Georgia Day 12 - Gori to Telavi
- eusts6
- Aug 29, 2023
- 2 min read
Wednesday 24th August 2022
I decided to skip breakfast as I thought it would cost extra. It turned out that we had already paid for it according to booking.com. Check-out was at 12:00 but around 11:00 Temo the driver came knocking on the door and wanted to enter. Something about his brother Misha taking us.
And old Lada car parked outside our hotel
At check out, Temo and his brother Misha were waiting, bit also a third guy. I felt a little uncofortable. I paid Temo 250 lari and we got in the car. I was thinking "tourists murdered in Georgia" as a headline.
The road to Telavi, with a sign indicating the distance to Teheran
As we hit the road I saw a sign indicating that Teheran was 1294 km away. With all that cars on the road from Iran I was feeling even closer to the mystic Middle East. We left dry Gori behind and we climbed very bad zig zag roads with huge potholes. I saw that Misha our driver was not amused with all the hairpin bends. We climbed up and up, hairpin bend after hairpin bend with cows and occasionally dogs wandering freely on the roads.
Approaching Telavi
Finally Telavi was in view and a huge grey wall of the Caucasus mountains some 30 km away marking the border with Russia, actually Dagestan. One Russian I spoke to in Batumi referred to them as "crazy mountain people".
The wine hotel
We waited in the hotel lobby patiently, but there was nobody. They had already tried to cancel our booking as the hotel called "The Wine Hotel" the tourists are actually secondary to the wine. But I forgive them for that. The room was large and minimalistic.
The beautiful market/bazaar
After resting for a bit, I wandered up towards the town. I bought water and peanuts on the way, but so far no sit down restaurant was seen. I found the bazaar, that was quite something with technicolored vegetables and old ladies with missing teeth gawping at me as if I was the first tourist to arrive here. One older guy mumbled something to the effect "fuck off back to Tbilisi".
Telavi
I started making my way back and found an ultra modern shopping mall with, to my horror, text in English everywhere. I bought cheese, water and bread. Back at the hotel I broke off chunks of bread and tried to eat the overly salty smoked cheese. I read a little before watching some Netflix and going to sleep.
In a word #მთები
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