Davide Cassenti

Tbilisi, August 13th 2010 – It’s early morning in Georgia capital when the alarm clock starts to ring: reaching Omalo, the most important village in the Tusheti region in Georgia is not that easy and nothing has been planned. Nothing should be planned in Georgia: the best way to save time and money is just to go, hoping that someone on the road would help.

The idea is clear: from Tbilisi, the best way to reach Tusheti is by going to Alvani, a town 2 hours far from the capital. Reached the bus station before 8am, we discover the first Marshrutka would leave at 9: too long to wait, the road will be long and tiring, so we decide to find a taxi. The taxi driver is asking 150 lari, a price that looks good for us, but before we can take it, a man is stopping us, telling he could help more: his name is Mamuka and he has a jeep in Alvani and he is available to take us there with his Marshrutka, then go to Omalo with the car: perfect! We just did not know how much hospitable he would have been next.

In Italy I would never trust someone who says this – and nobody would probably offer anyway – but in Georgia seems to be quite common: jump on his Marshrutka, we immediatly start our trip, destination Alvani, where he lives and he will get his car. Along the road, it looks like this man is very kind: he offers us to be our guide around Tusheti – where he has several houses in different villages – and bring us back to Tbilisi the third day, all for 500 lari (a bit more than 200 euro). Everything looks more and more amazing and we accept: we already had booked the hotel, so it seems we have everything.

The road to Alvani is long, but good: in a couple of hours we arrive at his house, where his mother and some other people are taking a cocktail break in the living room; of course, as the georgian tradition wants, we are forced invited to join and take food and drinks as well. The situation was kinda strange, with those quite-old women drinking on the sofa as they were 20 years old, but after half an hour we are ready to take the jeep and go to Omalo. The distance this time is not so long, just 70km, but the road cannot really be defined so: the more you go far from Alvani, the less large and clean the way is, going up around high mountains 200 or 300 meters sheer, without any protection to make you feel at least a bit safe.

The amazing road to Omalo

Car crashing along the road

Anyway, there is not that much time to feel scared, since the landscape is simply astonishing, the best I’ve ever seen: mountains covered with dark green trees, huge fields, rivers and several waterfalls are all around the 5 hours long road. Omalo is 1800 mt above the sea level, but to reach it the highest point is 2900 mt: we have a stop at the peek, eating some watermelon and taking amazing pictures and fresh, but few, air. After that, the last 20km are missing to reach Omalo: our hotel is a couple of km far from the rest of the village, alone in a wonderful green valley; it is made of wood and looks really inviting and beautiful.

Hotel Tusheti

Our driver seems to be very popular: everyone at the hotel knows him and they are all very friendly. We enter the hotel and discover one strange thing: it looks like most of the people are locals, staying at the hotel for god-knows-which reason. Anyway, they assign us one of the rooms and after we put down our stuffs we have the first surprise: there is no toilet inside the hotel. There are two small ones outside in the yard, as I heard only in my granny’s stories; the washbasin is also outside, in the open air: considering we are spending quite a lot, 50 lari per person, we begin to feel disappointed. The shower is even worse: it’s in the third scary bigger building in the yard, it has no electricity and water is warmed by a fire which is tuned on when the owner wakes up – later than guests, probably. Gosh.

The candle light shower

Outside toilets

Trying not to think about the bathroom issue, we wait the lunch: again, disappointment. The food is less, some old bread and not so tasty cheese, some rice with chicken, some vegetables: nothing so special and the price for food only was 25 lari. We are hungry – and angry, actually – so we eat as much as possible, preparing to go out for our first journey around the region. Mamuka will bring us to visit two villages in the afternoon, Shenako and Diklo, few kilometers far from Omalo: and it is now that the hospitality of this Tushetian man begins to be too much.

The roads to go to the villages are not worse than the one to reach Omalo: the small paths made of ground, surrounded by marvellous landscapes, are not a problem for the 4×4 car that we are using and in few minutes we arrive in Shenako. Along the road, every person met looks to be a relative of our driver: we are stopping every 100m to greet someone, who looks to be a cousin, the best friend or the aunt of Mamuka. We also meet some women with lot of kids – again, somehow relatives – that join us in the car to go to Diklo. The car becomes a school bus, with kids screaming and crying: thanks god the road is not too long and we survive.

Diklo

Other than the friendship, something that captured us about Tushetians is the level of superstition that they have: just before reaching Diklo, one of the woman starts to say that they must get down the car, since it is “forbidden” for women to pass there. It looks like the weather would be terrible for three days if a woman does it, and it is clear they really believe it; however, our driver doesn’t really care and we reach the village without stopping. Again, in the village, there are forbidden places for women: one of those is a small church on top of the town – which Mzia visited anyway; some people are even screaming at the women who try to pass in the forbidden places, showing off again how much they believe to these stories.

Dartlo

Church forbidden to women

On the way back we are again carrying kids, back to the village down; when we are back to the hotel, food is not ready yet, even though we alerted them we were coming back at that time. We are again disappointed by the dinner: same things as the lunch, cold, few and not so tasty; also, as the legend says, it starts to rain: maybe women shouldn’t really pass in those forbidden places or, most probably, it is raining so much in Tusheti that men should find someone to blame. The rain is strong and the toilet is in the muddy yard: better to wait the morning to go there. Disappointment.

The following morning me and Mzia are up quite early: outside is cloudy and clouds are at our level. The place seems unreal, as hidden in the fog, beautiful and magic; it’s cold, very cold and nobody is awake yet. Our other fellow traveller, Natia, is also sleeping as a child in her bed. Waiting for the World to wake up, we took a little walk around; breakfast time comes – no need to say we were not so happy – and later our driver arrives, ready to bring us around for the second day of the trip; of course he is late and the reason is simple: he was asleep. Simple and correct. The destination for today are two: Dartlo and Parsma, where there would even be a huge preparation of khinkali for the third day of the khinklaoba festival. Once again, we are stopping every 100 mt to greet some of the driver’s relative or friend.

Behind the clouds

Dartlo is another nice village, with old buildings in a wonderful nature; after the visit to it, it’s time to go to eat khinkali. But this time, hospitality begins to be too much. Parsma is not as nice as other villages: we need to walk a bit to reach it and we are welcome in one of the – ugly – houses; to say the truth, we are not really so welcome, since one of the woman starts to complain – trying not the be heard – that the house is not a restaurant to host everyone. Outside the rain starts again to fall: we begin to be a bit worried, since the road to that village is even worse than the one to Omalo; meanwhile, our driver has disappeared somewhere out with friends and relatives, not caring about us inside; and khinkali are not yet ready.

It looks like the real reason why the man was so kind with us was that he needed – or wanted – to visit all his relatives in all the possible villages in Tusheti: finding someone who would pay for that is even better, and here is when we join the story. The day is really terrible: we have been waiting around 4 hours for the khinkali, doing nothing inside the small kitchen of the strange house in Parsma. When the rain finally stops, we can take a walk outside: the khinkali are made by anyone in the village, in a small gazebo with the photo of Pelè – power of globalization; tens of people, who probably didn’t see a shower for 10 days, are helping the cooks to make the food. Nice. The eating moment is even better: there is no table, plates are put on the ground and people sit there, ready to eat as much as possible. I just have one khinkali – which I admit was good – praying the Lord and all Thy Saints not to get sick for that. Congratulations to Natia who, not to be unpolite, was brave enough to eat 7 of them.

Making khinkali

Preparation of khinkali

Kid eating khinkali

Due the rain the evening looks to be very close: impatient to go back in that awful road, we have again to wait the driver who is thinking about his business, joking and playing with his friends. One of the man at the “table” even says that Georgians are the most polite and hospitable people in the World, who would always invite guests for a dinner: apart that I would also do that, but one thing he is not considering is if the guest does really want to be invited. However, after another hour of doing nothing, the time to go back finally arrives. At the hotel we meet some italian friends, just arrived from a long trekking in the Caucasus mountains, guests in the same hotel (if I can call it so). This is our last night there and we agree with the driver to come at 10:30 in the morning: this time we refuse his offer to visit another village before going back to Tbilisi, fed up to see his family members.

After a better dinner, thanks to Francesco who gave me a fantastic chicken Simmental, me and Mzia decide to take a walk out at night: clouds are surrounding the hotel and with the light we could see the microscopic drops all around us. We are walking inside the clouds, almost in total darkness: very beautiful. After a freezing night, again we wake up early: just to inform, in the hotel the electricity was available only at night, so no possibility to turn on a light at that time. Anyway, we decide to go to the village, Omalo, couple of kilometers far, to buy some food in a shop. It seems incredible, but there is really one market, where we can buy the product of globalization: sneakers, nuts and some buscuits. At the hotel they also gives us some tea and coffee for breakfast – without asking more money – and there we get disappointed for the last time: the other italians there have potatoes and spaghetti, after we’ve been given awful food for three days.

Again, our driver is late, and when he finally arrives there is a news: we are probably going to take some other people in Omalo to bring them to Alvani; he tries to ask us if we want to visit Omalo first, but since we’ve already been we say no need: it seems like he wanted to go just to take them, but thanks God no other passengers in our car. Something else is changed in the plan: he is not going to bring us to Tbilisi, but to Telavi – close to Alvani – where we can take a Marshrutka driven by his friend for free. Not a big deal, maybe even better, but again we are not so happy that someone who is getting money to do a work is doing whatever he wants without even asking us if it is ok.

The road back is terribly stressful: we are stopping every time we find a car to greet someone, the wheel of the car gets broken and we need to replace, we meet other friends of the driver to join, we stop again to help someone else who also has problems with the car. I am mad, but still trying to be calm: it’s nice that nobody understands my nice words in italian, otherwise I would look quite unpolite. When we arrive in Alvani, again we are forced invited to have a drink at the driver’s house; finally, after some time we are in Telavi, sit on the Marshrutka which will bring us in Tbilisi in a couple of hours.

We are stressed, although the place was the most beautiful ever; we are also tired, after a week of mountains – Svaneti and Tusheti in a week, incredible; but me and Mzia cannot avoid to end our day with a great dinner: a huge pizza and a good fruit salad with ice cream bring back the smile in our tired and stressed faces.

An amazing landscape

Tags: georgia, mountains, omalo, travel, trip, tusheti, villages