The Big Trip

Lucy writes:

  It's 6.30am and Sunday morning. I'm on the sofa at home in London, and I'm quite pleased to have slept so long. 

  Despite there being on two hours time difference between Georgia and Turkey, few in the group seemed to get in the swing of the new time. The darkness setting in 4pm came as huge shock. That coupled with a night's camping, where cold tends to send you bed early, and a 5am balloon ride in Goreme, tales of waking at 5am, 5.30 or earlier were common and have come to seem normal. Having arrived in London, and turned our clocks back another two hours, I've managed to sleep until 10.30am, if my body's still on Georgia time. I think it is, and is perhaps a hint to head back to that amazing country immediately.

  The long, last drive from Goreme to Istanbul had been long discussed. It was a choice to drive long on our last day of the trip rather than split it in to two drive days, so our mental preparations for the 10 - 15 hour drive had started long before. The anticipation of it made it feel rather strange to reach the day when, again, we woke at 5am to be on the road early, crossing our fingers that our truck, Helena, would make it the final stretch. We wrapped blankets around our legs, or others pulled their sleeping bags up to their chins, and drove, watching the sun rise and stopping periodically to eat Turkish cheese pastries and pee in shiny service station toilets, where east meets west, and you can choose a western toilet or squat depending on your preference.

  As we crossed Istanbul, the sun was setting. In Georgia, we had reached the Black Sea at a similar time of day, and it had felt pretty monumental to see the sea stretching out after so many days and months in the middle of a landmass (plus the landlocked Caspian Sea). We had been travelling west for so long, and on reaching the sea, the end of the land, we simply turned left. 

  Here, reaching the water once again, ending our trip and crossing from Asia to Europe as we did so, was met with whoops of excitement. For some arriving in Europe was reaching home, and other's had never been here yet.

  Later, we met on the roof of the hostel for final cocktails, to thank Claire and Matt for getting us across the vastness of Central Asia, and to say goodbye to the group. We listened as the call to prayer went up from the mosques around us, each a few seconds out from each other, and the calls of the different Muezzins mingled and fought for prominence.

  We staggered our goodbyes to the group; many were staying in Istanbul for the same couple of days, or even a couple of weeks longer. While others stayed in the same hostel, within walking distance of the big sights, ourselves, Emma and Cathy had all booked flats across the Bosphorous, in Beyoglu and near Taksim. We loaded ourselves into a taxi and headed back across the water, away from the souvenir shops and towards the winding graffiti-ed streets of the neighbourhood. Somehow completely independently, ourselves and Emma had booked flats within minutes of each other.

  We met for lunch, but the recommended restaurant was shut, so we ended up wandering the streets, shopping and drooling at the boutique design shops, eating an amazing falafel pita, bread and filling were incredibly fresh, and ending up at the Istanbul Modern. We spent a couple of hours in the gallery. One of the most interesting exhibits were two videos of craftspeople, a potter and a taxidermist, running concurrently, watching them work. The gallery was mostly full of tourists, perhaps the locals preferring the small independent galleries spotted around Beyoglu.

  We ate in a small local restaurant, a basement, tiled and full of people. We squeezed into a corner, chatted, drank red wine and ate the most beautiful stuffed vine leaves, warm and gently spiced. 

  The next morning we caught the tram back across the Bosphorus, to see the big sights; the Aya Sofia, the Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cisterna and the Grand Bazaar. Having visited countless bazaars and followed the paths of the carpets, the embroidery and the pottery across the silk road, the Grand Bazaar felt familiar, and definitely much more organised and quiet than many others we've come across. That said, the shouting for business from restaurants and cafes as we wandered near the Sultanahmet made our return to our local neighbourhood very welcome. 

  For our last night of the trip, we met others from our group and ate Mezze, while they ate kebabs, in another busy restaurant, built around a large charcoal grill. We spoke about everyone's further travels, as Matt returns Helena the truck back to Africa, going over water to Cairo, Emma continues through Bulgaria and Hungary, winding her way through Europe and planning to reach London in December, Amy flies for Nepal, Cathy and Inez are off to Tehran, much to the jealousy of the group, while others, like us, are returning home.

  Catching our taxi to Ataturk airport the next morning was tinged with a lot of sadness, but of the right kind - of having had a truly amazing time and it being over. 

Danny writes:

  The town of Goreme in the Cappadocia region of Turkey turned out to be an absolutely brilliant final stopping point on our journey to Istanbul. Cappadocia is famous for its 'fairy-chimney' rock formations, and as we drove up to the town for the first time they started appearing all over the landscape, one at a time, until there were hundreds of them.

  We arrived mid afternoon, with just enough time on the first day to cook a late lunch, get settled in and go for a wander around the town before it got dark. Goreme is famous for its hot air ballooning industry and the next morning most of us had booked ourselves onto a flight, so at 4:15 in the morning our alarms went off and we shuffled downstairs to a waiting minibus.

  We have been so lucky with the weather on this trip. Today is day 100 and I can only remember 3 or 4 days when it has rained one drop. Whereas the previous few days in Turkey had been cloudy, the morning of our hot air ballooning flight was beautifully clear. We couldn't have asked for more.

  It was a jam packed day from dusk till dawn and after the flight we were booked onto a bus tour of the area. The first proper stop was the Derinkuyu Underground City, an enormous series of underground caves built around 800AD. They were originally an incredible 16 storeys deep and could house 20,000 people in the event of an enemy attack. Rolling stone doors are still in place, ready to roll shut and block the entrances in case of emergency. These days you can visit the first eight levels and see everything from the underground churches, wineries, stables, graves and kitchens. Quite incredible.

  We went for a walk and lunch in the Ihlara Valley, followed by a visit to Selime Monastery, built out of rock by the monks, high up on the hill side. Again, amazing carving work with churches and living areas chiseled into the rock, all of which have survived for hundreds of years.

Danny writes:

  The final two stops on our whirlwind tour of Georgia were Katusi and Batumi. After the food and wine themed previous week, Western Georgia turned out to be more about caves than anything else. First up was the excellently named Uplistsikhe Cave City. Uplistsikhe was an ancient Silk Road cave town, expertly chiselled into the rock face, just outside of modern day Gori. It was clearly a rich and prosperous destination, with amazingly detailed carving work still visible in many of the surviving caves. The level of civilisation that was evident from excavations, given the time period the city was functional, was remarkable. An ancient pharmacy has been excavated, complete with shelves carved out of the stone, and there is a museum full of all the pottery that has recently been uncovered.

  Katusi was next, and with it the Prometheus Caves. Discovered by chance in 1985, and opened to the public in 2011, the Prometheus Caves are a vast underground series of caves, absolutely full of stalagmites and stalactites. The biggest of the caves could well be the size of Westminster Abbey it is so big. Quite incredible. At the end of our tour around the place, we got into a boat and rode through the final caves to the exit. The water level in the caves changes throughout the year and we had to duck down to avoid hitting our heads on the cave ceiling as we moved along.

  From Katusi, we drove west until we reached the Black Sea. We have spent the night on a ferry crossing the Caspian, but the Black Sea feels more like the end of an epic land journey to me. Looking at our journey on a map, it is mind boggling to think of the distances we have travelled. Six time zones and over 4000 miles in a straight line separate us now from Beijing, the distance we have actually travelled is much greater of course. When we set off it was the height of Beijing's summer, with all the humidity you expect in far east Asia. Now we are in Autumn, approaching the gateway into Europe and the end of Silk Road. What a journey.

When we arrived in our accommodation in Gori, our guide announced with a wry smile, 'Welcome to the Soviet Union!' He was referring to the building built to decadent proportions, with inlaid wooden floors and an enormous staircase, but without the convenience of a simple lift to get us the few floors up. However, it felt like a comment relevant to the whole town. 

From regaining control of their wine industry and culture, to reclaiming a beautiful gorge in Tbilisi that had been full of rubbish in the Soviet era, and I'm sure in a multitude of other ways, Georgia feels like a place that is incredibly relieved to be shaking off Soviet rule and being free to be itself again. Unlike Turkmenistan, it's not building or creating a culture or history dreamt up by one or two men and it doesn't seem to be as economically dependent on the machinations of Russia as Kyrgyzstan. As much as our guide complained that the incumbant government would win Sunday's election (they did), and spoke of the disillusionment of his own generation with politics after growing up in the Soviet era, he also spoke of the greater political engagement of the younger generations, and that it seemed cause for hope.

It was interesting then to travel to Gori and experience the Stalin Museum, in it's full celebration of the man. After Georgia's independence from the USSR, there had been regular discussions about removing the statue of Stalin from the square in Gori, but it had been disputed. It was finally taken down just a few years ago, and had to be reinstated due to public pressure in the town in 2011.

Danny and I went for a quick walk around the streets in the twilight, when the dusky street lamps, drifting clouds of woodsmoke and overhanging trees made it seem interesting and eerie. We awoke to a bright blue sky and a trip to the Stalin Museum. When we arrived we got started at the gift shop, admiring the Stalin snow globes, thermos flasks, matches and pens.

Lucy writes:

  We left Tbilisi, leaving behind Carleen and Kate, so we are finally a group of thirteen, including Claire and Matt, for the last section of the trip to Istanbul.

  We worked our way up higher and higher into the mountains, past villages and lodges ready for the ski season, but currently, luckily for us, still waiting for their snow. We reached Kazbegi in the afternoon, too late for the drive up to Mtskheka Monastery, which we decided to leave until the morning. Instead we settled ourselves in, drinking tea and snacking on instant noodles for the few hours before dinner, while some of the others headed out for a walk in the fading light, watching livestock walk calmly around the town.

  It turned out to be a rather harrowing afternoon, as our leader Claire waited for news from her sister as she went though a very difficult labour at home in the UK. Luckily good news had come in by the evening. We spent that night eating another feast of Georgian food including homemade cake served with fresh sliced apple. We have followed the seasons through our trip, from ripe peaches piled up in the markets in China, to watermelons and a grape harvest festival in Western China, freshly made jams from soft autumn fruit - blackcurrants and apricots - in Kyrgyzstan. In Georgia, apples have all been harvested and mandarins, some still green, are piling up. There are trees heavy with persimmons all over Georgia, looking bent and craggy, laden with bright orange, round fruit, perfect as a Halloween backdrop. Autumn is a truly beautiful time to be travelling. The colours of the changing trees are indescribably beautiful.

  The next morning, four of the group headed up the mountain to the monastery at 7.30am. The rest of the group took a taxi up an incredibly steep and winding road. Set above the town, and surrounded by several other snowy crags of mountain, the Mtskheka Monastery is in a beautiful place. Still with monks dressed in black climbing up to it, and a little pot stove burning away, it's very atmospheric. Women, in churches and monasteries throughout Georgia are required to cover their legs with a skirt, not just trousers, as well as their heads before entering. All these religious places have boxes, baskets or rails of wrap around skirts and headscarves to wear.

  We all walked back down the mountain and into town, ready to take  a class in dumpling making, Georgian style - i.e. ending with eating, drinking, and our hosts making toasts.

  The dumpling class was held in the kitchen, apparently newly built or renovated, of a local woman, who showed us how to make the dumplings, with translation from our guide, Tza Tza. She had already made a significant number of both meat and cheese and potato dumplings for us to see, and to ensure we didn't have to rely solely on our own efforts for lunch. She had also made the dumpling dough, as it's best made in advance, but she did show us how to mix it. It's purely flour, salt and room temperature water, which she mixed with great ease and expertise, but I'm sure it's incredibly difficult to get right. The dough is very soft and stretchy - feeling very much like a soft white pizza dough. 

  She started with the meat dumplings. The filling was a combination of pork and chicken, with garlic, onion and seasoning, minced. The meat has to be fatty, as the idea is, when the dumpling is cooked, you bite the dumpling, suck out all the meaty broth that has formed inside, and then eat the remaining dumpling. 

  You roll out a round of the dough, dollop a spoonful of meaty filling in the centre (much more than any of us would have added in by instinct), and then pleat and fold the dough around the filling, forming a thick lump of dough at the top, which you twist off, leaving a pleated round.

  She didn't tell us all the ingredients of the vegetarian dumplings, but mashed potato and crumbled cheese was definitely included. These dumplings were formed by folding the dough around the mixture lengthways and then pleating and plaiting the edges of the mixture together, forming a sort of leaf shape, with a pattern down the closed edge. This technique was much more complicated, and I think only one member of our group, Amy, really got the hang of it.

  All our dumplings were boiled for 5-10 minutes before being served. She had also fried some of the cheese ones in butter, crisping them up after they had been boiled. They are also served with butter to melt over the top, along with black pepper. The meat dumplings are served with vinegar and perhaps some paprika too. 

  We all sat together to eat them, and our host offered us a toast, and we, or our spokesperson Emma, toasted back in return with some extremely strong grappa. Considering the toasting and celebration that goes along with having a few guests, a Georgia wedding or family celebration seems mind-boggling. 

Danny writes,

  Tbilisi is a city we would both definitely like to return to in the future. It is laid back and European with lots of interesting cobbled streets to explore and art galleries to visit. We spent two nights there, and when we arrived after lunch on the first day we headed straight down to the bustling Saturday market to have a look round. There were plenty of bric-a-brac sellers, selling everything from shower heads to vintage postcards, all clustered on a bridge over the river. On the far shore we reached a large park completely lined with artists selling their paintings and sculptures. Most of it was mediocre, but there were a few good pieces. Fortunately we don't have any more room in our backpacks, or on our walls back at home for that matter.

  That evening we found a nice little Syrian restaurant down a side street. I think we caught the owner just as he was about to head home because no one else was in there and he had sent his chef home early. He hardly had any food in the kitchen but we did manage to order hummus and felafel, the first time we have found them on the menu this trip! The owner told us that he used to own a freighting company in Damascus, until eight months ago when the civil war made it too difficult and costly to run. He decided to move to Georgia, and in the eight months he has been living in Tbilisi he has started the restaurant we ate in, as well as a travel agency and another shipping company. Quite incredible!

  The following day we had a look round the old city, starting with some of the naturally heated hot baths that can be found around the place. We headed up to a church on the hillside to have a look at the view. Being a Sunday there was a service going on inside, which was packed full of people with an overflow area out the door. The harmonies coming from inside the church sounded beautiful.

  The old town was my favourite part of Tbilisi, full of cafes, art galleries and wine shops. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the back streets and taking photos. We also accidentally bought a ceramic serving dish which we now need to try and safely transport back to the UK...

Danny writes:

  We started off our day in Telavi with a visit to the Alaberdi Monastery. Based a few miles out of town, the Monastery produces its own range of organic wines and honey. As we walked around the grounds we popped into a Grappa distillery, where the spirit is distilled from the grapes left over from wine production. Basically once the grapes are filtered from the finished wine they are placed in a pot over a fire. They are heated to around 85 degees at which point the alcohol burns off and is funnelled through into a separate container. This mixture is then distilled for a second time to create the purer alcohol which is Grappa.

  A bit further along the path you reach the beehives. At full production there are 140 beehives in operation and they produce around two tonnes of honey in a season. As the season changes, the hives are moved up into the nearby hills so that the bees can feed off the nectar. Each active bee lives for around 45 days, but the bees can live quite a few months between honey producing seasons, because their inactivity prolongs their life. When they are not collecting honey they group together into a large ball, protecting their queen, and rarely leave the hive. 

  After this cultural and educational experience we began a long day of wine tasting, or as our local guide Tza Tza called it, wine drinking! We started off at Petriaant Marani. Marani is the Georgian for vineyard and the Petriaant Vineyard is a tiny family run affair around 30 miles from Telavi. We got a first hand look at how the wine is fermented in giant clay pots beneath the ground. The Georgians find buried clay containers ideal for maintaining the temperature and humidity of the wine as naturally as possible. There is apparently quite a lot of tolerance allowed in the wines fermenting temperature, as long as the temperature doesn't change too much during fermentation. The pots are sealed with a stone, made air tight with wet clay, as if air is allowed to flow into the pots during fermentation the wine can become vinegary.

  The Petriaant wine is much more traditionally Georgian, which is quite different to Western wine. it is quite nice, just not quite what we had expected. The big highlight of the day was the excellent Georgian hospitality we received when we sat down to a huge lunch after the wine tasting. The Georgians love to toast and in between the endless supply of food coming out of the kitchen, we shared around seven or eight toasts to our health, safe travels and bright futures. The more alcohol that was consumed the more heartfelt the toasting, and we made our fair share of toasts back in return. Quite an afternoon!

Lucy writes:

  We woke early to meet at the truck in order to cross the border. It was still dark as we made tea and coffee from the stove on the truck. Previously, we'd assumed differences in sunrise and sunset were due to the time difference as we have been heading west, but it's become increasingly clear that the days are shortening into winter. 

  We drove for a couple of hours to reach the border crossing, and queued to show our passports and our luggage to various officials and walked a bridge over a river into Georgia, to find our guide, Tza Tza, waiting for us. We had to wait a little longer for the truck to be given the go-ahead, but it ended up being the quickest border crossing we've done so far, under two hours, rather than six hours endured elsewhere.

  Kate had already bought her first bottle of Georgian wine by the time we jumped on the truck and started off to find lunch, setting the mood for the trip. We stopped in a small town a few kilometres down the road, and wandered about near the market trying to find something, until Tza Tza mentioned a bakery. We all followed him into a bakery-restaurant, full of men eating enormous quantities of dumplings and smoking. We ordered some dumplings, some cheese bread and some bean bread to share between us. The bean bread was lovely - a really nice crisp dough filled with mashed kidney beans flavoured with black pepper. The cheese bread, however, was not quite as good. It was filled with strong white cheese and topped with melted cheese, with some soggy fried dough in-between. Having regularly consumed cheese bread since then, I can tell you, it was not the best introduction. 

  We drove further into the mountains, to find Sighnaghi, the town where we would be spending the night. It was up among the hills, with winding cobbled streets, squares, and crumbling town walls. We were staying in a home-stay, with Liz and Carleen and Matt and Claire, our driver and leader, in the rooms next to us. While our bedroom was quite the combination of brown 1970's chintz, Liz and Carleen had an amazing black and white room, punctuated with bright red heart shaped cushions on the bed and sofa. Matt and Claire really lucked out though - their two small single beds with Disney bed linen, was entered through their tiny bathroom. You had to squeeze past the shower fitting and toilet to reach their door - amazingly convenient or inconvenient? We couldn't quite decide.

  We went for a walk around the town, along to a church, jutting out onto the city walls, before meeting up to head for dinner at the Pheasant's Tears Winery, our first taste of Georgian wine. Traditionally, the first evening meal in each country has tended to be one of the best. I don't know if it's the new foods suddenly available, the excitement of the new country or just good luck. Georgia did not let us down in this respect. The food at Pheasant's Tears was incredible. There were more amazing dishes than I can remember; beetroot and walnut paste, amazing fresh herby tomato salads, aubergine cut into strips and tossed in a salad, ground walnuts in a paste with dried white beans, salty white cheese and very fresh bread. This was followed by freshly cooked fish, potatoes roasted with rosemary and scattered with fresh garlic served with plum sauce, and some beautifully cooked mushrooms for the vegetarians. The meat-eaters had veal served with a fresh green sauce that tasted similar to a tomatillo sauce. 

  Along with this was served some delicious wine. It has been a long time, through China and the 'Stans, without nice wine. In fact, the wine has been intriguingly and shockingly bad in many instances, to the point that we were discussing what possibly could have been crushed and put into the bottle, as it certainly wasn't grapes.

  At 'Pheasant's Tears', they talked to us about the Georgia wine industry and the wines we were tasting. In the Soviet Era, all wine production was geared towards sale in Russia, so it was concentrated on Semi-sweet wines, produced in a European way. Many of the enormous different Georgia grape varieties died off, as the Soviets chose to concentrate on just a handful. Since the end of the Soviet era, Georgia has had to work hard to rediscover the expertise surrounding it's traditional wine making techniques, which involve crushing the grapes and putting them, skin and all, into a huge clay pot, a qvevri, and burying it underground. This method was all but lost during the Soviet period, but wineries, such as Pheasant's Tears, are re-developing this aspect of their wine culture very successfully. 

  As the skins are included in the mixture, the colour of the wines is noticeably darker. Georgian white wines can be a deep amber colour, and the reds almost black. From the skins they also make Grappa and another spirit called Chacha.  The wine was delicious too.