Random Rambles

We depart from Baku in our rental car. We call him Shorty because he’s so small.

Unsurprisingly, the polished prosperity of Baku doesn’t extend far beyond the city limits. The landscape becomes more typical for the region.

Pumpjacks are a common sight. This is where all the petrowealth comes from.

There isn’t much to see in Quba itself. But we hear the 48-kilometre road to the village of Xinaliq is worth a look.

Just outside of town is a forested area, popular with the locals for picnics.

As we begin to climb, we see a shepherd using an ATV to herd his sheep with great efficiency.

The road soon ascends through canyons and switchback curves.

Maria poses with Shorty.

A lone horseman checks his phone.

After two hours of driving, we reach Xinaliq.

According to Wikipedia, there are many unique things about this place. But it just looks like another rag-tag village to us. A spectacular drive, though.

On the way back, we pass several herds of sheep and cows on the road. And this guy.

We pass a more-elaborate-than-usual shrine to Ilham Aliyev, the president for life. (He’s the son of the late president for life.) Giant billboards throughout the country are erected by the Azerbaijani people as spontaneous demonstrations of affection.

Back in Quba, we visit a Genocide Memorial. This is ostensibly to commemorate the victims of inter-ethnic strife in March and April 2018. The Azerbaijani tally is 50,000 victims. Less biased sources put the figure at 12,000. (And no mention at all that in September of that year, Azerbaijanis murdered 10,000 Armenians.)

All this occurs because of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Besides pulling out of the First World War, the former nations of Tsarist Russia’s empire were left to work out their destinies on their own. Usually with great violence.

There’s a fairly pungent whiff of propaganda about the place. It’s obviously designed to whip up anti-Armenian sentiment in advance of any future war. (Doubtless the Armenians are probably, with equal vigour, preparing the ground with anti-Azerbaijani propaganda.)

One thing that’s not in doubt – people in this part of the world spent a lot of resources in the first half of the twentieth century in murdering each other.

Sight or Insight of the Day

In Quba, we visit a carpet weaving studio.

Maria gets tutoring in the tying of a carpet knot from the manager.

She’s ready for her solo.

Now there is a tiny part of this carpet that will be forever Maria.

In short, no. It’s pretty damn impressive, though.

We fly from Tbilisi to Baku and arrive in the evening. On the ride in from the airport, we pass wide boulevards and elegant apartment buildings.

On a material level, it’s way different than shambolic Tbilisi. Where things in Tbilisi often seem to be ramshackle and falling to bits, Baku is sparkling clean and robustly put together. No graffiti.

Of course, a large reason for this is that Georgia is a Western-leaning liberal democracy and Azerbaijan is, well, not. It’s like making the trains run on time – keeping the streets neat and orderly is easier in an authoritarian environment.

Another manifestation of this is, in contrast to Georgia’s hearty support of Ukraine in Putin’s War, in Azerbaijan there is absolutely nothing negative about Russia in the media or on the street. No mention of Ukraine at all. Not surprising, considering Azerbaijan’s best buds are Russia and Turkey, making up as villainous a trio of dictatorships as can be imagined.

Still, it’s an interesting place to visit.

Baku itself is famous for its modern architecture. The skyline is full of it.

From anywhere in the city, the most prominent buildings are the Flame Towers.

Here’s the unusual Azerbaijan Carpet Museum. It’s supposed to look like a rolled-up carpet. The results are, um, different. Maria detests it. The collection, however, is excellent.

At the entrance of the Old Town is the enigmatic Qız Qalası, or Maiden Tower. Nobody knows with certainty how old it is, or why it was originally built.

Even the Old Town is pretty spiffy, in comparison to the reeking alleyways of most ‘Old Towns’.

We take the funicular railway up to Highland Park to see the Flame Towers close up.

The Caspian Sea from above. Note what looks like an unmolested oligarch’s superyacht in the harbour.

We make our way home at the end of the day across Fountains Square.

Sight or Insight of the Day

First noticeable feature about Baku: there are no stray dogs. None. The only dogs to be seen are the designer kind at the end of a leash.

We imagine that because Azerbaijan is a Muslim country (at least nominally – they don’t seem very observant from what we’ve seen so far) they simply destroy them.

There are, however, many cats. And they seem to be as amenable to being stroked by complete strangers as the dogs of Georgia.

In the morning, we find this interesting spider on the back step of our guesthouse.

Poor Uncle Joe looks like he’s been through the wars after the thrashing he took on yesterday’s crappy roads.

Work on the caves began in the twelfth century.

After earthquakes and invasions, it was mostly abandoned in the sixteenth century.

Most of the frescoes have not survived the centuries.

You get a good view across the valley.

There are still a handful of monks living here. These are their quarters (off limits to visitors).

‘Every morning at seven, the monks ring the bell in the high arch.‘ So says Wikipedia.

The road to our next destination is much better than the previous day’s goat track. This part of southern Georgia reminds us of the Canadian prairies.

We arrive in Kakheti in good time. They make wine almost everywhere in Georgia, but Kakheti is recognized as the major producing area.

Chateau Napareuli, not far from Telavi, is where we stay for a couple of days.

Maria gives Uncle Joe a bath.

Traditionally, Georgian wine is made in enormous ceramic containers called qvevris.

They remind us of the Plain of Jars we visited in Laos in 2017.

Georgia also produces a lot of wine in the usual fashion – big steel tanks, oak barrels, and all that – but this method is dear to their hearts.

I have a go at stirring the mash of grapes, seed, skins, twigs…everything.

Among the wineries we visit is Khareba. They have a cellar of cool, dark tunnels under a mountain.

These are the qvervis in their usual location – underground.

Our host is very pleasant and speaks excellent English.

One day Maria drives and I sample the vino, the next day we alternate. In theory, Georgia has a zero-blood-alcohol-while-driving policy. Like, ZERO. So it’s strange that the roads in Georgia are lined with empty booze bottles and cans of every description.

We also spend a couple of days in Signagi (or Sighnaghi).

Our Lonely Planet guide calls Signagi ‘Georgia’s single most attractive town’. We have to agree. It sits high up overlooking the Alazani Valley.

Cobblestone streets are everywhere.

So are quaint houses.

Note the Lada in the foreground. When I was young, a good friend bought a brand-new Lada after he got his first real job. I think he paid two thousand bucks for it. That was over forty years ago. Apparently, many are still running.

The town is surrounded by walls and towers.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Our time in Georgia is nearly up. One more day back to Tbilisi, then it’s off to Baku, Azerbaijan.

We’ve grown used to Georgia’s foibles and idiosyncrasies. (For instance, tobacco use is still widespread: Georgians smoke like burning haystacks.) And the lack of road signs.

But we’ll miss the good food and wine. And the friendly dogs.

At least that’s how it feels. We depart from seaside Kvariati for inland Vadzia, a distance of 240 kilomtrers.

Because of the state of the roads, this ends up taking ten hours of driving.

(Have we used this title before? I think so. Anyway, it’s from Tolkien.)

It’s very scenic, but the road is so bad, we often travel at speeds of single digits.

About midway, we come to the village of Khulo and take a break.

We reach the top of the Goderdzi Pass. There is a ski resort up here, with what looks like hundreds of rooms being added. God knows how people get here in the winter.

We finally reach asphalt roads again. This part of southern Georgia looks almost like Wyoming or South Dakota. (Or at least like Wyoming or South Dakota look like in my imagination.)

Another fortress. According to Wikipedia, there are over 100 fortresses in Georgia.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Finally, after ten hours of driving, we reach our goal for the day: Vardzia.

Vardzia is a complex of caves/monastery that dates from the twelfth century.

It sits above the Mtkvari River, the same river that flows through Tbilisi.

It’s too late in the day to visit, so we have dinner in a roadside restaurant.

The Black Sea, that is. We drive down to sea level and spend a few nights at Ureki, a beach on the Black Sea south of Poti.

Seeing the Black Sea is one of the things that attracted me to visit Georgia in the first place.

When I was a kid, I went to see this movie, ‘Jason and the Argonauts‘. Great special effects, eh?

Where Jason goes in search of the Golden Fleece is Colchis, an actual kingdom that existed on these shores over 2,000 years ago.

It was the easternmost edge of the known world in classical antiquity. Colchis was famous for having lots of gold, as well as skilled goldsmiths. We saw many examples of this at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi.

The story passes down through the ages, from Euripide’s Medea to Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica to the cinematic sword-and-sandal opera of my childhood memory.

Ureki is an interesting place. It’s popular with Russians and has a slightly run-down vibe. Few people speak English. We can imagine hordes of workers vacationing here in the Soviet days.

On our second day here, rain comes down in buckets.

It continues to rain for the next two days. Traveling south, we go through Batumi, Georgia’s second-largest city. It has a lot of somewhat bizarre architecture.

We drive on through the centre of town. It’s a busy place.

We take advantage of a lull in the rain to visit the Gonio Fortress. Also known as Ἄψαρος’ (Apsaros).

This is a mostly Roman fort, with Byzantine and Ottoman add-ons.

Finally, a break in the weather and we spend a couple of days at Kvariati Beach, just before the border with Turkey.

This beach has smooth pebbles instead of black sand.

But it’s clean. And quiet.

Well, except for a few restaurants that insist on blasting out loud, bad music. This is another third-world trait. Unfortunately, it drives the both of us right up the wall.

We walk down the road to see how close the Turkish border is.

We decide it’s not close enough and turn back. Besides, there are trucks thundering down the road in both directions.

We get a good view of the beach, though.

Our balcony is a great place for a sundowner.

Almost three weeks we’ve been here already. Feels like longer than that. We agree it’s been an enjoyable trip so far. Laughs aplenty. Lots of Zen moments. Indeed, these are the days.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We might have to start calling this the daily dog entry. While trying to read my book, a young dog – a pup, really – walks up and begins rolling around under and around me, begging me to play with her.

I give in and combine reading with a canine wrestling match.

In the north of Georgia is an area called Svaneti. After spending a night in Zugdidi, another pleasant mid-sized city, we drive up into the mountains again.

The road is switchback much of the way.

Frequent landslides take out chunks of the road.

We arrive in Mestia, the main town. Our room has a great view. We stay here a total of three nights.

A popular hike is the four-day trek from Mestia to Ushguli. We are not keen on leaving the car unused for that long, so we do the first stage from Mestia to Zhabeshi. We wind up walking on the road to Zhabeshi because we couldn’t find the beginning of the trail in town. (Have we mentioned that information can be hard to come by in Georgia?)

This is not as bad as it sounds because there is very little traffic on the road and the scenery is pretty spectacular everywhere.

Maria likes the fancy gates on some of the houses.

We get to Zhabeshi early in the afternoon.

We stay the night in a scrupulously-clean guesthouse and are stuffed to bursting with our hostess’s lavish cooking.

We depart from Zhabeshi the next morning, returning to Mestia by the real trail.

Unfortunately, we are completely on the wrong track. We follow what we think is the trail nearly to the top of a considerable mountain. We’re scratched mercilessly by thistles. The trail peters out to nothing. I consult my Maps.Me and find that the path actually begins way down, parallel to the river.

We eventually find our way. In one village, a small herd of elegant goats struts by like a party of supermodels.

These towers are everywhere in Svaneti-land.

Eventually, inevitably, we lose our way once more.

We only get back on track by coming across other hikers. The signage on this trail needs improvement.

This is looking down on the valley before reaching the pass back to Mestia.

We get back to our hotel in Mestia after 10 hours of walking, dog-tired but with a sense of accomplishment.

Next day, we take a local transport vehicle to Ushguli and back. (We can’t take our rental car because the roads are too bad.)

The overnight rains have cause landslides. A work crew clears the road while we wait.

Ushguli is full of stone buildings in various states of picturesque dilapidation. We’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Sight or Insight of the Day

On our day-trip to Ushguli, we meet a young Russian woman who has fled Russia and moved permanently to Georgia. (Sorry, no photo.) She acts as interpreter between the driver (who knows Russian, like most older Georgians, but not a word of English) and us.

It’s a shame that ordinary, non-insane Russians feel they have no choice but to leave. This woman was studying data analysis, a sought-after skill at the moment. Now she has to change career paths in a strange country.

She’s pretty adamant, though. When we part ways, I say we hoped she could go home soon. She replied without hesitation ‘My home is Tblisi!’

We climb into Uncle Joe and head south again.

No sooner do we come across the long queue of Russia-bound trucks does a herd of sheep cross the road.

The road back to Mtskheta goes through multicoloured mountains that remind us of Iceland.

We mentioned passing by a Soviet-era monument to Russia-Georgia friendship. We stop here for a break.

Traffic through some of the tunnels is squeaky tight.

We drive through the plain that lies between the Greater Caucasus and Lesser Caucasus ranges to the town of Gori, Joseph Stalin’s birthplace.

Our guesthouse is on a nice quiet street. There are grapes growing in front of every house, children playing, neighbours gossiping.

The main attraction in Gori is the Stalin Museum. Because Stalin is a local boy who made good (or at least gained prominence), it has little bad to say about the man

On the grounds is Stalin’s personal railcar. Stalin didn’t like to fly. He attended the Tehran Conference, the Yalta Conference, and the Potsdam Conference in this car.

Gori is an attractive mid-size town. There are no shops geared towards tourists. Lots of second-hand clothing stores.

We celebrate my birthday with a fine Georgian saperavi.

I get everything I ask for. A T-shirt from the Stalin Museum gift shop. And a carpet.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Stalin’s statue gets two thumbs down from Maria.

I think it’s ironic that the statue of this man directly responsible for the death of millions stands unmolested while poor old Sir John A. Macdonald’s likeness is vandalized and toppled for his misguided Victorian notions by frenzied screaming mobs with complete impunity.

As Margaret Thatcher said when she was booted from office, it’s a funny old world.

We rent a car for the next eighteen days. A Toyota Prius. It’s great on gas.

Of course, driving here has its challenges. Like three quarters of the world, Georgians drive like crazed maniacs. Not to mention the hazard of animals roaming the road.

We take the Georgian Military Highway up to Stepantsminda.

Stepantsminda is dominated by Mt. Kazbegi, This is the view from our balcony.

That’s our balcony in the middle.

A more dramatic zoomed-in shot of Mt. Kasbegi. Gergeti Trinity Church sits in the foreground.

We go for a stroll through town.

Next day, we hike into the Truso Valley, about twenty kilometres away.

Semi-abandoned villages are everywhere.

We begin walking at Kvemo Okrokana village, after driving a few kilometres down a shitty road from the highway.

I recently read Independent People, by Halldór Laxness. It’s about the hard life of peasants in early 20th-century Iceland. A large part of the book takes place in their ‘croft’, a turf-covered shack with a single tiny window and farm animals living in the bottom part.

This structure looks similar. Strange that peasant societies thousands of kilometres apart would share the same sort of habitation.

A bee and a butterfly share a thistle flower.

The walk starts out high above the river.

You can see snowy peaks in the distance.

Every now and then we come across decorative grave markers.

We stay hydrated.

We arrive at the mostly-abandoned village of Kitrisi.

We’re not sure exactly why so many of these villages are abandoned. Information can be hard to come by in Georgia.

A convent lies further down the valley.

The convent has solid-looking buildings, in comparison to the ruins elsewhere in the valley.

These nuns have several streams of income. They run a cafe and a guest house.

The turnaround point is the Zakagori fortress. Beyond this is the breakaway Republic of South Ossetia.

On the way, I can’t resist petting this very tame, very pregnant donkey.

Maria hams it up on the way to the Zakagori fortress.

We have a picnic lunch up here.

On the return trip, we stop for a cup of tea in a rustic establishment.

The tea is from Azerbaijan.

A view of the proprietor’s house across the way.

By late afternoon, we approach the place where we left the car. The changed light gives the valley a whole new aspect.

Then it’s back to Stepantsminda.

Sight or Insight of the Day

A sign of the times: about 15 KMs from the Russian border, the road is lined for several kilometres with heavy trucks stranded by sanctions against Russia.

CORRECTION: We learn that these trucks aren’t being turned back because of sanctions; in fact, there are thousands of trucks on their way to Russia with goods from all over in spite of sanctions. So many that there’s no room at the border crossing. Drivers have to camp for days at the side of the road.

Which also explains why so many of these trucks are from Turkey. Turkey is in dire need of US dollars to fund Mr. Erdogan’s bizarre economic plan (it’s a long story) and has lots of stuff to sell. Russia has lots of US dollars (thanks to the sale of oceans of oil) and wants to buy lots of stuff. Voila!

We finally depart Tblisi for the city of Mtskheta. We take the train. It’s only about 25 minutes away.

The Russian-made locomotive looks like an Indian bus – as if it’s been rolled down a mountainside and returned to service.

We arrive at the decaying, almost-not-there train station of Mtskheta and hail a cab into town.

Our guest house is a stone’s throw from the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. We are greeted with a cup of Turkish coffee and grapes plucked straight from the arbour overhead.

The hosts have a very large, very friendly dog.

This is one of the largest churches in Georgia.

Inside, it’s full of chanting priests, singing women, and soft light.

Behind a gold door is some kind of sanctuary.

The other main attraction in town is the Jvari monastery.

It sits high atop a hill overlooking the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers.

Back in town, Maria samples wine ice cream.

We also visit the Samtavro St. Nino Convent.

The nuns work in the shop, selling religious regalia.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Bread is a staple in Georgia. There are several kinds. It’s cheap and filling. People here consume Olympian quantities of the stuff.

Maria loves it. The primacy of our friend Mike’s homemade bread in Maria’s rankings is under severe threat by this Georgian product.

We end up spending a week in Tblisi. We visit a few markets, including the desertirebis bazari (deserter’s bazaar) food market.

We look for hidden treasure at the Dry Bridge flea market.

Tblisi is known for its sulphur baths. Maria hopes to take the plunge one rainy afternoon, if one comes along.

While crossing the Peace Bridge we come across a wedding photo session. Note the dog in a state of complete relaxation in the foreground.

For dinner, Maria chows down on Shkmeruli, which is chicken in a garlic/milk sauce. Mmmm.

Sight or Insight of the Day

People in Georgia strongly support Ukraine in its struggles in Putin’s War. There are Ukrainian colours everywhere. Sometimes the message is very obvious, as in the seat cushions of this restaurant.

Sometimes subtly incorporated into everyday items, like this ad in the Metro for a local snack food.

Sometimes not so subtly, as in the message on this receipt from a pharmacy. (Georgia experienced its own ‘special military operation’ in 2008.)

And sometimes in undisguised loathing. This sticker is on an ATM and the message is clear.

All this takes a certain amount of guts. The Russian border is less than 200 KMs from where we sit. Vladimir Putin could wake up any morning and decide to complete the liberation of Georgia. A simple case of chafing hemorrhoids could push him over the edge.