Ya No Mafioz!

Yerevan and Sevanavank, Armenia - 6th October - 8th October

There is an Armenian joke which goes something like this.

A little Armenian boy asks his grandfather, "Grandfather ! Grandfather ! Why has Armenia never put a man on the moon ?" His grandfather replies, "Well, my boy. If Armenia put a man on the moon, all Georgians would die of envy. If all Georgians died of envy, then all Armenians would die of happiness. And then the Azeris would get all of the land !" The rivalry is more friendly than anything else (besides, the Armenians have more than enough on their plate with the Turks and Azeris to worry about hating the Georgians as well), but our hop from one small Caucasian country to another was certainly to be a big change.

As it happened, the joke was on us. Our train was scheduled to arrive at 7am and, as the conductor banged on our door at 5.30am, we grunted, muttered vague insults and fell asleep again. He persisted though and indicated he wanted the sheets back, while we cursed him for waking us up an hour and a half before arrival in Yerevan. He counted, recounted and told me there was a pillowcase missing. I went back and eventually found it lying on the floor (it turned out that my attempted theft of an Armenian Railways issue pillow case went badly wrong and I ended up with a plain kitchen cloth instead). A short while later, we pulled into a grand station. As I poked my head out of the window, I was confronted with Ani's unmistakeably cheery smiling face. It began to dawn on me that we hadn't arrived an hour ahead of schedule, we'd actually changed time zones. We decided that our muttered insults to the conductor weren't in fact very fair, apologised for them subconsciously, and hopped into a taxi to Ani's place.

We eventually woke up and wandered around Yerevan. It's less picturesque than Tbilisi but somehow I felt it was a lot more lived in. Markets, people and noise are everywhere. Ani took us to a protest site where tent dwelling protesters want the president to step down. The streets were covered in French flags, for some reason, and when we got back to her place she found out that Nicolas Sarkozy was in town. Two unpopular presidents in the same country, then.

Freedom square (certainly NOT the parliament house), feat. protesters

As tradition befits, we had a mission for the day - the find tickets for the Armenia-Macedonia European Qualifier for tomorrow. Ani had told us in Tbilisi that she'd sort some out but on going to the ticket office she'd been told that the game was sold out. But, while we were sitting and eating Lahmajo (a small yet amazing Armenian pizza) she got a phone call from a friend, got animated, and announced that black market sellers had tickets at the stadium. We wandered down, picked up some tickets, and celebrated with beer and a trip to a market stall where we picked up Armenian-themed football scarves and hats. We were ready.

Fame at last !

Next stop was a market hall where I found possibly the best man in all of Armenia, a guy who sold only cheese, meat and tuti oghi, an Armenian firewater made from mulberries. We bought cheese and meat from the gentleman and were asked if we wanted to try some tuti oghi. Never the type to refuse a cultural experience (of course), we accepted and were taken to a room behind a curtain where my new friend poured us each a shot from some kind of glass jerry-can.

The chilli sauce lady is somewhat surprised that I don't find her chilli sauce mouth-destroyingly hot. "Armenians don't really eat spicy food", Ani pointed out

"You do know how to do this, right ?" asked Ani. It seemed like a rather obvious question. We'd all done shots before.
"You breathe in, take the shot, then breathe out". Noted.

Unfortunately, I made a hash of it and breathed out while the tuti oghi was still in my mouth and suffered the most outrageous heartburn I've ever had for several minutes afterwards. We later found out that tuti oghi is about 75% alcohol content, so it probably wasn't a surprise. We bought a half-litre bottle of the stuff anyway.

The greatest man in Armenia, taking care with his wares

We woke up the next day and poor Ani had used a fair proportion of Armenia's annual toilet paper production during the night blowing her nose and declared that she was sick, but recommended that we go up to Sevanavank, on the shore of lake Sevan, as it was a beautiful area with monasteries and lakeside bars and restaurants. We had about 5 hours before we needed to be back for the game, though, and Sevan was 75km away. Not to mention that we'd have to get to the bus station and back. I was sceptical.

"It's fine !" she said, "you can take a taxi up there !". My mind started playing images of us dishing out stacks of money to take a 75km taxi both ways. "It'll cost you about 4€ each". What ? At that price it was a bargain. She called a taxi and within half an hour we were on our way. "He just needs to fill up with gas and hope you don't mind", she said. No problems at all, we said, wondering how we'd get up there if he didn't. I'd love to say that we sped off towards the north but we didn't. Our taxi was a battered Lada, capable of a maximum speed of about 40km/h going downhill with a tailwind. We were going uphill and there was no wind at all. And then he stopped to fill up with gas. When we'd said we didn't mind, we didn't imagine that he'd go to a petrol station away from the highway, take ages to fill up, and then fail to find his way back onto the highway again. The whole detour took us more than half an hour and, of course, the meter was running the whole time. I was concerned about the loss of time but even more concerned about M's rising anger levels towards this driver which, once they start, cannot be stopped until she reaches a stage a few pegs short of Krakatoa. I assured her I'd sort it out and left her fuming in peace. We eventually got to Sevanavank, 2 hours after leaving Yerevan, gave the driver 1000 dram less than what his meter said, and walked away. He protested but didn't really chase after us, which I assume means that he knew we were right. The weather was hot, the monasteries were a short climb above us, and the lake spread out ahead of us under a bright blue sky. Life was good again.

Lake Sevan. Nice eh ?

M poses next to a bunch of stones

Alright, it was touristy. But even the tourists seemed exotic - outrageously dressed Russians (the women just had to be seen to be believed - stilettos that tall are probably illegal in most countries) were so different to camera-toting Europeans that I looked at them as part of the exotic charm of the place, rather than as a bunch of people getting in my way, as I usually would. The monasteries were more impressive from the outside than the inside but it was a nice little patch to walk around. We did the tourist thing and poked around, took some pictures and went downstairs, bearing in mind that it had taken us 2 hours to get up here. Just as we were buying a soft drink each, we were approached by a mafia-style guy with a neck as thick as his shaved head and a very classy tracksuit. "Taxi ?" he asked. He pointed us towards his car. We'd definitely make good time in that one, we thought. And since we'd seen everything, we hopped in.

Despite the G-Force during our return to Yerevan, M seems composed

Our driver was an enthusiastic, charming speed demon who would take time out from looking at the road to type various prices on his phone for other services he could offer. Over the course of the trip, he offered us a stop-over in pretty much every town in Armenia and also a ride to Tbilisi tomorrow, with prices included. He told us, "YA NO MAFIOZ !!", he was the only non-mafia driver in Sevan and with the others we'd get ripped off. With him, we were confident we'd done a good deal. Not only did we do most of the trip at 170km (during which time he made "crazy" gestures by pointing at his head as he turned round to look at us, laughing, every time someone got in his way or crossed the road ahead of him) but he also took time off from looking at the road to spray us with perfume, give M a shiny stone as a gift, and do various dusting jobs inside his car. We made it to Ani's door in about 40 minutes, of which I would presume that our man looked at the road for a maximum of 3. This probably gave him good reason to look at us as he dropped us off and boom out "GOOD DRIVER !". We agreed and gave him the agreed money, which was less than we'd paid for our rustbucket on the way up. He asked for a tip "for thank you" but when we smiled and turned him down, he still sent us away with a wave and a cheery smile.

Armenian scarf + Armenian sausage, both delightful

We scooped Ani out of bed, kitted ourselves out with fan-gear and headed off towards the stadium. Cole lost his hat and as M and I stood around waiting for him we were interviewed for Armenian TV. Our chances of actually being aired suffered a blow though, as the interviewer, somewhat surprised at finding such patriots who were in fact not Armenian at all, turned to M.

On the way to the game !

"What do you think of the Armenian team ??" she asked enthusiastically
"Err... I don't know, I've never seen them play", M replied. Finnish-style honesty is usually a good thing, but sometimes good-natured bullshitting has its merits too. Ah well.

Having managed to smuggle a hip flask of yesterday's tuti oghi through 3 military checkpoints outside the ground, I was delighted with myself and the cauldron-like atmosphere inside the stadium promised a lot of noise if Armenia scored. They delivered. Armenia won 4:1, everyone went home (or rather to the bar) happy, and we joined Ani and some friends of hers for post-match celebration before getting some sleep.

GOOOOOOOOOL ! Maybe

GOOOOOOOOOL ! Certainly ! Cole's thoughts on the Macedonian team: "Even Canada could beat these guys"

Final score

We DESTROYED em !!!

A consequence of late-night bar action. "Pictures look much better in black and white", we decided. Here is the proof

It was to be the last of our adventures before heading off. Our next day featured a minibus ride back to Tbilisi, an evening spent with Tom and Tako (and possibly the only Guinean tourist ever to have visited Georgia), and gift shopping for the folks back home. Before we knew it, we were in a taxi to the airport. We still had time to fall asleep in Kiev and very nearly miss our flight back home but that was it. Until next time.......

We really did meet one !!

And finally, because I did it with the African tales, we have to finish this trip with...

A lovey dovey cheesy picture. Just to show that, through all of these adventures without killing each other. Hooray for us ! And yes, it's a heart-shaped potato.

The Dodo Lives

Sighnaghi, Georgia - 2nd-5th October 2011

We did, eventually, get to Sighnaghi. After a few setbacks. The aim was to spend a night there, do some winetasting (Sighnaghi is, after all, in the middle of Georgia's best wine country), come back to Tbilisi and hit the rails to Yerevan. We had it all lined up. First, we'd go to the train station and buy the tickets to Yerevan, and then we'd hop on the metro to Didube, the bus station from where someone had told us last night minibuses go to Sighnaghi. The train station, as it seems they are in all ex-Soviet countries, is needlessly confusing. There are around 15 ticket booths, all of which appear to serve a different purpose. Of course, no booths have any explanation (in any language) as to what purpose they serve. M and I had already learnt this in our desperate attempts to buy tickets to Zugdidi, and she cleverly sat this one out, chatting with Tom (who was staying in Georgia) while Cole and I went on a man mission to sort the ticket situation out. One of the consequences of unmarked ticket booths is that the queueing system completely breaks down. One moment you are behind one person, the next you are behind five. Just when you are busy cursing the queue jumpers, you realise that they're only asking what the point of this particular ticket booth is. The fact that the Georgians themselves didn't seem to understand what was going on did make us feel slightly better. Amazingly, the booth we had chosen on a whim turned out to be the correct one.

"Yerevan, OK ! Today or in 2 days ?"

"Er... tomorrow ?"

"No train tomorrow. Only every two days"

Dammit. We retreated with our tails between our legs. This meant that Nagorno-Karabakh, one of our missions for this trip, was suddenly eliminated from all realms of possibility. We just wouldn't have enough time. It would, however, mean that we could take our time in Sighnaghi and so we decided to spend two nights there. We left the ticket buying for our return to Tbilisi and jumped on the metro to Didube, where a wandering gentleman asked us where we were going.

"Sighnaghi ?"

"Yes ! You want taxi ?"

"No, minibus."

"No minibus from here, you take my taxi !"

We'd seen this before in Africa. A clever ruse to trap the unsuspecting tourist into taking a long distance taxi. We asked around and were repeatedly given the same answer. Unfortunately, it appeared that our initial contact was not a scoundrel at all but was telling the truth. If we wanted a minibus, he told us, we'd have to take it from Samgori bus station. It was on the other side of the city. Another metro ride later (during which Cole was unfortunately booted off at the wrong stop - by us) we got to Samgori and waited a small eternity for our minibus to take off.

Caution : Handsome sleeping man ahead

Filthy backpack carriers ruin the beautiful streets of Sighnaghi. Fortunately, there are no residents around to notice this...

Sighnaghi is a pretty little town in the mountains but I couldn't help but feel like it was more of a museum than a town. We all agreed that it appeared far too big for the amount of inhabitants that it held. We didn't have time to catch our breath, though, before we were assaulted by an old woman waving a brochure around. "FIFTEEN LARI !!" she yelled at us. 15 lari for a brochure ? No thanks, darling. We wandered off to an address which Tom had been given, while the old woman gave hot pursuit. The place we were looking for was full, but there would be space tomorrow, we were told. Our old woman friend was still niggling us and we realised that the brochure carried a picture of her house on it. 15 lari was the price she was asking for one night. We followed her to a shiny Mercedes which gave us a free lift all of 300 metres to her house, during which she instructed the driver to stop and leapt out to pursue another couple of backpack-toting wanderers. The sign on her front gate instructed us that our new friend's name was Dodo. She was far more tenacious than her feathered namesakes and, despite the fact that we didn't understand the Russian she was blabbering at us with, she persevered, showed us to our beds, and invited us down to what looked like the bomb shelter from "Enemy at the Gates" and poured us glasses of wine and chacha.

Sighnaghi rooftops. This is probably about 95% of the town.

We wandered aimlessly around small yet attractive yet quiet Sighnaghi, and as darkness fell we came across a restaurant and dropped in. This was wine country so along with our uncivilised amounts of Khachapuri and Khinkali we wanted a bottle of wine. A concerned discussion came up when we remembered that a similar wine-buying attempt in Mestia ended up costing us 35 lari. We wondered how we could diplomatically ask for a more affordable bottle. M, proving her diplomatic worth, stepped up to the plate. "Excuse me", she asked the waiter. "What's your cheapest bottle of red ?". General giggling broke out at the bluntness of the question but more giggling was yet to come when the waiter looked awkward and we realised that he didn't understand the question. He whipped out a mobile phone, called someone, and passed the phone to M. More giggles. "Hello !" exclaimed an increasingly awkward looking M, "I was just wondering what your cheapest bottle of red was ?". The other customers quietened down to listen to the conversation and murmured amongst themselves. It was like something out of a Mr. Bean movie. She was eventually informed that we wanted to order the house wine. We did, and bizarrely, it was probably the best wine we had in Georgia.

"Yes, I'd be interested in a cheap bottle of plonk, any suggestions...?"

Khachapuri, wine and khinkali. The Georgian table in a (very tasty) nutshell.

And some idiot who thinks it's funny to pose with walnut-stuffed aubergines as a makeshift tongue. Looks good though eh ?

We celebrated this success with a night out at Sighnaghi's only casino, in which we were the only customers for the whole night. M, Cole and Tom all did well but I helped the business stay afloat by losing, as I usually do.

A site of great success, for most

The next morning, we decided to leave Dodo despite her infectious enthusiasm and stay in the place we'd been to yesterday, hoping that the conditions would be slightly less Arctic. For the same price, it was. A good choice. More wandering around culminated in a winetasting session at the "Pheasant's Tears" winery, the only one we could find. A classy place, with a wine tasting session hosted by an even more classy, and fantastically ambiguously gay guy who insisted on calling his female co-worker "Darling", even when speaking to her in Georgian. Cole and he, for some reason, got on very well. Following this, we ended up in an even more surreal place, "Pancho Villa", the only Mexican restaurant in Sighnaghi (population 2500). The restaurant was run by a guy who had fallen in love with Mexican food while visiting the US, had only three tables, and only four customers that night. Namely M, Cole, Tom and I. The Mexican food didn't really taste like Mexican at all but it was still tasty, and we celebrated this discovery with another night at the casino. Cole, Tom and M won again, I lost again. It's depressing.

Tom and M, "Los Gringos Georgianos"

The entrance to the "Nato and Lado Guesthouse"...

...where we were welcomed a glass of wine and a plate of cheese. The fact that it was 9am did not seem to bother them.

Cole celebrated his victory by abusing the unlimited free wine from the casino and falling asleep on the steps outside, and on finding him feeling rough back when we got back, I volunteered to go on a Khachapuri mission. The restaurant down the road, thankfully, was open at 2am, and a gang of drunken men gave me a fond welcome. One guitar toting man welcomed me with a song which another drunk sang along to, a third sat down next to me, fell off his chair and knocked me onto the floor. The manager booted them all out and invited me into the kitchen.

I would have enjoyed their company for a bit longer but this is one of the funny things about travelling. When the manager had finished ejecting his previous customers, he came into the kitchen and apologised profusely (if only he'd known where I grew up and what we got up to...), toasted me with a large shot of chacha and lent me a tray to take the khachapuri home with, insisting he would come to pick it up the next day and I didn't need to worry. We brought it back the next day anyway and had breakfast there. The manager and the babushka in the kitchen both gave me a warm handshake and a big smile. What delightful people.

The ride back to Tbilisi was punctuated only by a change of minibus in the delightfully-named town of Tsnori. We once again found the correct train ticket booth at the first time of asking, made our arrangements to meet Tom once we had returned to Tbilisi and M, Cole and I set off, once again, for the great unknown : Armenia.

-----------

Winner of the most ridiculous-looking food award :

M takes the gold medal position for having ordered "Skewered boiled eggs". Any suspicions that it may have been a typo evaporated when this outrageous dish arrived.

Winners of the Sighnaghi English language award :



I have no idea the majority of the above means. Boiled sucking pig ??

"They're not even big travellers"

Dzegui and Tbilisi - 2nd-3rd October 2011

Firstly, apologies for the bizarre fonts and text sizes recently. I just can't see any logic in the way blogger.com works. That's just how it is.

We were slightly apprehensive as Mako told us that we'd have to change minibuses in Zugdidi - we had already promised Tiniko that we'd come to her barbecue and we'd already donated many hours of this trip to the cause of sitting around in Zugdidi on the way up to Mestia. We shouldn't have worried - the turnaround time was around 10 minutes. We couldn't, however, work out why we'd paid 20 lari to get from Mestia to Zugdidi and onlz 12 lari to get to Tbilisi. These were both confirmed as correct prices, but the second leg was longer in terms of both time and distance. Georgian minibus logic seems to be on a par with blogger.com. But I digress.

The minibus ride was an adventure in itself - our driver sported an outrageous Russian-style short, spiky haircut, an equally outrageous shellsuit top, and had socks pulled up as far as they could go on top of his sandals. His choice of music was second to none featuring cheesy Russian techno interspersed with obligatory outbursts of Celine Dion and a techno remix of Status Quo's "You're in the Army Now". Schoolboy giggles were heard from the foreign delegation at the back of the minibus. We'd already asked to get off the minibus in Mtskheta, as Tiniko had asked us to, but we flew straight past the turn off and asked fellow passengers "Mtskheta ?" with a lost look on our faces. They nodded back at us and we were reassured. Shortly afterwards, we passed a sign welcoming us to Tbilisi. This was obviously the wrong route. We hopped off by the highway, hopped into a taxi and called Tiniko to ask for help.

Right. Where now ?

We didn't really know where we were going and I passed her onto the driver. The conversation got more and more animated. "I think she's just realised we're being stitched up", M pointed out helpfully. I got my phone back and the driver pulled off the highway and drove around a bend with purpose, following a 4x4. Unfortunately, roadworks were being carried out on one lane and a Kamaz truck came haring towards us. Both cars in the cortege slammed on the brakes, but ours were obviously inferior and we ploughed into the back of the 4x4. An irate woman got out and started yelling, and we got out to inspect the damage, joined by no less than 4 police cars. It appeared that the 4x4 had suffered no damage whatsoever apart from a scratched bumped, whereas our technologically inferior taxi had had its front caved in. We sat around and waited until Tiniko arrived.

Crash scenes. Tom and M are obviously more amused than the driver was.

She brought a lot of energy to proceedings, trying to flag down several passing minibuses and eventually a taxi stopped for us.

"Doesn't the other driver want money ?" I ventured

"Pff. It's not my problem that he crashed"

We got our bags from taxi #1 and started transferring them to taxi #2 when driver #1 realised what was going on. A lot of arm waving and shouting took place between Tiniko and him,.

"I think he doesn't like me from earlier" she explained, referring to her phone call. "I told him he was robbing my guests. I called him fucking bastard"

The image of Tiniko as a sweet. innocent girl was destroyed in hilarious fashion right there and then. She eventually threw 5 lari at him and we walked off, ignoring his pleas repeatedly featuring the word "benzine". If Tiniko hadn't told us that we'd been charged over the odds for the original ride I may have had some sympathy, but then life is cruel sometimes. We pulled off the tarmac road and bounced our way to the summer house without further incident. On landing in Tbilisi some days ago I never imagined that I would spend an afternoon in Dzegui, a village I'd obviously never heard of. But travel takes you to strange places.

What awaited us there was a feast in true Georgian style with the amount of meat and drink far exceeding the stomach capacity of those present - the foreigner brigade was wonderfully hosted and entertained by Tiniko and her friends, although we did protest about not bring anything to the table ourselves. Tiniko eventually relented and guided us to a shop where we picked up sausages and beer, and we wandered back. A cargo train had unfortunately drawn in to block our path and we crawled under it, only to see it pull off 30 seconds later. And this is why I never tell my mother where I am or what I'm doing.

Cole displays the goods...

...and M takes the dive !

The barbecue passed too quickly, which good company and good food (despite Tiniko's predictable claims that the pork was crap) tend to do. The meat was piled high, the wine and the chacha flowed freely. One of Tiniko's friends had won an architecture competition to design a small park in Finland,of all places. The world is small.

A Georgian meal, where ideally, the participants should be dwarfed by what is on the table. Mission accomplished.

The time came to leave far too soon and we caught the last local train back to Tbilisi where we shared the compartment with several million other passengers, passed around one of those 2,5 litre bottles of Natakhtari beer, and were merry. Tiniko was half listening to us and half eavesdropping on a group of girls sitting near to her.

"How I wish I could speak English so that I could communicate with those people !" one of them said.

"Why would you want to communicate with a bunch of drunkards like them ?" asked another. I resisted the temptation to interject that, just because we were sharing one bottle of beer between 6 didn't mean we were drunkards.

"They're not even big travellers !" exclaimed a third. "They're only going from Dzegui to Mtskheta !" I once again resisted the urge to say that we were going all the way to Tbilisi, which was at least 5km further on.

The gang at Dzegui station

And a larger gang on the train

The evening finished in a little shisha bar where we wanted to thank our new friends for their hospitality and attempted to toast in the Georgian way, which means long and rambling with some kind of moral at the end, upon which everyone raises their glasses and drinks. The next person along then has to think of an unrelated long and rambling speech, and so on and so forth. The foreign brigade was inexperienced but it seemed to go down well. A short night (as usual) ensued before we had to get up at the crack of dawn to get to Sighnaghi, in the eastern Kakheti region. Wine country. Yum.

This picture from Tbilisi metro is specially placed here to show how tough the Georgians are. Not only is Tiniko still alive after being placed so close to my shoes, she's also taking it with a smile

Cole, Tako, Tengo and M, the shisha bar gang

He just had to go, and I just had to post the picture.

Svan Lakes

Mestia, Georgia - 29th October-1st November 2011

We were awoken from our slumber by a rapping on the door at 6.30am. A peek through the window revealed a cloudy morning in one of those beautiful lump-of-concrete towns bequeathed to humanity by the USSR. We scooped together our stuff and stumbled off the train and were immediately accosted by a minibus driver who, seeing our backpacks, assumed (correctly) that we would not be staying in Zugdidi, and (correctly) that we would be going to Mestia. In all honesty, this was not very hard to work out. We had come from the east, south was Batumi (reachable on another train), north was Mestia (where the road ended), and west was Abkhazia, a de facto independent state propped up by the Russian Army. Interesting to see, no doubt, but not very easy to get into. And even more difficult to leave back to Georgia. Our new minibus-driving friend must have been slightly confused by our "yes, but no" answer. He spoke no English and our Russian was not really good enough to explain to him that we were meeting a friend here but weren't sure at what time he would arrive and hence didn't want to reserve three seats and consequently make everyone wait for his arrival. Or at least not at this time in the morning.

Our friend, of course, was Cole whom we last met in Africa. It had been nearly 2 years since we last met but on our reunion it seemed like nothing had changed. He and I both had holes in our clothes, all of us were half asleep. He was half an hour late because realised too late that Georgia is not in the same time zone as Turkey, where he'd just arrived from. The other minibus had just left so we were left standing around waiting for another one, unsure as to when or if it would come. It was great to see him again. We went through the African motions of a) being assured that a minibus was coming so we should wait here, b) realising this was unlikely and dragging our bags into town and c) finally finding a minibus and waiting three hours for it to fill up. Finally, around 5 hours after we arrived in Zugdidi, we started chugging up into the mountains of Svaneti (the name of the region we were heading to, named for its inhabitants, the Svan) to the regional capital Mestia for a bit of fresh air and mountain walking.

"Where you sleep ?" asked the driver. Charmingly enough, he was going to drop us to the door

"Nest Hostel", we replied. The Nest was the cheapest place we'd found online. There were plenty of accommodation options on the road into Mestia but they all seemed like quite nice-looking homestays, obviously way out of our league. This seemed to confuse the driver, who proceeded to ask everyone in sight if they knew where it was. We trundled into the centre of town, out the other side, over a bridge and seemingly were heading out of town. Mestia may be the regional capital, but enormous it isn't. Just as civilisation was about to disappear behind us, we spotted the Nest through the window, It looked pretty run down but quaint. The driver gave us a questioning look, to which we responded with a cheery thumbs up. With a look that said "oh well, if that's what you want..." he hopped out, gave us our bags, and we wandered in. The place seemed more like an abandoned house than a hostel although a room full of bunks with a few backpacks in gave us hope. A woman eventually wandered over from next door.

The Nest

The river

And Svaneti in a nutshell. Traditional Svan tower, cows, church.

"Khostel ?" she enquired.

"Yes ! Is it open ?"

Another inquisitive look as we realised that we shared no common language. She pointed at a door which led to another room full of bunks, smiled and disappeared. We settled in, wandered around and eventually a girl came to greet us. Mako was a cheery, bouncy character who had given up a job in an insurance company in Tbilisi to come up to the mountains and run a hostel. Mestia was going through a construction boom, she told us, although all of the workers were in town and she couldn't get hold of anyone to fix up the hostel for love nor money. That explained the slight insulation problems although the Nest Hostel had the most delightful bathroom I'd seen in a long time with a boiler half the size of the room which made it positively sauna-like. We had a long chat during which she explained our mountain-walking options to us and gave us the price of the beds - 15 lari each. A steal. Mako was more of a friend than a hostel boss and made us feel at home straight away.

With Mako, the queen of Mestia

Cole tries his hand at one of our events in the Olympics darts championship: the hammer. Amazingly, no one was injured on this day

We spent the evening enjoying the local chacha (Georgian firewater, bought by the litre from jerrycans and decanted into water bottles), chatting with a bunch of Poles who'd come up to the mountains, and with Tom, an Australian guy who was wandering around the Caucasus by himself. He was good company and realised we'd made a friend because, only a few minutes after meeting, we took the piss out of each other mercilessly. Cole was on the receiving end for his poverty, M for her slightly-less-than-photogenic nature, and Tom for staying at BoomBully, the most expensive backpackers in Tbilisi, and for wearing jeans without any holes in. We plotted together on some mountain walking the next day. It seemed that we'd be aiming for a cross on top of a mountain visible from town but about 900m higher.

"My mother would be so proud", he exclaimed

We were later joined bz Dom, an English guy who spent all of his time with us but barely spoke and didn't seem to enjoy our company. Maybe he was just shy.

Our resolve on getting up was dented by the fact that we were to get drenched as soon as we stepped outdoors. The rain continued all day. We played darts, drank chacha, ate khachapuri. A delightfully lazy, fun and unhealthy day.

M and Cole demonstrate the art of keeping warm in the Nest. The radiator did spend a few minutes in our room but the socket exploded and our source of warmth had to be repatriated.

Ready and equipped for the trek

Already knackered...

The gang look at something. From this, it would appear to be a beautiful panorama but it was actually Mestia airport, a mind-bogglingly ugly construction

Mestia from above and, on the other side, a ski station. Who needs Courchevel ?

Next day looked slightly threatening but we decided that it was going to happen either way and slogged our way up the mountain bit by bit. Every hairpin on the path would give out over breathtaking views of the surrounding snowcapped mountains. Just to the north, behind the range of the Caucasus which accompanied us, was the Russia border and Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe. My stomach was giving me trouble (as it tends to do whenever I go more than 20km from home) but the vistas kept me going and with the promise of an amazing view at the top, I refused to let go. After 3 hours of stop-start walking/climbing and a final trudge through the snow on top of the mountain, we reached what was probably the ugliest cross I've ever seen.

Even the cow dung is interesting in Svaneti. Apparently.

M has obviously been watching too many Chuck Norris movies

I don't think I could get tired of this...

My legs were about to pack in, but reaching the cross gave them a second wind. We tried to head off for a set of lakes which were apparently in the area. A short phone call later, we found out that they were 4 hours away and, with darkness soon descending, we abandoned the plot and wandered back, bumped into a group of Lithuanian girls and our friend Dom suddenly discovered that he did have an ability to talk after all, disappearing with one of them down the hill. Cole had had enough of the holes in his shoes and ran back to the hostel, leaving Tom, M and I to walk down, take a wrong turn, and get lost. The route back to the hostel included about half an hour clambering over rocks by the riverside looking for a place thin enough to wade through, breaking and entering into two separate private properties, and vaulting over a barbed wire fence. It all ended with chacha and khachapuri. If only every day could end that way.

M tries to mask her disappointment at the ugly cross

And Tom proves that getting lost on the way down need not stand in the way of fun. The cow did eventually go for the scarf, and our walking pace picked up slightly...

The night was curtailed as Mako announced that the minibus to Tbilisi would leave at 5am although our dear host did call the transport company and get them to pick us up at the front door.

She came downstairs to see us off in the morning, as as we climbed into the minibus her voice rang out in the darkness. "Remember what you say to your friends about Nest Hostel Mestia ? Very nice ! And VERY WARM !!!". In terms of temperature it wasn't, but the warmth of the welcome more than made up for it.