Davide Cassenti

Gentleman and Scholar Software Engineer

Archive for the ‘Trips and events’ Category

Kazbegi, a role play game adventure

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Stalin

Friday, morning. We’re thinking to go to Gori, the town where Stalin was born on December 1878. The town is less than 100km far from Tbilisi and with the new road built it is possible to reach it in less than an hour. Marshrutkas leave the capital from Didube bus station and in the early morning we are there, looking for one of them; however, when we arrive at the station, we immediatly see a car with a sign: Kazbegi.

Despite we are fed up of mountains, Kazbegi sounds really a nice place to visit: there you can find one of the most famous churches in Georgia, Gergeti, located 2170m high on the mountains. The idea looks good, so we are asking the old driver how long and how much would it be to go there: he says 2.5 hours and 120 lari, two ways. Not so much, but the man looks more a zombie than a real person and we are not that confident on his ability to drive there: despite he follows us for 20 minutes, trying to persuade us to go with him, we finally get rid of him and find a marshrutka going to the same destination.

Forgetting about Gori and Stalin museums, we are sitting on a 10 lari marshrutka which will leave soon to Stepantsminda, formerly known as Kazbegi. It’s in this moment that the role play game adventure begins: for those who doesn’t know, an RPG is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting; usually the characters are strange elfs, dwarfs and any kind of mythological creature and the people sitting in the bus with us are not that less strange.

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Tags: georgia, kazbegi, mountains, stepantsminda, travel, trip
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Tusheti: the unpolite hospitality

Monday, August 16, 2010

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.

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

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Svaneti is probably the most famous region in Georgia: whenever you ask someone here what to visit, they will definetly include it in the list; they would also add that it is the most beautiful and dangerous place in the country. Knowing this, the wish to visit the region has always been high and finally we managed to do it. The trip, however, seemed hard since the beginning: getting a plane is terribly hard – or at least, so it seems by calling people – and going from Tbilisi would be too expensive and tiring by hiring a car. With a mess in our heads, and with a lot of people warning us about the danger on Svaneti mountains, we finally found out what the best solution was: just taking a normal Marshrutka to Zugdidi, spend a night there and take another Marshrutka to the Svaneti capital Mestia. No need to get a 350 € tour, no need to rent a car, no need of anything: simple public transport would have allowed us to go in this mysterious place.

So we are three, me, Mzia and Zhana, ready to go: the good thing is that there are relatives in Zugdidi, the capital of Samegrelo region and the town where the Marshrutka to Mestia goes from; the even more good thing is that, despite it was late night when we arrived there, a traditional georgian-gaumarjos table was ready to welcome us in the region I like to define the Sicily of Georgia; the bad thing is that, as would happen in Sicily, the food is much, very very much; the worst thing, anyway, is the climate in Zugdidi: hot, hot and more hot, with an humidity probably higher than 100%. My sleep was anyway quite good thanks to the fan that they kindly gave me – as the guest – to refresh a little bit the room. In the morning is time to take the Marshrutka, which should take just 3.5 hours to get to destination.

Along the road I got a bit disappointed: there’s an huge reservoir in Samegrelo, a sort of big lake surrounded by mountains, but after that the panorama is not as good as I expected. It is indeed wonderful, but after my visit to Shatili last year I cannot say that is the best I’ve seen so far. Perfectly on time, about 5 hours later we finally arrive at our destination: Mestia, the capital of Svaneti. It looks like the guesthouse we booked is not in the center, but in the end of Mestia – which sounds like the end of the World: when the Marshrutka stopped in the center we felt like we jumped back in time, 50 years ago without any De Lorean at 88 mph. It was simply awful: I really can’t find any other word to describe the town – or village.

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Tags: georgia, svaneti, travel, trip
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