In Turkmenistan

Another North Korea without the potential firepower?  Turkmenistan feels more like an Eritrea, a depopulated dictatorship whose people live in extreme poverty, although in the case of Turkmenistan, it has an immense fund of natural resources and national wealth based on them and held in the hands of the very few.In Eritrea, there is at least a sense of normal bustle in the capital, Asmara, the fearfulness of the people only realised with greater familiarity with their ways of life. Ashgabat, in contrast, is almost a ghost city like all the newly constructed parts of the country including the immaculate and empty new docks we only glimpsed in passing at Turkmenbashi. Bruno Macaes, author of The Dawn of Eurasia, visited the new tourist resort of Avaza,, adjacent to Turkmenbashi on the Caspian shore and easily spotted from the ferry in all its shiny whiteness. It  has 30 or 40 hotels, a congress hall and a yacht club, all echoingly empty.  Like us, Macaes was given the official story of seasonal trade and  of the free luxury stays offered to good citizens as prizes, or, in the case of the massive white and gold, deserted buildings in Ashgabat, the schools for gifted children, libraries, universities, sports grounds and an Olympic stadium no less, all filled and busy at the right times of year but now was holiday time. The Olympic stadium seemed a triumph of wishful thinking at any time of year.

If the country opened up to tourism, WOULD resort lovers choose Avaza?  Perhaps.  It would have all the sterile pleasures of  a cruise ship one imagines, perhaps of other built for purpose seaside resorts,  but, from what we saw, the Caspian seemed so terribly dead, few birds, fished out and the Kara Kum stretching inland; desert upon desert?  Lord Curzon found the Caspian dead as long ago as 1888 but there are sandy beaches and perhaps resort life doesn't rely on much in the way of natural pleasures.  Anyway it isn't happening any time soon and, from our experience of Turkmen hotels, they will need to import foreign staff first or set up a hospitality school in one of those enormous white buildings.  It is unlikely any profits from such a new venture would trickle down to the desperately reduced and desperately poor population any more than any other profits from its huge natural wealth in gas, oil and valuable minerals.  The only place we had any sense of a living, breathing community was at Merv/Mary, the modern town adjacent to the fascinating mud ruins of ancient Merv.

Foreigners in Turkmenistan are obliged to have an official guide - it has to be said that life would be difficult without at least a driver who knew his way around and we were lucky to have one on our visit to Merv who was a delightful, smiling character who produced coffee and biscuits from his boot and behaved rather like an Edwardian chauffeur taking his charges to Ascot.  Likewise our splendid and fearless driver en route to the Darwaza gas crater and the border at Konye Urgench who also cooked dinner in camp, was responsible for beer acquisition and had breakfast set up at dawn after our night in a very small tent.  The 'ministry' driver in Ashgabat was a different matter as was Artom, our disastrous 21 year old guide throughout our stay although he had essentially given up altogether by the end.

By the time we had stopped for breakfast, including 'aborigine rolls' according to the improbably translated menu, in a rather nice but entirely empty Turkmenbashi cafe, we knew Artom's life story, more or less.  We had also been exposed to the BO, far worse after 8 hours in the car in close proximity on the way to Ashgabat that day,  that became the constant background to our tour of Turkmenistan, increasing as time went on and added to by bad breath.  We did not think Artom bathed for the duration of our visit, or brushed his teeth, and he was in permanent and extremely emotional mobile contact with his long-term, older girlfriend, a baker.  The impression we had was that she was heading away from the altar as fast as possible and Artom's vision of wedded bliss and the wife at home looking after his children and the house was becoming more of a pipe dream by the day.  The likelihood of his making a career in the tourist trade in spite of his much vaunted educational qualifications, that included time spent in Germany, he said, also seemed remote given constant nose bleeds, inability to get up in the mornings and general air of despondent disinterest in his job, it was hard to tell.  By the time we had spent a couple of days in the country, he had really become no more than a thoroughly irritating passenger in the car.

Turkmenistan, nevertheless, lived up to expectations although I doubt we expected somewhere quite as surreal as Ashgabat.  Moving settlements of yurts have been replaced by mile upon mile of white marble, purportedly coming at vast cost from Vietnam, or, for the grandest government buildings, from Italy, but is this really the case?  A magazine picked up in the Turkmen embassy in London describes the scope of urban planning in Ashgabat, the new ports at Turkmenbashi, including a huge container terminal and another for car and passenger ferries, not to mention the first golf course in the country.  It also discusses plagiarism in architecture - hard to believe this is going to become an enormous issue for Turkmenistan and the facing of new buildings with 'ceramogranite' tiles rather than marble.  We had a distinct sense there was in fact a lot more ceramogranite already used in the construction of Ashgabat than the 'marble city' epithet suggests but perhaps we were looking at new phases of development where the building quality was somewhat belied by crumbly looking concrete and chipped tiles at ground level whether made of marble or ceramogranite.

The official magazine, naturally crediting President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov for his 'progressive and socially oriented policy', describes 'the magnificent architectural ensemble of Ashgabat', where the 'new residential area is a visible man-made symbol of the epoch of might and happiness.' Crikey!  The trouble is that all those 72 apartment buildings and the new 'modern cottages' and 'elite two-story (sic) houses', not to mention the 11 shopping centres, comprehensive and primary schools, playgrounds and miles of roads, are all completely empty.  One has the sense that behind all that mirrored glass, there is nothing at all, the buildings are bare and may indeed only be propped up like stage sets from the inside.  All cars must be white in Ashgabat, we saw a few on the empty roads and behind the shiny white emptiness, a few old streets of soviet housing where some life might have existed among the 'that'll do' buildings with every window at a different angle.

We stayed in a Stalinist style guest house close to the monstrous Kipchak mosque dedicated to the family of the first President for Life and insane dictator, Saparmat Niyazov, who is buried here in a purpose built mausoleum.  His family, his mother most importantly, who became an important icon of his personality cult, were killed in the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake and are commemorated by the mosque.  Niyazov abolished the death penalty in Turkmenistan and officially granted his people human rights.  That went well, with his government said to be one of the worst global violators of human rights.  His bizarre directives included the banning of dogs in Ashgabat, outlawing ballet, opera and circuses, re-naming bread after his mother, Gurbansoltan and the months of the year after Turkmen 'heroes' including also his mother.

President Berdimuhamedov has re-instated the usual months of the year but stoking of his own personality cult means that he appears in posters all over the country, with a puppy, riding a horse, Turkmenistan is of course famous for its horses, driving a fire engine or a postvan (probably) and in a multitude of different uniforms. Then there is his gold statue, also riding a horse and one up on Niyazov's.  The gold statuary in Ashgabat, gold domes for the Presidential Palace, for the detail on various extraordinary and hideous monuments to peace, unity or whatever makes the white look ever cheaper and more jerry built. The statues in particular are masterpieces of bad taste and design.  Apart from the presidents, a series of enormous heroes guard parks and monuments, all weirdly foreshortened so they are as wide as they are high with very short legs. Berdimuhamedov banned black or dark coloured cars from Ashgabat in favour of the white which he considers lucky and fits the over-riding 'lucky' decor of the city.

if the city is empty during the day, the only sign of normality, a few gardeners working in the miles of municipal garden that surround monuments, statues and the massive wedding hall with space for thousands, tens of thousands probably.  We wandered about it unhindered by anyone in and out of plastic garlanded and gilded wedding halls ready for the impossibility of  enough guests ever to fill them. Artom, who did not accompany us, was he having a day off?  Strictly against regulations but then we had the ill-tempered minder/driver instead and he didn't leave the car.  Anyway Artom, told us that he was to be married where his wife to be lived, in Merv, where the marriage hall was a considerably more human sized affair and there might have been enough people to fill it.

We ate twice in the evenings we were in Ashgabat in a quasi international restaurant where we had a row about not being allowed local beer, unsurprisingly far cheaper than imported and rather better than other choices available.  The first night with Artom we won, the second, on our own, we failed and that anyway was the night, on our return from Merv when the angry minder, had thought he could drop us at the guest house to survive on who knows what might be available from some nearby shop that assuredly did not sell alcohol.  An early to bed policy likely prevails in a city where there is no one at all, not even the day-time handful of passers by on the streets after 10pm although this does not currently appear to be an official curfew. The guest house were reluctant or unable to offer anything very much in the way of service - laundry was taken but we collected it ourselves in the end, damp and hanging from some sort of store room.  The only amenity was hot water, no telephone, television, internet - breakfast had to be demanded and was unwillingly provided.  It arrived in large quantities which we gleefully abandoned as we had to go and it was disgusting anyway.

The Grand Turkmen Hotel in downtown Ashgabat is the nearest thing to an ordinary tourist hotel although it is reputedly both expensive and bad.  We wondered, nevertheless, why were were not staying there and concluded that the plan had been to keep two strange women who had travelled extensively and been variously described as journalists, publishers, writers or otherwise problematic individuals, as far as possible in some sort of purdah  We tried the Grand Turkmen for use of their internet and met a very soviet style stone wall.  The Yyldyz Hotel, probably the best available and built recently as a sort of miniature version of the Burj al Arab in Dubai with prices to match, was the only place where there was some semblance of customer service and tourist hospitality although it too was far short of busy.  There, for US$30, the international telephone lines could be used for a couple of minutes and internet appeared to be available at a cost- for the population in general, we realised, internet was almost entirely a dream. 70% of the population or probably more, depending on how depleted numbers really are, live still anyway in impoverished villages in the countryside where there are more pressing needs.. Population stands officially at 6 million spread over 5 fellayats, districts, but is highly unlikely to be more than 5 million and may well be lower.

Oil and gas are cheap but it is hard not to wonder how far free education reaches. All children have to wear uniforms, as do teachers and government licenced taxi drivers wear green cotton trousers and jackets.  We saw few children anywhere, the excuse being summer holidays and Ramadan - observance being mixed in this former soviet state.  We flew to Merv/Mary very early in the morning from the domestic airport in Ashgabat, one of three, domestic, international and presidential, with terminal buildings shaped like great white eagles and naturally quite empty.  We finally collected Barbara's errant luggage from the international version when it arrived somehow, due to Farhad's remarkable abilities and determination, via Aeroflot and Turkmen airlines.  Never was a woman happier to see her own underwear.

Merv felt like a real place with a proper community, compared to the dystopian film set of silent Ashgabat. It is the centre of the cotton-growing area and the Zelyony market with its friendly and talkative female traders was, like most markets in a new country,  a delight, although it hardly bustled in the afternoon in spite of relatively heavy traffic in the streets outside.  The charming Russian ginger bread style church, with its topaz blue and red-tiled interior crammed with icons, is still in use but gold and white government buildings, schools, libraries, hospitals and halls have also spread from the capital. Outside the modern town, there is cultivation, camels, sheep, cattle, horses and, Artom tells us, pigs.  His father farms 200 horses nearby, with a score of pigs - Artom does not look like a farmer and it is hard not to suspect that foreign educational opportunities and jobs as guides are presently more open to the children of government officials who may also have landholdings rather than actual tillers of the soil.

Pigs, we gather, are a profitable venture, pork a high value meat.  Writing in 1903, Annette Meakin, the British traveller and writer, described 'Turkoman' Mohammedanism as very lax but the Turkoman nevertheless had a horror of pigs and believed that a man who touched one could not enter heaven without an interval of a proper number of years.  Annette also wrote the Turkoman women enjoyed greater freedom than most of their Muslim sisters, going where they liked unveiled and mixing freely with men but, 'they seldom have much pretension to good looks'.  Pork farming and eating today is clearly a Soviet leftover and we would have imagined wrongly that greater freedom for women in this apparently traditional society was also due to generations of Soviet education. Meakin wrote the better-looking among them 'were invariably descended from Persian slaves'; a century later, it would be hard to know in the mish mash of Central Asian nationalities, who might have descended from who or where but we were transfixed by the wonderful posture of the women we met, tall in their high traditional headdresses and traditionally embroidered kaftans, elegant and poised as they clipped along on high-heeled mules, at least until we all got the giggles as the headdresses were tried on us to less satisfactory effect.

Market aside, the whole point of going to Merv is to see the spectacular mud ruins of one of the oldest inhabited ancient cities in the world, dating back to the 5th century or earlier and covering a huge area in the Merv oasis. Guide books suggest that more than a little imagination is required to find any sense of what Merv, Queen of the World, must have been as a major religious and trade centre on the Silk Road but the ruins are enormously atmospheric and, empty as we saw them, and retain a remarkable majesty. Colin Thubron described 'the hugeness of the city's dereliction', 15 miles from end to end, 'a shock of desolation'. that was the remains of not one ancient city but 5, built, destroyed and, rather than overbuilt, built again, always spreading west on this perfect site where all roads led for centuries until the Mongol hordes sacked the city in 1221. Nothing that came later, lasted or measured up to the lost pre-Mongol past.

The famous shrines of Merv are the mausoleums of 2 companions of the Prophet, completely rebuilt in recent years but retaining their atmosphere of religious eminence due to a steady stream, while we were there in particular, during Ramadan, of pilgrims, best-dressed women circling the tombs and Turkmen men, sometimes in robes and traditional sheepskin hats, instead of ubiquitous jeans, paying their respects. The Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar was restored with Turkish assistance and echoes with emptiness and the indefinable lost forever.  Outside in the garden, god may be nearer at hand in beds blooming with hollyhocks and buzzing with bees.


Near Ashgabat, we were taken to a horse farm to see the famed Turkmen horses.  One of the most depressing of our expeditions in Turkmenistan, we could not work out whether the broken down, blind or otherwise impaired horses we were shown were offered as an insult to the stupid tourist in general, us in particular, or whether we were simply expected to ooh and aah and notice nothing amiss over the tea and biscuits.  We did find one or two better animals in the stables but suspected the horses on show in the rough ring were destined for the meat trade very much sooner than later. Much later on this journey, while in Kirgyzstan, where horse meat is a regular part of the diet, my splendid guide there, Mohammed, assured me that horse meat was the greatest speciality of an excellent local restaurant and gorged himself on horse stew with extremely ill-effects the following day. Horse meat is supposed to be more digestible than mutton or beef but possibly the horse kicks back sometimes all the same. Those of us who consider the eating of horse meat only slightly  less bad than dog, are unlikely to be sympathetic.

At the UNESCO World Heritage site of Nisa, the ruined capital of the Parthian Empire between 3rd century BCE and 3rd century CE, our perambulations were somewhat blighted by an excessively loquacious Russian guide whose grasp of history was short on detail.  The natural site below the Kopet-Dag mountains is spectacular but, possibly due to a combination of the inaccurate Russian and the dreaded Artom, it was far harder to get any real sense of the place or any atmosphere comparable to that of Merv even after considerable re-building of parts of the walls.  Although the Parthians were a major Iranian power, in competition at different times with Seleucid, Scythian and Roman Empires, their culture, heavily influenced by Greece and Rome, they are best known through their artefacts found at sites like Nisa and through accounts written in neighbouring or rival empires including the Romans and the Chinese. With Greek as their official language, Parthian religious belief seems to be a mixed picture, it was easy in Nisa to believe were were seeing the fire temples and altars of the Zoroastrianism of the succeeding Sassanid empire but the spirit of these ruins had departed so long ago that for all the importance of the site, we found ourselves untouched by any great desire to know more. As Colin Thubron wrote 'the city itself had died', it was 'falling out of focus' and 'the earth was absorbing the whole city back into itself'.  So far as we were concerned, the efforts of men to reconstruct or suggest what might once have been were failed and perhaps mistaken attempts at resurrection, adding less to understanding than a museum 3D model or old-style wishful diorama.

For the drive to the Darwaza gas crater in the Kara Kum desert, one of the major and really most nonsensical tourist sites in Turkmenistan, we happily transferred from our offiical driver's gleaming white saloon car to a rough, tough, and black, Mitsubishi jeep driven with considerable verve and gung ho by Mohammed.  With Artom now largely silent and asleep except when engaged in furious shouting matches with his girl friend on the mobile, we used him only to translate Mohammed's cheery and smiling conversation.  We drove to Darwaza on increasingly rough desert roads edged by bristly mats of desert brush to stop the sand from covering the road entirely and stopped by the roadside for Mohammed to engage in the major process of choosing and bargaining for the best of his watermelons from a vendor heavily masked against the blowing sand. We stopped again in the oasis town of Erbent or Jerbent for a loo break in a concrete hut, to buy camel milk and to see this small town with its concrete and corrugated houses, yurts and livestock, all gradually being overwhelmed by the desert. As the wind was whipping the sand round the houses, there were few people to be seen.

The gas crater when we reached was, as expected, something of a disappointment with broken and singed pipes close to its rim pointing to its status as a man made curiosity.  The question as to whether it can or cannot be extinguished, the burning gas stopped so the surrounding gas fields can be properly explored is moot.  Turkmenistan hardly encourages tourism and yet this unlikely tourist draw is much advertised by every tour and travel company in the region and its very basic campsite is surreally supplied with a spotless pair of flushing loos, loo paper holders and rolls included and a shower, all fed from large plastic tanks.  The crater, admittedly more impressive burning away once darkness falls over the desert, was set on fire on purpose to burn off excess gas from the huge hole that appeared in the ground when the surface above a gas pocket collapsed under the weight of soviet prospecting machinery in the 1950s.  It was originally expected to burn for a few weeks. 

We were lucky at Darwaza, in the face of physically resent but mentally wholly absent Artom, to find an excellent English speaking guide who was looking after a friendly Japanese couple from Hiroshima and who helped Mohammed to put up and anchor against the wind, the minute bell tent that was our bedroom for the night. Mohammed cooked dinner, delicious tender barbecued chicken and lamb with aubergine and grilled tomatoes, melon for pudding and served it on one of those collapsible picnic tables with attached benches.  A great deal of beer, draught out of plain glass bottles, later and we slept soundly in our sleeping bags through a thunderstorm and most of the gale that threatened to rip the tent from the ground.  Artom remained unconscious in the car in the morning as we brushed teeth and ate porridge and fruit, until we literally moved arms and legs out of the way to get back into the car for the drive to Konye Urgench and the border. There were more birds, sparrows most of all at Darwaza and a black beetle, very large, whose defence mechanism involved lowering its head and raising its bottom with a fake sting protrusion into the air (Stink beetle/Eleodes....?) At the camp all rubbish is carefully collected and dropped in a dump near the main road presumably for occasional collection.  As we also discovered in Uzbekistan and, on the other side of the Caspian, in Azerbaijan, cleanliness and rubbish are national obsessions, litter is not dropped. Is this national pride in action or an unexpected hangover from Soviet days?  The latter is more likely.

Konye Urgench, another World Heritage site, the city dating back probably to the 5th century, is, one of the greatest sites of Turkmenistan.  A great centre of craftmanship in building where the kilns still today supply brick for historical renovations across the region, the original town declined after it was conquered by Timur in the late 14th century and abandoned when the Amu-Darya changed course suddenly and Khiva became the regional capital in 16th century while the town of Urgench was rebuilt, now on the other side of the Uzbek border a few miles away.  The remains of the old town have long disappeared into the ground but the monuments that remain are glorious, the most easily spotted in the distance the Kutlug Timur minaret with its ornate brickwork and the Turabek-Khanum mausoleum, the burial place of Kutlug Timur's queen.  Inside, one of the wonders of the region, is a tile covered dome, created using techniques and glazes, including yellow, unknown elsewhere before Timur himself began to build.  Restoration work is in hand on the Tekesh and the swayed Il Arslan mausoleums but, it appears, sympathetically literally to restore what is there, preserve a patch of shimmering turquoise tiles, rather than rebuild.  This row of monuments spread across the once city is traversed by cheerful local pilgrims and day outers who are catered for by a small group of stalls near the Turabek-Khanum mausoleum. There are other hidden monuments, a necropolis of 40 saints in one hill we were told,  that may one day shrug off their earthen shroud and see the light of day once more. Meanwhile tiny shards of colour lie on the ground, shed from these magnificent buildings and they, too small to have any value in any restoration or museum, are tiny mirrors to the past to be preserved and treasured.

From Konye Urgench we drove the short distance to the Uzbek border where village fields are fed through a canal system, crops grow and donkey carts move at donkey pace down the sides of the road. A sad goodbye to Mohammed, the pleasure of leaving Artom with a tip hint of a packet of mints in a London telephone box tin and we crossed the border on foot with a mass of small traders weighed down with bales of cotton cloth and piles of plastic buckets.  The idiiot foreign women were pushed firmly to the front of every queue with great good humour and generosity and we paid our $2 foreigner fare for the minibus drive through no mans land and out the other side into Uzbekistan hoping to find a driver and to the ping of vodafone mobiles as we reached a 'roam further' zone once again, liberated from Turkmen communication purdah.

Notes on Caucasian experiences and Central Asia at last

Notes on Caucasian experiences and Central Asia at last

Georgia

Tbilisi

The Log Inn Hotel (almost impossible to believe but not so unusual in this part of the world), is up a quiet unmade road off one of the major traffic arteries following the right bank of the Mtkvari River in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia.  The flow of Georgia’s longest river from Vardzia into Azerbaijan is hardly more relentless than the flow of traffic beside its banks, such that crossing the road appeared so impossible that we hailed a passing pair of traffic police to escort us to the other side.  They are clearly tolerant of tourist incompetence and treated us kindly as they stepped into the road and stopped the traffic dead.  We did shortly discover networks of subways and underpasses but rarely exactly where it was most convenient in our eyes.  Safely on the embankment we walked downriver to the Peace Bridge, one of many building and restoration works inspired by Mikheil Saakashvili, the reforming former President of Georgian and leader of the Rose Revolution.  His career, ending in present stateless ignominy in Holland with his Dutch wife, deserves at the least a quick scan of his Wikipedia entry and opinion of him in Georgia itself is highly divided.

Across the bridge we were in the old town of Tbilisi where small alleys run between swayed wooden and brick houses with carved balconies jutting overhead.  They open into wider thoroughfares, once filled with artisans’ shops, taken over now by restaurants, any number of karaoke bars and irresistible local designers shops selling clothes and jewellery.  Highly desirable jewellery too for a lover of hefty pieces of inventive and unusual design, set with rough cut chunks of gemstones or remarkably beautiful enamel work.  Clothes are mixed, boiled felts used for garments from slippers to shawls vary from rough and ready to a rare softness, mix with spectacular embellished leather pieces and fleece hats begging to be tried on. 

Passing by these honey traps with difficulty, the first church visit was to the Sioni Cathedral.  Built on the typical Georgian orthodox model, its austere brick exterior belies the painted wealth within, where dignified icons mix madly with arches garlanded like Victorian chintz.  It is clear that the churches are very much living and breathing centres of the community as black robed priests come and go and individuals drop in during the working day for a quiet prayer or hopeful supplication sent forth with the light of a candle lit in front of a favourite icon. Here too is Queen Ketevan, the first sighting of one of the excuses for this trip to Georgia, portrayed looking calm, beautiful and a great many years younger than when she was finally martyred by Shah Abbas after years of captivity in Persia.  (see text box)

Ketevan’s husband, King David, inherited when his father abdicated in favour of the monastic life but died shortly thereafter whereupon his Father returned to the throne. Constantine then rode in to engage in dramatic fratricide and patricide at the behest of his patron, sending his father’s and remaining brother’s heads back to Shah Abb

as before being himself defeated and killed in battle by an army of Kakhetian nobles whereupon Ketevan became regent for her eldest son Teimuraz petitioning the Shah to recognise him as the rightful ruler.  In the simplest version of the ongoing story, in 1614, Ketevan herself travelled to the court of the Shah and remained a hostage in Shiraz against any trouble from Teimuraz on the borders that would result in a Persian invasion of Kakheti.  In fact Teimuraz and his neighbouring ruler in the kingdom of Kartli did not play the game, resulting in the invasion of Georgia and sacking of Tbilisi by the Shah during 4 campaigns between 1614 -1617 and huge deportations of Georgians to Persia.  Teimuraz took refuge in the kingdom of Imereti from where he continue to be a thorn in the Persian side.  His two sons were taken into captivity initially with their Grandmother. After five years they were removed and castrated, one dying and one going mad as a result.  Ketevan no knowing her grandsons’ fate remained a prisoner for another five years, following an extremely ascetic and spiritual regime under the immediate care of Imam Quli-Khan Undiladze, the ruler of south eastern Persia, an ethnic Georgian who regarded her with immense respect.

It is not hard to imagine that the saintly queen may have become a dangerous focal point for the influx of Georgian deportees into Persia, let alone her son continued actively to resist the Shah.  In 1624 Abbas demanded Ketevan’s renunciation of Christianity and conversion to Islam on pain of death by torture.  He may possibly have required her further to join his harem, presumably as the ultimate humiliation given their relative ages, he over fifty and she 64. Urged by Imam Quli-Khan to acquiesce rather than suffer a dreadful death, Ketevan unsurprisingly, given the ways of the martyrs, refused. She was forced to suffer agonising torture with red- hot pincers, detailed descriptions are readily available, until it is said, her soul blessedly departed after her forehead was split with a red-hot spade. Her martyrdom was witnessed by missionaries of the St Augustine Portuguese Catholic order in Goa who removed the body, partly to be interred in the Alaverdi Monastery in Georgia and partly within the St Augustine convent in Goa.  They were finally rediscovered under the ruins in Old Goa in 2004, after a long search based on old Portuguese sources, by a joint team of the Archaeological Survey of India and Portuguese archaeologists.  After DNA testing the muddle of bones in a stone urn were proved in 2013 to include those of 2 known European missionaries of the correct period and a Georgian woman.

The oldest surviving church in Tbilisi is the Anchiskhati Basilica, named for a famous icon now securely held by the Fine Arts Museum.  It is on the same high domes, 3 nave basilica plan that will become increasingly familiar to any traveller in this part of the world and dates back to the 6^th century.  The blackened frescoes of a later date nevertheless emphasise the great antiquity of their surroundings.  (Ancient churches did not all suffer from the determined and often excessive restorations of President Saakashvili’s modernising rule that brought condemnation from international, cultural organisations in the case of Bagrati Cathedral, Kutaisi which we will come to later.  His fast infrastructure development and initiatives to reduce rural poverty, increase and support populations in difficult mountain areas with new initiatives including facilities for tourism, should be seen as valuable and important. but have not been uniformly popular.  To the outsider they would seem part and parcel of the intense Georgian patriotism and national pride but change since Soviet days has already been too fast in many instances for the population of this factional and highly traditional country – whatever that tradition might have been.

21^st century all too standard luxury is on show in Freedom Square.  The stalls selling chuchkela, very traditional snacks of nuts wrapped in different fruit pastes, boiled down until it acquires a waxy consistency, and looking like lumpy salamis hanging from their strings, fringe the pavements of the square where a blindingly gold statue of St George and his dragon stand on the central high column once occupied by Lenin.  A classical building that looks like a museum, instead houses a large Burberry, the Museum of Georgian History is a little way away on the major artery, Rustaveli. The temporary exhibition at that moment was an extraordinarily designed exhibition of dozens of skulls, the earliest ever found up to a very obvious Homo Sapiens and dozens of others from all over the world, all on stands at touchable height.  It looked like an unexpected art installation far more than an exhibition of anthropological exploration and was oddly beautiful.  Permanent exhibitions here include a remarkable trove of gold jewellery, some pieces dating back to the 6^th century and many set with stones, particularly carnelian, garnet and agates. To 21^st century eyes, it all appeared of remarkably contemporary design and skillset.

It is easy to keep walking in Tbilisi, drawn on as in so many cities, by the next monument, an idiosyncratic museum, a local curiosity, the dome of a church or a pretty tree-lined street with interesting shops and cafes.  It was surprisingly hot for May and we, quite mistakenly, tried to find a taxi to get back to the Log Inn.  It cost nothing and the distance in the end was small but we clearly should have walked had a sleepless night of stop start flights not begun to tell in sore feet and aching knees. Tbilisi taxi drivers do not do The Knowledge and before we started and, by successfully following our own noses along the river, arrived, we had a conference with about 10 drivers involving all our tourist maps which were apparently completely incomprehensible to them.  In fact the next taxi we had, organised from the hotel also got lost and we arrived half an hour late for evening prayers in the Peace Cathedral of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia.

The Evangelical Baptists bear no relation to Baptists, least of all the American Baptists usually to be found evangelising in poor tribal areas of the world.  Their militant missionaries have succeeded, over the past 100 years or so, in wiping all signs of local culture off the map that might today have brought in valuable tourism.  In North East India for instance, with its once great wealth of unique societies and languages, tourists prepared to brave the terrible roads, get barn like community churches, English language singing and the barest remains of the tribal cultures celebrated by the ‘philanthropologist’ Verrier Elwin.  He started as a missionary too but became far too fascinated by local culture to wish to change it.  The Georgian Baptists, are none of this but rather a very liberal and ecumenical branch of Georgian orthodoxy. The Peace Cathedral, under the auspices of the former archbishop, Malkhaz Songulashvili, is a former prisoner of war dormitory from WWII.  It has been transformed by the addition of a stone apse, looking like the remains of some ancient basilica, a vast square carved sandstone altar and two massive stone pillars.  More is yet to be done; proper seating to replace the motley chairs and benches and the addition of two wings to house a mosque and a synagogue.  Definitely not the usual Baptist form as we know it.

The former archbishop, a highly educated and linguistically gifted academic, has fought with government and the conservative Orthodox church for minority rights all his life and lost his archbishopric recently to a one-time pupil who took a more conservative stance on LGBT rights closer in line to orthodoxy.  The battle is highly political with the extreme anti-gay policies of Russia influencing regions where a conservative and intensely religious population is anyway disposed to dislike ‘difference’ in any form.  According to Malkhaz, the new archbishop’s wife is a ‘cured’ lesbian and is the extreme power behind her husband’s archiepiscopal throne.  We had dinner with Malkhaz and his wife Anna at their wonderful house where a positively bunker like exterior hides a huge library, a painted chapel and antechambers designed for ecumenical prayer, all looking as if they too might have existed since the 6^th century and in fact the house is on very old foundations. Joined by a posse of friendly rescue dogs who lay in every available gap on sofas or chairs, we ate spectacularly fresh Georgian salad, mushroom soup, treacly black rye bread, cheese and pickled red cabbage washed down with enough Georgian wine to send us reeling back to the Log Inn and into the soundest sleep.

To Vardzia

The unfamiliar buffet breakfast is always a bit of an adventure, some more worthwhile than others and the Log Inn’s left a certain amount to be desired in spite of smiling elderly women in bedroom slippers rushing to produce quantities of muddy Turkish coffee and whisk plates and bowls away almost before a spoon or knife has hit the china.  The thick yoghurt was in fact sour cream, yoghurt came in plastic pots as per and there were frankfurters, potato this and that, long-boiled, very hard-boiled eggs, bread, coffee cream stuffed bounceable buns and small slivers of slightly sad fruit.  Georgians are extremely proud of everything that is Georgian as our driver/guide, Gaga, pointed out constantly.  He himself lived to eat, Georgian food is very good indeed in general but high on calories and Gaga’s girth did not encourage much guiding beyond the inside of his car.  He clearly hoped to be left in peace to snooze in his seat while sending his clients off on endless ‘hikes’ which didn’t go too well after the first.  A 4km uphill clamber to a ruined village was alright I suppose but we could have driven to the ruined village at the top if Gaga hadn’t been so worried about the suspension of his car and we had known better than to agree to the plan.

By the time we came back down the hot and dusty 4km, accompanied by a stray dog who attempted, mistakenly we thought, to kill an adder basking on the road, to save us, and who we wept to leave behind, we had learned our lesson.  At the same time, we had our first sight of Georgia’s glorious wildflowers and the village, set in green flower spotted alpine meadows with a long abandoned but still atmospheric and fully roofed church was very attractive.  Sadly there are plenty of villages like this abandoned, or near deserted among the Georgian mountains, not so much due to urban migration as one might expect; on the contrary, urban areas also lost populations in post-Soviet years, but due to migration out of the country, reduced birth-rates and an ageing population, combined with declining agriculture and the difficulties of rural life especially in the bitter Georgian winters. Rural tourism is a vital component in plans to regenerate these areas and grow the Georgian economy.

We had walked up from nearby the ruined fort of Tmvogi on its spectacular rocky perch and stayed that night in the nearby Tirebi guest house where everything from beef to beans and cheese to jam, had been grown or made by the local farming family who had diversified into hospitality and expanded recently into a purpose-built guest house.  They will need to improve the home-made wine or dilute the currency with something made elsewhere if they are to attract the great drinking public. To get there we drove from Tbilisi through dreary villages of tin and corrugated roofed houses or serried ranks of government built basic dwelling for the refugees of the most recent of many small wars in South Ossetia when it was lost to the Russians as part of their clawing back of Caucasian territories.

The landscape was a different matter as we drove through green meadows and mixed forested hillsides, the verges covered with dog roses and other wild spring flowers and the Lesser Caucasus, snowy peaks on our right, away to the North, en route for the 5^th century Atskuri fort, one of the oldest in the country from the time when Christianity was first brought to Georgia by St Andrea.  It has been destroyed by countless invaders and rebuilt time after time but has not suffered the Disneyfication of the Rabati fortress in Akhaltsicke, a rather dreary town alleviated only by its red-tiled roofs.  This is on Saakahsvili inspired renovation that has gone a long way too far, an amenity for local tourism maybe but with all cultural or historical value as destroyed as the headhunting societies of Nagaland.

In the increasingly dramatic and craggy countryside there are fewer birds than one might hope, ubiquitous summer swallows, the odd unidentifiable small brown, a few European rollers or sunbirds in groups brightly decorating overhead wires and hooded crows on rocky hillsides.  In the hurtling rivers, fish stocks have been seriously depleted by overfishing using electric shocks.  Shooting is seasonal, most animals are protected but there are duck in season and some ground game.  Wolf shooting, usually by farmers protecting their stock, requires a special licence.  Gaga is, he says, a keen hunter with a 5 shot repeating 12 bore.  I’m surprised he could waddle far enough to shoot anything given his intense relationship with food which will become apparent to anyone reading yet another description of lunch or dinner in this account.  Lunch on this occasion was in the outdoor tented ‘pavilions’ of the Edemi restaurant, an adjunct to a trout farm.

On through terraced vineyards and poppy spotted fields and a turn uphill to the comfortable looking buildings of the Sapara monastery and an old ruined nunnery in a village high above the river valley. Here the depopulation and difficulties of subsistence farming were apparent however slowed by Saakashvilian policies to incentivise hard rural lives by provision of 4WD vehicles, free electricity and communication infrastructure.  The nunnery had once been part of another fort, unbreachable on 3 sides on its jutting cliff edge and built of such vast stones, it is almost impossible to imagine anyone building it, let alone attempting to invade.

In Vardzia itself we walked through the honeycomb megalithic cave complex carved into the hillside high above the river.  The famous Queen Tamar who established the monastery and ruled from here for a period of her ‘golden age’ reign in the 12^th century is represented in a fresco in the painted rock church considered the highlight of the complex. The frescoes in general have been sadly blackened by age and a recent fire but it is a highly atmospheric place where we scrambled up steep stairs to the asylum or refuge and down even steeper stairs behind a number of hefty black clad women puffing their way down to get back into the outside air at the front of the cliff face and made our way down to the tourist shops at the bottom.  Restored by improbably delicious water melon slice shaped icecreams on sticks, we drove back to the Tirebi to enjoy unlimited hot water in its inky dark bathrooms and the continuing hospitality of Marina, 46 and looking twenty years older, her husband and son, Giorgi, named as is the general rule we were told, for his grandfather. 

 Passing swiftly over the semolina with cheese and butter for breakfast we tool a longish drive via Borjomi where, carried away by an unusually co-operative ATM, I cashed unnecessary amounts of Lari, and on to Kutaisi, Georgia’s second and Gaga’s home city. As we drive, crops change from region to region with food specialities and the habits of what were once separate kingdoms with different languages and local habits. Fruit grows abundantly and there are cherry and walnut trees, citrus and, we are assured, everything except bananas – exaggerations based on national pride are also part of the landscape.  Brown cattle graze, fewer sheep, endless magpies but Gaga cannot name a single bird or plant.  There is honey for sale on the roadside and, later, terracotta ovens and wine amphorae of antique design and beauty, wooden and wicker this and that, hammocks, fresh strawberries and preserved or pickled fruit and vegetables in jars. 

Kutaisi is in many ways like a French provincial town, with municipal buildings and the distraction of a large modernistic animal covered sculpted fountain in the main square, wide tree lined streets, a Macdonalds and a phenomenal indoor market. The Sunday market was described by Madame Carla Serena in the 1870s as a ‘animated: sellers, buyers, swarming beggars in a relatively restricted space, where on the muddy ground are displayed all the products of the country’.  Not too many of the beggars to be seen as I employed my best Russian to haggle for spices with the older Russian speaking generation, but we gazed fascinated at one after another face of a vendor somehow evolved to resemble his or her own wares; so the walnut seller had a crinkled brown walnut face, the flour sellers had grown white; the spice sellers as animated as the ‘Georgian spices’ mix we tried.  We regretted all that dried garlic for the rest of the day. We ate nazuki, grape and honey bread from a regional bakery – delicious but not the ideal elevenses before a lunch that involved famous khinkali, quadruple sized Shanghai style dumplings full of minced meat and broth that must be sucked out with the first bite or sometimes with cheese, mushroom or beetroot.  They were followed by mkhali, what I would describe as veg splats – minced aubergine, bean, young beet leaves and mysterious ‘Georgian spices’ that included, most identifiably, garlic and chilli.

The Bagrati Cathedral may have been Saakashvili’s nemesis in terms of new architecture but we were astonished by the clever and beautifully done renovation.  The new green roof might be a little bright for some years to come but the beautifully done interior, unrepainted and with steel columns and glass were bound to appeal to austere Northern eyes and visitors might or might not enjoy the war dance of the proprietorial dove living in the vestry that attacks intruders’ feet.  Gaga made it clear as a determined orthodox traditionalist and nationalist that he would rather have kept the cathedral as a ruin, presumably because that was more traditional than a usable church.  He perhaps took traditionalism too far but he did make us understand what Malkhaz Songulashvili might be up against. This was a man whose wife had to call him if she was going out of the house and was not allowed to work despite her pharmacist training.  Gaga was only the first of several of his hidebound ilk during this journey, who took extreme pride in ‘tradition’ involving chauvinism at a level unacceptable to most and a view of women, their wives in particular, that made my blood boil.  Christian ‘tradition’ or Muslim made no difference and neither, one suspected, had 70 years of communism, on the contrary traditional Russian rather than soviet attitudes seem likely to have endorsed those in their satellites both to women and to their LGBT communities.

 The Gelati monastery at Kutaisi, 9 versts from the town in Mme Serena’s time, also under restoration but of a less radical variety, is one of the great sites of Georgian orthodoxy.  Founded by the splendidly named David the Builder, David IV, one of the greatest Georgian kings, in 1106 and the place of his burial and that of other sovereigns including Queen Tamar. It is crammed with glorious mosaics and with frescoes, reminiscent in some case of those in Ethiopian churches with their depictions of the most fanciful and enjoyable religious stories and fables, and, like Mtsketa, has its own legend of the Shroud of Christ albeit this one bore the image of the Virgin after she had pressed her face against the cloth.  St Andrew, travelling to the Caucasus after Christ’s death is said to have used the touch of the shroud to raise the local Queen’s recently deceased son from the dead after a sort of prayer duel with the pagan priests of the place and their idols.

Heading for Kazbegi and towards the Russian border on the Georgian Military Highway we had lunch, looking at these notes, lunches seemed to come thick and fast with Gaga as guide and they were rarely small.  On this occasion we ate a hot dish of meat in a vaguely curried walnut sauce and salmon in a slightly different cold walnut sauce, both called either bazha or satsivi – walnut sauces and walnuts in general are an important element in Georgian cooking;  rolls of a mozzarella like cheese, flavoured with mint, gebzhalia, a delicious speciality of the Mingrelia region; all with the usual irresistible Georgian flat bread.  Gaga could not drink while he was with us and driving and although he regularly mentioned his own winemaking expertise, many people in Georgia make their own, his advice in restaurants was either unreliable or he liked something akin to Ribena.  We had no idea how delicious Georgian wine really was, regardless of its reputation as god’s own vineyard with the most ancient method of winemaking still in use, until we reached the Kakhetia wine growing region where Queen Ketevan had once held power and went wine tasting.

On the way to Kazbegi and into the Caucasus and the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region, we drove between friable looking sandstone cliffs and paused on a wind gusted headland to examine shaggy sheepskin hats, local honey and beeswax products on semi-deserted tourist stall overlooking the spectacular Zhinvalii reservoir.  Likewise overlooking the reservoir on a glorious site, the restored 17^th and 18^th Ananuri fortress and its two churches retains some splendid frescoes and stonework. Here and there antique towers stand on the hillsides above the dry riverbed and the gravel lorries collecting their loads below and, uphill, where the river revives to tumble new stones and gravel downstream and jutting snowy peaks in the distance, there is a tiny white church, beehives and more stalls selling honey at the roadsides.  The weather deteriorates as we drive through steep green pastures and a ski resort, grimy and grey as the last patches of snow hang on in dirt flecked patches.

Kazbegi, or Stepanstminda by its restored old Georgian name, the backdrop of its great eponymous mountain glimpsed through the clouds as we arrive, had an equally grimy and depressed, frontier town feel.  In bright sun it might be better but the lilac filled spring gardens do little to distract from mean little houses and the air of one-horse town shuttered gloom.  Rusty gas pipes running above head height down the sides of streets and alleys, we discover they are a standard feature of badly planned Georgian settlements and villages like this one, add nothing to the scenery as the weather closes in.  We stayed, and froze, in the Iro & Dato guesthouse with gubby flocked sheets and tiny, icy bathrooms BUT, In Georgia there is always hot water, reliable electricity and remarkably good connectivity even in valleys and among the mountains and there is always the food.  The guesthouse, primed no doubt by Gaga, produced a spectacular amount for its sole 3 guests, served at a vast kitchen table and including a sort of minced meat torpedo rissole which was astonishingly good and may owe more to Russian than Georgia in this frontier area.

In the morning, driving up the track towards the Gergeti Trinity Church, one of the staple images of Georgian tourism with the sunlit mountain behind it, both were indiscernible in the thick cloud and chilly drizzle.   The cars gave up on the rutty track and after a short but stiff climb we arrived at the church packed with mainly German hikers.  Properly covered as the guardians of orthodoxy demand, with head coverings and the long kilt-like aprons required of women in trousers, the truth was the interior had nothing out of the way to offer – the point was the invisible setting and the equally invisible view.  Heading once again down from the mountains we had planned to drive and walk in the Truso valley but were put off by driving rain that made the deserted villages miserable, drenched grazing flocks, guarded by dogs against marauding wolves and discouraged further exploration of the mountain flowers, yellow and white azaleas and rhododendrons with primulas and other small flowers.  The Choughs rising and falling on the wind were the most positive signs of life and the Friendship Monument, a stone, concrete and painted rampart high above the Military Road, a symbol of the undying friendship between Georgia and Russia, in 1983 at any rate, added nothing to the scenery on a cold, wet day.

We reached Mtsketa too in pouring rain, not ideal but the glorious ancient Svetitskhoveli cathedral, baptism and burial place of Georgian kings and believed repository of the Shroud among its many other relics, is hardly diminished by bad weather regardless of layers of restoration.  The mediaeval monuments of Mtsketa are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and most recent Saakashvili inspired remodelling in the town does not jar so far as can be seen in the rain – possibly the arcade of tourist shops may have part of modernisations but mammon stays close to the sacred where there is ready custom.  The cathedral was full with more worshippers than tourists in one of the most sacred sites of Christendom, the 13^th/14^th century copy of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem symbolising its important role as the site of the holy Shroud.   

Legend has it that Georgian Jew from Mtskheta named Elias was in Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified. Elias bought Jesus' robe from a Roman soldier at Golgotha and brought it back to Georgia. Upon his return to his native city, he was met by his sister Sidonia who upon touching the robe immediately died from the emotions engendered by the holy object. The robe could not be removed from her grasp, so she was buried with it, her grave is now inside the cathedral.  Later a huge cedar tree grew form her grave which St Nino, the woman responsible for the Christianisation of Georgia in the 4^th century, ordered chopped down to make seven columns for a church. The seventh column floated in the air until St Nino prayed all night and the column descended to become a miracle making part of the church.

St Nino we will come to later at her major shrine at Bodbe, meanwhile we headed uphill to the atmospheric 6^th century Jvari monastery, high above the town before, as the light failed, on a horrible day, forgoing the remaining great monuments of Mtsketa and returning for the night to Tbilisi.  Hard to get away from yet more food but a very un-Georgian dinner involving caipirinhas, good dry red wine and chicken salad was clearly worthy of comment in my notes from that evening for its delightful novelty.

I do detest unimaginative guides or set in their ways drivers.  Gaga could not bear deviations from an itinerary that was more in his head than a confirmed plan. The ‘let’s go and see what that tower is’, moment put him severely out of sorts.  So much for pride in country and all its treasures but, as already said, he saw those most clearly through the eyes of a glutton.  His boss, Davit Berishvili, once himself an enthusiastic guide and now, to his regret tied to a desk running his travel business considered too much good living and not enough exercise detrimental to the calling.  He, in contrast, took us in double quick time to several of the major sights of old Tbilisi including the famous hot spring baths when we had only met him for a cup of coffee. 

Gaga, notwithstanding requests for diversions, was happier as we drove towards wine growing Kakhetia in the rain the following day with wine tastings and more good food in his sights.  Gloomy little boxy soviet style villages on the route were always brightened by apron gardens with ubiquitous yuccas and surrounding meadows of Michaelmas daisies and masses of wild flowering shrubs. On the lower slopes of deciduous forested hillsides, the trees gave way to yellow broom and valerian growing from tumbled walls and stones fringing the road.  Black headscarfed women ignore minimal road traffic and their crone like elder comes out of her house, leaning on a stick, to feed her hens, gripping a small child tightly with her spare hand.  Beehives cluster on flat bed trailers in hillside laybys, movable production lines taking advantage of spring in the mountains and the hills up near the Komburi pass are green down covered, lingering shreds of cloud hanging between them.  There are teazels more villages, iron and wood balconies and verandahs on houses, the head height gas pipes in various colours running through them and all rusting or gently rotting in the damp air in these de-populated highlands.  Going downhill towards the River Turdo we drive through a tunnel of trees and woods where wild mushrooms grow and out onto the vine covered plain, rich land protected by the hills we have left and the reef of the Greater Caucasus ahead.

 The Alaverdi monastery, the highest, or perhaps tallest is the right word, in Georgia until the opening of the massive Sameba in Tbilisi in 2004, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is easily seen from the distance on the flat land. The vast and imposing interior is almost bare now of decoration, a fresco of St George and the dragon inside the portico, the best preserved of the remaining fragments of 15^th and 16^th century frescoes.  We were lucky to have the monumental space to ourselves barring a couple of priests and were exploring the graveyard where members of the Kakhetian royal family and nobles were buried, by the time a bus load of other tourists arrived.  The Bishop’s palace was once the house of the Persian governor in the days of Shah Abbas and there was some question of a grave of Queen Ketevan here or presumably of parts of her body not interred in Goa. The Alaverdi monks in this wine focused area make their own famous wine plus excellent yoghurt which we tried as ice cream in an immaculate new café opposite the church.

The Kakhetia region feels quite different to other parts of the country, fat, comfortable and relatively wealthier.  There is tourism development across the country although the Kazbegi area looks ripe for more and Kakhetia, with its famous wineries now providing sophisticated wine tasting sessions, restaurants and hotels, is beginning to take on a Napa Valley air of prosperity.  Carla Serena described it as ‘the paradise of the Georgian topers’. The small town of Telavi, the former capital, close to Alaverdi, retains what appears to be a basic rural economy with its daily early morning market; smallholders selling surplus; small traders and sale and barter.  There are huge plane trees everywhere including one believably reputed to be 900 years old.  Out of town, chestnut lined roads lead to the Greater Caucasus and Chechnya and the land looks like Richmond park with oaks, chestnuts and then poplars by the River Alazani where flocks cover the river plain.

We visit the Chavchavadze Palace at Tsinandali, the summer country house of Prince Alexander Chavchavadze who was born in St Petersburg to the son of Kakheti-Kartli’s ambassador, and becoming a lieutenant-general in the Russian army before joining Georgian rebellions against Russian rule. He was a romantic poet, linguist, litterateur and proponent of the ideas of the Enlightenment in Georgia.  In this land of serial conquests, the palace was destroyed in 1854 by Dagestan tribesmen who kidnapped 23 women and children and the prince was bankrupted paying their ransoms.  The ruined palace passing to Tsar Alexander III of Russia and has been restored charmingly in 19^th century style with English style gardens, magnolias, gingkos and a green canopy of venerable old trees. The sense of the time capsule was completed by a mysterious but distinguished man about in the grounds with all the presence of the prince who, it was easy to guess, may have been his forebear.  He was certainly different to the usual smallish, squarish, dark haired and browed Georgian standard.

We were defeated at the busy Gremi monastery on its rocky hill by the numbers of mostly local tourists and disappointed by the level of reconstruction and uninspiring museum.  More cheerfully as the morning wore on we headed for vineyard wine-tastings and, at the Kindzmarauli winery, saw the extraordinary processes of the quervi traditional wine making method using massive clay amphorae buried in the ground – veritably suited to fit Ali Baba and all 40 thieves in a mere handful of these spacious vessels.  We tasted dry whites, delicious reds and a disgusting rose redolent of perished rubber in the cave of the Khareba winery and ate lunch high above on the terrace of its excellent restaurant overlooking miles of vineyards and where we managed to avoid Gaga’s idea of a proper Georgian lunch as opposed to our own.  Below us on the country roads, horses and carts moved with dogs by the wheels and the vines grew in their comforting ranks, roses blooming to mark the ends of lines. 

Back on the road, magpies perpetuate and must be saluted, spectacular yellow and black thrushes flashing across the road and into woods redolent with birdsong and the smell of damp leaves as we head deeper to hidden away Zegaan monastery.  Here, a heavy program of renovation is in hand and muscular young priests were attempting to shift a hefty generator from a lorry into some part of the complex. Back on the main road, we followed a dry river bed among antique workhorse Ladas and occasional BMWs into the restored and very empty town walled town of Sighnaghi on its hilltop overlooking the Great Caucasus and the plain below, as the temperature drops in view of the snow-covered mountain peaks.  The Central guest house is icy and we eat in a gale, wrapped in the blankets provided, at a restaurant at the top of the hill, chacha, a broth of mutton and masses of tarragon; and eggplant and mutton with potato, in spiced tomato, cooked in a clay pot. We drank chacha, the local slivovitz like spirit distilled in the wineries and best drunk quickly to avoid more taste than necessary.

Early the following morning I walked through the more or less deserted town, Georgians are not early risers and this town, intended in its renovated state to be a major tourist attraction is barely beginning to stir by 8.30.  Carla Serena described it as ‘a sad place’ inside its ‘wall, bristling with towers’, where the club was not well attended and the ‘ladies do not come there, as they do in other parts of the Caucasus, to have card parties and smoke’. In the main square, as I walked by, there was one man and a stray dog and, among the trees uphill, a few well-padded, cross looking women setting up stalls to sell chuchela, shaggy sheepskin hats, coarse hand-knit socks and a selection of rather misshapen articles of clothing in rough boiled felt.  There was one bakery open selling chebureki, a sort of cheese turnover of presumably Turkish origin and an old woman redistributing street dust with a broom like a small bush on a stick. Walking the old walls was a mixed pleasure of steps and dead ends and the greatest reward in the town this spring morning was the church topped with a spire where a real herbaceous border of spring flowers somehow grew merrily on the tiles.

It is no wonder invaders wanted the rich and desirable territory of Kakhetia and we pass Chailuri fortress one of many small square hilltop forts all over the country and in particular along the border areas on lines of conquest from Central Asia, Persia and Russia. There are wineries on both sides of the road and wild flowers, delphiniums, cottony thistles and mimosa along its edges and spreading across the land.  At Bodbe convent, St Nino is buried in a small chapel heavily decorated in European baroque style. In the main body of the church, 18^th and 19^th century frescoes show images of her life and of Christ’s.  Unfortunately, no photographs can be taken inside but the wonderful, if slightly municipal, gardens surrounding the chapel and the remarkable new and not yet finished church, paid for mainly by emigrant remittances, give way at a lower level to a splendid vegetable garden, fed by St Nino’s original spring. Carla Serena noted the ruined cloister of her day was beginning, ‘little by little, to lose its prestige.’ Today  she would find it astonishingly revived.

St Nino’s story varies in different traditions but she is most generally believed to have been the daughter of a Roman family in Cappadoccia, possibly a relative of St George and whose uncle was Patriarch of Jerusalem.  She was brought up a Christian and after a visitation by the Virgin Mary, who gave her a cross made of vine wood, travelled with a community of virgins to spread the gospel in what was then known as Iberia.  Unlike her fellows, avoiding martyrdom at the hands of the Armenian king, she reached Iberia/Georgia and, after curing Queen Nana at Mtsketa, of an illness, converted her and, with greater difficulty, in due course her husband, King Mirian, to Christianity.  King Mirian sent ambassadors to Constantine the Great in Byzantium and was duly granted church land in Jerusalem and a delegation of bishops to Iberia where Christianity became the state religion. When Nino died soon after at Bodbe, Mirian commissioned the monastery.

Travelling towards the rock-hewn monastery of Davit Gareja we drive through villages where chuchela, hanging bunched on endless roadside stalls, is the speciality.  There are wild delphiniums, cottony thistles and mimosa and herds of cattle as we reach an increasingly lunar desert landscape, still, at this time of year, covered with flowers.  There was forest here once, cut for iron smelting during the 1^st millennium and iron ore is apparent in the red surfaced hills, free of grass, as we approach Davit Gareja.  The monastery was founded by Davit, one of 13 Assyrian fathers, in the 6^th century and was highly important to Georgian royal and noble families.  The monastery is much damaged but remains a spectacular site if you can face the scramble to reach it which seemed, so far as I was concerned, highly unlikely during the climb up slippery shale and mud slopes.  The caves with their remaining frescoes are reached along a narrow path where handrails are now reduced to a few iron posts, the drop only mitigated by the heavy vegetation of spring.  There are reputed to be snakes, fear of which, Gaga claimed, made him quite unable to attempt the climb.  It seemed highly unlikely any snake would show its head in so highly touristed an area, where busloads of visitors were being disgorged in the parking area below to tramp around the area although we found one shed snakeskin on the way down.

 The Lavra monastery complex low on the hillsides was under heavy restoration and may have been the most interesting part.  High above we teetered along the path, peering into caves and eventually hauled ourselves up over the lip of the cliff to a chapel where border guards patrolled from the nearby military base.  To our relief the downward path, upward too had we known what we were in for, sloped easily and relatively smoothly downhill through phenomenal wildflower meadows, buzzing with insect life.  We returned to Tbilisi on an unexpected route, possibly on an old military road through what appeared to be a former soviet collective farm in time for dinner in the tourist/party hall, a barn of a place where we watched an exhibition of spectacularly athletic and balletic Georgian dancing that seemed of far higher quality than might be expected of the usual tourist entertainment. Carla Serena described her experience of Georgian dance when the ‘Caucasian, armed from head to foot, springs towards the woman of his choice’, and ‘leads her into an amorous swirling, rapid and graceful at the same time, in which the cavalier does all he can to capture the admiration of his partner’, and these dancers certainly caught ours.

Final destinations in Tbilisi were the outdoor ethnographic museum with its rebuilt traditional wooden village houses and workshops from all over the country – not so far removed in fact, barring only their decorative elements, from the dusty boxes of today. One of the most curious traditional objects on show and seen elsewhere too in Central Asia and the Caucasus, was the baby’s cradle, its proper use and practical value demonstrated by an unusually enthusiastic guide. And described by Carla Serena 150 years ago.  It is called an arkvani and ‘is formed from two planks held at the head by a full panel. It is provided with a pillow, a mattress and a wadded coverlet which as an opening around the baby’s neck, leaving the shoulders free.  In the middle of the mattress, a little round hole is made, into which a reed, twenty-five centimetres long, is inserted, whose upper end is cut in a different manner accord to the sex of the child…….’ Rods attached on both sides by means of cloth bands control the wrigglings of the captive, without constraining the development of his or her limbs.  In this country, they attribute to this system of cradling, the beautiful conformation of the race and the almost complete absence of deformities’! Last of all for Sunday shopping, the famous Dry Bridge Market is, on the day we visited, a damp stall upon stall of second- hand, mostly soviet era junk followed by a fruitless search through the shops in the old town and the Prospero book store for a bird book for the Caucasus and Central Asia.  Then onwards and eastwards to the station for the night train to Baku.