Our man in Georgia: the beginning

As I landed at Kutaisi airport in the early hours of Sunday morning, the sky was just beginning to glow in the east, the peaks of the Caucasus vaguely looming out of the darkness across the airfield. By the time I had made it through Georgian passport control, I hasten to add, day had very much broken; as I walked out of the airport terminal, accompanied by my taxi driver (who had nearly given up waiting), the sun was shining down brightly. I had been to Georgia once before, and one of the lasting impressions from that visit was the hair-raising driving style of the taxi drivers: I braced myself for a rough ride. As we cruised along at a speed which felt well under the limit that morning, then, I couldn't help feeling something was off. After all, it being 5:30am, the roads were empty except for the odd car or stray dog; what better conditions could there be for burning some rubber? Those doubts were soon dispelled: as the road hit the built-up area of Kutaisi, the passing cars and junctions increased in frequency, and my driver stepped on the accelerator. 

I've come to Georgia principally to explore the mountainous regions of Svaneti and Tusheti whilst practising my Russian, encouraged in my planning of the trip by a St John's College grant dedicated specifically to funding journeys in the high mountains (not a joke).  

I was using Kutaisi as a launch pad to get to those mountains, and a few hours sleep and one guesthouse breakfast later, I was ready to explore the city. 

The first Georgian breakfast of the trip

Kutaisi is an ancient city (some think it goes back as far as the seventeenth century BC), which makes it significantly older than Tbilisi, Georgia's capital. The large golden fountain in the central square depicts Colchian jewellery found nearby - a hint at the region's historical importance as the birthplace of Medea and as the home of the Golden Fleece which Jason and the Argonauts famously went on a mission to find. 

The Colchis Fountain in Kutaisi's central square

Ambling along the leafy backstreets on a warm Sunday afternoon, I got the sense that Kutaisi was more quiet town that big city - it wasn't difficult to escape the road rage of the main thoroughfares. 

Now, having stocked up on dried fruit and nuts (excellent hiking snacks) at the market, I headed to the Kutaisi Museum of Sport, which I had seen mentioned in my guidebook. Stepping in, I was greeted warmly by three ladies sat round a table by the entrance which was spread lavishly with Georgian delicacies. Had I got the wrong door and walked in on someone's Sunday lunch? I hadn't, I gradually discovered, because these diners were the employees of the museum, and before I knew it I was being ushered into the exhibition space by the museum director herself. She explained (in Russian with the occasional slip into German, keen to show off the other languages she could give the tour in, perhaps) how the museum had come into being: at a USSR-Northern Ireland football game in 1969, George Best and a Kutaisi-born footballer playing on the USSR team had exchanged football kit. The football player in question decided to put George Best's Northern Ireland kit on show back in Kutaisi, and gradually quite a collection of medals and sporting paraphernalia from other Kutaisi-born athletes (many of them Olympians) was put together, and now stretches out to three rooms. The sports represented ranged from wrestling to track cycling, and from water polo to chess. There was even a section at the end dedicated to Georgian strength championships, with metal poles bent with bare hands and nails twisted round each other. 

I was just getting ready to say my thank yous and goodbyes when one of the two other ladies who had remained at the table meanwhile told me to wait, reached into a cupboard for an extra glass and announced in Georgian that it was time to toast the English boy's health (sensing my slight confusion no doubt, the museum director translated into Russian for me). And so the homemade red wine was poured out (the sort the president drinks, I was assured), a plate for me was piled up with khachapuri (a very tasty kind of flatbread), meat and salads, and the feasting began. The ladies continued their conversation in Georgian and would direct a question in Russian at me every so often. At one point, the lady who had proposed the initial toast said something in Georgian to the museum director, which the latter translated to me simply as 'She says you are [thumbs up]'. Looking down at my clean plate, I guessed the reason for her judgement. But the food didn't stop there, because out came the cake and the coffee, as well as more red wine and with it more toasts to the director, to health, to friendship between nations. I was touched by these ladies' generous hospitality: although I had met them for the first time under an hour ago, here I was being made to feel so at home at their table.

With the museum director

After a walk up to Bagrati Cathedral, built in the eleventh century and for a long time featuring on UNESCO's world heritage list (although now struck off on account of drastic restoration work), it was time to make my way back to the guesthouse to get some good sleep before the long marshrutka (minibus) journey which awaited me in the morning.

Bagrati Cathedral 

Looking out over Kutaisi from Bagrati Cathedral, with the mountains behind

Waiting at the marshrutka station on Monday morning, I got talking to a French couple who were also taking my minibus up into the mountains - despite having arrived in Georgia at roughly the same time as me, they too had already been struck by the locals' hospitality. They told me it made the French approach to foreign tourists seem self-centred and shut off by comparison - and I think the same could certainly be said of England. 

When it was almost time to set off, a last minute addition to the minibus cargo arrived in the form of several large serrated blades (perhaps for sawing wood?), each bent into a circle and wrapped in a plastic bag. As we drove through the various mountain villages on the way to our destination, the driver would stop at a café, a house or a farm and distribute the blades to those who had ordered them - although in almost all cases this process ended in a heated squabble over which blade had been assigned to which customer, as we passengers looked on...

On board the marshrutka

When I stepped off the marshrutka (some four and a half hours later) in a village called Etseri, I sat down for a while by the roadside to admire the view and brace myself for the climb up to my homestay for the night. Before long I heard shouts of "gamarjoba!" and there was a lady walking towards me with a water carrier in her arms. "Would you like some water?", she said, switching to Russian. I thanked her for the offer and said I reckoned I had enough left. "The water I have here is mineral water, fresh from the spring!", she went on, and so I caved in and held out my bottle for her to fill up. She certainly wasn't lying when she said it was mineral water: you could taste the iron, and it was even naturally slightly carbonated (apparently quite common in the Svaneti region I am in). My bottle opened with quite a pop when I went to take my first sip halfway up the hill! 

As I write, I'm sitting on the balcony of tonight's accommodation (on a farm at the top end of Etseri village), watching the sheep, pigs, chickens and cows being brought in from the fields for the night. 

There's a mountain stream gushing down below, and up above the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus are looking very majestic in the evening sun. Tomorrow will be my first full day of walking - I'll be crossing over a pass into the next valley along, before continuing the following day to Mestia, the biggest settlement in the Svaneti region. Until then!