Central Asia 2011: Batumi, Tbilisi, Kezbegi

After arriving in Batumi we stayed in the town's first and only (for now) hostel, called... Batumi Hostel! For what it lacked in an original name, it made up for in friendliness and typical Georgian hospitality. There we met the two Georgian owners; Irakli and Lasha, as well as a friendly American who had practically moved in with them at the Hostel; Logan! He has quite an interesting and well written blog so check it out!

By just wandering around the town we were given a few insights into Georgian life. As we inevitably got lost in the backstreets of Batumi, Logan asked a local for directions to a nearby restaurant. Within 1 minute he was surrounded by 7 Georgians. All of them were frantically arguing as to what Logan was saying (they only spoke Georgian and Russian) and then, after having deciphered what help was needed, began a heated discussion as to which restaurant was best for us.

After the chaos subsided, they all waved us on our way, leaving us all quite humbled by the lengths to which these Georgians went to helping us, despite not speaking or understanding a word of English. I suppose Charade skills can be useful afterall!

Sam gets attacked by Logan with Sanita (A Latvian girl also staying at the hostel)

Further down the road we saw this:

Apparently it is actually quite common for a neighbourhood of residents to just go outside onto a street corner and... well, just chat! Catch up with friends that you havn't seen for a while, meet new people... It again highlighted the social nature of Georgians and I felt that was pretty cool!

An interesting fountain in Batumi

Georgian letters are pretty difficult to read...

There was also a significant police presence around the town. Turned out Sting was playing that night and the President had flown in to watch the gig, subsquently all road traffic got shut down in the centre later on. Because he can do stuff like that, why not?

Central Batumi that evening

We then went for some (awesome) traditional Georgian food. These are Khankali, basically meat AND soup, inside a dumpling. Boom. There was also a very precise way of eating these so as to not spill any of the soup, or burn yourself whilst eating it, as it was insanely hot!

That evening we got our first experience of a Georgian 'Supre', the traditional and intricate method of drinking many Georgians regularly use at social events.

This will be covered in more detail by Sam later, but simply, there are A LOT of various 'toasts' which, at least for the first five toasts, are done in a particular order as directed by the 'Tamada': Irakli.

The drink of choice was the famous 'Cha-Cha', a homemade brew unique to each Georgian family. At roughly 65% strength, it didn't take long for us to get suitably merry and begin to call numerous toasts for the most ridiculous of reasons.

The next morning (or afternoon, whenever we woke up!), we strolled around the now relatively quiet town now that all the police had left. We visited the beach near the Turkish border and later that evening Batumi really came to life.

The beach at Sarpi - cliff jumping videos to come soon!

Interesting architecture

A big fountain show

...and why not go Segwaying?

We hadn't eaten lunch and were desperately looking around for something to eat before we got our night train to Tbilisi later on. We came across a very modest kebab vendor. Little did we know that this was going to be one of the highlight meals of our trip so far! This guy created the biggest kebab I had ever seen. I will let the pictures justify the awesomeness of it...

The mystical 'double' kebab

It was longer than my arm. Incredible.

We thought we would splash out the extra $4 so that we could upgrade to 1st Class - Travelling in Style!

Fantastic interior design.

NIGHT TRAIN: Batumi - Tbilisi
Our first experience of Georgian trains was quite a shock.

We turned up to the train station with 5 minutes to spare until the scheduled departure. So of course we hurried along to our carriage and hopped on, quite satisfied that we hadn't managed to miss it.

After chatting for a while we realised that the train still hadn't left yet and it had been 20 minutes. Just then we noticed that the platform was crowded with people getting off the train and heading for the main train station building.

Sam went to ask one of the train officials what was happening and got the brief response: ''Train Broken! Come back tomorrow!''

Ok, so we asked around again and understood that our train ticket would be valid for the train tomorrow or we could refund it and then 'theoretically' make our own way to Tbilisi via a bus or shared taxi. So Sam waits in what resembles more of a mob than a queue for the ticket kiosk whilst I waited on a bench with the bags.

Half an hour later an announcement was made in Georgian and suddenly some people started rushing towards the train. I asked someone what the announcement said and apparently: ''The train might be working now!'' We waited another 10 minutes during which time there were two more announcements. We decided to try our luck and just sit on the train and see what happens rather than hopelessly try and wade through the horde of disgruntled passengers who still occupied the area around the ticket kiosks.

As we got onto the platform, the train started to move slowly. We figured: ''Oh cool the train is working now! They must be just giving it a test run.'' Well, the train didn't stop, but just continued at walking speed. At this point, I was about to jump into the open doorway when a screaming train attendant ran down the platform towards me and jumped in front of me onto the train and pulled the emergency brake.

The train stopped and we piled on whilst she was shouting something down a telephone to some unfortunate employee. Less than a minute later the same thing happened again and the train was moving, despite most of the passengers still in the train station trying to refund tickets for a train they thought wasn't leaving. But this time, the train didn't stop and suddenly, we weren't looking out onto the platform any more! We had left the train station and were slowly accelerating our way towards Tbilisi, missing roughly 80% of the passengers!

Our carriage, which had originally been completely full, now just had us and another couple at the other end of it.

The hilarity of this confusion overwhelmed the seriousness of it. At least we made it onto the train!

Tbilisi was much more humid and a fair amount hotter than Batumi, we stayed in the incredible Why Not Hostel, run by Misha, probably the craziest Polish guy I have ever met, who took us out to sample the Georgian drinking culture as well as the infamous homebrewed 'Cha-Cha', with a bit of Georgian Wrestling thrown in for good measure!

Downtown Tbilisi

The unlicensed bar we regularly hung out at!

We decided to climb the large hill overlooking Tbilisi, it was an incredible sweaty hike but the views were worth it.

Apparently the cablecar was out of order.

Sick views though

Charlie arrived the next day and whilst waiting for our Azerbaijan visas to be processed we took an overnight trip to Kezbegi in the Caucasus mountains!

Charlie in his natural element.

View from a monastery in the mountains.

View back towards the monastery

When we got back the Hostel's driver, Irakli, took us in his British VW for a tour of Tbilisi, and to see a really impressive and recently built Church. It was HUGE.