Ferihegy airport was a surreal place at five minutes to midnight, gate B12 haunted by those for whom the low price justified a flight arriving at 5am: a matronly posse in floral dresses who could be from anywhere in the eastern bloc, a few young backpackers, three metalheads in black hoodies solid with embroidered band patches, a British female contingent looking like a particularly weathered hen night, and a bunch of fresh-faced young men with huge shiny plastic trophies and certificates announcing that they were winners of a karate championship.
None of the obvious Georgians gave an impression of knowing what a queue was for; the karate kids were held up by a Wizzair goon who explained putting their cargo in the hold would cost €70 per trophy. We went past the argument, eager for the utterly degrading experience of standing in a packed parked bus for 20m for no reason (matched only by another 10 minutes of sweltering, futile hell right by the plane) so didn’t get to see the presumed karate battle sweep the terminal.
I was sat next to a nice Azerbaijani chap called Abdulla, studying in Budapest, and we chatted about economics, favourite cities, Europe, whether the Chinese or the robots would own us first, until the man in the row ahead (quite reasonably) asked us to speak more softly and I tried to get some shuteye. We arrived in the dark through low clouds – landscape speckled with random lights, outlines of suburbia and stopped trucks. A skilled landing, one bounce, no applause, and we arrived at the brightly, modern terminal as the sky began to lighten.
A sim card with 4gb of data was 10 lari (about £3) and no hassle whatsoever. A ride into the town – in a car with a cracked windscreen down a road full of abandoned petrol stations, through muggy morning air towards misty hills – was 30 lari of hard haggling; we succeeded at least in not letting him talk us into being our personal chauffeur. Having arrived in Kutaisi, looking at wikitravel for something else, it specifically warned us about being ripped off by taxi drivers. “Learning money, I guess,” said Arpi.
I had asked for the wrong railway station, so we were the wrong side of town, and it was too early for anyone but the homeless and stray dogs to be about, of which there were hundreds (happily all tagged, neutered, and not at all frightening). One followed us along for the 90 minute amble across town; we called him Trombley.
We came through a sort of Georgian suburbia, full of vast potholes and little old ladies sweeping up leaves. It had an oddly Middle Eastern feel of individual areas being well cared for but the whole collectively going to wrack and ruin, with a dusty aridity despite the lush green plants and vines growing on everything. It was warm and muggy, the hills above the town blue with scatter.
As with so many post-Soviet states, mobile signal is excellent, and it was no trouble finding David Agmashenebeli Avenue, a very Soviet-feeling east-west axis planted with hundreds of palms. We continued our trudge towards what looked on the map a lot like the old town. Occasional cars rocketed past with utter contempt for speed limits; a memorial to one side had a huge Georgian flag and a stone underneath a glass obelisk, carved with beautiful (and incomprehensible to us) curly-wurly Mkhedruli letters.
At the bridge, the Rioni River was clay-grey and turbulent, with the green roof of Bagrati Cathedral and the Chernobyl silhouette of a Ferris wheel on a hill to the north. Across the river, it felt more urban, if still run down: the pavements were still mainly populated by dogs and street sweepers. The latter had no uniforms (some had orange tops like homebrew hi-vis) and no sign of being municipal employees rather than than concerned citizens. They also had almost no equipment that wasn’t obviously homemade, and were using straw brushes to get the dirt into cardboard boxes on little trolleys. It all had a surreal, Sisyphean feeling to it.
Up a long Russian Empire-feeling staircase to the correct railway station with its statue of Agmashenebeli, aka David the Builder. Trombley wouldn’t let us go, and had assembled a posse of fellow dogs at this point. Through small scatters of large raindrops we headed along Tamar the Queen Street hoping for accommodation; eventually, one had a human outside who showed us a room for 45 lari (Trombley not invited), and we flopped down on an admittedly completely uncomfortable mattress for a few hours.
Good morning, Kutaisi! – Museums and wine – Chiatura from above – Pioneers’ Palace, Gori – Tbilisi – David Gareja – Akhaltsikhe – Vardzia
underneath the open sky 