It was then dinner time. Our general eating plan is to eat breakfast in the room and then kind of snack through the day, and eat a purchased meal for supper. I try to eat as much local cuisine as I can when we travel. Georgians love their cheese and butter. We had a lot of good food in Georgia. We have had khachapuri, which is kind of like a cheese pizza, but the bread is not particularly crusty and it is entirely filled with cheese. These can have other fillings such as meat or mushrooms, but they always have lots of cheese. I had tashmijabi, which was kind of like mashed potatoes infused with enough cheese to make the whole thing very stringy. Kudbari was also very good, and kind of similar to khachapuri but different in that it has meat in it, usually lamb. Sometimes it is filled with mushrooms.

Ushguli is a complex of four villages which remained off-road and isolated until only about five years ago. Even now, most visitors arrive after a four day hike. You can either carry your own tent, or stay each night in guest houses along the way. Andrew would have loved to hike this trail through the Caucasus high country, but it would have been a four day complaint trek with Caleb. Now that you can reach the villages by road, I decided to take a marshrutka up, spend the night at one of the guest houses, then come back to Mestia the following day. Many people take a marshrutka day trip to Ushguli, but that only leaves you a couple of hours to enjoy the scenery, hike around, and explore the villages.

Although the distance is only 46km, it takes an hour and a half for the marshrutka to get you there. It is a picturesque drive. We saw a medieval chapel high on a mountain, and some svan towers here and there. The biggest collection of svan towers was in the group of four villages, which run only about 2 kilometers from the first to the fourth. Ushguli is in the peculiar state of being ripped from medieval times straight into the 21^st century. The high mountain setting and the medieval stone buildings and svan towers are like nothing I have ever seen from a distance. As you get closer, it becomes apparent that every building that is not falling down has been converted to a guest house. Cows still walk the unpaved streets. At the same time, neon signs advertise rooms with free WiFi. The arrival of the road in the last few years has rapidly accelerated Ushguli’s jump toward modernity. It would be interesting to see what the place looks like in ten more years. I suspect there will be high rises and commercial resorts.

Our guest house was extremely rustic. It was clean, but the walls were made of unpainted particle board. The deck and upper floor were sturdily put together with raw 2x12s. Our facility was in the furthest, least developed village. We did not have climate controls or WiFi, which would have seemed out of place in Ushguli anyhow. Our host spoke no English. She was kind and provided us a delicious meal with huge portions for both supper and breakfast. It seemed from the advertisement as if meals were included in the price of the room. This turned out to be too good to be true. The room was only 55 lari (about $20), but the meals turned out to be another 80 lari! Those turned out to be some of the most expensive meals we ate the entire time we were in Georgia. Caveat emptor! In Georgia, you had better know what is included before you consume it, and negotiate the prices beforehand. Fortunately, this was not financially ruinous by American standards.

Caleb and I walked among the Svan towers in all four villages. We climbed to Queen Tamar’s winter residence. Sadly all that remains of this is a single tower, as the Soviets dismantled the rest of the buildings to use the rocks to fence farm plots. We walked to medieval churches and monasteries. We sat on a hill chatting with the trekkers as we gazed at Shkhara, the highest mountain in Georgia high upon the Georgia-Russia frontier. We sat in awe of the glaciers others had recently hiked. It was a truly amazing experience, all the more for me as I had not even known of Svaneti when we left North America.

I bought the tickets for the next few weeks of the trip the day before we went to Ushguli. For reasons I will explain in the Azerbaijan article, you cannot cross the Georgia-Azerbaijan land border. You must fly into Baku. The only way you can do this is aboard Azerbaijan Airlines. They had no flights before the 15^th, so I decided to stay a couple more days in Mestia, then allot two days to explore Tbilisi before catching our flight to Baku. I bought all of our airline tickets up to India, so it was nice to have that planned more firmly.

We took it easy for the next couple of days in Mestia. We talked with other travelers. We celebrated “football” wins in Euro Cup 2024 with them. We made a successful trip up the ski lift (although they did make us pay again). I ran every morning. I edited pictures and text for the website, and farmed a little. Caleb made some Russian friends and stayed up late. It was relaxing and the weather was cool.

We headed down to the Tbilisi area on Friday. It was an eight hour ride in a marshrutka. I had been shown a picture of a full size tour bus with air conditioning when I bought my ticket, but the Georgian lady selling the tickets pulled the bait-and-switch on me. This happens very frequently in Georgia, particularly to tourists. I am nearly always asked to pay a higher price. I am always made to sit in the back in favor of a Georgian or Russian. I am frequently ignored by cashiers. They do not sell me items for the marked price. They refuse to give me change if the amount they owe me is small, pretending like they don’t know what I’m asking about. Georgia is a beautiful country. It is also a country full of chiselers. It is an inexpensive place, so when you get ripped off, it still doesn’t cost all that much. It is just tiring. I was glad to move on for that reason, if nothing else. On Friday, I sat in the back of a minibus in a 24” seat for eight hours. I did manage to sit next to a window. I was asked to move, but I pretended not to understand and did not give up my seat. This proved a wise decision as the parsimonious driver opted to turn off the air conditioning for long stretches.

On our first day around Tbilisi, we headed out to the surrounding towns. Gori was Joseph Stalin’s hometown. They have a museum there that casts him in a surprisingly favorable light. There is a small section in the basement that discusses the great purges and political persecutions (Stalin may well have been responsible for as many deaths as Adolph Hitler). This area also mentions Russia’s invasion and occupation of two parts of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. During 2008, Gori was shelled during fighting between the Georgians and Russians. To this day, the Russians occupy South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Most of the museum, however, focuses on Stalin’s life and career. His numerous arrests and escapes are cast in a completely favorable light, as are his exploits in what Russians call the “Great Patriotic War,” (to us this is World War II). He is shown overseeing agriculture unions, and girls doing their school homework. He is shown in several pictures at conferences with Churchill and Roosevelt or Truman, who always look funny in the pictures. They are either in the middle of speaking, or making strange expressions. The photos always make Stalin appear the statesman of the group. The museum has Stalin’s personal luxury train car, and they have moved his childhood home to the premises for display. Outside, there are vendors selling busts of Stalin, commemorative coins, refrigerator magnets with his image, and all sorts of Soviet era nostalgic mementos. Because Caleb presently has an interest in pocket watches, he was extremely interested in the Stalin ones with his face in front of a red hammer and sickle background. I had a gentle conversation about what he wanted to do with the watch, explaining that it might not be something to proudly use as an everyday item, as not everybody would understand that it was really just a gee-whiz thing. It would be like displaying an item with a Hitler image on it. Owning it may not mean you love Stalin, but if you display it publicly, you may give people the wrong idea. I told him to think it over and decide on the way out of the museum. He opted for a Georgian watch with an image of the Bridge of Peace, a national icon of theirs.

We grabbed a Bolt (like Uber) to get from Gori to Mtskheta, an ancient Georgian capital. That is not a misspelling, and even having been there, I am not sure how to pronounce it. There were several ancient churches and a medieval fortress there. Saint Nino apparently came to Georgia in the fourth century – around the time of the Council of Nicea – to spread the gospel to Georgians. The monarchs of that time were converted from paganism, and Georgia became Christian. One very small chapel actually dates from the fourth century. Saint Nino and the fourth century monarchs are buried there. There were some larger sixth century and medieval monasteries and basilicas. Nearly all of these buildings had been destroyed or renovated several times over the years. Soviet occupation was not kind to religious buildings, either. As such, the interiors all have nineteenth century decor or newer. We concentrated on observing the ancient architecture. The main older basilica at Mtskheta has fortified walls around it like a castle. Caleb asked me why a church needed castle walls. The area changed hands several times over the centuries, being contested by Turks and Persians. Some of the best booty would have been in the biggest church. It needed walls.

We spent our last day in Georgia looking at some of the city’s highlights. Once Caleb was up, we went to the Anchiskhati Basilica. There were no Churches of Christ in the entire country of Georgia, so we decided to visit an Orthodox service in an ancient church. Despite the “basilica” name, Anchiskhati is a fairly small sixth century Orthodox church. The architecture was beautiful. The building was divided into three main areas in a classical style. It is a different building shape from later Gothic structures, proving it is much older. The Soviets had turned the place into a fabric museum, and none of the ancient artwork survived. Pieces have been brought in that do not clash with the ancient dark aura of the church. It is dark inside. This highlights the candles and the gilded pieces of the two dimensional Eastern style gilded images, which seem to shine and really jump out.

The service was all in Georgian, of course. It was very different from what we are used to. There was one aspect of the service I could really relate to. They used polyphonic all Acapella music. It was more choral than Stamps-Baxter, but it was spectacular, and the acoustics of the building made the sound eyewateringly moving even without knowing any lyrics. In a way you could feel what the song was about – its purpose in the worship. There was a lot of self-crossing, as in Catholicism. You had to stand the entire time. A couple of helpers walked around at a certain time offering eucharistic emblems to those who wanted them. I was not sure if the Eastern Orthodox church practiced closed-communion or not, so I elected not to participate so as not to offend anyone since I was a visitor in their service. It was over in less than an hour, and I have a feeling we saw about one and a half cycles. I believe they run multiple services throughout the morning as Catholics do in some places.

It was an enjoyable experience, not just for the beauty of the building, but also to see how others worship. It would not have been where I worshiped had there been another choice, and I’m not certain how to describe what I did there. I was a spectator in some ways, though I didn’t just “come and go” as many tourists did. I didn’t check my phone, or have it go off during the service as happened to several while I was there. I certainly wasn’t a full participant in their worship, but I prayed. I felt as many medieval Christians must have, standing in a service I didn’t understand. One facet of the service felt particularly sad to me. Way up at the front of the sanctuary, there was an altar area. A massive barrier with a keyhole shaped entry covered by a cloth shroud which separated the worshiping masses from the priests, the altar, and the “holy place.” At a climactic point in the beautiful vocal harmony, the priest opened the keyhole and you could see what was going on up there. Toward the end of the service, he blessed the audience and ceremonially closed the door, once again leaving the masses separated from the holy. I said a prayer of thanks for the accessible, understandable nature of the worship we participate in on a regular basis at home and abroad. Thank God for sending His Son into the world, that we may approach Him and His holiness, without a barrier or gatekeeper.

(Continued)