Kakheti & Tusheti: Chilling out in Georgia's Wine Country and Mountain Wilderness

"A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry."

Having finally negotiated the Azeri border, I felt an almost indescribable sense of relief being back on the Georgian side of the border, and, naturally, decided to 'chillax' (as the kids irritatingly say these days) for a few days in Kakheti, Georgia's wine country, before heading up to Tusheti, a remote mountain region in north-east Georgia. First though, I had to go back to Tbilisi - all roads in the Caucasus inevitably tending to lead there - as that's where my train from Baku terminated. Though I'd like to have checked out the cave monasteries of Davit Gareja near the Azeri border, a remote semi-desert site, the taxi drivers at the dusty, fly-blown border town of Gardabani were wanting about 40 pounds for a round trip for the day - a hefty amount that my battered wallet could not spare, considering I still planned to go to Armenia, and had just forked out the best part of 400 pounds to get out of Azerbaijan. I put my head down for a couple of hours in my second-class coupe which I had entirely to myself and finally managed to get a bit of much-needed sleep. The train pulled in to Tbilisi station at about 12pm, 13 hours after it had left Baku, and I bade my fellow passengers farewell - some of whom, when I'd stepped on (crazy as it seems now) I'd suspected of being secret police - and the rumbustious, slightly rotund, gold-toothed female Azeri conductor bizarrely saw me off the train by thrusting out her hand and saying "Goodbye Johnny English!" before turning on her heel and back to her domain of the carriage to tidy it all up ready for the next batch of timid, bribe-able border-crossers entered. These mini-mafiosi can either be angels or bulldogs, guiding you safely to your next port of call and harbouring you from mischief, or turning a blind eye to whatever extortion the border guards decide to mete out on a vulnerable, lone foreigner; fortunately, this one appeared to be in the former category, though I must say I never entirely trusted her glinting smile, punctuated as it was with those golden false teeth.

Back in the underground; reminiscent of Baku's, practically identitical, and yet the small differences made me know I was back in a safe place. The Khachapuri sellers outside the station, the chipped orange tokens that cost 20p to get through the flimsy gates, adverts for western products on the walls instead of the fixed smile of some long-dead dictator staring at you from every angle. The digital clock on the wall of the underground was the same though; pointlessly counting up from the departure of the previous train, leaving you clueless as to how long you might be waiting for the next one: "it should be no more than ten minutes" was all I ever gleaned from anyone about this quirky system. All signs in Georgian language, not even Russian, leaving you no alternative but to ask people (in Russian of course) for help. Soviet systems were not designed to make information easy to come by. The most valuable of commodities, it had to be hived away, jealously coveted and revealed only grudgingly, if at all. This hangover from Soviet mentality is disappearing in Georgia, but only gradually. You see it more in the Metro than most places, but to be fair it is extremely efficient and very cheap. As a complete contrast, Tbilisi's main train station is like something out of Tomorrow's World: huge, air-conditioned, clean, modern, abounding in information and very 21st century - everything that you don't expect in Georgia, more like an airport terminal than a humble station. All slightly bewildering and surreal.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a train to where I wanted to go next, so was left with the dreaded marshrutka once again. This time from Samgori, the marshrutka terminal for all points east. A hive of activity, dirty, confusing, noisy and stressful. Again, no information - you just have to ask for the name of the place you hope to get to with a rising intonation and hope that people know where this particular bus goes from. Magically, they almost always do, and you arrive, by way of a few shunts and pointed fingers, to your point of departure. Which, in my case, was a place called Sighnagi, in the east of the country - Georgia's wine region. Frustratingly, this meant me back-tracking in the direction of Azerbaijan once again - I'd have worked my way there from the Azeri border much more easily the way I'd originally intended before being unceremoniously dispatched back to Baku. The usual drill - pay for a ticket, plonk a magazine on your desired seat - forgetting the front passengers' seats (they are mysteriously unavailable to foreigners) - and go to the closest kiosk/bar, preferably in the shade, hoping the rest of the bus fills up quickly. (It rarely does). Luckily, I get into a conversation over some ropey pork chops and cheap mustard, with some locals to pass the time, and end up drinking a few shots of vodka and a round of beers (3) in about 30 minutes flat. Leathered by 3pm, I stagger back to the waiting bus, which is now full, and my seat has been taken by a stern looking grandmother who is not about to forsake it for a foreigner. I am shoved to the back seat. Purgatory for two hours awaits. Surrounded by Israelis, swaggering and defiantly confident in their ability to haggle any man in Georgia down to his last Lari. Due to politics in this region this year, Israelis have, quite literally en-masse, deserted Turkey - no longer considered a safe place to travel, and no longer particularly cheap either - and have come to Georgia. Which is a mixed blessing, as many Georgians in the tourist industry are likely to find out. Israelis. I am not ashamed to say, are very difficult people when it comes to traveling. I generally avoid them like the plague. They come in gangs, and seem to like safety (and cheaper prices) in numbers; as a lone traveler, you are automatically on the back foot. The question 'where are you from?' is loaded with huge political significance, and can determine instantly if you are friend or foe. Sad to say, but often true. One on one, like anyone, they are more manageable. I suppose it's the herd mentality that irks me - lone Israeli travelers simply do not exist. You have to wonder why.

The journey was quite pleasant - through green countryside and with low mountains on either side. Sighnaghi, when we arrived, a little sooner than expected (thankfully) was approached from above. It revealed itself to us gradually as the minibus lurched down the serpentine road to meet it. A pretty red-tiled town with eye-catching spires, it has an Italianate feel - and it straggles around a hillside; looking down loftily on the surrounding plains - Georgia's wine region. Wine is the lifeblood of Georgia, and some claim that it was even invented here - the Georgian word for wine 'gvino' being the etymological root of the name. Sighnaghi feels - and looks - like a town which has been plucked straight out of Tuscany. Built originally in the 17th century, three-quarters of its houses today date from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and a large part of its 4km defensive wall still stands. Sakashvilli has decided to ambitiously redevelop the town and has spent millions on renovating its cobbled streets and traditional stone and wood buildings to make it a tourist hub for the region. For this reason, it feels completely apart from the rest of the country, a little bit surreal, if not artificial. I chose to enjoy this little slice of Italy in Georgia though, and spent the next two nights just strolling round and relaxing. There wasn't a great deal to do other than that, but it made me very happy to go from restaurant to café to wine cellar, soaking up the ambience and feeling like a tourist again after feeling like a renegade enemy of the state in Azerbaijan. I spent most of the time there in a kind of alcoholic fug - wine is proffered at every opportunity, and comes in large 1 litre jugs in restaurants for about a pound. I spent my first evening with a group of Georgians who invited me to their table at about 4pm, down by the city walls and with a fantastic view over the surrounding hillsides. I had agreed to join them for a toast originally, but one drink led to another, and large amounts of food were brought to the table - barbecued meats, goats' cheese, pickles, roasted potatoes, khachapuri, chinkali - and the jugs ofsweet white wine just kept coming. By 8pm as the sun was going down I counted 6 empty jugs from when I had arrived; there were only 3 of us drinking. The quality of it, from what I remember, was pretty good. By this time, Georgian hospitality was no surprise to me of course, but it was a great evening, punctuated by lengthy toasts and bouts of tearful singing and reciting of poetry. The Georgians truly embrace the good life, and welcome foreigners with open arms - literally. I was hugged as we parted a couple of hours later, and felt like a brother to these guys I had just met.

Slightly regretfully, I left Sighnaghi and my very friendly guesthouse after two nights to explore the wine region further. Getting around the region without your own transport is problematic - and I was given a hand by a random Dutch Jehova's Witness who had befriended me on my first day there (bizarrely he was setting up a restaurant business there) - he took me down to Tsnori, just below the town, where I cadged a lift in a shared taxi to the next village where I could get an onwards bus to Telavi - the main town in Kakheti. The whole journey was about 60km, yet it took me perhaps three hours. Frustrating, and the major downside to travel in these parts. Televi was so-so, more a hub than an attraction in its own right. I found a great homestay there though, run by a quirky old couple who lived in a massive old wooden building with about ten bedrooms and a wide verandah and shambling garden. It had a great old stone bathtub and antique furniture, and vines creeping around the verandah. I was the only one staying there, and our only common language was Russian, but we got along ok. I used it as a base to explore the wine region - next day I hired a taxi (about 15 pounds for the day) to take me around a few places which are pretty much inaccessible by public transport, unless you have several hours to spare hanging around. My driver was a physics teacher at a university, making a bit of summer money. He told me that times were extremely hard now in Georgia, that a lot of people worked two jobs, if not three. Teachers of course have it rough, like anywhere (why won't governments value education more highly?) and he was paid something like two hundred dollars a month. Hardly enough for yourself, never mind a family.

He took me in his battered old Volga - a 1975 model which he claimed had 1 million kilometers under its bonnet - to the villages of Gremi, Kvareli, Nekresi and Tsinandali. Gremi contained a picturesque citadel which dominated the surrounding plains, commanding great views from its tower. Nekresi was a more typical Georgian monastery, atop a steep hill which had to be walked in the 30+ degree heat - and though I'd begun to tire of this trend, the views were worthwhile at the top. Additionally, I was treated to another impromptu feast with some labourers and a priest in a forest nearby, and was again quaffing (home made) wine before the sun had come anywhere near the yardarm. Not that this was the end of the festivities for the day; at lunchtime, I had barely sat down quietly to my khinkali with a bottle of Nakhtaktari lemonade in a café before I was beckoned over by some middle aged guys who seemed a little bit worse for wear already, and before I knew it I had a big tumbler of vodka before me and more toasts were being proffered. An hour later, I stumbled out of the darkened café, blinking in the light, and proceeded to spend my afternoon tasting various red dries and sweet whites, the names of which utterly escape me (not that I could pretend to be any kind of wine expert) - I just know that I enjoyed the experience. Sipping wines in cool cellars on a hot day and purchasing plastic bottles of it for pence cannot but make a man happy. We followed an open-top lorry piled high with red grapes back to Telavi having visited Tsinandali, a huge wine estate with an impressive country residence as its centerpiece and being given a guided tour in English by a charming young girl. I felt as if I could hang around Kakheti for several weeks doing this, and I'd certainly recommend it as a place for wine connisseurs - sufficiently off the beaten track to boast to your snobby friends, yet respectable enough to make them jealous; Georgian wine is very much on its way up in the market, judging by what I tasted, and this, perversely, is mainly to do with the Russian embargo on Georgian wines since 2006. This has forced Georgian wine makers to look for new markets in Europe, and therefore up their game a bit (Russians not being noted for the care they take in the taste of alcoholic beverages) - and in the meantime, several very high quality cottage industries have emerged in the region, able to do business in the new economic climate. All in all, it seems, the glass is at least half full. And if it's not, someone is bound to top it up soon.

From Kakheti, which is a kind of wide, flat expanse sandwiched between two mountain ranges, you are always looking up to the surrounding Caucasus Massif and thinking: "I want to be up there." The heat of Kakheti, combined with the right amount of precipitation, accounts for the perfect conditions for grape growing, and you are surrounded by fields of vines as you travel north towards the mountains - largely depopulated, a few small villages scattered here and there. Alaverdi is the name of the place to catch a shared taxi to the spectacular yet relatively unknown mountain area to the north called Tusheti. Unfortunately for me, I had missed all the taxis, which it seems had set off early in the morning, and was left with hiring my own Lada Niva 4x4 for about 200 Lari (80 pounds) - or hitching - there being no buses. Of course, I took the second option. So it was that I found myself sitting in the front of a Soviet-era green goods delivery truck half an hour later, having negotiated a fee of 20 Lari (8 pounds), surrounded by random bags of food, drink and supplies for the locals who live up there; several other locals - I presume they were either workers or simply people living somewhere up in the mountains - had cadged a lift on the back of the open-top truck, and were standing up in the back. It's only 70km to the main tourist village of the region, called Omalo, but the road is one of the worst in Georgia, snaking up the Abano Pass, which reaches 2900m, via a series of hair-raising switch-backs.

The truck started off slowly, and was down to 20km an hour just a few kilometers out of Alaverdi. As the road started to head skyward, it moved down the gears, and was soon moving at barely more than walking pace. The road, which had started out as rutted but tarmacked, turned into a potholed, bumpy track, and the truck had slowed down to about 10km an hour. Each time it reached a hair-pin bend, it had to negotiate it in two stages; it's turning circle being about the width of a football pitch. So, it had to move slowly forward to the edge of the road, reverse, and turn again, proceeding in this painfully slow way up the mountain. There were over a hundred hair-pins. Squashed in the front of the cab with two fellow passengers we had picked up, sweating and thirsty, jolted around, and holding my breath every time we approached a tight corner with a steep drop beneath it - of which there were many - this was turning into the toughest journey of the trip so far. Every time a 4x4 went past us (I had clearly missed the correct place to catch them) I was left cursing under my breath. I could only imagine how the guys standing up in the back were feeling. The saving grace was the surrounding scenery, which was utterly breathtaking. The beautiful weather allowed great views over the surrounding mountains and valleys, which were wild and verdant. There were some shady hollows where packed-in snow and ice had survived the summer; on distant hillsides were specks of white, which as we moved closer turned out to be herds of sheep, grazing at high altitude. Just when I thought we were making some progress, and soon after we had crested the highest point of the pass, we got caught behind a bulldozer, which was literally moving at no more than a snail's pace. The road was not wide enough to let us past, and there were no passing places, so we just had to crawl behind for about 20 minutes. Very sensibly, the driver decided to stop for lunch at this point - about 5 hours after we had left Alaverdi - and we all got out by a stream for an impromptu picnic of bread, goat's cheese, tomatoes, pickles and tinned sprats, washed down with warm beer from plastic bottles and a few shots of vodka. A simple meal, but probably the most welcome break on the trip.

We were in Omalo two hours later, and as I hopped out of the driver's cab, I swore to myself I would never hitch a ride in a truck ever again. I'd set off at 11am and it was now 6pm. I'd spent seven hours doing a 70km trip. Not to worry; as I put down my rucksack I looked round and saw a paradise. A wide prairie of grassland, surrounded by high mountain peaks, Omalo lay in a protective hollow, above it a hillside which comprised the upper part of the village. It felt unreal to see a community existing at this altitude, this far from civilization. The road I had just traveled along to get here had indeed only been built in 1978, so until then the locals would have been almost totally cut off for more than half of the year. The village still has no electricity supply, and most houses no indoor water supply. It is in fact only inhabited these days for the summer months - the locals go looking for work down in the valley during the winter months, and only a few hardy families stay up to brave the winter. Surprisingly, the temperature when I arrived was only a few degrees less than in Alaverdi, but I imagine it must be brutal in the middle of January. I found a place to stay - very basic, but homely, and with meals provided. This was pretty much a necessity, as there were no shops around. It was as basic as you can imagine - and as far removed from modernity as is possible. The Soviet way of life and politics barely made an impression on this area. People lived in those times as they have always done, and do now - herding, working the land, making handicrafts to survive. Animism is the religion of these parts, even Christianity hasn't penetrated very much.

I walked up to Upper Omalo on my first evening, just above the village. Dominated by five solid stone watchtowers, it's like something out of Medieval Europe. Built to guard against marauding intruders from the north - the wild regions of Dagestan and Ossetia lie just a stone's throw away - they are like ancient sentinels, stern and foreboding, and quite unlike anything I've seen anywhere else. Looking out over sheer hillsides to the north, they must have been pretty effective at repelling attacks and giving forewarning of approaching armies. I just sat down and admired the view as the sun was setting on the horizon beyond the towers.- a moment of perfection, which made that truck journey (almost) worth it. I met some English guys up there doing pretty much the same thing, and though they hadn't come up there the painful way I had, they'd still had a long hard trip getting there, so it was a kind of moment of group appreciation of the sumptuous surroundings. We spent the evening getting pleasantly drunk together on locally bought home-made wine by the light of oil lamps after a more than acceptable meal in our hostel, and it turned out they had just come from Nagornno-Karrabach - where I was headed soon - and where they had been on a mine-sweeping mission. I questioned them about the place, really interested in the politics, having been to Azerbaijan and heard so much (negative) about it. They said it was beautiful but tragic, and I was inclined to believe them. I slept the sleep of the dead that night, addled by alcohol and utterly exhausted from the trip.

The next day, following another impressive breakfast, we decided to explore the surrounding valleys. They set off earlier than me, and we agreed to meet at a little village called Shenako, 8km distant. I set off in what I thought was the right direction from the village, but after about ten minutes reached an army checkpoint and was told to stop in no uncertain terms by a pretty gruff-looking soldier, who had had his eyes trained on the surrounding mountains with a pair of binoculars. I was asked to produce my passport, was questioned where I had been, where I was going and where I was staying. It was like being back in Azerbaijan. Luckily, they let me go - after calling somebody to check my passport was valid - and pointed me in the right direction. It was a reminder of the tight security in this region and the proximity of hostile states. Russia is an enemy, but the southern states are lawless and considered a terrorist threat - and these mountain corridors are a potential way in for criminals. As a tourist, wondering into the wrong territory in these parts is also not recommended - in 2006, a group of German tourists did just that just east of here. They were kidnapped, ransomed, and then never seen or heard of again. I went on my way, and was soon on the right track. The scenery everywhere was stunning.

I reached Shenako after a couple of hours pretty taxing hiking, down into a deep ravine and back up the other side, and met the guys in an even more remote village than Omalo, which was crowned by a little white-washed monastery. Beyond it was a sacrificial alter to animism - which is a belief system held in this part of the Caucasus (and across much of Central Asia) that all living things, as well as objects, contain soul, or spirit. It is not separate to Christianity in these parts - it is embraced and combined, which I think is quite pragmatic. Old habits (and beliefs) die hard here. We hiked on for a few more kilometers to the next village, Dartlo. Another cluster of stone towers, even more impressive than those in Omalo, overlooked by the single tall lookout tower of Kvavlo on the hill 350m above. Just stunning. It felt special just being in this part of Georgia; an area so remote that most visitors come by helicopter (several flew over our heads during the day). We reached the Russian border, where there were two rather bored looking soldiers on duty, and were told in Russian not to go any further. A little stone painted red, white and blue like the Russian tricolor marked the border; there was a grave of a young boy who had died five years previously. We asked them what had happened. Shot by Russian border bandits, apparently; another reminder of how hostility can flare up here from time to time. I gazed over the endless snow-peaked mountains and regretted not being able to continue - the traveler's urge to see what is around the next corner. Unfortunately, in the Caucasus, there are several dead-ends and blind alleys, making travel difficult and time-consuming. This was the second time I'd approached the Russian border - the other time being near Kazbegi - and wished I could have seen what was beyond. Instead, we turned back, and two days later I turned back, yet again, to Tbilisi - back down the mountain, this time in a comfortable 4x4, shared with a couple of the ubiquitous Israelis. Though I loved Georgia, I had Armenia on my mind.