Episode 16

Even while we were at passport control we could see advertisements for casinos in Georgia. Quite possibly there isn't any in Turkey so those that want to gamble just head over the border. If you lived handy you would want to cross to buy fuel too, it’s way cheaper than Turkey. Later L could check the exchange rates and Turkey wasn’t as bad as she feared, but still the most expensive we’ve encountered.

But, O boy! The driving is worse than Russia, Mongolia and any other place you can think of. Makes Turkey look very civilized. Then there are the blocks of Soviet era flats that are amongst the worst and poorest looking in the world. Initially the roads aren’t as bad as Russia, but that may change:

Soon after crossing the border we came to an old Roman walled town. Called Gonio-Apsarus it was built in the 1st century AD and has had three major eras of occupation. Originally it housed 1200 to 1500 Roman soldiers and families. It had a hippodrome and an amphitheatre. The Roman era lasted until the latter part of the 3rd cent AD. The next major period was the Byzantine era in the 6th century, and the last the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. A small museum displays artefacts that have been found on the site. Although not a lot there has been a few gold bracelets, some exquisite small figurines, coins from each era of occupation and the usual clay pottery and ceramics. Just outside the walls is a Colchian burial ground from the 5th cent BC: There is some legend about Jason and the Argonauts being here too, and hacking a local prince to death, charming people these were.

D did try following a sign to a National Park but faced with a choice of several very minor roads and no pointer on a steep hillside we gave up and rejoined the main road. The heat is stifling according to my lot, I don’t feel a thing, and the thought of getting into some hills and a cool breeze seemed quite inviting but it was not to be I fear. There was nothing on the sat-nav map or in the guide book about a national park in this area and almost no-one seems to speak any English. Haven’t had it this bad for a great many years.

Having successfully negotiated all obstacles, cows, pigs, horses, dogs, cats, hens, geese, and worse of all pedestrians, some pot holes too, of course, we arrived in the small mountain town of Mestia. The somewhat cooler air was welcomed by my lot after the heat of the coast. However, D succumbed to some ailment and was ill for about 2 days. Probably that oppressive heat set it off.

My lot had checked into a small guesthouse popular with backpackers. It is run by a lovely lady called Nino. For about €20 (30AUD) they got dinner, bed and breakfast. There was no way even the most hungry of people could eat their way through all the food that was provided and really good it was too, according to my lot, I’m not allowed to eat:

The day D was the most ill was also the day it rained solid. It had started during the night with torrential rain and just kept up. The thunder kept rolling around the hills all day. We had several blackouts, the longest was for about 15 minutes, however after the last blackout we had the internet went out and didn’t get repaired before we left the town a couple of days later.

L did consider walking up the track behind the town to a view point 900m above, however, she was a bit dubious of doing it by herself because she has trouble following trails, she easily loses them, and after she met a few young ones that hadn’t been able to find the trail at all she thought it best to give the whole idea a miss. Truth is she probably just wasn’t up to it anyway. No way could D have done such a climb.

We did visit the museum that has a good display for such a small town. It has many 10th and 11th century icons, some in quite bad condition. In times past coins were donated to the many small churches in the area and there was a really fine display of these ancient coins. The gold ones were replicas and didn’t come out in photos, but one of them was from Greece at the time of Alexander.

L got talking to one of the local bakers and he invited her in and she watched him bake some bread. It’s a flatish chapatti type loaf they bake here. She will try and remember to post some photos of the bread; the video she took didn’t record properly for reasons known only to the camera. Both of my lot do say that this bread is quite tasteless. They did have some of this at the guesthouse and some other bread that was much better tasting.

Ushguli claims to be the highest permanently occupied village in Europe. First L wants to know when they changed the parameters for the boundary of Europe. When she went to school, ancient history I know, she was taught that the main Caucasus ridge, that along which the Georgian/Russian border runs was the diving line between Europe and Asia, North of the ridge is Europe, south of the ridge is Asia. Now Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan all claim to be part of Europe. The dividing line now seems to be the Iranian border. Anyway the highest village in Europe is claimed by quite a few villages in a number of different countries, just which one it actually is who knows:

The drive along a fairly rough road took 2.5 hours for 44K’s. We stopped and had a look inside one of the many tower houses along the way. There are heaps of these tower houses through this Svanti region. They were built like this to be more easily defendable in times of war and invasion. Many are still used as houses. Inside they are very basic with just saplings tied together for flooring every 2.5m or so and ladder steps access from floor to floor. Not every floor had a window in the one we saw.

In some places we got views of the high mountains and their snowy peaks. Ushguli is a picturesque small village where every house is either a guesthouse or hostel, or has a table or two in the yard and serves cold drinks, tea and coffee. Between the houses is a stony track that after all the recent rain had a good coating of mud along with plenty of horse poo and dog poo, so it was best to avoid slipping over, not easily done. One such track is wide enough to take vehicles but certainly not the day we were there, a bob cat was sitting half way up the hill in front of a partially dug trench. No operator anywhere in sight.

Classed as only a 4WD track, and it really is too, is the track beyond Ushguli that goes over a pass at 2615m and continues on in a semi circle to end at Lentkha. It is very popular with bikers and the more venturous 4WDers’. That’s us!. We met a group of Russian bikers who had just arrived in Ushguli and they said it was OK, and a couple of Turkish bikers overtook us along the route. A couple of cyclists, the man towing a small cycle trailer, and the girl packed up to the hilt were doing it in the opposite direction. We did get a great view of a couple of glaciers.

We camped just outside a small village before Lentkha and a man come and asked if we were OK. Later in the evening he came back with a big bowl of fruit from his garden. Pears, apples and tomatoes. He told us that he had lived in Spain for 7 years so, with a bit of broken Spanish that my lot can muster we learnt that he now keeps bees, had 3 grown up children and that 2 Australians have been working on some project near here.

Way before reaching Lentkha we were on a good 2 lane tarmac road that we followed along a river valley that was sometimes wide, and at other times just the width of the river with verdant green tree clad hills rising on either side. We saw a sign for a winery that pointed up a steep dirt track of a side road so we followed it for about 5 or 6k’s wending our way upward past many houses with garden growing a few grapes, much corn, some pumpkins, tomatoes and cucumber as well as a variety of other things. Ending in a village, we were told that the winery no longer exists, yet the signs were fairly new.

At the entrance to the town of Tshaltubo the town sign also had a 'spa’ symbol so we looked for a place to enjoy the ‘waters’. With the help of the sat-nav we found a spa place. A huge great mansion of a place with a portico of tall Grecian columns: Looks like it had been built to cater for the Soviet elite and has gone significantly downhill since that period ended. However for 5GEL ea, ($3.20AUD) my lot each got a 20 min session in a private bath: It was a very hot, humid day so they enjoyed their soak in quite tepid water, I was left in the car in the shade.

After that we visited Sataplia nature reserve and dinosaur footprints. The dinosaurs conveniently left several footprints in a small area, 2 different types, one the 3 toed Tyrannosaurus and the other a large soft pad something like an elephant print. In this park too, is a cave with lots of stalagmites and stalactites. My lot say they have seen better but it was still quite good and well worth the small entrance fee, unlike a certain one in Ireland that they visited.

We made a special trip to Vani, a town with very ancient origins, but it really wasn’t worth the effort. Almost nothing is left of the ancient city that flourished from the 8th to 1st cent BC at which time it was destroyed by some invading peoples. The small museum has a display of archaeological finds from the site but nothing outstanding. A wander about the sight doesn’t reveal much either, there are some stone walls and clay brick bases of buildings, nothing to get excited about. Jason and the Argonauts may have come here in search of the golden fleece. It seems this is where the legend was born, because in the mountains in the Svanti region up until very recent times people have gathered gold from the stream beds using sheep fleeces.

In the city of Kutaisi we found our way to the Bagrati Cathedral that is still in the process of being rebuilt, most of the outside being finished now. It is from the 11th century, however under it is evidence of a 4th century church. We met a nice French couple here who have invited us to visit them in France if we pass their way. They live near Lyon.

Driving through the city of Kutaisi was a bit hair raising even for me. We drove along some very narrow streets that were crowded with mostly young people, L thinks it might have been the area around a University, because they looked like students. Then we came into a very large open square with quite smart new buildings. These are possibly the new parliament buildings, apparently the parliament has been moved here from Tbilisi in recent years.

A few k’s outside Kutaisi we visited a couple of Monasteries. One is quite small but sits in a lovely spot on top of cliffs above a U bend in the river, the other also overlooks the river and is higher up. It is the more famous Gelati monastery. It must have been a very striking interior in it’s prime when all the wonderful fresco’s were still in good condition because such bright colour had been used to create them. Even now, up to 800 years after the first ones were painted the blue paint is still very vivid. The frescos were done over many centuries from the 12th to the 18th cent. There is much renovation and repair work in progress here too. All three of these abovementioned places are World Heritage listed. There is also a 12th cent mosaic of the Madonna and child that L couldn’t get a photo of because of reflection.

Following minor roads to the north of the main road we made our way towards Gori, the birthplace of Stalin. Along the way we passed through some rather pretty hilly areas and came to a large town, no idea what its name was however, it seems to be a mining town as we passed under 3 cables carrying ore bins to and from mines high above in the cliffs of a river gorge. Only small bins so perhaps they are gold or silver mines.

At Gori we visited the Stalin museum but really learnt very little about him as virtually nothing was in English. L had a Romanian friend many years ago who always said the Stalin made Hitler look like a Boy Scout. We did get to see the railway carriage he used to travel in and the room his parents lived in until he was 4 years old. The house the room is in has been preserved and all else around it demolished and the museum built on the instructions of Beria, another of the notorious Soviet leaders of the same era.

Not far outside Gori we visited the cave city of Uplistsikha. Dating back several centuries BC it has been hewn out of the sandstone with primitive tools. The walls and roofs then smoothed off and decorated. Some of the roofs were hewn to resemble wood ceilings. The whole place was buried during an earthquake in the 17 or 1800’s and what we looked about is only a tiny part of the original city. Archaeologists have only been able to guess the use of the different caves. As well as the caves there are 3 different types of pits, one used for baking bread, one used for storing wheat, and another used for sacrificing animals. In the cave they call the temple they found 6kg of gold ornaments. The Romans occupied the place in the 1st century AD judging by some of the decoration but in the middle ages it seems to have been deserted, then in the last centuries before the earthquake it’s believed that only shepherds and nomadic people used the caves.

Then we came to Tbilisi and so did the rain, couldn’t have timed it better. My lot found a small hotel on the outskirts of the city and we checked in there. With rain threatening I got left in the car while my lot went off to see about Azerbaijan visas.

They spent a couple of days here, a lot of time was taken up with organising the visas because they had to make a couple of visits to the people who are getting the visa for them. Then also they found a place where they could arrange insurance for the car while in Georgia as none was available at the border and that too, took a couple of visits because they had to come back to the hotel to get some papers.

Despite all this they did have a look about Tbilisi and rather like the city. Very little predates 1795 as the whole place was destroyed by the Persians at that time. Some of the tiny lanes and alleys in the old town resemble the poorest you can find in any 3rd world country, so to some of the big soviet style apartment building around the city. Yet, there are some quirky new things about. The Peace bridge over the river, pedestrian only, leads to a park where a very odd shaped unfinished theatre complex dominates the scene. The theatre complex was a project of a former president but he got ousted and the project canned. L has a photo of it so hopefully she will load it and you can all see what you think. In the same park is the cable car to the Fort on the hill top overlooking Tbilisi. The city sits in the river valley with high barren hills on both sides. In the southern part of the city the river has high cliffs on the eastern side.

Yet in some things the place is extremely up to date and in that L doesn’t mean just the use of mobile phones and internet. For using the busses, the new metro system, and the cable car they have single card similar to an ‘oyster’ card in London or a ‘go’ card in Brisbane. These systems are common enough but here also, at every bus stop and hundreds of other places around the city there are ‘terminals’ where you can re-load such cards using cash, credit card or direct debit. You can re-charge or pay anything up to about 50 different things from these ‘terminals’. Also at each bus stop there is an electronic display board showing the number, destination, and waiting time for the next 6 busses. Destinations are continually changing between Georgian script and Latin script. L has yet to make any sense of this Georgian script that looks a bit like, Thai, Burmese, Hindi, with a bit of Farsi thrown in for good measure. She did find out that the alphabet has 33 letters, it did have 38 until fairly recently when 5 never used ones were officially deleted.

Not much of the Fort left but not far along from it there is a great metal statue of ‘Mother Georgia’’ with a sword in her hand. Below the fort is a small church that my lot visited on the walk back down into the city. Like so many of the churches all over Georgia there is a painting or fresco of St George slaying the dragon, and in some another of St George slaying Diocletian. For those of you who don’t know of Diocletian he was the Roman Emperor who built that massive palace at Split in Croatia. Also, as far as L can remember he was the last of the Roman Emperors to rule from Constantinople. L doesn’t recall just how he met his end; sometime she will have to ‘google’ him and check:

L says that if one thing typifies Tbilisi it’s the quirky clock tower that took a bit of finding in a trendy street in the old city. Perhaps it’s fitting that it’s right beside the puppet theatre.

We will be back in Tbilisi the end of next week apparently to collect the passports with Azerbaijani visas, one hopes. Another thing this particular stuffed toy hopes for is some fine weather so that he can get out and about and see this city. Apparently D has found a nice hostel on the edge of the old city with a parking area and we will be staying there when we come back.

© Lynette Regan September 20th 2014