Here is another unpublished post I found while rummaging through some of the old drafts on my blog. I wrote it while I was teaching English in Georgia, and probably intended to publish it after I’d taken some pictures, but never got around to it.
I lived in Kutaisi, but made it out to Tbilis about two or three times per month. Over the course of my time there, I came to know this road very well. It took about three and a half hours to travel from Didube Station in Tbilisi to Tchavtchavadze Station in Kutaisi, with a short rest stop in Surami (where they make delicious nazuki bread!). This post covers the first half of the journey, just before stopping in Surami.
Originally, I was going to hunt down some pictures from the internet to fill in the descriptions here, but nothing I found really fit my memories of the experience. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so hopefully this 800 word blog post is enough to paint a picture in your mind. Just for fun, I’ve added a timelapse video of various places in Georgia, many of which I visited and remember fondly.
Kargi majos!
It starts in Tbilisi, the only truly modern city in a country of villages, some larger and more ancient than others. On the dusty, cracked pavement of Didube station, the sun beats down hard on the crowds milling about the dozens of mini-markets, bakeries, apothekas, and lottery dispensers. The smell of cigarettes mingles with the dust and car exhaust, punctuated only occassionally by the delicious smell of freshly cooked shaurma.
Marshrutkas and taxis fill almost every available space, their drivers shouting out the end destinations loudly and impatiently, eager to get back on the road. Large white signs with red and blue letters proclaim in bold Georgian script the names of the major towns and cities: Qazbegi, Poti, Batumi, Zestaponi, and Kutaisi.
The fastest and most popular means of transport across Georgia is the marshrutka, a van-sized microbus with a high roof and twenty some-odd seats crammed as close together as the interior will allow. Luggage typically goes in back, though there’s often less than half a meter’s clearance between the rear doors and the back four seats. Large blue and white oval lights run down the center of the ceiling, with matching blue seat covers and window curtains. Icons of the Orthodox saints can be found at the front, just above the driver holding his cigarette beside the half-opened window.
Once every seat has been filled, some with mothers holding their eight and nine year-old children on their tightly cramped knees, the marshrutka pulls out of the station and out into the city. Old Russian clunkers mingle with European sedans and Japanese station wagons, while closer to the highway, large eighteen wheelers pull red and blue trailers for Turkish freight companies. Old Soviet apartments and giant oaks and poplars provide ample shade, while children play between the white-painted tree trunks in parks along the median.
As the marshrutka pulls onto the main highway, the city gives way to steep, green hills covered in verdant forest. Every other one seems to be capped with an old stone monastery, and the more devout travelers make the sign of the cross as the marshrutka drives by. The sun’s brilliant rays shine through the clouds, illuminating villages in the distance, their medieval churches and cathedrals standing above the silver rooftops like shepherds watching over their flocks.
In a little less than an hour, the marshrutka passes through the first major tunnel and into the heart of Shida Kartli. The hills give way to a wide plain. Except for a few villages peppered here and there, the landscape is mostly free of large settlements. The magestic Greater Caucasus mountains line the horizon to the north, their white-capped peaks blending in with the clouds. To the south, the Lesser Cacausus range looms much closer, as if jealous of its older brother and eager to prove itself superior.
Before coming to Gori, the road several refugee villages from the 2008 South Ossetian conflict. Hundreds of identical red-roofed huts line the dirt roads like concrete tents, their perfect rows unbroken except for a school and a police station in the very center. The contested territory lies just over the nearby hill, perhaps less than an hour away.
If you keep an eye out, you can catch a glimpse of the statue of Stalin as the road passes Gori. Perhaps the most famous Georgian from the modern era, Stalin grew up here as Iosebi Dugashvili. Some of the locals still offer toasts to his name. The more prominent landmark, however, is the road construction for a giant highway causeway that crosses a wide brook and passes into the second major tunnel of the journey. A bumpy two-lane road leads past the construction and on to the tunnel.
The Lesser Caucasus quickly sweep up from the south, transforming the plain into rolling foothills. A gentle spring rain falls over the land, a sign of storms on the other side of the mountains.
