Here I am in a little internet cafe again, in the town of Borjomi in the mountains of western Georgia. About a week ago, I had my last black tea in a glass at a cafe in Azerbaijan. Then I crossed into Georgia close to Lagodekhi, at a quiet little border gate in woodland with horses and foals running wild. The border guards all sang some song with a bit in it that goes ‘oh Susanna’. I don’t know really what they were singing and nobody seemed to quite know the tune properly, but anyway, I got through into Georgia with no problem.
Suddenly there were villas with tall louvre shutters, shady trellises, grape vines, and cottage gardens full of roses, red hot poker and Black-eyed Susan. The fields were yellow stubble with the blue mountains of the Great Caucasus behind.
I turned south across the Alazani valley towards Tsnori, very weary over a bumpy road, where donkeys were pulling haycarts with clattering metal wheels, and then I hauled 10km up a zigzag climb to the little town of Sighnaghi. THis place was fortified in the 18th C and is a lovely place of cobbled strees and old houses with balconies. I stayed with the family of a huge lady called Manana. They had a brown wooden living room, with a dining table always laden with food, and a dresser in which were kept white cheese, a glass dish of preserved cherries, honey in a bowl, bread, teacups and plates. Manana had three big sons working on the local hotel refurbishment, who came home all dusty. There was a tiny granny with a white bun who went here and there to the dresser and back and outside to the kitchen folding things and carrying things. There was a huge view over to the mountains. There was a study with books in Russian and Georgian, and wooden crucifixes, and in the hall, a big radio on legs on which you could tune to Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev. There were power cuts so we all sat in the dark, and the phone needed to be banged and then you shouted into it.
In the town square, I met a local criminal police officer, and was then was rather surprisingly adopted the Kakheti regional criminal branch. They seemed underemployed (fortunately). An officer with a gun in a leather holster took me for coffee in a cafe in the square, and then to Bodbe MOnastery where St Nino is buried. People were kissing her grave, and boys were being dipped in the holy well. We walked round the old town walls and watchtowers, and picked blackberries and apples and wild plums.
From Signhaghi, I rode west to Tbilisi through long dry yellow hills and fields. There were castles on the hill tops. Container lorries from Turkey were driving east.
In Tbilisi, I had a sulphur bath (smelly, some suntan came off, but not much).
I met up with the lovely Reuters Tbilisi Caucasus bureau team, who arranged for me to be on Rustavi-2 TV… So I spent the next morning with a cheery film crew, riding round the city and talking about the trip.
And when I set out from Tbilisi the following day, I found people were waving and shouting from their cars “Good luck - you’re the one cycling to England!” and so on, in Russian, German, English etc. Everyone of whom I asked the way said “hey you’re the person who was on TV!” It was rather incredible that one TV news item could have such an impact. I stopped in Mtskheta to look at the 11th C churches there, and even walking quietly round the back of a church, people recognised me and came up to say they’d seen me on TV, and welcomed me to their town. It’s interesting to be recognized, and fine when I’m breezing along looking good on easy bits doing a nice 25kph, but I’m sure the people who see me in bad moments - when I’m struggling up a climb or battling to get the bike up steps or just plain exhausted somewhere, think it just can’t be true that I really rode from Hong Kong.
Anyway, I cycled on the back roads from Mtskheta to Gori, hot dusty tracks with just a few cattle and donkeys staring at me lazily and then going back to nibbling dry grass. I went to the ruins of the city of Uplistsikhe, founded in the bronze age and finally destroyed by Tamerlane. There were cave temples, a ruined stone theatre, a hall, a ruined apothecary shop. Lots of lizards and a small group of Italians who sat with me on the remains of the theatre stage and chatted about Damiano Cunego, Marco Pantani and the Tour de France.
I’m eating white flat bread which you tear with your hands, and round warm mchada cornflower breads, and a thing called lobi which is a beans and walnuts, lovely white cheeses, khachapuri cheese pies, khinkali meat dumplings (like oversized CHinese xiaolong bao), and chebureki stuffed meat pancake turnovers. And finally proper COFFEE! thick grainy Turkish coffee in little espresso cups. Thanks a lot to Vladımır and Stephanie for ıntroducıng me to Georgıan food beyond khachapurı.
I stayed in the Inturist Hotel on Stalin Avenue in Gori, the town where Stalin was born, and then rode here to Borjomi, along roads lined with huge lime trees and verges covered in yellow leaves. I turned south for Borjomi up a beautiful green gorge with a green river and a tiny single-track mountain railway below me. Borjomi is a mineral water resort town, that was fashionable in the 18th C, apparently. Now it’s a bit down at heel, and just got a few roundabouts and swings in the Mineral Water Park, and people walking children, eating ice creams.
Tomorrow I plan to cross the border from Georgia into Turkey in the mountains near Posof, and start heading through Anatolia. Off now to have a coffee.
