Tblisi
From Batumi, it was a six hour minibus ride to Tblisi. The bus station in Batumi is madness. Loads of filthy kids begging, including one woman with Downs Syndrome which was especially uncomfortable. Stood by a huge Soviet hammer and sickle monument, a bloke in a Russian tracksuit hugged and kissed his girlfriend who was dressed like a ballerina. The bus was very cramped and had that constant pong you often get when you walk past a group of homeless people. Four hours into the journey, we stopped at a roadside hovel constituted the services. The carpets were so filthy that your feet clung to it as you tried to move across, much like the toilets in a student discotheque. . Not knowing what to order, we gave the huge old waitress an emphatic shrug and after slapping me on the back, returned with two ancient, chipped bowels of delicious unidentifiable meat stew. We slurped away whilst watching a South American soap in which all the characters voices were dubbed into Georgian in one monotone female voice. Waking on my first morning in Tblisi, I heard someone walk by my dormitory bed then stop and could feel them staring at me. For a bit of sport I pretended to be asleep then blasted my lamps wide open at him. This beardy bloke leapt out of his skin, nearly falling backwards before running off. There's a great market in Tblisi where ceremonial daggers are placed next to hardcore porn DVDs and envelopes stuffed with photos of anonymous Russian families are flogged not far from the skins of tigers, complete with bullet holes in their necks and backs.
We visited the popular Orbeliani bath house where I opted for a full body scrub. The man elected to do it was a huge bear of a chap, clad in nothing but old, emaciated underpants, with a Santa Claus beard. He barked a weight of instructions at me in Georgian, and I wilted and wanted to cry until a nice Georgian fella came to my aid. I was directed to lay on a bed shaped slab where he battered me for a while before scrubbing my body away. He even put his fingers deep into my ears and cleaned them out. At the end, all the animosity vanished as he extended his soapy hand and offered me and big bear-like smile.
Davit Gareja
The following day we headed off to the Davit Gareja monastery on the border of Azerbaijan. The views were sublime, as the walk actually entered Azerbaijan.
The caves on the mountainside were used by the Russian army as they geared up for their ill-fated adventures in Afghanistan. When they weren't taking practice shots on parts of the old monastery buildings, they whiled the hours away scratching the faces off of the painted angels and saints. On the way back from the Monastery, three busty peasant teens sat next to me on the public bus. I waited a good ten minutes before shifting my gaze from the guide book I was pretending to read and quickly yet discreetly, into the ample cleavage sat beside me. Just once. For no more than three seconds. Not long after alighting, Christina turned me after some bollocking or other and said, "Oh, and don't think I didn't catch your crafty glance down that young girls top..." As I stumbled and stuttered for an outraged riposte, she came in quick with an emphatic, "...Pathetic!"
Signahi
The following day we set off for the town of Signagh. The driving on the way was more of the shocking same we would never grow used to, yet far far from the worst. On the two hour drive there was a moment when three vehicles shared the exact thin two lane width of country road. There wasn't much to do in Signahi, save for fart around with two five-year old sisters, Kato and Kato, the two siblings phonetically differentiated by nothing more than a long and a short 'a' vowel sound. The town has been designated a 'Tourist Town', which means they have ripped down the town center's antique buildings and rebuilt them brand new for the tourists sake. It hasn't worked. The highlight of Signahi was drinking on the roof of the guest house, observing the family over the road. The man of the house would stagger up to the woman's quarter around 8pm and bark incensed orders at them until three generations of the families women folk brought him plate after plate of food, quickly removing themselves from his drunken presence. Through the meal he would scream at them through a gob stuffed with stodge. When he'd finished the last bit, he swaggered down the stairs, leaving the woman to clean up and evidently slag him to high heaven.
On the morning of leaving our hostess took us through the morning toast ritual. Having only just woken, a double shot of the vile firewater, Chacha was presented before each of us. We were informed that the first shot was ironically, for our own health. We were to follow this up quickly with one to the woman of the house, then the man of the house. I begged for reprieve after two, feeling instantly sloshed and unable to move. Apparently there are up to seven toasts of Chacha. For breakfast. Everyday. It's hard when your country has produced just one character of global fame, a man who you see as having roused the the Soviet Union into crushing the Nazis during WW2, yet the rest of the world only focuses on the naughty things he did. Like being directly responsible for a possible 60 million deaths. So it's with reluctance that Georgians readdress their view of Joseph Stalin as a hero to a heathen and there are plenty of statues, plaques and golden busts of the mustachioed swine all over the country. And until Katie fucking Melua leaves Beijing bicyclists to the Chinese and takes on or Putin single-handedly, this is unlikely to change.
Telavi
Telavi is a fucking dump and we had no idea why were were there. It's one of those places that's just miserable, like the German towns in school text books printed in the 70's. We took a bus out to the Alaverdi Cathedral. Shorts are considered terribly uncouth in Georgia and entrance is to historic buildings and churches is forbidden for men wearing them. For the third time I had worn them and was barred entry to the fucking place, so had wasted an hours journey and had to wait for Christina whilst being tutted at by bearded monks. Our guest house for the night was a cosy place, housed inside what looked like a bombsite, ran by a lonely old lady who cried when Christina asked who the pretty young girl was in the photographs. Her kitchen was from 1890 and we sat chewing in her kitchen whilst she sat in the lounge watching her black and white TV. We went to bed very depressed, wondering what we were doing in Georgia. On the bus the next morning, we saw a middle-aged woman take a sly whiff of her left armpit before rubbing her fingers into it. She gave them a sniff before shrugging forlornly to herself.
Kazbegi
Kazbegi was just superb, some of the finest scenery I have ever clasped eyes from. It's best to let pictures do any talking when it comes to this area of the country. One day, our host Vasili wrested the cars keys back from his 11 year-old son and drove us to see the Russian border.
On the way back, we saw various families gathered around the spots where male loved ones met their makers in brutal speeding accidents, probably whilst drunk. The families marked the occasion by drinking in-between sobs, before driving home. Gravestones have elaborate portraits of the departed etched into the slab, usually young lads with slicked back hair looking cool as fuck. We walked up to the Sameba Church, the most iconic image of Georgia but the weather was awful so we didn't even see the church till we bumped into it, let alone the mountains back-dropping it.
The next day, we went for a great walk up towards Chauki mountain though yet again, the views were obscured by the fog that descended on the area. We came across two lads sat smoking outside their tent with a huge riffle sat across. We approached them and asked for directions. They said they needed the gun as there were plenty of bears around. They were helpful but kept laughing and speaking in Georgian to each other. As we strode away, I braced myself for the first shot lancing the top of my ear off before turning, screaming, and getting the head shot.
That night we got utterly Blitzkrieged with a bunch of Germans and Georgians. There was a sad moment when Vasili interrupted us to introduce Christina to his cousin, a young man with calloused hands and a hard Russian face who longed to live and work in Canada. Vasili thought Christina may know someone who could give him a job in some archaic form of stone-masonry. The bloke seemed to think that his skills were enough to gain entry, once a job could be offered. Neither of them seemed even vaguely away of visas, a language barrier, Medicare, or electoral roles. He left looking hopeful but sobered and it was sad knowing that, no matter steps of advice we gave, he would probably never set foot in North America. The next day, with a hangover so formidable that even I was shocked, we hired a taxi to drive us up to the Trinity Chruch in Sameba for the view we missed when climbing up a few days back. It was well worth the extortionate charge.
When walking to the town square to get a Marhrutka (minibus) back to Tblisi, a car pulled up and the driver offered us the same journey for the same price, without the hassle and miserable conditions that cannot be ignored journeying in a Marshrutka. Saying yes meant we both endured the most harrowing journey of our lives. With his thirteen year old daughter in the passenger seat and a few drips of gas left in his tank, our driver floored it down the mountain roads of Kazbegi with a determination that could only be read as suicidal. Blind corners were taken a 100 km per hour, sometimes on the wrong side of the road. Cars were overtaken with seconds to spare before the truck coming in the opposite direction wanted the same stretch of tarmac. Skidding became customary. All this soundtracked by pounding Russian trance. Both of us were convinced we were genuinely going to die that sunny afternoon. And I realised that if we left the road and went hundreds of feet down a cliff, the discordant din of a Russian trance version of 'My Heart Will Go On', it would be infallible in those last few seconds that God fucking hated what I had done on this earth. If a stranger came up to me in the street and flicked my ear, I'd probably get angry. So when our mobility, face and existence was put in jeopardy, did I get vocal with the driver? No, I sat there clinging on to another human, sweating and slamming one foot into an imaginary brake, whilst easing the other of a non-existent accelerator. The average journey time from Kazbegi to Tblisi is three hours. Our guy got us there in one hour and forty eight minutes.
Svaneti
We took a sleeper train through the night to reach Zugdidi where a marshrutka took us through what is considered the most dangerous road in Georgia. There's loads of us crammed into the fucking thing as it wheezes it's way up mountains and chugs along the sides of terrifying drops, monstrous boulders from rock-slides littering the pothole ridden excuse for a road. For breakfast, we stopped at a cabin high in the hills. Whilst sat chomping on some past- encased cholesterol product, our driver walked past us with a bottle of vodka, four shot glasses and a bottle of champagne. He sneaked into a side room and drew a curtain, partitioning himself off from the passengers, along with numerous other drivers. An incredulous Israeli girl, deciding to say something, storms into their haven and is confronted by a female Georgian passenger who backslides the Israeli out. The Georgian girl then denigrates our concerns, proclaiming ALL the booze to be hers. She continues, "...anyway, these drivers know the roads so well you don't need worry. Last week I had a driver who was so drunk that he couldn't even stand, but he was such an excellent driver..." She may have had a salient point as we discovered just a few minutes from our destination. Workmen were busy tarmacking the road. With a chasm just a few feet behind the back bumper, the wheels began spinning in wet cement as we rolled slowly backwards. Then the engine cut. An deafening silence erupted in the vehicle, a silent terror as everyone telepathically beamed driving instructions into the back of the shitfaced drivers witless fucking skull. Suddenly the car started, the front wheels prevailed over a sloppy lump of wet gravel and we were in our way again. The passengers applauded wildly, commending the driver on his inebriated command of the rusty lump of burdensome shite.
Mestia
Svaneti is a place that our guide book, printed as recently as 2006, warns travelers against visiting without a trusted guide. Svaneti is a place where some men still tote Klashnikov riffles as a kind of accesory. The menfolk of Svaneti were men who, "...like to quarrel", I was informed. In the past, if a traveller needed a bed to sleep in, a Svanetian would often donate the man a bed for the night and have a young female of the house sleep in the bed with the guest as a sign of trust. If the guest touched the girl, they would be killed. All heresay, some scant fact perhaps but we went to Svaneti hoping to encounter none of this and instead see, what is described as some of the finest countryside in the world. Mestia is the main town in the Svaneti region and is currently completely being redeveloped to accommodate the thousands of Israelis who are presently descending on the country. Since May this year, when Israeli soldiers equipped with simple harmless water-pistols (and real guns) boarded a Turkish flotilla and shot nine Turkish peace activists/ arms suppliers / terrorists, sentiment between the two countries hit an all time low, so young Israelis have turned their attentions and pocket-money towards Georgia for a quick local getaway. The government men of Georgia are in overdrive to turn this one-horse-town into a bustling alpine mountain resort. The whole place looks like the assembly of an enormous movie set and not one building isn't adorned with wooden scaffolding. With our nerves shattered and in need of some booze, we headed straight for the local watering hole. The sight inside was fucking staggering. An old saloon, slap-bang out of the old Wild West. Tables of obliterated builders stopped to gawp at us for a second, before the racket continued, cement-caked. builders, smashing huge beer galsses together, hugging each other and downing full ales in one gulp, before ordering a tray or two more (Sadly their wasn't a honky-tonk pianist to continue playing.) The whole sorry scene was presided over by a punctilious sour-faced old bar wench, arms folded and scolding them inbetween considerations of whether to take my order of not. All of a sudden, they all downed the last few of their pints and staggered, some of them literally falling about the place, to the swinging doors at once. Lunch break was over. The place was suddenly empty apart from the two of us, a table of local women and the moody curmudgeon behind the antiquated pump. Within a few moments, the town outside came alive with sound of drills, hammering and old walls tumbling as the work continued. We did a good few walks in Mestia and in Usguli which is a few hours away by 4X4. Usguli is considered the highest permanently inhabited settlement in Europe. Whilst walking through the pastures to the blinding white of the Shkhara Glacier, we were accosted by two soldiers who wanted to see our passports. They looked drunk but then again, every male we had encountered in Georgia by that point usually was, so it was a fair assumption. Something about the situation was unsettling. They seemed to say that we could go on to the glacier but we had to come back straight afterward. Seeming as though to contravene their orders would mean scaling a glacier an entering an angry Russia illegally, their concerns seemed a little fanciful. The views in Ushguli were the finest the pair of us have ever seen. I'd like the photos to do it justice but sadly the memory card was lost, an incident that took some considerable days to come to terms with for both of us. I've tried to find photos on Google that do just an amoebic scrap of justice to the sights seen in Ushguli and this is the only thing that comes close:
A thirteen hour marshrutka ride with no leg room later and we were back in Tblisi. I promptly came down with food poisoning. I spent the night shitting and vomiting. The vomiting in particular was frightening, a ferocity that had me sounding a bit like the girl in the Exorcist around the point where she informs the priest that his old dear performs fellatio in Hades. We checked into a posh hotel for the night so I could shit and spew in peace, though I had to climb into three different beds and suffer two of Christina's hysterical tantrums before she was satisfied with the room. In order to leave Georgia we took a train back to Batumi. On the TV they showed old Georgian films from the late 1970's at ear-splitting volume. All the movies had at least one scene where an impoverished fool would be screaming incandescently at a photo of a family member on the wall. Batumi really is the worst place on earth. The Georgians view it as their Riviera. In an internet cafe, the bloke on one side was flicking between tabs of porn and Russian bride order forms. The young boy on the other side was looking at a close-up photo of a vagina. The only other thing to do in Batumi is try and keep the contents of your guts out of you trousers and watch homeless Indian kids throw bottles at jelly fish.It was high time to leave Georgia.
