Later that day, I somehow became the owner of three cucumbers. I was looking for a bus stop in the street, and a random man helped me find it. His name is Mateo (I think?) and he is an Internally Displaced Person from the Abkhazian conflict of the early nineties. He has many grandchildren, and also told me a lot of other things about his family, except I don’t understand much Georgian. At the bus stop, he reached into his bag and insisted that I take the cucumbers with me. It was clearly one of those situations where it would be impolite to refuse. Georgian hospitality is not just a stereotype.
One yellow minibus later, I was at Ortachala bus station and soon after that, I was on a marshrutka headed out of town. Marshrutkas, privately operated minivans that seat about a dozen passengers, are the main form of mass transit from one town to the next in Georgia. Bus stations consist mostly of a chaotic parking lot full of white vans with their destinations written in Georgian on cards in their windshields. At most of them, there is no posted schedule. You have to find out from your hostel or guesthouse when a bus may be leaving for the place you want to go. At the station, eager drivers mob you and try to convince you that you should change plans on the fly and go to their bus’s destination instead.* It’s good to have some basic Georgian literacy and a few key phrases so that you get on the right marshrutka.
I was headed for the Pankisi Valley, via Telavi and Akhmeta. It’s a beautiful trip. First you pass a power dam, then Ujarma Castle with ruined towers spiraling to the sky, then you cross the Gombori Pass, with views of a massive rock topped by another fortress. Finally, you’re in the wine country of Kakheti. Light and shadow play across open pastures, while behind them layer after layer of grey-blue hills culminate in a solid wall of snow-capped mountains. When it’s about to rain, shepherds in waterproof capes lean on their sticks or hunker down in roadside bus shelters. It looks as if you’re inside a Caspar David Friedrich painting.
*If you go from Ortachala to Batumi in the late afternoon, say hi to Gia, and tell him that Ariella from Canada sent you. He fancies himself a ladies’ man, and is no doubt heartbroken that he never convinced me to ride his marshrutka, or give him my phone number.
Kartvelian Adventures 