Hiking in Kazbegi

We got up at a fairly reasonable time for our first full day in Kazbegi and had some delicious breakfast at our guest-house. Nazi's home cooking was awesome! We had really fluffy omelettes and there was lots of bread and cheese available. We also got to try Nazi's famous home-made apple jam which was very tasty. I put sugar on my omelette as I thought it tasted like eggy bread and I always put sugar on that. Everyone thought I was crazy but then what's new? We made some big sandwiches to take hiking with us for lunch and then emerged out into the fresh mountain air. 

It was cloudy but still quite sunny when we left the homestay to climb up the steep slope to the Gergeti Sameba (Trinity) Church. We hoped to also hike along the ridge line to the glacier beyond the church but, inevitably, the weather soon changed for the worse. Our short walk around the village the previous day had shown us how unfit we were (especially at that altitude where the air felt so thin) so we decided to take it easy on ourselves and take the longer but more gradual path up to the church. We walked through some woods past an interesting little cemetery with unusual headstones  that were life sized carved sculptures of the departed's head. By the time we got to the cemetery it had started raining. 

Our intended destination for the day, the Gergeti Sameba church, perched on top of the mountains above Kazbegi.

Along the Georgian Military Highway to Kazbegi

Every Georgian we'd met so far on our travels had told us that we had to visit Kazbegi because it was the "most beautiful place in Georgia" and had very "healthy air". The original name for this tiny town was Stepantsminda but it was renamed Kazbegi in 1925 during Soviet rule after the famous Georgian writer Alexander Kazbegi who was born there. In 2006, the town officially reverted to its original name but pretty much everybody we met still referred to it as Kazbegi including the marshrutka drivers who drove visitors up there. 

Kazbegi is a small town up in the mountains of northern Georgia near the border with Russia. It's located about 1700m above sea level in the Greater Caucasus mountains and is very small with a population of less than 2000. It's scenic location makes it a popular destination for hikers and mountaineering enthusiasts and I'd already seen plenty of beautiful photos of the place long before I even arrived in Georgia so I was very excited about going there armed with my camera. 

Kazbegi town nestled among the Caucasus mountains with its most famous landmark the Gergeti Trinity Church perched on the ridge above it.

Day trip to Davit Gareja

We got up quite early on our first day back in Georgia after our brief visit to Armenia to go to Davit Gareja, a Georgian Orthodox cave monastery complex near the border with Azerbaijan. The complex is made up of lots of different monastery sites that included monk cells, churches, chapels and other monastic living quarters all cut out of the rock face of Mount Gareja. It is located in the Khaketi region of Georgia, famous for its vineyards and lies about 60-70 km south-east of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital and right on the border with Azerbaijan. In fact, some parts of the monastery are now in Azerbaijan which has led to some border disputes between the two countries. It was founded in the 6th century BC and was once an important centre for religious study and the arts in Georgia but it fell into decline over the centuries as repeated invasions and raids by the Mongol and Persian armies took their toll. More recently, the Soviet army turned Davit Gareja into an artillery training ground and destroyed several historic churches in the process. 

Davit Gareja marked on the map of the Caucasus regions. Its spelt David Gareji here. The spelling of Georgian place names varied a lot due to problems transliterating from the Georgian alphabet to the Latin one. 

Return to Tbilisi: Accidents, World Cup football and Vake Park

We woke up at a reasonable time for once in our hostel in Yerevan, Armenia and had decided to take a marshrutka to go back to Tbilisi. We'd caught an overnight train to get to Yerevan from Tbilisi but the journey had been too short to really get a decent night's sleep and the border crossing had been annoying so we wanted to go for the cheaper daytime option of the marshrutka bus. The only thing that had been putting us off was the awful driving of people in Armenia and Georgia which made every road journey into a white knuckle ride. The marshrutka was very cheap though, only 6500 drahms per person which is about £10 or $16 each. It was faster than the train too as it took a much more direct route.

The train route from Tbilisi to Yerevan takes a long meandering route around most of the circumference of Armenia before it arrives o the capital city.

First impressions of Yerevan

We arrived in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, early in the morning after a tiring overnight train journey from Tbilisi, Georgia. Our first impressions of the city were that it was very hot, very Soviet and just as confusing to arrive in as its Georgian counterpart. Using our (extremely) rudimentary Russian we asked an old guy in the train station where the metro was and went to try to catch a train to the centre. It was very confusing in the metro station as nearly all the signs were in Armenian script which neither of us understand. Luckily, there were a few signs in Russian too which I can read so we caught a train going in the right direction. There wasn't a word of English anywhere so if you didn't know at least a little Russian you'd be in trouble. I knew my degree in Russian history and culture would be useful one day!

The platform at Yerevan statıon early in the morning.

Armenia - By train to Yerevan

We had train tickets booked for an overnight sleeper train from Tbilisi to Yerevan in Armenia. We woke up quite early (for us) and spent the day exploring some more if Tbilisi's sights. We started with the rather new looking Russian Orthodox church that's located in the next street down from our hostel. There was a service going on when we arrived but we were still allowed in. The inside of the church was ornate as with most Orthodox churches, with lots of gold encrusted icons and paintings of saints. There was some pretty singing going on but we couldn't see the singers. Not sure if it was a cunningly hidden speaker system or if they were behind some screen to one side. A priest gave us some stale tasting pieces of bread and insisted we ate it. Think that means I've ingested a piece of Christ - gross!

Onion shaped dome of the Russian Orthodox church that seems to be currently under construction just like most of Tbilisi.

Mtskheta - Georgia's old capital

On our third full day in Georgia we decided to head out to Mtskheta, one of the oldest cities in the country and the spiritual heart of Georgia with its ancient churches. It's 20km from Tbilisi and just a short bus ride away, perfect for a day trip. We walked to the main train station in Tbilisi called Voksal and bought our tickets for the overnight train to Yerevan in Armenia for the following day. Then we caught the metro to Didube bus station and found the marshrutka to Mtskheta. Marshrutkas are small minibuses that ply the roads of Georgia (and Armenia) linking cities together and driven by guys who get paid by the number of passengers they pick up, which means they usually wait until they fill up which can be inconvenient. They are usually driven very quickly and are very cheap. We paid 1 lari (about 50p or less) to get to Mtskheta and it took about 30 minutes.

Our first stop in Mtskheta was at the Samtavro church just up from the bus stop. This church was built in the 1130's and now forms part of a nunnery. The nunnery was the site of Georgia's first church. Then we walked to the town centre where we visited Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, a compound surrounded by a large crenelated wall.

Smaller older building in the grounds of the Samtavro church.

Tbilisi Day 2: Narikala Fortress and the Quest for the Botanical Gardens

Feeling rather worse for wear after the previous late night drinking, we planned to have a lazy, easy day of wandering around Tbilisi's Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, they proved unexpectedly elusive.

After our usual Georgian breakfast of khachapuri (cheesy bread) we made caught the subway to Liberty Square and walked down to the dry bridge market, the place to buy all kinds of random things including Soviet memorabilia, old musical instruments, jewelry and stuffed animals. I bought a replacement my Russian hat after the original badge had been tragically lost at a music festival a few years ago.

Jewelry and handmade rugs for sale at Tbilisi's dry bridge market.

Tbilisi Day 1: Churches, chacha and crumbling grandeur

So we spent our first day in Georgia exploring Tbilisi's many churches, eating lots of cheesy bread, (khachapuri) and getting acquainted with the local firewater called "chacha". We started with some khachapuri for breakfast before heading off on foot across the city towards Liberty Square for a free walking tour. 


We noticed several interesting things about Tbilisi just on that first lazy stroll to the centre. One of the first things was that, despite Tbilisi's relatively small size (the population is only about 1 million people), the city seemed very big on art. There was interesting stencilled graffiti everywhere we looked. The other things we noticed were that there seemed to be building works going on all over the place, there were lots of people begging (mainly Romany kids and wizened old Georgians) and there were churches of varying sizes everywhere you looked. 

One of the many pieces of stencilled graffiti we saw all over Tbilisi. 

Arrival in Tbilisi - First impressions of Georgia

We left out hostel in Istanbul on a hot, sticky Friday morning with all our bags and headed for the airport for our flight to Georgia. The flight was a little delayed though we were never told why. Turkish airlines were being as useless as ever. They'd been rude and superior on the way to Istanbul but this time they were incompetent too. On the plane one of the air hostesses kept fiddling around in an overhead compartment and ended up dropping some spare seatbelts on a passengers head! Luckily the pilots weren't as careless and managed to go land us safely at Tbilisi airport in Georgia despite a fair bit of turbulence.


Rowan almost didn't make it into the country. The woman at passport control spent a long time staring suspiciously at his passport photo then back at him. After more than five minutes she got a friend to come and have a look, there was some serious debate then they finally let him pass. Maybe I shouldn't have encouraged him to try and grow that little beard - makes him look like a vagrant!

Would you let this man into YOUR country? I didn't think so!