Bananas Don't Travel Well

pork!Coming from over two months in the Islamic world, our entry into Georgia was a bit of a shock. Georgia is the world’s second oldest Christian state (after Armenia), and its Orthodox church is still going strong, so we knew alcohol and pork would be fair game here. But we weren’t prepared when we emerged from the customs hall for the sweaty, hairy, shirtless taxi driver with a large beer belly, who reeked vodka at us and wanted $20 for a ride into town. We took the $1 marshrutka (the Russian name for minibus taxis) instead.

Crossing the border from Turkey to Georgia was like stepping into a completely different world. Here, hairy, fat men walked around barechested, girls wore tight, skimpy clothes, and everyone was drunk before noon. It was getting late so we spent the night in Batumi, a Russian-styled seaside resort town with a polluted rocky beach and a fair bit more video poker and sticky humidity than we cared for. We wandered for at least an hour trying to find an open restaurant (we didn’t realize until later that Georgian time is an hour ahead of Turkish). When we finally did, we were ushered into the back room (I think we weren’t well-dressed enough for the main lounge) where we ate in isolation. The room was dimly lit and adorned with animal skins, reminiscent of the torture-chamber restaurant in Monty Python. But the food was good—we ate pork kebabs (with guilty relish) and khinkali, georgian meat dumplings, and downed it with beer. The next day, the train being sold out, we took a wild marshrutka ride to Tbilisi, the capital city, which turned out to be just as hot and sticky, but considerably nicer.

Party in Tbilisi

faded gloryIn Tbilisi, where budget accommodation is problematic, we opted to try couchsurfing, and we scored big with our first experience. We stayed with Bruno, a French chef working for a large hotel who lets backpackers stay at his large downtown flat. We ended up staying several nights chez Bruno, where there were anywhere from four to fourteen people staying at a given time, and though we didn’t get a lot of sleep, we had a great time. Bruno likes to party and he often brings his French expat friends over to the flat to drink with his couchsurfers. We met a lot of other travelers this way, which was not only fun but useful for gathering travel information as there are no up-to-date guidebooks on the region.

Tbilisi feels very European—Georgian, not Soviet. It is a pleasant but small city. Much of its old buildings are very run down, but there is a lot of restoration going on, and we had the feeling that the tourist industry was about to pick up in a big way. Georgia and Armenia seem to be the hot destination for European backpackers willing to get a bit of the beaten track this summer, and we think it’s only a matter of time before the word really gets out.

Georgians are a friendly bunch, but language barriers prevented a whole lot of interaction with the locals and much of what we learned about Georgia was from expats at Bruno’s flat. But after the Middle East it was actually quite a nice respite to be mostly ignored by the locals, and we were mercifully spared the experience of the notorious Georgian toasting ceremony. Apparently, the only way to really offend a Georgian is to refuse to drink—and Georgians have very elaborate rules about toasting vodka and the local wine (much of which is only slightly distinct from vinegar) in ceremonies that typically last until no-one is left standing. We met a few tourists who’d been treated in this manner and paid for it dearly.

We ended up spending several days in Tbilisi waiting for our Azeri visas. This was our first taste of real bureaucracy. After waiting an hour in the blazing sun to be let through the gate to the Azeri consulate, we submitted our applications and were told to come back in three days. Another hot wait on the appointed day, we were given receipts to take to a bank to pay the visa fee. But it wasn’t just any bank, it was all the way across town in an unmarked building that looked like a house. Once inside, it took four ladies fifteen minutes to process our paperwork (they had to do it over when they added the visa fees up wrong). We went with a Swiss couple who wanted to pay in Euros. It took another fifteen minutes to convert their $40 visa fee to €110. The confused looks on all four ladies’ faces when told that the Euro is worth more than the dollar were priceless.

The end of the world

Rustavi skylineWhile we waited for our visas, we did a daytrip to the cave monasteries of David Gareja. Bruno hooked us up with Sarah from Marseille and Marco from Rome to share travel costs. We set out by marshrutka to Rustavi, about half an hour from Tbilisi, where we arranged a taxi ride in an old Lada. Driving through Rustavi was fascinating. It was an industrial town during the Soviet era, but most of the factories are now abandoned, although the ugly apartment blocks built to house the workers are still inhabited. We were left wondering what the people do for a living now. The industrial landscape is a fascinating wasteland of twisted rusting metal and leaning towers. The factories that are still operational belch strange coloured smoke—orange as well as grey—and farmers graze their cattle in the abandoned fields nearby.

natural borderThe monastery at David Gareja is still operational, although only a handful of monks live there now. It dates back to the 6th century, when dozens of caves were inhabited. The monastery and the caves themselves didn’t thrill us that much, but the hike up above did. The site is on the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan, and it is an impressive natural barrier—a long ridge of stark hills with old watchtowers along them. Looking out toward Azerbaijan the plain below seems to lap at the ridge like waves. This was (and still is) the edge of the Christian world and, for the monks living here, this must really have seemed the edge of the universe. Some of the caves had paintings in them, but most had been defaced by Islamic invaders (who slaughtered the monks) as well as by modern-day graffiti. (The Soviets also used the area for target practice, destroying many more.)

Night train to Baku

Nicolas and the trainOur last night in Tbilisi, we had dinner with Bruno and some other couchsurfers staying at his apartment. He took us to an open-air restaurant reached by a small funicular on a hill overlooking the city. The food was the best we’d had in Georgia—grilled eggplant with walnut sauce and currants, pork stew, trout with pomegranate sauce, and khachapuri, a cheese-filled pastry.

The next day we took a night train to Baku, Azerbaijan. By this time, we’d hooked up with Nicolas in the Caucasus, who is also on his way to China via Central Asia, and we took the train with him. We had a long sweaty wait at the border, while Azeri guards in disheveled uniforms “searched” the train. They glossed over us once they realized we didn’t have Armenian stamps in our passport, pointing to our backpacks and inquiring “clothes?”

After the border we went to bed but the tracks were in much worse shape on the Azeri side of the border and the train bounced violently. There was a thunderstorm outside and the flashes of lightning combined with all the shaking made us feel like we were on the starship Enterprise under attack. After some fitful sleep we awoke to find desert and apocalyptic oilfields... but that is for another posting.