The day is started in the most awful way: trip planned and stomach ache cannot be room mates; bot me and Mzia were feeling bad in the morning, but we didn’t want to miss a nice trip: thanks to the holy medicines, we decided to face our destiny and go anyway, destination Davit Gareji. The monastery is a complex situated in the Kakheti region, on the border with Azerbaijan.
The first step of our trip is the big bus station, or marshutka station to be more precise, called Samgori, inside the capital: here we found a nice – at least we thought so – black marshutka that was going to go to Sagarejo, a town one hour far from our destination. From there, we would have taken a taxi to go to the monastery.
Our Black Marshutka
After a fast walk around the station-market to buy some food and water for the trip, we found our seats on the minibus and at 11am we started our trip. Now, I know I often complain about georgian driving, but it really seems that they find the drivers as a surprise in the Happy Meal®. They use to say that math can explain everything, but I really can’t understand how that marshutka was still alive. The life of a marshutka, as other car, depends on the use: if you hit a hole in the street, the life of your car becomes shorter. Let’s use some math:
Suppose:
h: holes in the street where the marshutka entered
K: a costant
L: life of marshutka in days
We will have, considering the number of holes tends to infinite in a georgian road and the driver was hitting ALL of them:
As far as I remember from my study, despite the value of K, the result is always 0; but the marshutka, even if slow and driven without any ability to choose the right gear, did its job perfectly. I am amazed. During the trip, also, Natia managed to get the drivier to bring us to the monastery, wait for us and take us back to Tbilisi for just 70 lari (we were 5): things begun to turn in the right direction.
The marshutka, that was a public transport ’till Sagarejo, was quite full of people, but after we left that town, it was all for us – with another friend who joined us there and in about one hour we reached Davit Gareji. The road to go there is really beautiful: the street is surrounded by hills, without trees and in beautiful autumn colors; they call it a desert and it really seems.
Panorama of Sagarejo
Davit Gareji is a complex built in the rocks, founded in 6th Century. The place was crowded, with many school children and their teacher explaining them everything about the place. It was really a surprise, after several kilometers without anything, to suddently see the monastery and so many people having fun and watching be beauty of the complex. We had a nice day there, visiting the monastery, then we went back to Sagarejo, where we decided to have a lunch.
Panorama from Davit Gareji
Having lunch there was a terrible idea: we ordered some mtsvadi, the tasty meat prepared in Georgia, and some Megruli Khachapuri and they both were awful. Definetly, I would not suggest anyone to visit that place, unless for the funny translations in english they had on the menu: we were wondering why a pig was sucking, as well as what kind of cigarettes does a smoking sulguni like. But we didn’t investigate to much: at 5pm our black marshutka took us back to Tbilisi. Of course, without avoiding again all the holes in the streets.
Smoking sulguni
Tags: davit gareji, georgia, trips