Armenia

We caught a minivan from Tbilisi, Georgia, to Dilijan in Armenia. The minivan could only 7 hold  passengers so it was a comfortable enough drive. I sat next to a young guy who spoke perfect English so he was really helpful when it came time to cross the border. The border crossing was easy - we were stamped out of Georgia then were taken a few hundred metres by the minivan to the Armenian border. We didn't know what to expect but the border guards just stamped us in and welcomed us to the country. Our bags weren't even checked. It was all so easy!

Armenia didn't look a lot different to Georgia from the minibus, although the land got noticeably drier the further south we went. Because we loved Georgia so much, we stayed longer than we originally planned there so we only had 8 days for Armenia. We decided to spend it at just two places and the first was Dilijan.

First impressions were unexciting. Dilijan was described in our Lonely Planet guidebook as being a bit like Switzerland. Seriously, I think the writer must have been on drugs or something. It was a nice town but pretty rough around the edges and nothing like the pretty, neat towns of Switzerland. The town was dusty (nothing new there), disjointed and a weird mix of old, new and ex-Soviet. Not that many people spoke English. 

We felt lost without a car. Many of the things we wanted to see were well out of town but it was surprisingly difficult to get around.

Just as we finally looked like organising a rafting trip, John caught a cold so the rafting plans got shelved. Meanwhile, John's toe problem was returning and my foot was still swollen so we made a decision to not go out much and to get a lot of organising done.

The town wasn't much but our accommodation was lovely. We had a gorgeous old room which was beautifully decorated but the old wooden floorboards creaked every time someone in any room walked on them. There was no aircon but it was just manageable without it as we were up in the hills here. Meanwhile, in the capital city, it was 42 degrees! Our room opened up onto a gorgeous garden so we were happy enough to hang out here and get various things organised. It was weird arriving in a new country and not seeing much of it but that's the way it is sometimes.

We had the most sensational baclava at this place though!

There was also one of the best restaurants in Armenia in this town (according to our guide book). The food was wonderful and the setting was simple.

We went for a short walk in "The Drunken Forest", apparently called that because the trees are all on a lean. We found this atmospheric ruined building in the greenery.

The street dogs here were just as friendly and well-fed as those in Georgia. We walked past an empty building and realised they soon learn to hang out where it's cool.

We needed to work out how to get to Yerevan, the capital, but trying to get info out of the woman who owned our accommodation was like extracting teeth. It took a lot of patience but she eventually told us there was a minibus and we finally got tickets on it. We were happy enough to leave here when the time came.

We arrived in Yerevan and the worst of the heatwave seemed to be over. It was only probably high 30's. We walked the 2 kms through the town to our hotel and it was a surprisingly nice city. Yerevan only has a population of 1 million people. Due to a tumultuous history, there are only 3 million Armenians living in Armenia but 2 million to 9 million live outside Armenia!

Our hotel here was a modern, city hotel but it worked really well for us. It was central enough that we could explore all the main city sights on foot yet it was on a quiet street.

Yerevan itself was a surprisingly modern city.

The old Soviet buildings were incredibly ugly though.

We soon realised that one advantage of being in a big city is that there were far more food options. After eating more or less the same foods in Georgia for 5 weeks we were rapt to find Mexican food on our first day. After that we ate Armenian food though and it was good. It wasn't that dissimilar to Georgian food but it was different enough for us to find it interesting.

It's amazing what you can learn just but walking through a city. Judging by the incredible number of beauty salons we figured there's a preoccupation with looks around here. Certainly a lot of people are well-dressed. One day I wanted to buy a dress so I was directed to a local mall. OMG - the number of shops and the number of people shopping was mind-boggling! I'm sure all 3 million Armenians were there that day. It was all too much for me -  I came home empty-handed. Later, we would see families with armloads of shopping bags. What are they going to do with all that 'stuff'?

We managed to get quite a bit of sightseeing done. First up was a museum dedicated to a very quirky Armenian artist. His work was interesting, that's for sure! 

We also went to the Centre of the Arts, a weird structure of many concrete levels. 

Inside, you rode an escalator up while you looked at a few pieces of sculpture. It was weird and seemed like a massive waste of money. 

The last sight was more interesting - to me at least. It was a library that held over 20,000 ancient books and manuscripts. It was incredible! Only a fraction of the collection is ever on show but there were books that were over 1500 years old. There were beautiful illuminated pages and documents from people like Napoleon as well as kings. I loved it!

This one is about how to heal horses.

When the Soviets ruled Armenia, they tore down many of the beautiful old traditional timber houses and erected concrete monstrosities in their place. There was apparently one small section left but try as we might, we couldn't find it. What we did find though were huge brand-new hotels and office buildings. I'm not 100% sure there are no old buildings left but I certainly don't think are many. We never found any at all.

Armenians believe they're descended from one of Noah's sons (of the Ark fame). Because the Ark came to rest on Mt Ararat, the mountain is very important to them. Poor Armenia has had its borders changed again and again over the centuries and Mt Ararat currently is inside the Turkish border. We had planned to try to get a taxi or something to take us to near the border so we could see this striking looking mountain, however as we came out of a building one day we looked left and there was Mt Ararat towering over everything. We saw it again from a number of places. It was a bit murky and it was over 50 kms away but it was still a stunning mountain. It saved us a big trip!

You think you know nothing about Armenia, don't you? But you're wrong. Some very famous people are Armenian. Try Cher for a start. Yep, she came from Armenia. Then there are the Kardashians. 

We really enjoyed Yerevan. The modern city felt so easy after the mountains of Georgia. The food was great and our bed was wonderfully comfortable!

There's far less English spoken here though. Armenia aligns itself far more with Russia than Georgia does, so Russian is the second language here. We certainly didn't see any anti-Russian slogans or Ukrainian flags in this country! I suspect if we headed out into the villages that we would struggle to communicate.

We probably didn't get that much of a feel for Armenia but if I had the choice between Georgia and Armenia I'd choose Georgia hands down.

Hooroo!
Heather and John

Kutaisi, Vardzia and Goodbye Georgia!

Once we made the decision to leave Ushguli early (see the last post), we decided to go to Kutaisi. Kutaisi's a small city about the size of Ballarat with a few interesting things to see and it was on the way to our next destination. It was the perfect option to fill in a couple of days between other bookings.

We booked a place online and had no trouble driving into the centre of the city to our hotel. We loved the heart-shaped traffic lights here!

The hotel turned out to be wonderful! It was in a really grand old building and only had a few rooms. Our ceilings must have been 5 metres high and had ornate cornices. The bed was comfy - and it had clean white sheets! To top it off, the young manager was delightful. After the last place, we felt like we'd landed in heaven!

We rested up that afternoon then tackled the sights the next morning. We headed out in the car but there were roadworks happening and we couldn't go the way we wanted. We did a detour then found ourselves at the end of a one-way road with the exit blocked by the roadworks. We were stuck! We had no alternative but to turn around and drive the wrong way back up the road. Several other people did the same but traffic soon came towards us and just like that we were in a traffic jam. Luckily a couple of locals took things into their own hands as there was certainly no police in charge of this. They had blocked off a number of major roads yet provided no detours or guidance. Our new best mate, a guy in a red cap, managed to convince the people ahead of us to back up and we weren't stuck for that long. 

First stop was 40 kms back up the road we drove down the previous day but we were too tired to see things then. Our maps app, maps.me, led us through towns and at one stage led us along a short road where I suddenly saw a sign that looked like a Do Not Enter sign. It was too late as we were already nearly at the end of the road and I thought I must have been wrong as it was a wide road. Just as we pulled out at the other end, a police car happened to be there. (Where was he when we needed help with the traffic jam?) John stopped to give way and the police car stopped as well. Suddenly the policemen inside started yelling through a loudspeaker. Were they yelling at us? We had no idea. The police car was still stopped and traffic was building up behind it so we had to do something. John waved, and drove through as if the policeman was giving way to us. We watched in the rear view mirror but no police car was chasing us - well not immediately anyway. The car soon came tearing up behind us with it lights flashing. We'd already worked out that whenever emergency vehicles travel they have their lights flashing even if there isn't an emergency so we were still unsure if he was after us but another blast of yelling from the loudspeaker convinced us to pull over. The cop car pulled up at John's window (why would he get off the road? People will go around!) and the passenger-side cop rattled something off to us in Georgian. We figured he was probably telling us in no uncertain terms that we just went the wrong way up a wrong-way road but we just looked blankly at them and John asked politely, "Do you speak English?" They understood and shook their heads. Cool! We got caught by some of the few cops who don't speak English! They had a quick discussion among themselves then the cop reluctantly waved us on our way. Phew!

We had read about a suspended track over a gorge near here and had seen pictures of an amazing glass-bottomed footpath that teetered over a precipice. To get there we elected to walk the 30 minutes from the ticket office to the gorge rather than drive as the exercise would do us good. The walk turned out to be beautiful but it was steep downhill after this easy start through a gorgeous forest.

We then reached the gorge and realised it wasn't the one we had seen pictures of! It was ok but nothing exceptional. That'll teach us to do our research a bit better next time!

By now it was really hot and there was no way I was going to tackle that steep slog back to the car in the heat. Clearly lots of people thought the same because many taxis in the form of cars and vans waited for people to drive them back up to the car park. John walked and I took a car. I thought the price was a bit expensive until I saw the road. It was just as bad the worst of the roads we had been on elsewhere, minus the drop-offs at the edge of the road. Mitsubishi Delicas ruled the road here again but somehow I ended up in an old Subaru Forester. It did a mighty job of tackling the rocks, potholes and steep sections. At one stage we had to pass a car coming the other way and there was seriously no room. Somehow the vehicles managed to climb up the sides of the road but they were on such a lean that their rooves were almost touching as they passed. It was amazing!

Next stop was a waterfall but it was a bit underwhelming.

Lastly was the Prometheus Caves that friends had told us about. We had to join a tour which was in Georgian, English and Russian. Our nice tour leader was justifiably grumpy at people who talked through the presentation or tried to get let in before anyone else. Some people didn't really follow along once we got inside and they could have been doing anything but it was an interesting place. It was huge!

At the end we were put on boats and finished the last part by gliding through the cave on the water. We had to wait ages for the boat though so the appeal had been largely lost by the time we got on one.

A nearby town had been renowned in Soviet times as being a wonderful spa town. People came down by train from Russia in droves to this glamourous location. Now, a number of grand buildings stand empty, rusting relics of a bygone era. You can just wander through them but we only found a couple of them. Our old, dusty jeep looks right at home in this grand but overgrown entrance.

Paint peeled off the old walls in such a cool way!

Again John found an interesting road on a map and, after two lovely night in Kutaisi, we reluctantly dragged ourselves away from our wonderful hotel and headed south. The road was better than we expected it to be but we realised why when when we unexpectedly found a grand spa resort town in the middle of nowhere. It's amazing what a bit of marketing about mineral water can do.

The road turned to dirt at the end of the town and remained like that until we hit civilisation again. We drove through beautiful forests where moss seemed to drip from pine trees.

We crossed over a pass where the views of small farms and large hills were spectacular.

By now we were so far south that we weren't far from the Turkish border. Not far before our destination was the restored Khertvisi Fortress built in the 10th to 14th centuries. It was pretty impressive.

It was really hot and John headed back to find some shade. I found another section that we hadn't seen and explored it on my own. I climbed up the steps on the right in the photo below. On my way back down I stepped onto that metal grating on the right of the photo and my foot slipped right through it. I tipped forward and the weight of the pack on my back carried me further forward while my foot stayed anchored between the metal slats. I went down like a sack of spuds but managed to extract my foot shortly afterwards. It was already bruising. This wasn't good. John was out of earshot and nobody else was around so I took my time until I could safely walk with the daypack.

We got to our absolutely lovely hotel (our only two options here were very basic or upmarket so we took upmarket for a change) and got some ice for my foot. It swelled and bruised but wasn't too painful.

The reason we had come this far was to see Vardzia, an ancient cave city and monastery complex carved into the side of a nearby cliff. Bizarrely, even though it was really hot, the complex didn't open til 10am. We took our chances and got there early. There were a few others waiting too and they let us in 10 or 15 minutes early which was great. We were the first visitors for the day and it wasn't crowded at all even though it's one of Georgia's 'biggest' sites.

All the safety railings detracted from the natural look of the place but they were essential as it was all pretty steep and exposed.

There was a church that opened just as we got there. The paintings were beautiful and apparently depicted the Queen that built this place.

A lovely man was in charge of a holy well where spring water runs fresh into a pool. Pilgrims come here to drink the water and the man insisted that we take some bottles with us. It was cool and delicious.

There were quite a few tunnels. Some were long and, without electric lighting, would have been very spooky in their day. We mostly had to stoop over to get through them.

Rooms had different purposes. This was a wine cellar and you can still see parts of old qvevris (clay wine urns) embedded in the ground.

In 1551, the Georgians were defeated by the Persians in a battle here and the Persians burned everything including old manuscripts. Many rooms are still scorched.

The last tunnel was very steep!

We were out well before the busloads arrived so we had a nice lunch in the shade beside the river. Wonderful!

We returned to our hotel and had a brief swim in the pool there. The water was surprisingly cold! We then focussed on keeping my swollen foot up. It was about this time that John's toe problem started coming back. Hmm, this wasn't good for two walkers!

We left the next morning and headed back to Tbilisi - again. The land we drove through was dry but a fertile valley ran through it and hay season was in full swing. We found it really interesting. Most plots were fairly small. Hay was cut by scythe, whipper-snipper or commercial slasher. It was then raked by pitchfork or a commercial rake behind a tractor. Once dry, the hay was either pitchforked into small, loose haystacks or baled into small bales. We saw no big round bales.

When machinery was used, it was all very old. Tractors and trucks all seemed to be from the 50's and 60's. There were no elevators used to load the hay bales. To lift the bales up to the top of the trucks, two people put a pitchfork at each end of a bale. They then hoisted the bale way above their heads where someone on the top of the truck reached down and grabbed it and stacked it. Now that's hard going!

That's a person lying down on this truck load of hay. I reckon he deserves a lie-down!

The tractors were ancient and everything was so labour-intensive.

Any usable vehicle got called in to cart hay.

Shepherds and their dogs guarded stock along the roads.

Surprisingly, we came to a town where many power poles were adorned with stork nests. This was weird as we didn't see any storks anywhere else in all our travels in Georgia.

So we made it back to Tbilisi and returned our car in one piece. We had one last night revisiting our favourite places and saying goodbye to this wonderful country. It was time to head to Armenia!

As this is our last Georgian post, there are a few things I'd like to record for my own benefit.

The language was a real challenge to us. It's not a language that shares a lot with other languages. Luckily, many people speak English as it's taught in schools. In our whole time there we only learned a few words and, as they were such weird words for us, we had fun trying to come up with ways to remember them:

Mardeloba - (Thank you) - This word started off our "funny ways to remember foreign words" campaign. We came up with "Mark's a lover". We then found that wasn't accurate enough so we changed it to "Mark's all over". Sorry Mark, but we laughed every time!

Gumajoba - (Hello) - This started the run of ruder ideas!

Another funny thing was the way Georgians asked us to repeat ourselves (which was often given that they don't come across too many Aussie accents). Instead of saying "pardon?" they'd say "what?" very bluntly. It was kind of affronting but we knew they didn't mean to be rude at all.

For a country that was largely rural, and so hot, we were continually amazed at how late Georgians go to bed and get up. The day was half gone by the time they got started and they kicked on, kids included, until all hours of the night. They are very family-orientated and often travel in large family groups. This means they make even more noise at 2am. They have no regard for other people at night at all. They don't mean to be disrespectful - it's just not something they think about. Clearly they can sleep through anything.

Cows and other livestock roam the streets everywhere. Every village seems to have communal land around it that anyone can graze. We saw very few animals confined in paddocks. I only saw one horse refuse to get caught while its frustrated owner clambered up a hill trying to catch it.

Street dogs were a highlight. They were incredibly friendly. They were well fed (we don't know who by) so they wanted nothing more than a pat and a walk. They were wonderful! I'm sure their friendly dispositions were a direct reflection of the kind humans that they lived amongst. Surely the Georgians must treat them really well for them to be like this.

Traditions were strong - endless speeches at formal events, polyphonic singing and pride in their history. They generally weren't wealthy people - we'd class it as a second-world country. Lots of people smoke, even the younger ones.

Drivers were generally pretty wild. At first it was a bit of a shock when cars would overtake others forcing everyone to move over. It was common for 3 or 4 cars to end up across a 2-lane road when overtaking but we got used to it and John soon relished the challenge. Look out when he starts driving again in Oz! I just hope he doesn't do it while talking on the phone and smoking at the same time like they do!

Whenever people would ask where we're from and we answered "Australia" they would say "Ooohhhh, so far"! They don't meet many Aussies here. People were generally keen to chat. They were very pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia and very proud of their own country.

The food was great - it's probably one of the healthiest cuisines we've encountered. Vegies are often fresh out of the garden and fruits and nuts grow on trees everywhere. Strangely, we didn't see many birds so they don't have to protect fruit with nets. We weren't a fan of their orange, organic wines - they were way too funky for us. John liked their chacha (a grappa-like spirit) though.

If our visit has inspired you to visit Georgia, our advice is to do it soon! So many things are changing. New roads are opening up mountainous areas that were difficult to travel to before. We've seen towns that have sprouted up from small villages in only the last decade. As much as we want it to remain as it is, we can't blame people for wanting supermarkets, public transport and mobile phone towers.

What a stunningly beautiful and interesting country.

Catch you later.

Heather and John

Ushguli - Roads, Mountains, Towers and Fame.

Our next destination was a smaller town in the Svaneti region - Ushguli. Yes, that's the place the film, Dede, was located in (see our previous post). Part of the attraction here was the drive - a mountainous road only partly paved. John loves these driving challenges so we set off.

We hadn't gone far before saw a sign pointing to the village of Adishi. When we saw the polyphonic singing group in Mestia, they mentioned having just come from a fantastically beautiful village and it sounded like he said Adishi. It wasn't too far to Adishi so we took the turn.

As usual, we had to dodge cows on the road.

I love the variation in the wildflowers in different areas.

We don't know if Adishi was the place we had heard about, however it was on a major hiking trail so there were a few simple cafes and guest houses here. It was very authentic, very ramshackle and totally atmospheric.

I don't know how much longer some of these old towers will last.

Looking through the bell tower at the church. Each church in this area has a bell tower beside it.

Many old houses had slate rooves but some were made from shingles.

Sleds are used here in winter but we also saw some used now. They adapted them by putting wheels on the back. They're pulled by horses.

We continued our road trip and arrived at Ushguli unscathed despite the damaged and washed away roads at times. This is an eroded concrete road viewed from the side as we approached it around a bend. 

Keep left, John!

It was a great trip!

We found our hotel and were shown to our room. Oh no! Our bed had what I call tablecloth sheets - a weird seersucker material that's terrible to sleep on and far more suited to being used as tablecloths than sheets. On closer inspection I found that not only were the sheets too small to tuck under the mattress (a common thing in Georgia and one of my pet hates) but they were so small that they barely covered the top of the mattress. The bathroom was tiny - about 1.5 metres square. To fit in a shower they simply added a European shower head beside the toilet. 

What really drove us crazy though was the fact that the bed creaked and groaned every time we made the slightest move on it - and even when we just walked near it! We kept getting woken multiple times a night just because we rolled over. As I lay there in the dark one night I could hear the people in the rooms on either side of us having the same problem.

As much as we didn't like the room, the views from the hotel and from our room were spectacular - we looked straight at Shkhara Mountain. Stunning! 

We had a lot of fun in Ushguli. We wandered around the ancient cluster of villages. It was like walking through history.

As usual, we shared the paths with all sorts of farm animals. Very few animals seem to be fenced in.

Again, we saw a sled. It would get really snowy here in winter.

The lady at our hotel had told us that they had been very busy as there was a festival on that weekend. We saw a crowd gathered at the local church and checked it out. From what we learned, families meet at the church and there are endless hours of toasts to all sorts of things. It seemed weird to see everyone drinking in the church grounds but we all have different cultural beliefs. We heard later that a cow was slaughtered and the meat was divided up between the families. A week or so later, as we drove through another village, we again saw a crowd in the church grounds and a sheep was being cut up on site.

We got chatting to some tourists one day as we were wandering around. The guy in his 20's was Russian and he had participated in a demonstration against Putin and was jailed for 5 days. That was enough for him. As soon as he could, he left the country. He made his way to Georgia where he now lives and works. He seemed quite proud to have been jailed but was keen to not have it happen again.

We found another house museum which was very similar to the last one. You can see the 'beds' on top of the animal stalls better here.

At one stage we walked past a building and some kids called out hello to us from the balcony above us. While we talking to them in broken English, we noticed the name of the building - Mose Guest House and a picture of the boy from the Dede movie, whose name was Mose. 

As we were talking to the boys we noticed that one of them looked a lot like Mose from the movie. I was trying to calculate if this could be the boy - he looked about 4 in the movie which would make him about 9 now. It turned out we were right! Once we realised, we didn't talk to him about it as it must be hard for him to hang out with his mates and be the 'star' so to speak. Mose's the one on the left with the blue t-shirt.

After that we saw Mose quite a lot as he was one of the key people who rode a horse around the town a lot. He wasn't hard to see as he wore that same blue t-shirt every day. Horses are a common way to get around here. Again, the horses are in really good condition. They are left to roam free then brought in when needed, which is mostly when they're rented out for tourists to ride. Foals learn the ropes early as they simply follow mum on the rides. As the foals get older they don't always follow though. One night we were sitting at an outside bar and heard a horse neigh far on our left. A foal near our right called back. They neighed to and fro until mum came cantering up the road to find her foal at the end of a day's work taking tourists out. We thought it was so sweet until she fed the foal for about two seconds then raced over to a nearby stallion to get served! She had a big day......

It was quite interesting to see horses used as everyday transport around the town. People would ride their horses to the shop at our hotel to buy things and people like Mose and his mates would tear up and down the roads seeing who can go the fastest. None of the people here were stylish riders by any stretch of the imagination but the horses were willing and honest.

The main walk here is to the bottom of a glacier and this was our aim. We set off early and cheated by driving the first leg along the flat valley. The advantage of this is that we got to the tongue of the glacier first and had it all to ourselves. The dogs around here are enormous but just as super-friendly as everywhere else in Georgia. This one greeted me so enthusiastically that I had trouble standing upright! Some of these dogs have heads the size of bears. They really are huge.

The walk up the valley was beautiful.

The tongue of the glacier was brownish. A river ran out of the bottom of it but the water was that grey colour and was silty.

John somehow convinced me that we should climb around the side of the glacier. It was really rocky and if the rocks slipped we could have been sent over the edge of the glacier. I had visions of our kids being orphaned but we made it safely.

On the way back down the valley, surrounded by wildflowers.

As we came down, others started to come up the valley and soon they were arriving in droves. About 30 people rode up in a group on local horses. There must be a lot of coordination between locals because I'm sure that nobody owns 30 horses on their own.

One afternoon a big storm came through. Thunder boomed overhead and the rain bucketed down! It was amazing! A few hours later, the skies were clear again.

We met a young German couple who were travelling in a campervan for 12 months. They camped in a spectacular spot with great views of the mountains. Their English was wonderful and we had a fun night with them at an outdoor bar.

We did all this with very little sleep because just after we went to bed the night before at about 10.30pm a group of motorbike riders turned up. They needed to be fed and guess where the restaurant was - yep, it was under our room. This is after we specifically asked for a quiet room. It was the final straw really. We had booked the room for 4 nights but we abandoned any thought of staying that long. It was too late to leave the town after our walk though so we stayed the second night begrudgingly. The owner was shocked that we wanted to leave early but still charged us for the full 4 nights. 

We spent our last afternoon making last minute changes to our plans as we suddenly had two extra days to spend somewhere. One thing we wanted to do was to head out of Ushguli and drive over the Zagar Pass. This road was supposed to be even more challenging than the road we drove in on.

We had another crap sleep then woke before dawn and decided to leave. I was a bit hesitant to tackle this road without light but it began to lighten not long after we started and it turned into another spectacular drive. We wound our way down and down, past more stunning mountains and beautiful wildflowers. It was another really special drive!

Thanks for joining us on our journey!

Heather and John