Georgia is a conundrum in relative comfort… bookended by the Caucasus, it feels as if the mountains help it maintain a decent level of geopolitical sanity whilst surrounded by a cacophony of ideologies and interests at constant war… there is that geographical identity crisis of straddling two continents, one that exacerbates existing religious and generational divides… yet amidst all the tumult, there is a glum forbearance that characterizes the people here, meandering along with the seasons, buoyed by their early history but a little perturbed by the present…  

We had a week in the country, and enamoured more by the mountains than the coast, focused on the north and eastern precincts of Tbilisi… the capital city itself was a compact jamboree of art and architecture… crumbling medieval walls contrasting the grandiose of churches and cathedrals that lurked around every possible corner… cable cars and funiculars ferrying the sightseers looking for panoramic views to the mountainous perimeters of the city… subways and government buildings plastered with graffiti, a reminder of turbulences bubbling under the calm façade… one can imagine, a region inhabited since prehistory, and coveted by many an empire, feeling discontent in its modern day obscurity… 

Henceforth to Mtskheta, deeper into the cynosures of orthodox Christianity… a collective bass of sighs and prayers buzzing through the echo chambers of Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, one of the four Great Cathedrals that has survived conflicts and conflagrations aplenty… the constant influx of eyes peering down the confluence of clay and turquoise in Kura and Aragvi Rivers from the ramparts of Jvari Monastery… first half the day spent among milling crowds, we went looking for monuments away from the touristy din, and were rewarded with the solitude of Shio-Mgvime Monastery, meditating quietly inside a canyon, away from the madding crowds…

Feeling bloated with the ecclesiastical ensemble and craving a change, we made our way up the mountains, meandering up and down towards the tiny hamlet of Stepantsminda, the scenery reminiscent of the Sivaliks, the proximity to Russia now evident with large oil trucks dotting the highway… it took a little bit of time to adjust to the right-hand drive, and time and again one had to put some serious thought in at the intersections, but the highways were a breeze, the low volume of traffic facilitating a quicker adjustment…

‘Twas dark by the time we reached the town, and realizing after a couple of days that an early start was the best way to beat the crowds, drove up to Gergeti Trinity Church with the first light… perched atop a hill overlooking the valley, we had half an hour of blissful quietude before the first tourists arrived, from whereon it cascaded into the usual pandemonium… I’d wanted to try and hike up to the Gergeti glacier, but we could only go a couple of miles up as the drizzle turned into snowfall, and we retreated to the dry recesses of the car…

As it always happens, it stopped raining as soon as we reached the vehicle… cursing my luck we drove back to the homestay to change into dry clothes and after a late breakfast, drove up to the church again for some birding, for the longest time all I saw was a grasshopper and a raptor circling the skies, thankfully a few wheatears took pity and obligingly posed before we headed back to prepare for another early start the next day…

Which turned out to be a bit of back and forth along the highway… we drove for about half an hour before turning into a literal riverbed that the Georgian Military Highway became, a stretch for which we’d consciously hired a 4×4 at the car rental… around five miles further, after crossing the village of Kvemo Okrokana and rattling the rubber skirt under the bumper loose, we decided to park the car and hike… in hindsight, we could have driven further up ahead as the jeep road, although rough, was rather driveable, and the walk in the gorge was rather dull…

A couple of hours of strolling up the road brought us to the first expansive views of Truso valley, its sulphur infused waters adding dollops of ochre and russet to the green meadows… crossing a rivulet, we reached Abano lake, a small sulphur pond bubbling with its concoction of gases… I followed the coattails of a herder for an hour further to the village of Keterisi, occupied seasonally by the locals and home to the travertines, chemical amalgamations that would usually remain underground coming to the fore…

Bidding farewell to the meadows as the first wave of hikers started rolling in, we drove back towards the village of Sno, where stone monoliths ala Easter Island stared poignantly towards the horizon, as if aware of the financial crunch their creator faces these days… we then wound our way towards a small fortress, where half a dozen gentlemen, pepped up by vodka and juice, sang us Raj Kapoor songs, setting off the tune for Back in the USSR in my head…   

Leaving Sno, we wound our way back, negotiating another small traffic jam near Jvari Pass, which was, consequent of its expansive views, much too crowded for our liking to stop… finding a garage to get the front bumper fixed – and chuffed by the fact that my makeshift arrangement had held fast so far – we found ourselves at the cottage around five in the evening, the wooden contraption buried deep inside a roadside village that took some finding…

Steadfast in our resolve to beat the crowds, we started early morning the next day as well, and realizing that Ananuri was simply a panoramic photograph from a bridge, the fortress quite unkempt on the inside… decided to take an excursion to the wine country… a couple of hours of descending through some beautiful winding roads into the valley brought us to Alaverdi monastery, another one of the four Great Cathedrals in one of the oldest wine making regions… the monks have in recent years started commercializing their traditional wine making practices, and the wines themselves…

The church was undergoing extensive renovations making any photography impossible, so to compensate, we headed towards Ikalto Monastery, a much smaller and quieter abode tucked away into a hillside… we were quite saturated again with divinity but time and again there would be this edifice in the distance that one couldn’t resist taking a detour for…

Which is what happened again as we were on our way back, a small road winding steeply up the compelled me to take the detour and brought us to the Kvetera Church and fortress, the former a rather colourful structure to be in the desolate surrounds that it was, the cows nonchalantly trimming its lawns in the autumn afternoon… and with that we finally bid adieu to the Georgian countryside, a mountain assemblage not much different from our neck of the woods, save for the humans, and their cultural and historical imprints…

Next morning found us cruising along a four lane expressway, the roads leading to other major urban centres like Kutaisi and Batumi, as well as going further into Armenia… our destination today was the ancient cave town of Uplistsikhe, which surprisingly wouldn’t open before ten in the morning, neutralizing our early start… we stood at the front of the ticket queue and made a beeline for the cave structures before the crowds overwhelmed us again…

Baking bright in the morning sun, the complex was an intriguing piece of ancient art and architecture, not huge in area, yet lying at the intersection of trans-continental trade routes, always a prime target for armies on the pillage… we spent a few hours in the complex, trying in futility to comprehend the gravitas of the history within these crude caves, then spotting agamas peeping out of crevices and inevitably chasing after them… trying to kill some more time before heading back to Gori, we meandered along the wine trail, taking a brief halt at Ateni Sioni Church, rich with frescoes…

Our final destination of the trip was Gori, a bedraggled fort staring into the thriving city under its auspices… the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, the quintessential grey character of modern history… one steeped in blood, some of enemies across the border, and many within (supposedly)… ‘tis intriguing to see, this veneration… one that prevents the country from letting go of its communist antecedents… the museum was full of artefacts that speak of the inevitability of history repeating itself over and over, from cigars to trench coats, from ballroom pianos to life size portraits…

Twilight nudged us back towards Tbilisi as we mulled over the week gone by… all in all, ‘twas a microcosm of sorts… the mountains a silent witness to the ebbs and flows of civilization… a storied past looking for ways to navigate an uncertain future… layers of time, each echoing with their own tales of triumph, survival, and resilience…