Days of Steel (last days in Georgia)

An abrupt change of plans has resulted in an abrupt change of scenery. I blame Azerbaijan.

 

Azerbaijan has a weird border policy. You can fly in, you can fly out, you can leave the country overland, but you cannot enter the country overland. They closed all their land borders at the start of Covid and decided they liked it that way and haven’t reversed the policy. Azerbaijan is not known as a beacon of political liberty.

 

It’s possible to get a direct flight from Tbilisi to Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, but, oddly enough, it’s actually cheaper to fly via Istanbul—two hours in the opposite direction. I suppose one consequence of Istanbul being a major international hub is that flights through there tend to be cheaper. Which works out well for me for the most part.

 

The whole “overland across Asia” plan was already severely compromised with the inaccessibility of Iran so I’ve decided to jettison it altogether. There were a few points of interest in Azerbaijan but nothing that was calling out to me with great urgency so I decided to fly straight to Samarkand in Uzbekistan. The “what” is more important than the “how.”

 

When Iran got knocked off my summer travel list, my best hope of retaining the overland vibe was to try to take a boat across the Caspian Sea. It’s possible to do this but logistically tricky. There are no passenger ferries so you have to try to book a spot on one of the commercial vessels going from Baku to Caspian ports in Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan. The latter option was especially intriguing but even more logistically tricky—Turkmenistan is mostly inaccessible to tourists but one loophole is that you can get a three-to-seven-day transit visa, which had been the original plan if coming up through Iran.

 

But this was one of those cases where the costs seemed to outweigh the benefits. Apparently you can spend up to a week in Baku knocking on the doors of officialdom before you can get passage on a boat across the Caspian. And even transit visas through Turkmenistan require a combination of patience and luck. It could have all worked out to create a fabulous adventure but it could have also eaten up a week or two of my trip without even a guarantee of success. So I figured I might be better off spending that week somewhere else and booked the flight to Samarkand.

 

One consequence of all this is that I feel I’m doing the summer trip on “easy” mode. All the hard things I was going to attempt—travel in Iran, a boat across the Caspian, transit through Turkmenistan—ended up on the chopping block of geopolitics and expediency. I have no particular macho need to flex my travel muscles so this is no great tragedy. And I expect Central Asia will present me with difficulties enough: the infrastructure is a bit sketchy, it’s not a veggie-friendly part of the world, and apparently I can expect to get diarrhea at some point in the coming month. Can’t wait!

 

Tbilisi in review

 

But first, let me recount my last few days in Georgia. I left you after my hike up to the Gergeti glacier in Kazbegi. The next morning I took a marshrutka back to Tbilisi, where I happened to be on the same minibus as a young American I’d shared a balcony with in Kazbegi. Lexi works remotely and has spent the past four years travelling pretty much nonstop and uses the adjective “sick” to describe things she likes. A lot about Georgia is sick.

 

It was nice having a couple days in the somewhat familiar environment of Tbilisi. I regret that I didn’t start this blog sooner to tell you about my first four days there. I won’t review those four days in any detail now, but they involved a hike along the upland ridge overlooking Tbilisi, visits to some of Tbilisi’s beautiful churches, an outing to the quirky Gabriadze puppet theatre, and day trips to the old capital of Mtskheta and to the David Gareji monastery near the border with Azerbaijan.

Inside the Tbilisi Sioni Cathedral

The hilltop Jvari Monastery outside Mtskheta

David Gareji Monastery

I spent those first four days with my girlfriend Nis and the two of us also joined a couple gatherings with my friend Tara and her coterie of bohemian friends. I first got to know Tara during my last year in Oxford, where she was assistant director in a stage adaptation of Kıerkegaard’s Repetition—I played Kierkegaard and liked to joke that at least I got to play the second most famous angsty Dane. We reconnected some years later in New York, where she’s been pursuing a very successful career as a writer, both of fiction and non-, having completed a DPhil in Theology at Oxford.

 

Tara has a longstanding connection with Georgia and has spent a lot of time there, even writing about it for National Geographic. One reason I flew to Tbilisi rather than working my way there overland was that Tara was staying in Tbilisi only until June 29 and I thought it would be good to overlap with an old Georgia hand while I was there. The gatherings involved a mix of other Tbilisi-based ex-pats and friends of Tara’s who were visiting for just a while—which randomly included two other people I already knew independently from Tara, one from Oxford and one from NYC.

 

I’ve met quite a few ex-pats based in Tbilisi and I can understand the appeal. While Yerevan feels like a post-Soviet city, Tbilisi feels like a forgotten corner of Europe, with lively street life and cafes, bars, and restaurants, and beautiful old buildings lining cobblestone streets. Nis said it reminded her of the way Istanbul used to be and I see her point: both cities excel at having a street level whose character is primarily defined by creative business owners and graffiti artists rather than corporate entities. But Tbilisi is tiny compared to Istanbul (at 18 million, Istanbul’s population exceeds that of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan put together), and quieter and more manageable. And, in happy contrast to Istanbul, the streets of Tbilisi aren’t surveyed by machine-gun-toting police.

One of Tbilisi's many charming streets

The idea of Tbilisi as a European city isn’t just an aesthetic notion. It’s also a very live political notion. Georgia has existed under the heavy shadow of Russia ever since it separated from the Soviet Union. The autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were carved out of Georgia following bloody wars in which Russian military might backed the separatists. The Georgian constitution has a clause expressing the intention to join the European Union but the current pro-Russian government, with a dubious democratic mandate, is trying to backpedal on that plan and bring Georgia closer to Russia. There are regular protests and a permanent encampment outside the Georgian parliament building opposing this pro-Russian turn. While it isn’t all sunshine and roses for the protesters, the fact that phalanxes of riot police aren’t tear gassing them and beating the crap out of them, again, marks a pleasant contrast to Istanbul.

Protestors outside the Georgian parliament

You also see it in the graffiti. Lots of pro-EU, anti-Russia imagery, as well as lots of pro-Ukrainian images. It’s easy for Georgians to see parallels between their own situation and Ukraine’s, and to see themselves as next in the firing line if Ukraine falls.

 

Gori

Anyway, back to the near-present. Nis left Istanbul today (Wednesday, July 23) to visit family in Karaman for a week so if I wanted to see her on my unexpected return trip to Istanbul, I needed to leave Tbilisi by Tuesday. I returned from Kazbegi to Tbilisi on Saturday, which gave me Sunday and Monday to squeeze in some last bits of Georgia.

 

On Sunday, I made the pilgrimage out to Gori, which is about an hour by marshrutka east of Tbilisi. Its main claim to fame is as the birthplace of Georgia’s most famous son, Iosif Dzhugashvili, better known as Joseph Stalin. Stalin was the original Man of Steel—he took his adopted name from the Russian word for “steel.” Nis’s last name is Çelik, which is Turkish for steel. She wasn’t flattered when I first remarked that she shared a last name with Stalin.

 

There are actually two reasons to visit Gori. One is the town’s Stalin Museum but the other is nearby Uplistsikhe, and ancient city carved out of the rock. As it happened, I visited Uplistsikhe first because I was approached by an enterprising taxi driver with about five teeth who made the valid point that I’d be better off visiting Uplistsikhe first, when the heat of the day wasn’t at its most intense. The price he quoted was within the range of what I was told I should expect so we set off in his jalopy, talking intermittently as far as my bad Russian would allow. He has a son called David and was delighted that that was my name too. David is a popular name in Georgia and being called David has won me some unexpected goodwill.

 

The standard deal on these outings is that you pay the taxi driver a fixed fee to drive you out and back and wait for an hour by the car while you explore. I realized pretty quickly that that one hour was for the uncurious and my own visit felt uncomfortably rushed. I also realized to my regret that this was one of the rare occasions it would have made sense to spend a little extra on an audioguide, since the various parts of the city had numbers marking where in your audioguide to find more information but no written text.

 

The oldest structures in Uplistsikhe date back about three thousand years, although much of it dates from the Christian era. And while there are built elements, large amounts of it are dug straight into the rock. Without the audioguide, I mostly just had to let my imagination run wild but there certainly was a lot to imagine.

 

But more than wishing I’d had more time or good information, I wished I could have been eight years old again. The child that loved running around the ruined castles on the Welsh border would have delighted in clambering about the rock steps and mysterious caverns. His forty-seven-year-old descendant had a pretty good time of it too.

 

Uplistsikhe

After Uplistsikhe, it was time to spend a bit of time with Stalin. The Stalin Museum was opened in 1957 and doesn’t seem to have changed a lot since. The museum is a faithful homage to the local boy done good, following his trajectory from young revolutionary to world-bestriding statesman without much mention of the show trials, the Gulag, or the Ukrainian famine. This, of course, was part of the fascination, and the exhibition rooms were full of all sorts of memorabilia and Soviet realist paintings, as well as one room reproducing Stalin’s office in the Kremlin. You do get pictures of Stalin with Trotsky and other bits and pieces that wouldn’t have been kosher when Stalin was still alive but in all it felt like a very lightly revised version of the Stalin Museum that Stalin himself might have approved of.

 

Reproduction of Stalin's office in the Kremlin

Outside the museum, you could see but not enter the small hut that Stalin had grown up in and walk through the train carriage that carried Stalin around the Soviet Union. Lining the streets outside, vendors hawked the standard Georgian tourist goodies along with bits of Stalin kitsch.

 

Stalin was born in 1878, so I could match his life events to my own by just adding a hundred years to the dates. I really could have spent a lot more time in the last couple years consolidating power and eliminating my enemies.

 

The nightmare Vardzia day trip

 

The last bit of Georgia I really didn’t want to miss was Vardzia, a working monastery that originated as a Medieval cave city where Georgians could hide themselves from marauding Muslim conquerors and later Mongols. The only practical way to get there in just a day was to book a tour. I’m glad I went but it was easily the worst outing I’ve been on.

 

The tour company’s website gave an itinerary for the day—which would take in the town of Borjomi, known for its springs, as well as Vardzia—but without any specifics about time. I knew Vardzia was a bit of a drive from Tbilisi but I hoped to get back by early evening to take care of a few things before my flight to Istanbul. The first discouraging sign came that morning, when I arrived for the 8:30am departure and asked when I should expect to be back. About 9:30pm, the woman checking me in said. Oh well, hopefully it would be worth it.

 

My first clue that this thirteen-hour tour could use some trimming was our bathroom-and-breakfast break an hour’s drive from Tbilisi. The guide said we’d stop at this roadside mini mall for forty minutes. I’d made a point of having breakfast before we set out so I had forty minutes to go pee. Except the bathrooms were out of order. I snuck behind the building to pee on the wall and then waited impatiently to get back on the road.

 

Rather than having a fixed itinerary for Borjomi, our guide simply told us there were various options for how we could spend our time there, each with its own added fee. After some needless deliberation, everyone agreed that the activity he recommended would be the best, and we set off on an electric buggy to visit a couple monasteries in the nearby hills. Borjomi is near the border of Armenia and reminded me of northern Armenia, with dramatic canyons and lush green hills. We visited a working nunnery that was so peaceful and pretty that I felt a bit bad about intruding.

 

Upon returning to the town of Borjomi proper, the guide said we now had half an hour to explore the town a bit. No particular reason given. So I just wandered up and down the streets idly with an American who was also on the tour. Brian lives in Vegas and works as a barman at the hockey arena. He showed me photos of him with Mark Stone and Jack Eichel—a fact that probably means nothing to anyone reading this blog besides my brother—and told me he preferred basketball. Brian was a weird combination of adventurous and green. His ambition for this trip is to go to Syria and Iraq and he talked up the value of exploring parts of the world other tourists don’t go. But he also reacted squeamishly to the idea of a squat toilet and seemed to prefer pizza and McDonald’s to local fare.

 

I’d asked my guide whether we should get lunch during our half hour of downtime in Borjomi but he said no, the lunch stop was later. So we got back on our minibus around 2pm without any lunch and then drove another two hours to Vardzia, finally depositing us at a restaurant for our “lunch” at 4pm.

 

Just as we did so, the heavens opened and a torrential downpour began. I’d checked the forecast that morning and it looked like clear skies so I hadn’t brought any rain gear with me, nor had half the people in the group. We waited things out until about 5pm, at which point the guide started hinting that it might be better just to go home without visiting Vardzia. To his credit, Brian insisted that we at least drive to the entrance to the site and see if the rain would let up. And sure enough, it did slow to a drizzle by about 5:30 and so we—belatedly and briefly—got to explore Vardzia.

 

Apparently the whole village began in the twelfth century as a network of caves that would be almost entirely invisible from the outside but a thirteenth century earthquake caused a large part of the hillside to collapse, leaving the cave network exposed. Visitors could wander along open-air walkways and visit various cavernous rooms, as well as clamber deep into the cliff along tunnels that only an eight-year-old could have stood up straight in. Again, my eight-year-old self really missed an opportunity here.

 

Vardzia

Parts of Vardzia remain in use by monks and only parts of the monastery complex are accessible to tourists. I got about five minutes in one astonishing chapel carved directly into the rock and covered floor-to-ceiling in frescoes. I wanted to linger longer but my tour group had moved on and an impatient monk started whistling at me to leave so that he could lock up.

 

Frescoes in the Church of the Dormition at Vardzia

After Vardzia, it was a long drive home with a quick ten-minute break to grab a snack. Because of the delayed arrival at Vardzia—not to mention all the unnecessary idling earlier in the day—we didn’t get back to Tbilisi until 11:30pm. So in all, I spent fifteen hours on a trip where I got a rushed hour through the one place I’d actually hoped to see. At least it gives me incentive to come back at some point. But I wish I’d been a bit better rested before flying to Istanbul the next day. I didn’t go to bed until after midnight because I really needed to take care of some Uzbekistan logistics before I left Georgia.

 

24 hours in Istanbul

 

And then I flew back to Istanbul! A bit strange having a quick visit home in the middle of a trip but it did have some practical value. I could drop off a couple things I wouldn’t be needing for the rest of the trip (a book I’d finished plus my Lonely Planet guide to the Caucasus) and pick up a couple other things (my aunt Pam will be pleased to know I’m writing this with Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game sitting on my lap). Shower, laundry, this, that, and the other, and an afternoon and evening with my favourite Woman of Steel, Nis.

 

I got a little less time in Istanbul than I’d have liked because it took me over an hour to get through passport control. Apparently the passport scanning machines had broken down shortly before I arrived so everything was on hold and I got to the passport control hall to find half of humanity queueing up in long, snaking lines and chaotic clumps. I chatted with an Australian woman who only had a few days in Istanbul and I persuaded her that she’d be happiest chilling out on the nearby islands.

 

Istanbul has got hot since last I visited. Temperatures were in the high thirties. Cats were laid out flat in the shade, like a bunch of buildings blown over by a hurricane. Urban, an alleyway open-air bar that’s my and Nis’s local, had traded the heat lamps it used in winter for fans that whirred away to keep us cool along with a large refrigerated water cooler dispensing free water.

 

And then, the next morning, it was off to the airport again, and off for Samarkand. Goodbye to Christianity and scripts I can’t read, hello to Cyrillic and Islam! (Actually, wrapping this up in Samarkand, I note that Uzbekistan now uses the Latin alphabet, although Cyrillic still pops up here and there, and the other post-Soviet Stans use Cyrillic.)