Georgia - Natural Wonders and Soviet Architecture

We struggled to find anywhere to park Lolly up in central Kutaisi, so ended up taking her to a motorhome place that offered parking and facilities a few kms out of the city. There was a lovely Dutch couple there doing some maintenance work on their vehicle.

We called a Bolt taxi to take us into the city. The driver was very friendly and said he'd lived longer outside of Georgia than in it, having stints in Saudi, Italy and Malta. He was a water polo coach and said the Georgian water polo team was not at a good level and he could not find work as a coach in Georgia.

The first thing we did was head to a cafe and tried an Adjarian Khachapuri which is dough shaped like a boat, filled with delicious Georgian cheese, egg yolks, and butter. Very tasty, if not too healthy.

The central area of the city is pretty compact, so we had a couple of hours mooching around the main areas. There is a colourful covered market selling local produce which has a striking soviet-era frieze on the outside wall which we believe is depicting Georgia's history.

The city is dissected by the fast flowing Risoni River which has three bridges crossing it - the photo below is the White Bridge. There is an old cable car that you can take up to a viewpoint over the city, which we took, but weren't too impressed with the view that is largely obscured by trees. We got a better view from the Bagrati Cathedral. This once UNESCO listed cathedral was delisted following some insensitive restorations carried out this century. We finished our day with dinner at the Worlds Oldest Brewery, ironically having wine to drink.

The following day we set off in the other direction to explore the nearby town of Tskaltubo. The town was developed in the 1920's as a spa retreat for Soviet workers, rewarding them for their hard work. In the town were 19 trade union run sanatoria, and before the collapse of the Soviet Union the town had become one of the most popular places in the country. After 1991, as with most of Georgia, the town declined rapidly, and the empty, once glamorous, sanitoria were used to house as many as 9,000 refugees fleeing the war in Azerbaijan in 1993.

In more recent years, the town has been rediscovered by urban explorers who are faced with the most fascinating and photogenic images. Some of the complexes have been fenced off now and have security guards (who are usually obliging to visitors wanting a peek). We're sure Health and Safety in the UK would prohibit anyone getting close to the crumbling structures. We picked out just two of them which seemed to have the most impressive features.

The first one was the Sanatorium Mettallurgist, which still has the most most amazing chandelier hanging. There are refugees still living in parts of the building, and we were met by a friendly lady on the door who charged us 5 gel each (£1.50) to come in - a small fee for such an amazing piece of recent history. A man that was with her pointed us to different areas and switched on lights for us. Imagining what it must have been like in its hay-day was mind-blowing.

The second place we visited was the Sanitorium Media, another incredibly impressive structure, now graffitied and crumbling with time.

Our final visit was to Bathhouse 8, located in a park in the centre of town. While there seems to have been some redevelopment of the town, with new spa hotels to be found, we got the impression from locals that they didn't want to see lots of funds thrown at restoring the old buildings, as they still view it as a time they don't wish to remember.

We continued on into more rural countryside to visit the Okatse Canyon. The canyon is 3km long, and they have built a 700m long walkway that projects over the canyon, with a breath-taking platform at the farthest point projecting right out over the large drop. To reach the boardwalk we has a pleasant 2.5km walk through woodland from the Visitor Centre.

Once we'd finished here we continued on an increasingly steep, twisty and scenic road to the Kinchkha waterfall which cascades 88m down a limestone cliff. There is a metal walkway here which gave some terrific views, even in the rain that started as we pulled up.

We decided to retrace our route back towards Tskaltubo, dodging the other road users of cows, pigs and horses. We ended up parking in the car park of the Prometheus caves that we wanted to visit the following day.

We had to join a guided tour in the caves, which had a good concrete path through it and the obligatory colourful lights and even piped classical music. The guide was doing the tour in English and Russian, and while we would have liked to take our time taking in the stunning features in the cave, she charged along at a pace, not waiting for the group to catch up before she said her speel in each chamber.

From here, we made our way to another urban explorer haven of Chiatura. It was a scenic drive with snow-topped mountains as the backdrop. We had a quick diversion to look at the Katskhi Pillar - where 2 small churches dating back to the 6th to 8th centuries sit on top of a 40 m high limestone column. How it was constructed and how the monks got up there is a mystery.

The town of Chiatura is still an important manganese industrial town, but today the key attraction is the remains of 20 cable car lines that were built to ferry the workers up to the mines in the 1950's. In the early 19th century the town was producing 60% of the world supply of manganese ore, essential for steel production, and continued to thrive under Soviet rule. The good times ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and with the decline in the industry, two thirds of the population of 30,000 left the town. In 2021, four new cable car lines opened and the old Soviet lines were closed, although they have been left suspended above the town. There is still one that has been made operational for visitors to experience. We rode on two of the new lines to get different views over the town. Colin was fascinated by the state of some of the old Soviet apartment blocks that had defintiely seen better days but were still home to many people. The line up to the old Sanitorium had the best views, and we spotted a good parking spot for the night where we visited a very nice traditional Georgian restaurant.

On the way out of town the following morning we became train spotters.

It was another scenic drive to the town of Gori - birthplace of Joseph Stalin (the model for Colin's management style).

Stalin was born and grew up in the Georgian town of Gori There is a museum in the town dedicated to his life, which we noted that most of the reviews made comment that it glossed over the merciless acts that he oversaw for over a quarter of a century while leading the Soviet Union resulting in millions of brutal deaths. The only references were in a very small room hidden on the ground floor.

An English guided tour was starting just as we arrived, which helped us put into context some of the displays we were looking at. The guide was quick to defend the museum, saying it was opened in 1957 just to document the life of the most famous person of the town. She said we could get the more brutal truth about his actions at a museum in Tbilisi.

It was a bit ironic that the man who banned religion had started studying in a theological seminary in his early days. His private train carriage that he used to travel in is outside the museum, as well as the preserved mud and brick home in which he grew up in.

It was a warm sunny afternoon, so after a few nights of sleeping in car parks, we headed to a rural campsite outside the town. We had the place to ourselves initially and the owner spoke to us on the phone saying she wouldn't charge us as the hot showers and washing machine were out of action. We were eventually joined by an Austrian Landrover being driven by a well travelled guy called Tomas. He was heading to Mongolia through Russia and the Stans as well. We had a nice evening chatting with him and drinking some good Austrian wine.

It was raining hard the following day, so we decided to have an admin day in the truck. Tomas also didn't move on, so we invited him into Lolly in the evening. He was heading to the Russian border the following day, and we are pleased to say he let us know he did the three day transit without any difficult checkpoints or police stops.

The next day took us to the former Soviet spa town of Borjomi. The town is famed for its slightly fizzy mineral water which is said to have good digestive healing properties. The town had some nice old buildings and a Central Park that sits next to a wooded valley that leads to some sulphur bathing pools. It was a cool wet day, and we'd read the pools weren't overly hot at this time of year so we gave them a miss. We did try drinking the spring water that wasn't unpleasant.

This was to be our last day in Georgia for this leg of the trip, so on our way to the Armenian border we had a final stop off at the town of Akhaltsikhe (which was very close to the Turkish border) to visit the super impressive Rabati Castle. Originally built in the 9th Century, a huge restoration project was undertaken 15 years ago, so while it didn't have the crumbly used look of an ancient castle, it was very nice to wander around and take in the stunning views.

It was late afternoon by the time we made tracks, with our aim to be parked up in striking distance to cross the Armenian border in the morning. The road condition was pretty rough for most of the journey and felt very remote. There was quite a bit of snow lying on the ground the closer we got and it was freezing cold. We'd planned to find a sheltered spot pulling off the road behind a derelict building, but after the heavy rain we were worried we'd get bogged down in the muddy ground. We retraced out steps to what we thought was a derelict petrol station, but turned out to be still in operation, but thankfully the attendants gave us the thumbs up to park on their forecourt for the cold windy night.

Next stop Armenia - the 10th country of this trip. We will be coming back to Georgia soon where we are meeting Colin's neice in Tbilisi and getting our visa sorted to transit Russia.