Beautiful Ramshackleness....

On the ride from Sarp, the Turkey/Georgia frontier, to Batumi, the first major city in Georgia, the word 'Ramshackle' kept springing to mind. I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to mean - I've often heard it in reference to a football team, i.e. "Despite their ramshackle defence, Cyprus still managed to stuff Ireland 5-2". Surveying the Georgian countryside from the marshrutka window, it struck me that many of the buildings appeared less steady than the Cyprus defence. 'Ramshackle' for me meant 'thrown together before moving on to the better stuff', or 'should have been abandoned years ago, but still very much in use.' I had underestimated the Soviet influence on this country, thinking it would be a smooth transition between two neighbouring countries with similar European ambitions. As it was, arriving in Batumi with no clue of the alphabet (didn't know they had their own), surrounded by people who wouldn't have looked out of place in the opening scenes of Borat, and viewing obese, tipsy Georgians swilling beers on the street (actually, they'd been swilling them on the marshrutka), came as a bit of a shock after neat, civilised Turkey. The pulse was racing and the head swimming as I abandoned my (useless) Lonely Planet map, stuck my head into a taxi and said "Hotel?" Naturally, the guy simply pointed to a big green sign behind me with the only latin script in sight, saying 'Hotel 50m'.

Of all the people I've come across, the Georgians love it when you attempt a few words in the local tongue. At times when approached, they give that Sovet style reception we've all heard about, staring through you without a smile. A few words of Georgian changes this in a flash. Having found a room for the night, I sat down to memorize as much useful Georgian as I could, and on setting out to explore the city, noticed the differnece instantly. That's not to say it made Batumi any more attractive - the place is ridiculously touted by the Lonely Planet - 'Come for the party atmosphere!'; 'The charming, fun-loving jewel of the Back Sea'. From what I saw, the party atmsphere amounted to knocking back vodka in the bookies while losing money on the football, while the Black Sea coast was more a fading grey, but very dull (see the picture). So after one night, I set off for a proper destination, a place I'd been dreaming of for 4 years.

It took 10 hours to reach Svaneti from Batumi, and it was pitch dark when the marshrutka pulled up outside a random house. An elderly woman sat in the front, who had been rambling on to me in Georgian on and off for the whole journey, jumped out and motioned for me - 'You, sleep here!'. With no idea of the surrounding landscape, I entered the house to be greeted by a smiling family - father swaying from side to side, with eyes that said 'look at me, I'm completely pished...'; mother in the dining room - where a picture of Stalin sat beside Jesus on the book shelves - setting dinner on the table already; and three English speaking children (2 girls, 1 boy) firing various questions at me. Dinner was beautiful, the start of a love affair with Georgian cuisine, which of course, I was unable to come anywhere close to finishing. My new father, George, began lining up the shots, and four vodka toasts later I was singing 'Purple Haze' on the Kareoke machine, following it up with Chuck Berry's 'You Never Can Tell', which had them all on the dance-floor going at it Pulp Fiction style.

In the course of the evening, I came to understand that there was no running water in the house - the pipe had broken two weeks earlier. This meant that the toilet was located in a shed out the back, and was basically a hole in some floorboards perched high over a deep ditch. I stumbled out, into the shed, and in the total darkness, stepped straight through the hole. My left leg was left dangling about 2 inches above a pile of human shit, but I managed to save myself by throwing my left arm out and grabbing the 'rim'. I pulled myself up, left arm now badly hurt, and strolled back into the house. We finished off with a few glasses of wine, and I was off to bed, having nightmares of being trapped in a ditch and having to alert the wole family what had happened, not knowing what awaited me the next morning.....

Mestia, the town where I was, has to be one of the most beautifully situated towns on the planet. In 5 days there, I took hundreds of photos, but none of them really captured it properly (what you see is a selection of the best). I woke the next morning, opened the curtains, and there was the valley in front of me - two snow-capped peaks framing a green valley backed by forest. The town itself was dotted with defensive watch towers. These were built between the 9th and 13th centuries, and are testament to Georgia's geographical position at a crossroads of great powers. Over the centuries, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Persians and Russians all held the Georgian heartland south of the Caucasus. At times of invasion, important religious relics would be sent up to places like Svaneti for safety. The remoteness of the area, coupled with the towers, made the effort of successfully conquering the highlanders too much to bear, and the Svans, along with the other mountain people, were generally left alone until the early 19th century, when the Russians finally consolidated their power.

I quickly settled into a routine of walking the spectacular hills by day, returning for food and rest in the afternoon, and watching football with George at night. George had a certain way of speaking English, so that he said 'is' between each word, leading to sentences like this: "I is watching is football Holland is Russia is European Champion is chips..." I learned soon that there were two George's - happy, drunk, fun George, and sober, moody, and serious George. On the second night, having downed far more vodka than is good for any man, George almost had a heart attack beside me on the couch. Clutching his left arm, repeating 'too much drinking I is...', the ambulance was called, and George was told he needed to stop the binging. For the remaining nights, George was sober and frustrated. One day I returned from the bar after having a few drinks with some Israelis I had met, and I could tell he wasn't happy. Weirdly enough, I felt a bit guilty.

Staying with families is a strange experience. The food is great, and if you get a good family, like I did, it can be very positive. However, you don't feel free to come and go as you please, as you would in a hotel. Whenever I went out, I felt I had to give them a reason. A lot of the time, the kids would sit in watching bottom of the barrell European and American pop videos, and I felt obliged to join them. However, the awkwardness would never last, as this was a happy family, and I was happy to be there.

I did a day trip to a beautiful village called Mazeri, with Mt. Ushba looking down over it not too far away, but my main goal was to get to Ushguli - if Georgia is indeed in Europe, then it's almost certain that this is the highest village in the continent. A jeep ride cost around 70 Euro up there, too much for me, so I spent a few days looking for other tourists to share the cost. At first, it seemed that I'd be able to hitch a lift with the local school - one of my new sisters was going on a trip with her class, and said I'd be able to tag along. The day before though, she told me that the trip was cancelled - one of her class-mates fathers had been shot dead by the police. I met an American woman travelling on a tour who told me I could jump in her jeep. We arranged to meet the next day. She never showed, and the next morning she drove right past me in the square on her way to Ushguli. I kept trying, but was ready to give up and just walk it when I met a Czech couple who had driven their Land Rover from Prague. The next day, I was in Ushguli.

It's a spectacular place, not beautiful like Mestia, but with an atmosphere all of its own. Although the weather was far from perfect, this added to the appeal - the town was miserable, and it seemed appropriate. Life here has traditionally been tough, and will remain so. It's not a mountain paradise - the surrounding hills are treeless and windswept, the buildings, including the watch towers, are crumbling, pigs roam the muddy streets, and people retreat indoors, leaving the villages (of which there are four) like ghost towns. It gives a good idea of what life in medieval times might have been like (if you can ignore the power lines and occassional satelite dish). Eventually though, the clouds did clear, to reveal Mt. Shkhara, the highest mountain in Georgia, and 3rd highest in the Cuacasus (and Europe). It stood behind an old church, looking down on the brightening town. In the good weather, I walked for 3 hours through the valley to the glacier running down its side. The next day, I managed to hitch a lift with a tour group of seven Germans, and so, returned to Mestia for free.

I returned to my family for one last night, and it was like old times - George was hammered again, and we played a bit of volleyball before hitting the Kareoke machine. The family made a moving final toast for me, and the 12 year-old son cried because I was off the next morning. I recipricated as best I could, toasting to Ireland, Georgia, our families, and my future visit.

I'm now in Armenia, waiting for the snow to clear in the mountains further east in Georgia next month. Despite Yerevan having a slight village atmosphere, with old women in tightly wrapped head-scarves selling fruit and veg on street corners, and being seemingly like any other east Europerean capital, it seems positively ramshackle after peaceful, beautiful Svaneti.

(I've added a couple of panoramas to previous blogs, plus there's a caption competetion this time for one of the photos below).

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