peaks started to emerge. The area looked beautiful.

Arriving at the village of Kazbegi at 1750m altitude the temperature was more manageable, and the scenery not unlike Switzerland, but I had a bit of a nightmare finding accommodation since strangely few of the many guest houses actually had signs outside. A couple of teenage girls touting for business in the town centre tried to get me to stay at their family's place nearby. I rarely take up the service of touts but reluctantly had a look inside and decided against it. As I left the house onto the street, the two girls and another friend worked hard to pursuade me their friend's place next door, and to my suprise together physically pulled me in through the gateway, saying 'just look, just look!' They were doing it playfully but I really wasn't impressed with their style and walked off.  If you're pushy it mean's you're desperate, and if you're desperate what you're selling probably isn't much good. An hour later I ended up at the unfortunately named but fairly pleasant 'Nazi's Guesthouse', named after it's owner, a lovely lady in her fifties called Nazi Chkeruli.  She was born post war so I really don't know what were her parents thinking with that name! By now the day was all but done since I'd set off late originally, so after briefly chatting to an Aussie, an American and a Polish lawyer I hit the hay.

Gergeti Glacier 
The guesthouse was actually more of a homestay and all the home cooked meals were eaten communally, which is where at breakfast the next day I met Rebekka from Germany and Stijn (Stein) from Holland, a former kindergarten teacher and medical technology student respectively. They had a day of walking planned which sounded good, and kindly let me tag along. We headed up through the fairly dilapidated concrete and rusty steel village, and climbed up a path in some steep woods until we reached Tsminda Sameba church an hour later, perched right on top of a hillock and a local attraction of sorts. After a look inside walked on and up steadily for another four hours, across open mountainous land above the tree line, eventually reached Gergeti Glacier at 3200m above sea level. The glacier was impressive and shaped a bit like a bumpy ski slope, though didn't have the steep crumbling edge like some I've seen before, and even though it appeared to be covered in stones it was deceptively slippery on the few metres we dared venture. A number of people had crampons and ice axes and were carrying on right above to reach the top of Mt Kazbeg a couple of thousand metres higher up. I felt a touch of jealousy, but now wasn't the time. We chatted briefly to a Czech guy who was waiting by the glacier's edge for his friends and fondling a beer - 'beer is the only thing Czechs do well!' he joked when I questioned why he'd carried it so far. The glacier cooled the air significantly so we didn't stay long before heading back, and with the day coming to a close the low sun made the scenery look quite spectacular, especially when we saw the church from earlier seemingly float amongst the clouds below.

Gergeti Glacier with Rebekka from Germany and Stijn from Holland

Gergeti Glacier

That evening at the guesthouse I met a hilarious group of Ukrainians who had just finished a four-day mountain ascent, and were sat around a table with huge plastic bottles of cheap Georgian wine in a merry ol' state, and they invited me to join them along with some other French, Dutch and American folks. One was a 13 year old lad who they let him have a bit of wine, another was surprisingly a lawyer and they were all as mad as each other. My glass seemed to refill itself constantly, and a hilarious evening followed of toasts, daft questions and generally tomfoolery.

Bike to the border
 The next morning my hiking partners from the previous day were keen to move onto another town, and I debated whether to join them since it was a good opportunity.  Being on a two week holiday they were keen to make the most of their time, but I'd long since had enough of moving fast from place to place so decided to stay another day. I hired a mountain bike for the day and realised it was the first time since in Bangalore, three months ago so therefore some sort of personal record of time spent away from two wheels I reckon. The guys in the hire shop spoke barely a word of English, but with some pointing at the map and a waving of hands I had both a ride for the day and some ideas of where to go. Disapointingly, despite what I'd been told the mountain biking in the area simply meant the act of riding a mountain bike on roads in the mountains and not actually riding off-road as one might expect, but it was better than nothing.

We were just ten miles from the Russian border, a fact which sounded quite exciting, so I took the road there which to my suprise it was downhill the whole way. I groaned at the thought of the ride back up later, something I'd never have done this time last year whilst cycling across Europe - my former fitness is nothing but a memory now. After so long since the last ride  it felt great to be back on an iron horse again, and heading down through the high sided green and rocky valley the scenery was quite spectacular. Riding through a dark tunnel which had no lights was a little hairy though, and when cars came I had no choice but to stop and squeeze tightly against the tunnel wall. Nearing the border the road turned to dirt briefly and went through a construction site for what I guess was a hydro electic plant, though given it's proximity to Russia and the mysterious tunnels full of constuction traffic heading into the mountain, it seemed more like a real-life James Bond set. I neared the Russian border and stopped a hundred metres or so away, having a rest and a drink of water. A minute or so later a border guard wandered over.

Guard: What are you doing?
Me: I just cycled from Kazbegi and now I'm heading back
Guard: Why you waiting?
Me: I just had a rest and drink
Guard: Go back to Kazbegi
Me: (casually) OK
Guard: GO BACK to Kazbegi!
Me: (hastily) Sure!

It was a blunt though not exactly scary exchange, but I wouldn't have wanted to argue with him. The ride back up was predictably a right old slog, and I passed back through Kazbegi to ride up the nearby Sno valley, the odd lorry driver beeping and waving at the rare sight of a cyclist as they passed. Sno valley was flat, quiet and lovely to ride along, the road weaving through meadows, past crumbling concrete houses with overgrown gardens, and a beautiful old stone defensive tower. As you do, I looked and smiled at people I passed to acknowledge the time of day but no-one smiled back, and one guy sternly even shouted out a load of stuff. I later learnt a simple nod suffices, but even then might not be reciprocated - Georgian's aren't always the most friendly. I reached a very poor village with dirt roads, crumbling buildings, gas and water pipes running overhead, and rusty old Russian cars sat around. A sight typical of poor rural Georgia. It was bleak enough already, and when it started raining I took that as a sign to call it a day.

Back at the guesthouse I had plans to get on with writing but they were put on hold when I got chatting to a 60 year old Californian guy; a maths teacher who had a slow dreamy drawl and seemed to have travelled a lot to off-the-beaten-track places over the years, including Sudan, Djibouti  and Ethipoia - the latter a place where he's partway through what I thought was quite a specific personal challenge to hike all the mountains over 4000m high. At dinner that night I met a pleasant Swedish couple at dinner from Stockholm, and we compared notes on our respective countries. Whilst many people outside the country don't know where Georgia is, it sure does see quite a few tourists.
In some ways there was probably more to do at Kazbegi, but whilst the location in the centre of a mountainous valley was beautiful,  the village was pretty run down, information on hikes lacking and the guesthouse and food a bit basic so early the next morning I moved on back to the plains.

Caucasius mountains

Gergeti Glacier

Floating church

Border

Sno valley