Oh my! We knew the mountains of Georgia were going to be amazing but Tusheti blew our minds!
The Tusheti region is in the far north-east of the country and to get there we first we taxied to the town of Alvani. En-route we saw this horse and cart. Horses are still used quite a lot in Georgia. Note the pipes running along high in the background. These are the pipes delivering gas to the villages. They're often above ground like this. They're so ugly!
At Alvani we tried to get a share taxi but nobody else was waiting so we bit the bullet and paid for a whole taxi ourselves. The drive to the Tusheti region takes about 4 hours and all vehicles have to be 4 wheel drives. We soon learned why.
Our driver was called Goche and he drove a Mitsubishi 6-seater. The weird thing was, it was right hand drive as it's from Japan. It turned out that this was the car of choice around here. Goche was a lovely guy.
The more we climbed up into the mountains, the more spectacular the scenery became. At first we drove through a beautiful tree-lined gorge. We saw waterfalls, beautiful forests and at one stage we drove under a small waterfall!
Soon the landscape began to change as the gully widened and we found ourselves driving along the edge of the mountains. In the distance, the greater Caucasus Mountains began to peek above the lower hills. The road was rough, narrow and the sides dropped off steeply. As we climbed up further, the drop offs beside the road got longer and scarier. Turning corners was at times a truly frightening experience!
We had to wait at one stage for a grader to fix a bit of the road before we could pass. I'm glad he was there!
A few times we saw memorials on the side of the road. Some even had tables and chairs set up nearby. This is apparently so friends and family can come and pay their respects by drinking to them. Kind people even leave beer there for the next person!
The road was only single lane so when vehicles had to pass there was a protocol that whoever was closest to a passing spot had to back up or go forward to allow the other vehicle to pass. Sometimes the inside vehicle was perched right near the edge of the drop-off beside the road while the other one crept carefully past, sometimes missing the other car by centimetres.
We saw many patches of ice along the streams that tumbled a thousand metres down the full length of the mountains.
As we moved above the treeline as the temperature dropped significantly. We finally reached a high pass and Goche, who couldn't speak any English, motioned that we should get out and take a look. We could see back the way we had come and forward to the way we were going. It was all incredible!
Then a really weird thing happened. A lady in a van got out and seemed to fiddle with what looked like a generator. A noise emerged like an aeroplane engine starting. The noise grew louder and louder and sounded more like an aeroplane engine as the volume increased. Then just as I was getting completely confused, the noise suddenly lurched into "doof, doof, doof". It was techno music being played at full volume on this high, isolated pass! It took me a moment to register that the lady was selling coffee. That was one helluva way to attract attention!
It was freezing so we jumped back into the van and started heading downwards. As we drove, more and more spectacular mountains opened up ahead of us. It was one of the most incredible car journeys we've ever done.
We would love to have driven this road ourselves but the major car hire companies don't allow their cars to come up here and we didn't really want to deal with the local car rental guys that just rent cars off the street.
The Tusheti area is special. The pass is closed for 8 months each year, so people tend to live in Alvani, the town in the valley below where we caught our vehicle from, then they come up here each summer. They traditionally graze animals on the lush pastures here although tourism is now an important financial contributor too. There are lots of cattle and horses here as well as some sheep.
It was hard to choose accommodation online - the main village is Omalo and this is where most of the accommodation is but you can also sleep in some of the smaller, more traditional villages. We had no idea what these would be like and ended up choosing a small hotel in the main village. In some ways this was a big mistake. For four nights we put up with local tourists yelling down the passageways at 1am, slamming doors and generally making an incredible amount of noise. Georgians tend to travel in families and two families who were there for most of the time we were had the worst behaved kids I've seen for a while, which is unusual for Georgians I think. Georgians are very late risers and go to bed very late so we would be in bed hours before they were. The hotel is not quite finished so it's very bare. There are no soft furnishings, only bare walls, so every sound echoed along the passageways. To top it off, we soon realised that the restaurant attached to our hotel, which was right outside our room, seemed to be a bit of a meeting place so locals would drive here then rev their cars on the way out at all times of night. It was unbelievably noisy.
However, there were some fantastic things about this place too. The staff were wonderful! Two girls in their twenties, Iza and Mari, were great fun and we soon got on well with an older woman, Nana, too. All these people worked such long hours - roughly 16 hours a day, depending on when people left the restaurant/bar. They do this every day for two or three months and, from what we've learned elsewhere, they earn about AUD250 a month. It's terrible!
To top it off, Nana, the cook, cooked incredible food. We fell in love with her amazing tomato soup, khinkali (traditional dumplings) as well as stews and vegies. Nana even made us some hot, spiced wine like Gluhvein. It was yum!
But we weren't here for any of that -we were here to hike in the mountains!
Our first walk was to the restored ruins of the Omalo towers. We climbed up a steep hill then through the cluster of dark stone and timber homes that made up the village of Upper Omalo. (We stayed in Lower Omalo - a decent hike away.) Stone towers are a feature of this area. They are up to 1000 years old and were built in the times when invading marauders from many different places would pass through. The towers were built where there were good views of the surrounding areas and guards kept watch. If strangers came through, black smoke was sent up so others could prepare for an attack. Then the villagers would move their stock and themselves into the towers which were quite defendable. The invaders usually moved on as there was, and still is, only a three-four month window of decent weather before the cold set in.
Looking back over Lower Omalo on our way up to the stone towers at Upper Omalo.
We met this guy here who was clearly drunk or stoned (marijuana is legal here). He happily posed for a photo in his traditional sheep wool hat. We later found he was staying at our hotel. He was taking a break from work and his way of taking a break was to spend the entire four days that we were there blind drunk. As we ate breakfast he would order a beer. Then he would line up 3 cha chas (the local grappa-like spirit) and down these. Then he'd drink beer the rest of the day. He got into a fight one night and generally gave the poor staff a lot of grief.
On our first day we learned that there are no public transport vehicles here - you have to organise a 'taxi' to take you to where you want to go and this is expensive. Fuel here costs about the same as home and the roads are terrible so the drivers have to have a 4WD. We ended up getting Gocha back, the lovely guy who drove us here. He's from a nearby village and was happy to hang around as long as there was work for him. He drove us to a village called Dartlo, a dark-stoned medieval village with towers. It was so cool!
In many of these villages you can find ancient stones with carvings in them. They've been found elsewhere and incorporated into newer buildings. Nobody seems to know much about what they were used for.
We looked around a bit then began our ascent to the village above, called Tvavlo. Oh my, this was a tough slog - an hour of hiking straight up the side of a hill in the warm sun. There was one benefit though - the wildflowers were incredible! Everywhere we looked was a riot of purple, pink, yellow and white. Cattle and horses grazed these open pastures and they were in great condition.
At one stage we walked past this guy who was cutting the grass for hay using a whipper-snipper!
Finally we arrived at the top, huffing and puffing. We met a group of young Georgian tourists there and chatted for a bit. We told them their country was so beautiful and one girl replied matter-of-factly, "We know!"
You could stay in guest houses in either of these villages although Tvavlo really only had one house. Outside they had a hand-made aeroplane whose propellers spun in the wind. We saw these a couple of times in this region. This one's for you, dad!
Talk about a loo with a view!
We staggered back to Dartlo where Gorcha was waiting for us, had a quick and fabulous lunch in one of the interesting stone and wood houses and got driven back to our hotel. We showered, ate a wonderful dinner, crashed into bed - and were kept awake by the big Saturday night happening in the restaurant.
The next day we didn't need a driver. We just walked to the next village. Again it was a long steep slog but this time we walked through a forest and it was so beautiful! Again flowers were everywhere but I couldn't believe it when I spied a tiny strawberry. After that we found wild strawberries everywhere although they were usually smaller than a pea and were probably a week or so off being completely ripe. It was so special!
We then hitched a lift back with a local family. One guy in the car spoke good English because he worked in the US. He was home to visit family.
We needed a driver for our last day and Gocha had gone back to his village so our lovely girls at the hotel organised someone for us. He spoke no English and we spoke no Georgian or local dialects so he asked if we spoke Spanish! We do a bit, and it was weird having a Georgian and two Aussies in Georgia speaking Spanish! It turned out that he worked in Spain for a few years. We suddenly realised how many Georgians leave their country to work elsewhere for better money, and who can blame them when their wages are so low?
He drove us to the village of Shenakho which was so beautiful! It wasn't as ancient as some of the other villages but it was more inviting. There were a couple of guest houses there - I would love to have stayed there! It's just so hard to learn about these smaller places in advance. On top of the hill at the back of the village was a beautiful church, one of the few churches in the area. It was a lovely place.
That rocky outcrop near the left of the centre is our next destination - Old Diklo!
Our driver met us at Diklo and we asked him to recommend somewhere to eat. He took us to a guest house where the lady who ran it spoke - you guessed it - Spanish! She had also worked in Spain. She was a little surprised by the request for food but within 5 minutes we had wonderful stuffed capsicums and bread in front of us. Just what the doctor ordered.
We then explored Old Diklo the ancient original settlement. There was a road most of the way there so we drove. You can see the setting from the photo above. All that remained of the old settlement were a few slate walls and piles of slate but the location was incredible. It was strategically perched on the stony outcrop with the most amazing views of the mountains around it.
The slate walls here was covered in orange-brown lichen which added even more character to the old stonework.
Not far below, a group of men were building a house. This would be the base for renovating the ruins. Hmm, I kinda like it the way it is.
Back in Omalo there were mobs of cattle and horses grazing feely. The horses are really good-looking and in great condition. Lots of tourists come here to go horse-riding in the mountains and I can see why.
By now we were great friends with Iza, Mari and Nana and, when it came time to leave, it was so sad to say goodbye. Our horrible hotel had become a wonderful place thanks to these three - and earplugs!
Our trip back down the spectacular mountain road was just as wonderful as the trip up and we shared our vehicle with a French couple as well as two English girls who had been at an art residency. Many musicians and philosophers were at the residency. The French couple had an interesting day the day before we all left. They went hiking and got lost. They ran out of food and water. After dark they finally found a village but nobody would drive them back to the hotel as it's too dangerous to drive at night. They kept walking (personally I would have stayed there the night and got a lift in the morning) and found another village but it was abandoned. Finally they heard music and found a group of people having a party in the middle of nowhere. Someone agreed to drive them back and they arrived home 11 hours after they left. They were very lucky!
The Tusheti region was a really special place. The mountains, the wildflowers, the vertiginous roads and the people combined to make it a place we will never forget.
Hooroo!
Heather and John
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