Travelling Around Britain and the World

Friday 22 August 2014

Mestia, Capital of the Upper Svaneti: Part 12 of from the Caspian to the Black Sea

A Small Town with a Remarkable Number of Towers

Georgia

Mount Tetnuldo and a Panorama of Mestia

The view of the snow-capped and inevitably cloudy mountains from our bedroom was spectacular.

Mt Tetnuldo (4,858m 15,938ft)- the view from our bedroom balcony, Mestia.

The view from the restaurant balcony, though very different, was equally good. Mestia, population 2,800 and the capital of the Upper Svaneti, consists of ten separate communes though they are not very separate; from our hotel's slightly elevated position we could see the whole town. What makes Mestia remarkable is that almost every family has not only a house but a watchtower. We lost count somewhere in the high thirties.

Mestia from the restaurant balcony

We may have taken the photo from the balcony, but we did not eat there. After the heat of the plains the morning temperature at 1,400m felt decidedly fresh.

Our route across the Caucasus

The Svaneti Museum, Mestia

Alex and Dinara arrived at 9.30 and transported us the short distance to the newly built Svaneti Museum. The region had a tradition of producing fine icons and frescoes, but the mountains were also a place where treasures were brought in times of national emergency. Some of them are still here.

Svaneti Museum, Mestia

Icons of St George slaying a dragon are to be expected, particularly in Georgia, but this was the first time we had seen St George killing not a dragon, but the Roman emperor Diocletian.

The tumbling mountain rivers of Svaneti were also the source of the gold that made Colchis rich. We had seen the fine work of the ancient goldsmiths in the National Museum in Tbilisi, and the same figures used as decorations around the fountain in Kutaisi, once the capital of Colchis. We were not surprised to find that some of the gold had remained in Svaneti. The metal was extracted not by panning but by a strategic arrangement of sheep’s fleeces in the fast flowing rivers. Fragments of gold adhered to the wool, thus creating the legend of the Golden Fleece.

Mestia, from the Svaneti Museum

The museum also had mock-up of a room in a local house as it would have been at any time from the medieval period until the middle of the last century. The heavy wooden furniture included several benches but only one chair - for the patriarch, naturally - and a wooden screen dividing the people's area from that of the animals whose presence indoors in the winter kept the room warm.

We also met Dinara's grandfather who was working locally and popped over to see his granddaughter and, as he had some responsibility for the finds and for the museum, to show some parts to us. A small man with a confident handshake he is some years older than Lynne and I and of an age where he does not have to work, but he has the energy and drive of someone much younger and as his interest in archaeology remains undimmed he continues to excavate.

The museum roof provided another view over Mestia. Dinara lamented the construction of the modern church, which may be in traditional Georgian style, at least for the lowlands, but is rather jarring here. It is not the only new building in Mestia, indeed much of the town centre is new, but it blends far better than the church stuck on its promontory like a sore thumb.

The new church that caused Dinara's wrath, Mestia

Mestia's Watchtowers

Leaving the museum we headed into town to climb a watch tower. Distinctive features of Svan life, they were for warning and protection should the village be attacked - but why so many? Would not one for each of the ten communes be more than enough? The answer appears to be in two parts, firstly vendettas were not uncommon among mountain families, and sometimes you needed protection not from outsiders but from your neighbours, and secondly there was an element of keeping up with the vilis. If your neighbour Berishvili has a tower, and his neighbour Sutiashvili has a tower, then you needed a tower too. The Tuscan town of San Gimignano, now appropriately twined with Mestia also had an outbreak of tower building, but whereas San Gimignano is all urbane, Italianate elegance, Mestia’s charm is down-to-earth, medieval and rustic.

The two of us on the roof of the Svaneti Museum, Mestia

The Margiani Watchtower and House

The majority of Georgian surnames end in –vili or –dze, but not all, as we next went in search of the Margiani house. Finding someone’s house in such a small town should not have been a problem, but it was. Difficulties arose, (I think, though I could not really follow the conversation in Georgian) because Dinara had a fair idea where it was but Alex did not believe her and insisted on asking the way from several locals, some sitting on their tractors, others standing by the roadside.

I heard a marked contrast between the slow, measured tones of the countrymen and the sharp, urban voice of the young man asking directions from the driving seat of an expensive BMW. I probably imagined it, but I thought they sent the city boy round in a circle on purpose – and serve him right. After we re-encountered the original man-on-a-tractor, Alex reluctantly agreed to follow Dinara's directions and shortly afterwards we found two women sitting beside a table in the smallest imaginable village square. One was packing Svan Salt - sea salt flavoured with dried garlic, fenugreek, coriander and chilli (though recipes vary). We bought some; it has since added delightfully unexpected flavours to all sorts of things. The other woman was the guardian of the Margiani House which was next-door..

The entrance to the Watch Tower, Margiani House, Mestia

She unlocked a gate and we climbed the external stairs to the entrance of the watch tower. Inside a series of rickety ladders took us up the four or five storeys. There was nothing in the tower, the walls were bare and the floors of less than totally secure planks. The building had never been used as anything other than a watch tower, and I cannot be sure if it had ever been used as that in any real sense.

Lynne ascends the watchtower, Margiani House, Mestia

Lynne declined to ascend the last and most precarious ladder, but I went up and stuck my head out the top. There was a small plastic Ukrainian flag sticking out of the roof, but the view was otherwise not remarkable, at least by the highly unusual standards of Mestia.

From the roof of the watchtower, Margiani House, Mestia

The descent was slightly trickier as descents often are, but we both arrived safely back on the ground....

Lynne makes the descent, watchtower, Margiani House, Mestia

....and followed the guardian into the house at the base.

The Margiani House, Mestia

The furniture was exactly as in the museum, but this was not a mock up, this was the real thing in its real place.

Inside the Margiani House, Mestia

The house dated from the twelfth century. It was impossible to say when the furniture was built (such furniture really is built, not made), but I would believe any date from then until a hundred years before the house ceased to be used in the 1920s. Stepping over the threshold was like stepping back in time, and it felt we were somewhere that had been undisturbed for hundreds of years.

I assume the patriarch's chair, Margiani House, Mestia

Lunch in Mestia

It was time for lunch and because of the dearth of good restaurants in Mestia, indeed of restaurants at all, we ate in Dinara and Alex's guesthouse.

Dinara, Alex and Lynne lunch at the guesthouse, Mestia

Nothing had been laid out when we arrived – Dinara was not impressed - but the table was quickly covered with the usual salads and cheese, aubergines with walnut and garlic sauce, and, new to us, a meat pie and fried corn bread. It was a standard Georgian feast, there is no great variety, but the food was simple, fresh, expertly prepared and the quantity was gargantuan.

Meat pie, Mestia

Queen Tamar and Mestia Town Centre

After lunch we strolled with Dinara through the town centre. Money has been pumped into Mestia in advance of its development as a tourist resort, and there has been much building including a new bus station, a police station, and a suite of brand new shops, but the tourists are lagging behind the development and most of the shops awaited tenants. In the main square, outside the empty shops, is a splendid statue of Queen Tamar. She ruled jointly with her father from 1178 until his death in 1184 and then in her own right until she died in 1213. Her reign was the high point of the medieval Georgian golden age and she ranks second only to David the Builder (r1089-1125) among Georgia’s monarchs. Mestia’s tiny airport (daily flights to Tbilisi) is named after her.

Lynne and Queen Tamar, Mestia

We gave Dinara the rest of the afternoon off and visited both the town’s souvenir shops. There was little to buy beyond the highly distinctive traditional local clothing, which might be ideal for hunting in the winter snow, but did not suit a warm August day and would have looked strange at home in any weather.

Later in the afternoon we found ourselves seated outside Mestia's one and only café-bar. It was busy and getting a beer required patience, but it came eventually (and so, a little later, did a second one). We relaxed in the pleasantly warm afternoon - a change from the aggressive heat of the lowlands - and watched the life of the small town drift past.

Having a beer, Mestia

Eventually we made the walk back over the rushing Mulkhra River and up the hill to our hotel. The evening buffet was better than yesterday, though still uninspired and 10 Lari (£3) for a glass of wine was well over the top by Georgian standards.

From the Caspian to the Black Sea
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Location: Mestia, Georgia

Thursday 21 August 2014

Kutaisi, Zugdidi and the Inguri Valley: Part 11 of the From the Caspian to the Black Sea

Bagrati Cathedral, Kutaisi

Bagrati Cathedral stands on a hill overlooking modern Kutaisi. As our guest house stood on the same hill the journey took only minutes.

Bagrati Cathedral, Kutaisi

Built by King Bagrat III in 1003, the cathedral was one of Georgia's major medieval buildings until 1692 when an explosion during the war with the Ottoman Empire brought down the dome and ceiling.

Bagrati Cathedral bell tower overlooking the city of Kutaisi

The programme of rebuilding and restoration which started at the beginning of this century was so ambitious that in 2010 UNESCO placed the cathedral on its World Heritage 'At Risk' list. [It was removed from the UNESCO list in 2017 as its major reconstruction work was 'detrimental to its integrity and authenticity'] As befits the granddaughter of an archaeologist and the daughter of two of Georgia's leading conservers of frescoes, Dinara was clear about the differences between rebuilding, restoration and conservation and about what it is appropriate for such a building.

A strange collection of body parts - relics of the saints, Bagrati Cathedral, Kutaisi

In one area at the back, where the shape of the old building is unknown, it has been replaced by a design of uncompromising modernity.

Modern addition, Bagrati Cathedral, Kutaisi

Although the restoration was completed a few weeks ago, workman were back in tearing up the floor, though for what purpose it was not clear.

Tearing up the floor, Bagrati Cathedral, Kutaisi

Leaving Kutaisi we drove ten kilometres into the hills surrounding the town to the Gelati Monastery, which stands on a wooded height overlooking the countryside.

Gelati Monastery

If Bagrat sounds an unfortunate name for a king in English, Gelati is a strange name for a monastery in Italian. That apart, it is an impressive complex of buildings in, as so often in Georgia, a beautiful location.

Gelati Monastery

Gelati was founded in 1106 by King David the Builder, who was responsible not only for much physical construction, but also for the building of an independent Georgia and a Georgian national identity. He may also be a distant ancestor of Bob.

Old stones, Gelati

The Academy, which has recently been restored, was a centre for Christian culture and Neo-Platonist learning and became, according to one medieval chronicler, a 'new Jerusalem'.

Lynne in the restored Academy, Gelati

In front of the Academy are the Cathedral of the Virgin and,....

Cathedral of the Virgin, Gelati

...because in Georgia one church is never enough, two smaller churches dedicated to St George and St Nicholas.

Church of St Nicholas, Gelati

Surviving an attack by the Ottoman Turks in 1510, the cathedral became the residence of the Patriarch of West Georgia until the monks were cast out by the communists in 1922. It was re-consecrated in 1988 and was used for the inauguration of President Saakashvili in 2004. It contains some of Georgia's finest frescoes and a mosaic of the Virgin and Child with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, dating from 1130.

Virgin and Child with Archangels Michael and Gabriel, Cathedral of the Virgin, Gelati
The conservation work is much needed, but it does get in the way of my photographs!

David the Builder ushered in the Georgian golden age which crumbled a couple of centuries later under the twin, if unrelated, hammer blows of the Mongol invasions and the Black Death. Several of the monarchs from that era are buried at Gelati, though the resting place of Queen Tamar (ruled 1184 to 1213) is uncertain. She ranks second only to David the Builder in the pantheon of Georgian heroes and was such an effective ruler she is sometimes known as King Tamar - a serious compliment in the Middle Ages, if clumsily sexist today.

Iconostasis, Cathedral of the Virgin, Gelati.
The icon of St George, lower left corner of picture is especially revered

David himself is buried under the south gate as he wanted his people to walk across his grave as they entered, which might show a refreshing lack of ego in a medieval monarch, or maybe just a perverse manifestation of it. Ironically the south gate is no longer used as an entrance and many who go to see his slab of a gravestone take elaborate care to walk round him (as we did).

The South Gate and the grave of King David the Builder, Gelati Monastery

He is buried next to his son, Demetrius I, who was a musician and composer as well as a ruler. Dinara played us one of his songs on her iPad as we stood by his grave. What a medieval ruler would have made of his music still being played 900 years after his death to foreigners from barbarian lands unimaginably far away, and by means he would probably have described as sorcery, we can only imagine. Traditional Georgian music is polyphonic chant, a type of music we had only previously encountered in Corsica. Dinara was aware of this odd link with a distant Mediterranean isle (her breadth of knowledge was genuinely impressive) but, she told us with a little national pride, Georgian singing has more parts.

The remains of the actual gate, South Gate, Gelati Monastery

Central Kutaisi

We returned to Kutaisi. The city looks better when not approached through the areas of industrial dereliction but even so the streets give a clear indication that Kutaisi is far from the most prosperous city we have visited.

A Kutaisi street

The centre, though, looks better. The parliament has moved to Kutaisi and with the latest version of the constitution giving more importance to parliament and the prime minister and less to the Tbilisi-based president, Kutaisi has become the seat of the Georgian government, and has acquired some appropriate buildings. Sadly, we did not see the futuristic parliament building on the western edge of the city.

Central Kutaisi - clearly an important building, though I have no idea what

The city's centrepiece is a fountain which echoes its claim to have been the capital of a far older country. Western Georgia is the Colchis of Greek legend, and in search of the Golden Fleece Jason and the Argonauts rowed from the Black Sea up the River Rioni perhaps as far as Kutaisi which may have been the capital of the possibly mythical King Aeëtes. What are not mythical are the hordes of gold objects that have been recovered from ancient Colchis, some of them by Dinara's grandfather, and enlarged versions of several of these gold pieces decorate the fountain. We had seen many, maybe most of them, in the national museum in Tbilisi, and of course our old friend Tamada, the toastmaster with his drinking horn, was prominent amongst them.

Fountain, Central Kutaisi

Leaving Kutaisi we headed northwest across the rich agricultural land of the Kolkheti plain, the modern name echoing the ancient Colchis.

Our route so far

Zugdidi

We had lunch in Zugdidi, the small capital of the Samegrelo district. We ate at 'The Host', a popular three storey pub on the main drag. We lunched on the top floor where the waiters have to bring all the food and drink up two flights of stairs. The good service was a testament to their fitness.

'The Host', Zugdidi

Continuing our efforts to eat as many local specialties as possible - and with Dinara keen to point them out whenever they appeared on a menu - we both chose gomi described as cornmeal porridge, and best thought of as a pallid and rather sloppy polenta. The idea is that you hide a slice of Salguni cheese in the gomi so that it melts and then cover everything with a white walnut based sauce. Sadly, the combination of white on white inside white did not look appetizing, the gomi was not hot enough to melt the cheese and the polenta was uncompromisingly bland. It was the least successful of the specialties we encountered, but the spicy stuffed peppers, fried potato and trout were excellent, though it was, perhaps the smallest trout I have ever seen - we have eaten bigger sardines in Portugal.

Lynne, Dinara a tiny trout and a plate of gomi

At Zugdidi we were within 30km of the Black Sea, but we would not reach it for another three days. Zugdidi is the gateway to the mountainous Svaneti region, and that was where we went next, heading northeast along the banks of the River Inguri. For the next three days we would not stray far from the Inguri and its tributary the Mulkhara and would eventually come within a couple of hour’s walk of the Mulkhara’s source, a glacier on Mt Shkhara, Georgia’s highest peak.

The Inguri Dam

As the road climbs into the mountains it follows the Inguri’s sizeable gorge to the Inguri dam, at 270m high the second highest arch dam in the world,* and then runs up the eastern side of the lake.

The Inguri dam

The Inguri Valley

Abkhazia, Georgia's other breakaway region (for South Ossetia, see here) was on the other side of the lake. The Abkhaz speak their own language, quite distinct from Georgian, but the region had been linked with Georgia since medieval times. In 1921, under the Soviet Union, Abkhazia signed a treaty of union with Georgia and ten years later it became an ‘autonomous region within Georgia’. Stalin and Lavrinty Beria, then Secretary of the Georgian Communist Part and later Head of the NKVD oversaw the migration of Georgians into Abkhazia. In 1989 the Abkhaz made up only 18% of the population, but they dominated Abkhazia's Supreme Soviet which in 1990 declared independence as a separate republic within the Soviet Union.

The road runs beside Lake Inguri

As the Soviet Union crumbled Georgia tried to regain Abkhazia. A brief but vicious war in the early nineties resulted in the displacement of Abkhazia's Georgian population sending some 230,000 refugees to Georgia. Despite Russian backing for the breakaway, Georgia retained hope of regaining Abkhazia, and some 40,000 refugees even returned, but after the 2008 South Ossetia war, Abkhazia declared complete independence. Their independence is recognized only by Russia (and Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru) and fellow unrecognised breakaways South Ossetia, Nagorno Karabakh (now called Artsakh) and Transnistria. The Abkhaz are barely a majority in their own ethnically diverse country but remain in firm control of the government. Abkhazians might hold Russian passports and use the Russian Rouble, but they have shown little inclination to join Russia.

..and beside the River Inguri above

Higher up the gorge, dozens of vehicles of the Georgian environment agency lined the road, and there was a large police presence. Then we ran into what at first appeared to be a traffic jam outside one of the villages crammed into the narrow valley. It was, though, not a jam; the cars were parked and a crowd of men were making their way towards what already seemed to be a packed and angry meeting in the village square.

The environment agency, we later learned, were trying to enforce stricter rules to safeguard the forest and the protestors did not think the rules should apply to locals. Not understanding the argument and having no wish to take sides we were glad that Alex managed to pick his way between the parked cars, milling crowds and nervous officials.

A demonstration, not a traffic jam, Inguri Valley

We wound higher and higher into the mountains on a well-made road, occasionally detouring round rocks and boulders which had fallen from the cliffs above.

The road climbs higher into the mountains, Inguri Valley

As the road rose we entered the region of Svaneti. The Svan people have their own language, though unlike Abkhaz, it is of the Georgian language family and they have shown no yearning for independence. Living high in the mountains has always given them a measure of freedom, though they remain dependent on the valleys below for economic survival.

Approaching Mestia

Arriving at Mestia

In late afternoon we reached the remarkable small town of Mestia where we checked into the Hotel Tetnuldi on the edge of town, while Alex and Dinara made do with a B &B in the centre.

Our balcony had a wonderful, if inevitable intermittent, view of the snow covered peak of Mount Tetnuldi (4858m, 16,319ft) and a different though also splendid view over the town, which will be the subject of the next post.

Mount Tetnuldi from our hotel balcony

According to the Rough Guide the Hotel has the best restaurant in Mestia, but we were treated to an uninspired buffet and an overpriced bottle of beer. We quickly gained the impression that what should have been a good quality alpine-style hotel was drifting like a rudderless ship. We later learned that the builder, owner and driving force behind the hotel had recently died in a motorcycle accident and under the sad circumstances the lack of direction was perhaps inevitable.

*The highest at 292m is Xiaowan Dam on the Mekong River in Yunnan Province, China near the Burmese border


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Location: Kutaisi, Georgia

Wednesday 20 August 2014

Uplistsikhe and Gori, Cave Dwellings and Stalin: Part 10 of From the Caspian to the Black Sea

A Cave System Still in Use in the Middle Ages and the Birthplace of Josef Stalin


Georgia
In the morning we retraced our steps southwards down the Aragvi Valley. We were leaving the mountains, but only temporarily - in two days’ time we would return - but on the other side of South Ossetia. We were going round this mountainous and sparsely populated region partly because there are no good roads across it, but more importantly because it is no longer de facto part of Georgia. Prompted by Russia, it seceded in 1990 and now considers itself an independent country.

Our Journey so far

Uplistsikhe, City of Caves

Reaching the southern end of South Ossetia we turned west, followed the valley of the River Mtkvari and soon reached Uplistsikhe. On a rocky bluff across the river from the rather down-at-heal modern village is an ancient cave city.

Uplistsikhe across the Tiver Mtkvari

Established in the sixth century BC Uplistsikhe became the major pre-Christian religious centre of Kartli (Eastern Georgia), but lost importance when Christianity arrived in the 4th century. When Tbilisi was taken by the Arabs in 645 and became the capital of an Islamic Caliphate, Uplistkhe returned to prominence as the stronghold of the Christian kings of Kartli.

Uplistsikhe

At its peak the cave city had a population of 20,000 but after King David the Builder took Tbilisi and united most of Georgia under a Christian monarchy it went into decline. The end came when Timur (Tamburlaine) and his Mongol hordes paid a visit in the fourteenth century.

Wildlife, Uplistsikhe

The dwellings, palaces and temples were deserted and over the centuries seismic activity caused many of the roofs to fall in and the walls to crumble. When archaeologists arrived in the 1950s only the tops of a few caves were visible among the rubble.

Uplistsikhe

As we clambered over the rocks and visited the various caves labelled as halls, palaces or temples I found myself struggling to recreate the city in my mind's eye. The labels all seemed quite definite, though they are of course speculative. Evidence exists to suggest certain caves were temples or palaces, there are marks of burning on the roofs to show where hearths once were, and in some halls it was clear that the stone roof had been carefully decorated....

A temple (possibly) with a decorated roof, Uplistsikhe

...or laboriously carved and polished to look like wooden beams.

Hall with stone roof carved to look like beams, Uplistsikhe

The Blackberry Hall was well enough named, a large bramble hung from the remains of the roof, but the ‘Apothecary' seems a stab in the dark.

Apothecary, Uplistsikhe

The most modern building, indeed the only real ‘building,’ is the tenth century Prince's Church which was built over an earlier pagan religious site at the highest point of the city.

The Prince's Church, Uplistsike

We finished by descending a tunnel that took us from the defensive heights down to the riverside. It was unlit though easy enough to descend by the modern stairs; how the original inhabitants coped I have no idea.

Tunnel down to the riverside, Uplistsikhe

Back at the entrance we had a look round the museum, which we would have done first had it not opened late. A brief film showed how the city might have been, but despite the computer graphics the place stubbornly refused to come alive for me. Lynne did not have this problem, so it must be my failure of imagination.

Uplistsikhe overlooks the Mtkvari River and much arid countryside

From Uplistsikhe we drove 10km to Gori, the birthplace and childhood home of Josef Stalin. Our route almost touched the South Ossetian border and we could see the hills, fields and Russian communication systems of this make-believe country.

The South Ossetia Problem

Beyond the Caucasus, North Ossetia had been part of the Russian Federation since 1806. There were a few Osset settlements south of the mountains in the 17th century, but many South Ossetians migrated from the north during the 19th and 20th centuries. According to Dinara they were well integrated into Georgian society and several generations of intermarriage had weakened the Osset identity. The Georgian view is that the Russians stirred up their dormant nationalism and then used that as an excuse to move in 'to protect the Ossets from Georgian oppression.' They did the same in Abkhazia, Georgia's northwest province along the Black Sea. It is the same tactic, Dinara observed, that Vladimir Putin has recently used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and indeed that Hitler used to annex the Sudetenland in 1938.

Map of Georgia showing South Ossetia and Abkhazia

In 2008 Georgia started a misguided war to get South Ossetia back; a Russian-Georgian war could only ever have one winner. Gori was shelled, cluster bombs were dropped (the Russians deny this but unexploded bomblets are still regularly found)* and it was occupied for ten days. As a teenager Dinara had travelled from the Black Sea coast to be with her family in Tbilisi and had seen Gori burning as she passed on the main road.

Lynne and I were born in 1950 and like most of our generation were brought up by parents who talked (sometimes incessantly) about their wartime experiences, but we have been blessed by having no direct experience of warfare. Dinara told us calmly about what she had seen and although she did not believe she had been in any imminent danger, it was unnerving to hear experiences of a war that was so recent and from one who was still so young.

The population of South Ossetia, 100,000 in 1989, has halved and left Georgia with a refugee problem - added to by similar events in Abkazia. The road into Gori was lined with houses reminiscent of our post-war prefabs which I remember surviving into the seventies and even eighties. These were the dwellings of Ossetian refugees.

Refugees' houses, Gori

Gori, Stalin's Birthplace

Gori

Our first brush with Gori was brief – we no sooner arrived than we drove five kilometres out of town to Dinara's restaurant of choice. We sat in the shade in a large courtyard, watched fish swim round a pond and ordered a veal kebab. The spreads laid on when food is pre-ordered are memorable, but we had eaten two such feasts yesterday and were glad to be in control of the menu and able to order a light meal. Even the greatest trencherman needs an occasional rest and another feast was promised at our guesthouse that evening.

Back in Gori we drove past Stalin Square and down Stalin Avenue to the Stalin museum.

Central Gori - modern(ish) and a bit dull

Stalin is a problematic figure to the whole of the former Soviet Union, not just Georgia. Born Josif Dzhugashvili in 1878, the son of a Gori cobbler, he ruled the world's largest country for a quarter of a century, turning the USSR from a rural backwater into an economic powerhouse - as Churchill said 'taking it with the plough and leaving it with nuclear weapons'. Even those of us who prefer the idea of beating swords into plough shares have to acknowledge that under his leadership the Soviet Union played arguably the most important role in the defeat of fascism (though they had that role forced upon them when Hitler’s invasion unilaterally brought the Molotov-Ribentrop non-aggression pact to its end.)

And, of course, Stalin was a psychopathic mass murderer. He imprisoned his opponents, real and imaginary, in a vast archipelago of gulags and in Yekaterinburg we saw a mass grave of some 30,000 victims of Stalin's purges. 7 million more died in the 1932 Ukraine famine, for which he bears the main responsibility, and his secret police terrorised large parts of the population.

Lynne in Russia at the memorial to 30,000 murdered on Stalin's orders,
Yekaterinburg 2007

Although Khrushchev denounced Stalin and Stalinism in the 1950s it is not difficult to find devotees of Stalin among older people in Russia today. In Georgia the situation is even more complex. They resent the Russian denomination that Stalin and the Soviet Union brought, and most Georgians are only too aware of his faults, but still he was a native son of Georgia.

The last statue of Stalin in the whole of the former USSR stood outside the Gori museum and stayed there long after independence and long after Georgia had abandoned everything that Stalin stood for. It was removed in 2010, but even then the authorities thought it best to do the deed at night.

Stalin Museum, Gori

We were shown round the museum (along with a lone German student) by a woman in her late sixties - it is impossible to visit any museum in Georgia without being given a guided tour. She might (Dinara suggested) have been of Russian origin, but she was certainly an unreconstructed Stalin fan. It was a swift tour and she seemed to be reciting a script as we whizzed through Stalin's early life in Gori and later in Tbilisi where he trained for the priesthood but was expelled from the seminary for political activity.

And that was where the history stopped. We saw an exhibition of some of the gifts he received, shades of North Korea, some of them with less than compelling connections to the despot. A musician’s organisation presented him with an accordion but, as our guide told us, Stalin did not play the accordion so he passed it straight on to the museum where it is labelled 'Stalin's Accordion' though he may only have looked at it from a distance.

Lynne and Uncle Joe, at least we were not expected to bow!

She mentioned nothing that might bring discredit to the great man's name. We were not shown Lenin’s letter warning the politburo that after his death they should under no circumstances let this psychopath get his hands on the levers of power. Near the end there were some much more recent colour photos of destruction and rubble. ‘What is that?’ asked the German student. ‘2008,’ said the guide without elaborating and moving swiftly on. Dinara contained her amazement at the whole show, but did some serious head shaking later.

In the square opposite we saw the simple nineteenth century worker’s cottage where Stalin was born.

The house where Stalin was born, Gori

It stands alone, all the neighbouring properties, like most of Gori's buildings from that period, having been demolished as the town has modernised. It was reminiscent of Kim Il Sun's house, though without the parkland setting.

Inside the house where Stalin was born

Again like, Kim, we saw Stalin's private train,...

Lynne boards Stalin's private train, Gori

.....but unlike in North Korea we were able to get on it and walk the length of the carriage.

Stalin's private train, Gori

There was childish glee in the way Lynne photographed his private toilet.

Stalin's private bathroom on his private train, Gori

Honey Bread on the way to Kutaisi

Leaving Gori we drove on to Kutaisi, Georgia's second city. The drive was scary, the two lane road was busy and Alex's overtaking was aggressive to say the least. The big BMW had immense acceleration which he relied upon to keep out of trouble. Unfortunately other drivers seemed equally aggressive but few were as well equipped. Back in Azerbaijan our driver Togrul had merely raised his eyebrows when discussing Georgian driving standards. I was beginning to understand his meaning.

Honey bread on sale by the roadside, Kutaisi

Nearing Kutaisi the road was lined with stalls selling something we did not recognise. 'Honey bread,' Dinara told us. We stopped to look at one of the stall-holder’s ovens and bought a loaf. It was delicious.

Honey bread production near Kutaisi
Kutaisi

Kutaisi

Kutaisi does not present its best face to those arriving from the east. We entered the city through an area of post-industrial dereliction. We had seen the same in Armenia ten years earlier and for the same reason - the Soviet Union deliberately placed parts of complex industrial processes in outlying republics, but never the whole process, so at independence they found they had either lost their suppliers or their market.

We found our guesthouse in the old part of the city which sits on a hill, the large balcony giving a good view over the newer parts that have colonised the valley below. At dinner, as expected, every inch of the table was covered in goodies and despite serious work, ably assisted by Dinara and Alex, we were able to see off only a small proportion of what was on offer. We ate cucumber and tomato salad, rice and vegetables, aubergine purée with walnuts, mushrooms with dill, vegetable soup, chicken pieces, pork with a walnut and garlic sauce, homemade burgers and finally, watermelon. We also enjoyed a litre of 'homemade' white wine – as brown and oxidized as always.

Kutaisi

We shared the guesthouse with a group from Dragoman Travel whose leader gave them careful instructions for their arrival in Turkey the next day. I spoke to him the next morning, he had picked up what he called 'the truck' (and it was much more of a truck than a coach) in Malaysia and driven it to Beijing where the tour started. Some of his clients had travelled the whole length of the Silk Road with him and would stay until the end in Istanbul while others had joined for just a section of the journey.

*Appalling as this is, it is a drop in the ocean compared with the American cluster bombing of Laos in the 1960s and 70s which has left tens of millions of unexploded bomblets that are still killing peasant farmers (and their children) today. See Phonsavon, The Plain of Jars and Unexploded Ordnance.

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Location: Gori, Georgia
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