From Georgia

Greetings from Arcadia,

We’re bumping down a dusty, rocky, steep, dirt road toward a remote mountain village, swerving around cattle and my life is entirely in the hands of a man who put together a playlist that alternates between “I Can Be Your Hero” by Enrique Iglesias, Russian pop songs, obscure American folk, and show tunes from Les Mis, so I’m questioning his sanity, and mine. But I’m in the developing world again, so that means things here aren’t always easy or logical, they’re usually not convenient, and there is cause for more than a few tears of frustration. But, quite simply, this place is worth it.  

I’m in Georgia, and I don’t mean Atlanta. You may never have heard of it, but this little republic, sandwiched between Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan has a distinct personality and identity that all it’s own. Georgians are proud of this place, and rightly so. It’s got an enviable diversity of landscapes, people, food, history, and places that make you go “wow, why don’t people know about this place?”

In the interest of complete transparency, I was THIS close to pulling the plug halfway into my 20 days in Georgia. I was convinced that this place wasn’t for me and never would be. And it may not take the top prize for my favorite place in the whole world, but the last half of my trip pushed it closer to the top of the list. It got under my skin in a way that I didn’t expect at all, and I’m looking at my 4 a.m. departure with more than a little sadness. I think more people should at least have heard of this little country, even if you don’t come here, this bears repeating: Georgia is pretty great, and it’s worth the inconvenience. Stick with me as I tell you about the last three weeks.

Day 1, and I arrive in the capital city Tbilisi in a semi-delirious state after an all-night ordeal in the Istanbul airport wherein the connecting flight was delayed multiple times. My one-legged driver, named Giorgi (I would soon come to learn that nearly all men in Georgia are named some version of George) took me to my little basement apartment Airbnb, where I collapsed on the terrible mattress and slept most of the first day away. I ventured out in the evening for my very first Georgian meal, wandering across the Dry Bridge Market (where street vendors sell everything from cassettes to antique jewelry, old Soviet military gear, random used charging cords, to some of the ugliest artwork I’ve ever seen…it reminded me of the contents of a Goodwill strewn around the sidewalks). I finally found the entrance to the restaurant hidden in an alleyway around the back of building and ordered the famous khinkali, a version of a dumpling that can be filled with meat, potato, or sometimes cheese. In deference to my need for some actual nutrition, I tried the Georgian salad too, which is a cucumber and tomato mixture covered in a walnut paste dressing. I would soon learn that I couldn’t have picked a more typically Georgian meal if I tried. In the following weeks I would have countless cucumber tomato salads, walnut-based dishes, and khinkali. They really like walnuts here. But my first bites felt momentous, because Georgian food and wine is one of the reasons I chose to come to this part of the world, and I was hoping it would live up to the rapturous wonders I’d read and heard about. I can sum it up by saying that until the day that a Georgian restaurant comes to my city, I’ll be dreaming about khinkali and looking up recipes to try at home. I hear there are some Georgian restaurants starting to pop up in cities like New York, so my hope is that maybe in 10 years I’ll be able to enjoy some stateside Georgian food with friends and family.

I was excited the next day to participate in a highly-rated food tour in Tbilisi. After an interesting taxi ride to the city center (my taxi driver got lost and was asking me for directions – how do these things always happen to me?!), I met up with guides Paul and Maka, and an American couple from New York, and we started our tour in a traditional Georgian bakery, in a nondescript building simply labeled “oven.” This delicious bite of fluffy bread started off a day-long whirlwind tour through food, culture, and even Georgian politics, and if I detailed every moment I might die of old age before finishing this letter. Suffice it to say that this is everything I can remember sampling that day:

• Ricotta-like cheese covered in chestnut honey
• Churchkhela – walnuts on a string coated in a wax-like substance that is a byproduct of Georgian wine making (these things were originally meant to stay fresh for a loooong time, in order to feed soldiers who carried them off to war in distant lands)
• Very tangy locally-made yogurt
• Sour plums
• Green figs
• An extremely sour/spicy sauce made from various fermented fruits, one of which I think was blackberries used for meat dishes
• Lobiano – a bread filled with what tasted exactly like refried beans, hot out of the tandoori-style oven
• More local honey (it has a deep, distinct flavor that is hard to nail down, but it’s very, very tasty)
• Sulguni, an extremely salty Georgian cheese
• Tastes of various indigenous spices, including well-known Svanetian salt, blue fenugreek, and a spicy mix called ajika
• More ricotta-type cheese, wrapped in a salty cheese skin with fresh tarragon
• A black, slimy coated and canned walnut (ugh)
• Various pickled vegetables, including garlic, beets, acacia leaves, and a delicious pickled carrot mixture
• Dried barberries
• Khinkali – four different ways – meat, potato, cheese, and mushroom
• Seven different types of Georgian wine, my favorite being the red Saperavi style
• Various stews and spreads which included chicken, lamb, beans, and vegetables of uncertain origin (I was too tired at this point to question what I was putting in my mouth)

After I rolled myself back to my Airbnb, I gathered my things and got ready to start my riding trek the following day.

I met up with what turned out to be a ladies-only tour (minus our various drivers who were men – some probably named George); including three Brits, our tour leader Carly, Anne, and Camilla; two Americans named Sarah, me plus Coloradan Sarah; and three friends from Stockholm, Ci, Gunilla, and Susanne. Our local guide, Alex (or Sasha, as all the Georgians call her), has vast knowledge of Georgian history, and I would soon learn in this country civilization is so ancient that anything built after the 12th century is considered “new.” We quickly moved on from Tbilisi to visit an ancient monastery in Jvari and a “new” Eastern Orthodox cathedral. We happened upon the cathedral during a mass, which was unlike any service I had ever seen. There was a man in a robe chanting psalms which echoed around the stone walls, and old women in headscarves wandered around the open space, stopping to kiss images of the Virgin Mary or stand in front of the altar. No seats, no sermon, and tourists snapping photos all around them, they went about the business of worshipping without paying mind to any clear organization or agenda. We stopped for the night in Telavi, which put us within striking distance of Omalo, our destination for the start of our ride the following day.

After a night of trying desperately to sleep over the incessant barking of a neighborhood dog, I woke bleary and a little unprepared for the hair-raising ordeal of driving through the Abano Pass. At over 9,000 ft of altitude, getting up this treacherous road is only possibly via 4×4 vehicle, and even then, only in the summer. The villages at the top of the Tusheti region are uninhabited most of the year because there is no access to them from October to May. To put it in perspective, this road was once featured on a BBC television series called “World’s Most Dangerous Roads.” On this particular day, the mist thickened as we climbed, bumped, crawled over rocks and through streams running down the side of the mountain (as I tried mightily to fight my carsickness). The mist ended up being a blessing, as it disguised the truly dizzying drop-offs just inches from the side of the road. After five hours of crawling up and down the pass we finally made it to Omalo, in one piece, though I was shaking from the effort of holding my stomach contents in, and wishing for a teleportation device that would take me anywhere but here.

No such luck, as we had a quick lunch then were immediately sent out to meet our steeds and embark on an afternoon ride. I was paired with a little grey, who I nicknamed Lil’ Grey (Meredith, that one’s for you), and we set off quickly, riding in saddles that could only be described as “creative,” given that they are two pieces of wood held together with a bent piece of rebar and covered with what looked like a car seat cushion.

I’m going to have to digress for a minute, because this riding experience made me seriously question my own conscience and the ethics of tourism riding. Perhaps my expectations were out of line, but since I started riding in different areas around the world I’d seen different standards of horse care, but I’d never actually ridden horses that were unfit, trained poorly and with a very “heavy hand.” Every place I’ve ridden, whether it was Chile, Ecuador or England, the horses appeared reasonably fit, well fed and well equipped for the riding that was undertaken. This was not the case in Georgia. Our guide Alex explained that some of the horses were used for the informal horse racing meets that happen in villages in the remote mountain areas. Racing horses aren’t generally used for tourist rides for obvious reasons, but these animals were beasts of burden, in every sense of that phrase. I won’t go into great detail, since I realize most of you aren’t versed in the intricacies of good standards of equine care, but I after that first day I very seriously considered sitting out the rest of the riding trek. I ended up riding for three out of the next four days, and I still don’t know if I made the right decision. I felt trapped in a situation that was outside my control, in a remote area of the world with no way to back out gracefully. I decided that I could only live with it by listening to the animal that was in front of me, to show them respect and kindness for a time, however short. I’ve since decided that I won’t be participating in any more riding holidays in the developing world, in large part because I just can’t be sure that the animals are being treated well until it’s too late to turn around, and I don’t want to take part in the casual neglect and cruelty that is an almost inevitable part of riding in countries where modern standards of animal care and welfare are simply unknown. Ultimately, I chose to be there and am responsible for participating in it. I love horses and have all my life. I’ve worked with excellent equine professionals and learned over the years how to listen to the animals and read them. On the last day of riding, I was put on a horse that couldn’t have had more obvious and classic symptoms of a very sore back. I told the horse wrangler I wouldn’t ride this horse and he promptly hopped off his mount, traded reins with me, then he jumped on the sore backed horse and off we went. The horse didn’t get the rest it needed, but I realize that the people who manage these animals have seen no other way of raising and caring for the horses. But at the end of the day, in my book, ignorance doesn’t trump neglect, and the horses were used and cared for was just wrong.

Ok, getting down from my soapbox. After a sweaty ride in the hot, mountainous sun, we gathered back at the stone tower to share a meal. It was a typically Georgian spread (they don’t believe there’s such a thing as too much food) and included a bit of the unusual “amber” wine that is particular to this country. It’s technically a white grape, but the ancient way of making the wine involves fermenting the juice along with the skins and stems for a number of months, and gives the wine an orange-y color and a taste that I can honestly say I’ve never come close to experiencing in any other wine I’ve ever tasted. While I preferred the red wines, the “white” wines are so unusual that I enjoyed drinking them just for the novelty.

The next day was an out-and-back ride around the hills, and after stopping for a picnic, we mounted back up and headed back to Omalo. But the real challenge lay ahead, as the following day we were to have our longest ride yet, and most difficult, since we were headed over a 10,000 ft peak on horseback and ending the day in a small village on the other side of the mountain. It would end up taking us eight hours and only the pictures can really give you any sense of what we experienced riding along what seemed like the top of the world. Although, I wasn’t in much of a picture-taking frame of mind during the most difficult part, so even these can’t quite give you an idea of the difficulty navigating a narrow, rocky ridge on foot with a horse in tow, and 10,000 ft of thin air just a few short steps to my right. My mount, a mercifully placid little black horse, who was christened “Gypsy,” was completely unphased by the drop off and remained unflappable throughout the experience. Meanwhile, I was panicking quietly and trying to pretend I was walking through a nice, flat meadow, and when that didn’t work, I stopped looking at the incredible views around me and focused on putting one foot carefully in front of the other.     

This death-defying act accomplished, we had a picnic lunch on the top of the world (standard lunch included a hard-boiled egg, piece of salty cheese, bread, cucumber, and a whole tomato), then walked the horses downhill for a while. We wandered across the path of a herd of semi-wild horses that belong to a nearby village but spend months at a time roaming the mountains freely. They came galloping over when they saw us, stopped a cautious distance away, then turned around and ran back up the hill.

The next five hours were, in truth, quite boring riding along a hot, dusty road (but included an interesting river crossing) until we reached the little village of slate houses that had nothing but intermittent solar power and basic facilities, but to my complete and utter shock they had WiFi. Georgia never ceased to amaze me in the contradictions between the modern world and the ancient, even in incredibly remote places inaccessible by car. Dinner that night was again shared around a big table, and we raised a glass of homemade wine to Georgia, as Alex told us her moving experiences about friends lost during the brief but brutal 2008 war with Russia. Georgia lost an important piece of their country, South Ossetia, which is now considered an occupied territory under Russian control. This is in addition to a large northwestern chunk of the country, Abkhazia, which was lost to Russia in the 90s. The Georgians I talked to about these losses were quite stoic and matter of fact, but I sensed an undercurrent of deep feelings about Russia that don’t quite make it to the surface, given that Russian tourism is a major industry in Georgia, and the tiny country of Georgia has no recourse to Russian aggression.

After countless nights on bad mattresses, several long days bumping along dirt roads in a 4×4, and some difficult riding, my back was in serious pain that night, so I decided to sit out the following day of riding. It ended up being a pretty good call, in retrospect, since the group unfortunately met with a downpour in the last hour of their eight hour ride, and came straggling into the next village, Dartlo, looking very wet and very cold. They were warmed up that night by downing a shot of chacha, which is a homemade vodka distilled from the leftovers of the winemaking process. It seems like every home in Georgia either distills their own chacha or has a neighbor who does.

After another sleepless night, I was less than enthusiastic about the final day’s ride but wanted to finish what I’d started, so I reluctantly hopped on for the four hour ride back to Omalo. After swapping my mount, I landed back on Lil’ Grey and we wound our way back through the mountains at a leisurely pace to our starting point. At this point I was more than ready to head back to Tbilisi, and it was with relief that I climbed in the 4×4 the next day for the long ride back to the capital. Little did I know.

The ride back through the Abano Pass was the single most terrifying experience of my life. It’s impossible for me to describe this to you in a way that could make you feel the sheer terror of the situation, but I’ll try. It had rained all throughout the previous night, and into the morning. What were gentle streams easily forded on our way up the pass a few days ago were now raging torrents we had to crawl through in the 4×4, very literally inches away from the edge of a cliff. The dirt road was washed away from the edge of the cliff in some sections because of the force of the water coming down the mountain. As we descended we came across a part of the road running next to a lake that had badly flooded and was completely invisible, so the 4×4 minivan was forced to ford a section that had muddy water running up to the hood. For hours, I was clenched on to the armrest for dear life, in the vain hope that would somehow save me if we were swept off a cliff as we crossed the torrential streams on the side of the mountain. Spoiler alert – we made it through safely, though we did end up with a flat tire at the bottom of the pass. We passed through a barricade at the bottom; the police were blocking any traffic from coming up the pass because the road we had just come down was “too dangerous” in the rain. The pass would remain closed for the next three days, and we were one of the last vehicles the came through before it was closed.

After hours spent hoping I would get to live to see my home, husband and family again, it was quite a shock to find myself sitting in a nice restaurant, drinking sparkling water and eating a huge Georgian meal in Telavi. We stopped there briefly before heading back to Tbilisi and having another large, final group meal together before saying our goodbyes and going our separate ways. It was at this point that I had to dig deep, put on my Big Girl Pants, and move forward even though I really just wanted to go home. At these moments it helps to think back to tough days at home, and remember that even when travel is hard and feels pointless, it’s very temporary and I won’t get to be in this place for very long. So for better or worse, I was in it for the full Georgia experience. I spent another night in the capital before meeting up with my guide, David, for the next half of my Georgian adventure.

I had booked a private tour of the Svaneti region, another mountainous and naturally beautiful area of the country (as if I hadn’t had enough of mountains in the past week). David and driver Misha (nickname: Mumbles) were taking me to Svaneti and visiting sights along the way that would give me a fuller picture of the country and ultimately help me understand it better. My guide was a university student and computer programmer who guides tourists around the country during his summer break. He has an insatiable appetite both for food and American television that gave us a lot of common interests. We talked endlessly about movies and TV shows that I had seen, many that I had not, and he asked questions about the real America and how it was the same or different from the country he only knew from the screen. By the way, his understanding of American political system (which was more complete than a lot of people that have grown up in our country) was mostly gleaned from watching House of Cards, and we had surprisingly nuanced and complex conversations about how the politics on screen reflect what is really happening in our country. David is a talker, and I, as an introvert, actually found that it was a good match for my quietness, since he was happy to carry the conversation for me and I felt content to listen to his thoughts and opinions. Plus, he very generously ceded the front seat to me in deference to my carsickness, which was helpful on the winding Svnanetian roads.

Our first stop was at the Stalin museum in Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, where I learned more about the dictator who grew up in Georgia but ultimately came to hate his homeland and persecuted Georgians when he became the leader of the Soviet Union. The older woman who lead the tour gave a slightly “rosier than reality” picture of his life, so David quietly whispered the bigger context, which includes some of the uglier aspects of the Soviet reign under Stalin as we made our way around the rooms full of pictures and artifacts from his life.

I was eager to get away from the staring eyes of the Stalin paintings, and the history of the next place was even more interesting to me – the ancient cave city of Uplistsikhe. It was once an important offshoot from the Silk Road, with impressively large cave dwellings that had the stories of their unique history hewn into the rock. Some caves were houses with pits for fires and cubby holes in the walls to hold belongings, others were bakeries, wine shops, temples, eating halls, and even a grand theater.

Our final stop in a very full day was at a homespun winery run by a lovely older man named Maradi, who makes his own wine in the traditional, ancient Georgian ways. His grapes go into the buried qvevri clay jars and ferment for various lengths of time before being pulled up, bottled by hand, and sold locally, or shipped to Japan (a Japanese woman having visited his winery, decided to export his wines to Japan). My favorite was his koniaki (a cognac-like drink) that was quite tasty, and the closest I came to having whisky during my time in wine-crazed Georgia. He and I toasted each other and I drank as much as I felt I could (thank God they didn’t pull out the horn – an actual goat horn that holds about a liter of wine, which you are required to drink in one go, since you can’t put it down with wine still inside), given that we were climbing back in the car for another belly-turning ride to our stopover in Kutaisi, special thanks are in order to Misha for driving slowly.

The next day we made our way to our destination of Mestia, in the Svanetian mountains. Mestia was a haven of civilization compared with Omalo, and I was relieved that our guesthouse included a comfortable bed and clean sheets. The following day we hiked in Ushguli, a UNESCO World Heritage site whose claim to fame is that it’s the highest continually inhabited settlement in Europe (if we’re counting Georgia as a part of Europe, which is an open question). Stepping back in time, we hiked up to King Tamar’s stone tower ruin, overlooking the village. At nearly 7,000 feet of altitude and up a steep slope, the hike was strenuous, but the view was unparalleled.

I was in one of those moods the following day…it was definitely a day I shouldn’t have left my room, because I felt like even getting dressed would have required too much effort. But I had committed to hiking with David and another local guide, so I dragged myself out of bed and we hiked around another village near Mestia. The bad attitude didn’t get better when the hike began with a long, arduous slog up a hill to the village, and it hadn’t really improved five hours later when we finally walked back to our guesthouse in Mestia. Thankfully, David kept up a constant stream of conversation that required little thought or effort from me, but gave me something to concentrate on so I didn’t dwell on the fact that I wanted to go home and curl up in bed. He bore my whining very well and was a cheerful presence, especially since our local guide Giorgi spent most of the hike well ahead of us, talking on his cell phone in the Svanetian language that is different enough from Georgian that even David couldn’t understand what he was saying. In some of the regions in the Caucasus, different languages have developed over the centuries and have been preserved by the continual isolation and remoteness that has persisted until relatively recently.

The next day we made our way back to Kutaisi, stopping at the Enguri Dam to marvel at the mass of beautiful turquoise water in the reservoir. We walked around the city at night, and David told me about how Kutaisi is famous for being the place where in the Greek myth, Jason and the Argonauts captured the Golden Fleece and triumphed over his evil uncle (I think…I lost track of who all was scheming against whom in these convoluted myths). We had a dinner of khachpuri, which is really the best thing ever, a salty cheese baked inside delicious Georgian bread (sometimes served with an egg cracked over the top), and made plans to see the grand church on the hill overlooking the city in the morning.

After visiting the Eastern Orthodox church (the predominant religion since Christianity first came to Georgia, around 350 AD) and a nearby monastery with absolutely stunning frescoes in the morning, we drove back to Tbilisi, stopping along the way to grab a snack of nazuki, a sweetened bread from a roadside stand. I bade David and Misha farewell outside my Airbnb, and settled in for my last day in Georgia, walking around Tbilisi’s bustling old town one last time and stopping to buy a bit of Georgian wine for the road.

It’s not the easiest place to travel, but Georgia has some unique contradictions that make it feel both timeless and modern, with one foot in European culture and one in Eastern traditions, holding tightly to an ancient heritage while also moving forward into the 21st century with a determination that you only see in developing countries. The food and wine are a huge part of the experience of being immersed in Georgia, and it’s delicious, almost without exception. The people are diverse, they’re interesting, welcoming (they don’t laugh at me when I trot out my Georgian phrases), and they care deeply about their country and its history. So, as I get ready to head out to my next destination, I’m feeling the irresistible gravity of Georgia pulling me back in, unwilling to let me go so soon. I’m grateful that Georgians welcomed me to their country and allowed me to see what makes it so special, and I’m happy to report that I survived another adventure in Arcadia.

Kargad (Be well),

Sarah