Hotel: Hotel Lile (Tbilisi, Georgia) $40 After a decent breakfast, a taxi driver arrived and we set off for Vardzia, the cave city. The landscape soon changed from rolling meadows to more mountainous terrain. The driver had agreed to take us to Vardzia and Akhaltsikhe (~50 miles) for $50. The road was in pretty bad shape for most of the trip, and our driver was flying along. Vardzia is a cave city located about 15 miles off the Akhalkalaki to Akhaltsikhe road, the royal city in the late 1100's consisted of over 700 caves carved into the cliffsides, supporting a population [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: EuroStar Hotel (Akhalkalaki, Georgia) $40 This morning we planned on visiting the town of Echmiadzin, the Armenian Vatican, home to the Armenian Orthodox church. We planned to take a minibus there, and taxi back. The minibus depot was about 10 blocks away and so we climbed into a taxi for the short ride. Once we were at the depot, the taxi driver started getting animated, I think he wanted us to take the taxi instead of the minibus; it would have been cheaper to take the minibus of course. We finally decided to take the taxi there and back, as [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: Hotel Lile (Tbilisi, Georgia) $40 Woke up this morning to an absolutely clear sky; the view out the window of our hotel was stunning with the Tsminda church high above and the snowcapped peak of Mt. Kazbek behind it. We hoped to catch one of the early marshrutkas to Tbilisi around 8 AM; we were lucky to catch one that actually left 20 minutes early. The fare was 8 GEL ($4.50) for the 4 hr ride back to Tbilisi. Originally, we had been planning on going all the way through to Armenia today, but decided to spend an extra afternoon [View Full Entry]

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Tiblisi [View Full Entry]

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It only cost $2 to get from the Armenian border to the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Much like Yerevan, Tbilisi is seriously lacking in cheap hotels - that I could find anyway, so I ended up in a strange place that was a small room above a restaurant for a staggering $40. thankfully it was heated and had hot water and lots of space for the rabbit. As I had no idea about Georgia, no maps or no guide book I just set out wandering in the city and hoped that I would come across some cool stuff. I found a river [View Full Entry]

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Efter Svaneti’s øde bjerge var det fedt at komme tilbage til storbyens cafeer, restauranter, biografer og internetcafeer igen. Tbilisi er Georgiens hovedstad (stammer fra ”tbili”, det georgiske ord for ”varm”, for der er masser af varme kilder i undergrunden), og på trods af, at den er blevet smadret og bygget op igen mange gange over de sidste par tusinde år, er det stadig et smukt og spændende sted. Mtkvari floden løber lige midt gennem byen og deler synagoger fra armeniske og katolske kirker, sunnimuslimske moskeer og georgiske ortodokse kirker. Midt i det hele er den gamle bydel med lave bygninger, smalle [View Full Entry]

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Vi var i Georgien i en måned, og det var en helt speciel oplevelse. Jeg kan ikke påstå det var kærlighed ved første blik - mere som et af den slags forhold der starter med en uforklarlig fascination og måske en smule afsky, som udvikler sig til forståelse og venskab, og som ender med at trænge dybt ind i sjælen, uden du helt er klar over hvordan det er sket. Vi fik lidt af et kulturchok da vi krydsede grænsen til Georgien fra Tyrkiet. Grænsen har været helt lukket i omkring 70 år, under det sovjetiske styre, som Georgien først blev [View Full Entry]

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After the wonders of Svaneti there was only one place in Georgia that could really capture my imagination: Tusheti. With promises of more beautiful mountain scenery and unique traditions, completely isolated in north-eastern Georgia bordering Dagestan and Chechnya, Tusheti was an exciting if not easy place to visit.. Cut off from the rest of Georgia for 9 months a year when helicopters (in emergencies) are their only means of reaching this place - it is the most challenging and difficult to reach of Georgian destinations. Our experiences in Svaneti had convinced Robert a Dutch tour group leader to join us on [View Full Entry]

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In the 1890’s a pipeline terminus, railway and refinery were built by the Rothschild family to carry Caspian Sea Oil from Baku to the Black Sea Port of Batumi. In 1902 a Georgian Revolutionary called Joseph Stalin learnt his trade here organising a strike against the Rothschild refinery for which he was sent to Siberia. In 1917 Batumi had more millionaires than Paris or London. When the revolutionaries finally prevailed the capitalists were kicked out, and during Soviet times Batumi became a popular holiday spot on the sub-tropical Black Sea coast. When Georgia finally achieved independence after the fall of the [View Full Entry]

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Links to travel journals and pictures from: * 2003 Moscow, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Sochi * 2004 Georgia, Svaneti, Armenia [View Full Entry]

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