A short diversion to Gyumri

To cross into Armenia, we took the brand new sleeper train from Tbilisi to Yerevan. Booking our tickets all the way to Yerevan was another in a series of slight miscalculations – we’d so easily booked last minute accommodation in Georgia that it came as a bit of a shock to find that there was barely anything available in Yerevan, and anything that was available was very expensive. We made some friends on the train (who had moved to Armenia from Moscow, but some months ago) who explained to us that Armenia had seen an influx of Russian citizens in recent weeks because it was one of the few countries where it was possible to travel on a national ID (since apparently many Russians don’t have full passports), and this might explain the shortage of accommodation.

We decided to switch our itinerary to visit Gyumri first. This left us with two options:

  1. Get off the train in the middle of the night when it stopped at Gyumri, knowing that Armenian cafes don’t open for breakfast until around 9.30am
  2. Enjoy a full night’s sleep on the train, before turning around and travelling the three hours straight back to Gyumri

We opted for option #2, since arriving at 4am didn’t sound like much fun. It was also an excuse to take another train, only this time we’d be able to take in some of the scenery as we trundled along after leaving Yerevan’s beautiful station.

Gyumri is Georgia’s second largest city, but its name is still synonymous with the earthquake which practically levelled the town in 1988, killing 50,000 people and displacing even more. The reconstruction effort has been ongoing ever since, with ruined buildings and others undergoing repairs visible throughout the city, including the city’s old hospital (below right), which was rebuilt from scratch next door, leaving the ruins to be consumed by nature.

Still, those buildings that had been restored continued to use the distinctive black and orange tuff (volcanic rock), giving the city a unique architectural style.

The town is built out from Verdanants Square, a vast area flanked by the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God at one end and the Holy Saviour’s Church at the other. The cathedral has been fully restored since the earthquake in black tuff, with two of its predecessor’s spires preserved in the cathedral’s gardens.

The exterior of the church at the other end of the square had also been restored, but inside work still continued. We were a bit surprised to be beckoned into the building site by the man who was working alone inside the church, but it was worthwhile to see just how much of a project it was to restore it to its former glory.

We also came across a picture of the church taken shortly after the earthquake, which was pretty staggering – there was very little left standing.

Our favourite meal in Gyumri was undoubtedly the lunch we ate at Gwoog Gastrohouse. The first dish to come out was heavily buttered scrambled egg with basturma, a type of salty cured beef (not pictured as we ate it way too quickly). Next up was chrov pilaf, a rice side with apricots, dates and raisins (we realise this was a slightly strange accompaniment to eggs, but that was on us!) Finally, a whole plate of lamb dolma arrived, complete with fresh lemon and sour cream. All of this was washed down with a sweet apricot and raisin Kompot, a drink we’d never heard of, but that went down a treat!

We also treated ourselves to a donut each from Ponchik Monchik. These are hollow deep fried dough balls, filled with either vanilla custard, chocolate spread, or jam, and dusted with icing sugar. After demonstrating how much the filling hole looked like a mouth, Sara then painted her nose white with icing sugar with her first bite. Absolutely delicious, and we could probably have eaten two each!

To burn off some calories, we took a walk out to Gyumri’s Mother Armenia – a colossal statue on the edge of town which somehow survived the devastating earthquake. She watches over Gyumri, with one arm raised to the sky and her back clearly turned to the Turkish border less than 10km behind her. Still, her view across Armenia was spectacular.

Just next door to the statue lies the Black Fortress, a military installation built with typical Gyumri black tuff, which has more recently been converted into a live performance venue. Both attractions were eerily quiet, with just the odd wandering tourist and a few local kids out exercising.

We took a short diversion on our way back into town through Gyumri’s Central Park. From the outside, this appeared to be a wild and seldom used park, but once inside, we found that the park was dotted with beautiful architecture and Soviet statues.

As well as yet another amusement park…

After exploring Gyumri’s main attractions, it was time to pay some attention to the increasingly messy matt of hair on my head. We headed to Lux Barber Shop, a traditional barbers filled with wood panelling, mirrors and metal and leather chairs. With my Armenian language skills stretching to “hello”, “goodbye” and “thank you”, I resorted to showing the barber a few photos taken shortly after my last hair cut. He gave the photos a passing glance before leading me towards a chair and picking up the clippers. Sara watched on from the entrance as I had one of the most tense hair cuts of my life, but at least I didn’t have to engage in the normal barber small talk. In the end, the barber did a great a job despite my lack of communication skills, and I left Gyumri looking much smarter than the state in which I arrived.

Our next destination would be Vanadzor, a typical Soviet town and the gateway to the Debed Canyon, with Yerevan now demoted to the end of our Armenian itinerary.

Georgia round up 🇬🇪

While the transition from Greece to Turkey felt gradual, the difference between eastern Turkey and Georgia was immediate. Food instantly became more varied, Islam changed to Christianity, clothing became less conservative, the Latin alphabet became Mkhedruli script and the structured coach network was replaced with an informal collection of marshrutkas. After three weeks in Asia, it felt like we’d re-entered Europe.

Transport

We travelled from Batumi in the west to Tbilisi in the east almost exclusively by marshrutkas.

While we loved the organised chaos of marshrutkas, the lack of certainty kept us on our toes regarding whether they departed on a schedule or when full, and whether passengers should buy a ticket or pay the driver. We also found that driver care on the road varied wildly, and it seemed that essential requirements included a huge crack across the windscreen and reliably departing before closing the sliding minibus door. We also witnessed many pre-departure altercations between fellow passengers and sometimes the driver. We think the source of these arguments related to who sat where and whether the passenger had bought a ticket before reserving a seat, but we’ll never know for sure. The best part of these situations was that inevitably, every passenger on the marshrutka threw in their two cents, while we sat helplessly and watched it unfold.

While there are train lines in Georgia, there are generally only one or two trains a day, often at inconvenient times of day (or night!). We were most excited about the scenic Borjomi-Bakuriani railway, but sadly this route hasn’t restarted since it was paused during the pandemic. Still, I managed to weave a round-trip train journey into our day trip to Gori.

We enjoyed the amount of bureaucracy that went in to the purchase of this train ticket, despite Gori only being 79 km from Tbilisi. Our passports were required, seats were allocated, and after lots of typing, we were presented with an airline-style ticket each. And after all that, we found some people sitting in our seats anyway.

Carbon

Our route across Georgia was our second most carbon intensive journey so far, despite also being the shortest distance we’d travelled within a single country. This is largely because I’ve classified our marshrutka journeys as “average local bus”, which is nearly 4 times more carbon intensive than “coach”, according the the UK government’s carbon database. This is probably an overestimation of our carbon emissions, but it’s the best I could do with the available data.

This brings our total carbon emissions from transport since leaving London to 676 kgCO2e, so we’re now well over halfway towards the minimum offset size of 1,000 kgCO2e.

Cost

We spent less money per day and less money in total in Georgia compared to any other country we’ve visited so far. This was despite feasting on Georgian delicacies in some great restaurants while we were there.

Transport costs were responsible for less than 10% of our expenditure in Georgia. This proportion is similar to Turkey, but noticeably less than the proportion spent on transport in Italy and Greece. Despite travel by marshrutka being quite hair-raising at times, they really were cost-effective. For instance, we travelled the 267 km from Batumi in the south to Mestia in the north for the equivalent of £16.50 each.

Cats

We saw about 5 cats per day in Georgia, which sadly doesn’t even hold a candle to Greece or Turkey’s totals.

We did meet some particularly fine chaps though – quality not quantity!

🏅Award for the cutest flood barrier

If it fits, I sits

🏅Award for the most co-ordinated cat gang

They arrived en masse, worked together to fleece this woman of her dinner, then dispersed to wreak havoc around the rest of the restaurant

We also saw plenty of dogs, although these were not counted so rigorously. At first we were apprehensive of stray dogs when they approached us in the street or while we were hiking, but it was hard to not feel attached when they would quietly follow you for hours purely for company and the chance of a scrap of food. We also noticed that most of them had tags in their ears, presumably to track and record health status, which I thought was pretty impressive. Still, I think my favourite photo is this one of a stack of snoozing Georgian puppies.

From Tbilisi, we took the overnight sleeper train to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, although this wasn’t where the day’s journey ended…

Revisiting lovely Tbilisi (and Gori for the first time)

Our initial plan had been to pass though Georgia in two or three days on the way to Armenia, but nearly three weeks later, we’re still here! I thought that we’d seen all we wanted to see on our last visit in 2019 (when we spent time in Tbilisi and the wine region, Kakheti) but that was definitely not the case. In fact, we found so many new things that we wanted to do that Tbilisi was the first place on our Georgian itinerary that we revisited. We were very happy to be back.

Because we’d seen many of the main sights previously, this freed us up to do what we like doing best anyway – wandering, admiring the architecture, and eating. Tbilisi has a really distinctive look and it’s a treat just to roam its streets. If, like me, you’re a fan of doors, it’s a great city. I’m aware that if you don’t particularly like doors (or perhaps have never considered your level of liking for them), you’ll probably think that sounds really strange, but I know there are other people like me! We also spent some time hanging out on our pretty (but frankly quite precarious) balcony.

We paid a visit to the Dry Bridge Market, which was absolutely full of treasures. If only we had somewhere to live, I think we would have bought quite a few bits! The thought of carrying additional things in our backpacks is a very good incentive to be disciplined, though.

At some point during our slow meandering around Tbilisi, we realised that we had made a slight miscalculation in that the every-second-day sleeper train to Yerevan (our next connection) did not, in fact, depart on even dates but on odd dates. Whoops! This left us without accommodation but with a bonus day, which we decided to spend in Gori.

Gori

Gori is Georgia’s 5th most populous city, but is much better known as Stalin’s birthplace. Although I suspect it was both faster and more convenient to travel there by marshrutka, Oli convinced me that we should take the train, given it was one of the few rail routes in Georgia. This was by far the oldest train we’d travelled on and the process to obtain a ticket was suitably beaurocratic. Once we boarded the train, we became well acquainted with the conductor because every time he saw us (which, over a 90-minute journey, was quite a few times), he enthusiastically shouted, “Gori! Gori!” After an inauspicious start where we Brysoned our way out of Gori railway station through a spooky but fascinating yard of rusting train carriages, we headed to the Stalin Museum.

I think we would have got lots more out of the museum if our Georgian or Russian language skills were up to scratch, but as it was we missed much of the written information. We did enjoy examining the scale model of the secret underground printing press where Communist propaganda were printed, though.

I was also pretty impressed with this portait of Stalin meeting Mao Zedong – it’s embroidery!

Parked (stationed?!) outside the museum was Stalin’s private train carriage and this was really up our street. Unfortunately, there was a tour group there at the same time taking many photos who were slightly irritating. Oli’s pose below is supposedly a cruel imitation of their poses, but actually I think he really was this excited at having so much train-related fun in one day!

Our next stop was lunch, and we followed a recommendation to a very local workers’ cafe in residential backstreet to try the local speciality: cutlet. It might not look like much but it was pretty good! Think Ikea meatballs but with delicious fried crispy edges, smooth mash and a spiced tomato sauce…

In the afternoon, we climbed up to the citadel, which gave us a great view across the city. At the base of the citadel, we stumbled across the Memorial of Georgian War Heroes. This was a circle of eight huge metal sculptures of soldiers, where each one had something missing, such as an arm, a leg or a head – symbolising what is lost in war. It was beautifully done and really moving.

While exploring the old town, we saw our 50th Georgian cat (a milestone!) He declined to pose, but our 51st and 52nd cat were only too happy to work it for the camera.

Back in Tbilisi, the other side effect of our train miscalculation was that we needed to move accommodation. We chose the extremely hipster Fabrika, a hostel housed in an old Soviet sewing factory, complete with co-working facilities, maker’s spaces and a courtyard filled with small food joints.

For our bonus evening, we had drinks at Wine Merchants and a delicious dinner at Asi Khinkali, before joining in the Saturday night melee back at Fabrika. It had a really nice buzz but we might have been the oldest there…

We woke up the next morning to rain and slight hangovers, which meant it was the perfect time to relax in Tbilisi’s famous sulphur baths. We chose a private room at Gulo’s Thermal Spa. Although there are public baths, if you’re not so into public nudity or just fancy some peace and quiet, renting a private room is a good option. On our last visit, we were on less of a budget and our room was positively palatial. This time, we were a little more frugal but still ended up with a four-roomed space that was larger than our London flat! It’s a bit of a rite of passage to have a kisi exfoliating scrub, but given I’d tried this last time and it was one of the least dignified experiences of my life (slithering around on a marble slab while all soaped up and then having a bucket of cold water poured over my head!), I opted out this time. I imagine it would have sorted my hangover out pretty quickly, though!

The rain continued all day but we were determined to enjoy our last few hours in this beautiful city, so we spent the afternoon walking and revisited the Bridge of Peace, one of Tbilisi’s iconic pieces of modern architecture.

That evening, we caught our first proper sleeper train of the trip to Yerevan, Armenia, marking the end of our time in lovely Georgia.