gamarjoba. This is the Tbilisi podcast covering life, travel and more in the country of Georgia. Brought to you by foodfuntravel.com expathub.ge and eat this tours.com.

In this episode, part two of our where to Visit in Georgia summary, we are talking about all of the best highlights, regions and areas that you should consider when you're first planning your trip to Georgia. If you didn't listen to part one, go back and do that now if you like. Or you can listen to this one all by itself.

Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Tbilisi Podcast, a show about life and travel in Tbilisi and Georgia. It is part two of our where to Go in Georgia episodes.

Which areas to go to, a general overview for first time visitors or even people who've been here once before but maybe missed some stuff. Oh, even if you live here, maybe you haven't thought of some of these places.

Yeah, yeah.

Plenty of people are like, well, I've been in Tbilisi for months but I haven't really traveled anywhere. So here you go. This is your sort of idea generating friend. It's just going to be like, oh, that sounds interesting. Let's try that out.

If you're one of those weirdos that just jump in on episode two and don't go back to listen to episode one or any other episodes. Hi, welcome. I'm Meg. I run a website called foodfuntravel.com and I'm here with Tom.

Yeah, it's Tom from eatthisthistours.com and expathub.ge doing food and wine tours here in Georgia as well as expat services. So. But yes, these are standalone episodes. I mean we're probably going to reference a few things from the last episode, but really each one is just a summary of different parts of the country for people to think about visiting.

Yeah. So maybe there was nothing in the last one that you're interested in and you're like, hey, let's jump into that one. I want to hear about that place.

Yeah, because I think in this one we've got a few more out of the way places. We had a bit of a mix in the last one. Lots of famous places and a couple of lesser visited and this one, a few more of the lesser visited and some famous ones. So yeah, we're going to start in the west of the country right now. We started the first episode with Tbilisi, which of course is one of the main airports. And this, we're going to start with one of the other main Airports, which is Kutaisi.

Yes. If you fly into Kutaisi, there's a lot of budget airlines coming in there. So if you come in. In on Wiz or some of those other airlines, you might be flying into K. And you know what, it's actually a good idea to spend a day or so checking out that area. Don't just jump on a bus straight to Tbilisi, because there's actually some really cool stuff especially that you can do in Kutaisi and around the Emirati region.

Around Kutaisi, yes, because Kutaisi is the capital of Emoretti and this whole area of Western Georgia was once a separate country as well. I mean, you know, the whole Georgia thing, there was sort of kingdoms within Georg and that sort of thing.

Got conquered and then they joined together and then they got conquered again and then they joined together in a different way and then they got conquered again and then they joined together and.

Yeah, yeah, lots of stuff was going on. History, stuff.

History.

We'll talk more about Kutaisi and Imereti in other episodes. In fact, there are two other episodes already out that you can go back and listen to where we're talking about things to do around Kutaisi and Imoretti.

Yep. We speak to Emily from Wonderlush. Maybe you have seen her website. It is everywhere. If you Google basically anything about Georgia, her website will probably pop up, so.

Or maybe us, we also come up a lot. But I'm just saying we're also doing stuff.

She has a really fantastic website and if you have heard of her and her website, those two episodes we actually do with her, she lives in Ktaisi and she knows a lot about that region. So that's why we got her on the show to do two full episodes.

Yeah, yeah. There's loads to do in that area for sure. So go back and listen to those if you're going to be in the Kutaisi area when you land. Yeah.

So highlights of that.

A few things. UNESCO site first, I think probably because Galati Monastery Complex is one of the three UNESCO sites, the main sort of historical UNESCO sites. We talked about Mutsketa in the last episode. We talked about Ushguli in the last episode. And the third one is Galati Monastery Complex, including Bagrati Cathedral, which is in Kutaisi. So they're actually two different locations that are about 20 minutes drive apart, but they're both covered under this UNESCO title.

Yep. So if you are an observant person on the airports that you actually fly into, rather than just Kutaisi Airport, you will know that it's called David the Builder Airport. And so he's very famous because he helped build and commission the Galati monastery in that sort of area. So. And he's supposed to be buried there. There's at least like a. Allegedly, there's a plaque there.

Plaque.

Like, is it a plaque? A plaque, A plaque.

I don't know.

Plaque is on your teeth. Plaque is on.

Yeah, I think. I don't know, maybe the other way around.

I don't know.

Who can tell?

Anyway, there's like a.

Only an etymologist could tell us.

Yeah, there's like a monument thing of. Because he, you know, he built that to be an education hub of the region.

But the main reason to visit it, aside from being a UNESCO site, is it has. It's. Yeah, it's a very nice monastery. It has some of the best preserved frescoes in the whole of Georgia. So these are incredibly well preserved because mostly during the Soviet era, they came and whitewashed and destroyed all of the historic religious art because they wanted everyone to be atheist and secular. So they went, we're just going to destroy all that. This church monastery complex actually managed to avoid that fate. Only a few actually did. Yeah, some of them have been restored more recently, but this is one of the ones where, you know, it's original artwork that's still in good condition. So, yeah, those frescoes are floor to ceiling in this huge, huge building. Yeah, it's quite incredible to see another fantastic thing jumping from Soviets destroying stuff to Soviets building stuff. There was a lot of sanatoriums built near to Katasi in the town of Skaltubo. This has natural hot springs and so they built lots of sanatoriums there. So, like, most of them are not active. A lot of them are ruined. And that's actually the reason to go there is because the photography of these ruined sanatoriums is quite fabulous, if you're an Instagrammer or whatever, or just if you like seeing some old buildings that are still in interesting condition.

Apparently they're starting to be developed though, so more are. Yeah, I'd get there sooner rather than later.

You get a few years still, probably. But more and more of them are being redeveloped and then opened as actual sanatoriums again or other purposes. So, yeah, go do that. That's only like 20 minutes drive outside of Kutaisi on the other side from Galati. So worth doing if you're into wine, which, as you may know, if you've listened to any of our podcasts, I sort of am a little bit, just a little bit like all the time, obsessively into wine. So a little bit obsessively. You can go and visit the Baghdadi wine region or Zestophoni and Terjola, which are all to the southeast of Kutaisi, about just under an hour's drive to that area. Some of the most famous Emeritian wineries are there. By wine is probably the most famous one. One of Georgia's premier female winemakers. Yep. You can go visit her. I mean, she's hardly ever there, but you can go visit her family or you can go and visit one of many other wineries and you can try the local wines there, which are very different from Eastern Georgian wines. They're lighter wines, maybe a little bit more minerally. Definitely a lot higher acid than East Georgian. Sometimes sour. Yeah, sometimes sour. It depends how they're made. But that's a very famous area. So you can go do a sort of one day trip down there, which is something we're planning to open our own with Eat this tours. We're planning to open tours there hopefully in 2024. Yeah.

So if you're interested, just message us and we'll see. Yeah, we want to do it. If more people are interested, just drop us a line and then maybe we can get enough people together at the same time to put a trip together. That'd be great.

We already have tour routes. It's all set up. We've sent plenty of tours out there already.

Everybody just wants Karketti right now.

But everyone wants Karketti.

There's some great other regions.

Yeah. If you're flying into Ktaisi, then, you know, jump straight on a minivan the next morning and go out to the wine region. We are, we're open for business on this if people message us. But otherwise we're going to eventually launch a full tour there as well. Yeah. So probably in 2024. Okay. So yeah, drinking wine. It's Georgia, obviously. We talked about loads and loads of other stuff in Emily's episode about two episodes about Kutaisi in Ameritis.

I'll put a link in the show.

So many things.

Or you can just scroll back and go save that for later to have a listen to the Kutaisi episodes.

But as we like food a lot, I would say my favorite Emeritian dish. And let's be clear, Emeritian cuisine is definitely its distinct own cuisine as our to the regions around Georgia. I love fried chicken in BlackBerry sauce made with fresh fruits in the Summer. It's incredible.

Yep. Especially if you get, like, nice. Nice bit of crispy chicken.

Yeah. Crispy village chicken that's been running around the farmyard that morning. And. And how do you. How do you say chicken? Let's not get into that story. And BlackBerry sauce, fresh fruit. Sometimes they mix it with other fruits as well. It's fabulous. That tart sort of sourness of the fruit mixing with the sort of crispy and sort of slightly oily version of the crispy fried chicken. Fabulous. Love it. All right, anything else you like in Katasi Amoretti? Any food that comes to mind that you're immediately like, yes.

Oh, there's like, the Katasi kebab.

Katasi kebab? Yeah.

You gotta try it.

We talk about that in one of the episodes with Emily as well. Yeah. This is like a small mixed pork and beef kebab, which is topped with tsatsabelli, which is Georgian fresh tomato sauce. So unlike ketchup, which has got loads of sugar in, this is just natural sweetness of the tomatoes. It's brilliant. Yeah. Topped with some onions and some parsley and cilantro and. Great.

Love. It's one little shop in Kutaisi that's been cooking them up for years, and that's the place you got to go to. But if you want to know where that is, go back and listen to the Kutaisi episode.

Or we have a kutaisi article on foodfuntravel.com which tells you where it is. All right, so let's move on to somewhere else. Somewhere bordering Imereti, just to the north, is Racha and Lechkumi, which is two regions that are sort of connected together politically.

Definitely a place that doesn't get as much tourism, but gorgeous place to visit. And I think it'll definitely become popular. I think if people.

It's off track, which is great.

Yeah. If people are avid hikers, you might have heard of this region, but it's definitely not one of the top places people have on their list. But it should be, especially in autumn, because it is gorgeous.

Yep. Autumn colors all the way down the river valley near Ambrolauri, which is the capital and main city of that area. Really great. And it's only just over an hour to drive from Kutaisi through the mountain pass and up there. And the mountain pass itself has some beautiful views as well. So it's really quite easy to get to if you're. If you're jumping off point is Kutaisi, if you're trying to get there from Tbilisi, it's more like three and a half, four hours before you're even close to Ambrolari. But yeah, from Kutaisi it's a great little day trip. So you've got this amazing river valley near Ambrolari, which is where most of the wine region is. So once again, everywhere in Georgia, apart from the high mountains, is a wine region. But this valley is surrounded by high mountains to the north. The Caucasus Mountains are right there, and then also smaller mountains to the south as well. So it's a pretty stunning place. And then you also, if you keep going further to the northeast from there, through Oni, which is another one of the main towns, and all the way up to Gebi, which you're definitely going to need a 4x4 to get to, that is where some of the serious hikers go. If you want to get really off any sort of map and you just want to get into mountains, then Gebi is the area to go to. That's definitely one of the main regions you go to if you are wanting to go hiking, for sure. Lots of good hiking trails up there and going up in the summer is great.

Yeah, incredible. Incredible place to visit also. Who would have thought? There's some pretty famous dishes that you can get there.

Yum, yum.

One in particular is the Shikmaruli, which is a garlic explosion in your face.

Yep. Fried chicken again, or at least chicken normally fried.

I like. Yeah, you can get it different ways. I like it when it's fried and a bit crispy when you've got. Because there's a lot of, like, garlicky sauce that goes with it. It's like a creamy garlicky sauce. And I personally prefer it when the chicken's a little crispy with the sauce. But, hey, each to their own. There's lots.

I think it's better. So the crispy chicken has to stick out the top of the sauce because if it gets submerged, it goes soggy whilst it's waiting there, which is not so good. Now, the traditional version of this is made with a milk and garlic sauce, because that was obviously more regular in the villages. And then once they sort of updated it and made it a bit more fancy, they started using cream, so you get thicker versions. Obviously the more decadent cream version is great, but the original milk version is pretty nice as well.

It's not first date food, though.

No, it's messy and very, very garlicky, as in the most garlicky food I've ever eaten in my life, apart from maybe Korean garlic fried chicken. Which is also incredibly garlicky.

Yeah. But so if you are on a first date and you're in retro, also choose to order the lobbyanni, which you can get that all across the country.

It's one of the most famous dishes in Georgia, really.

So it's kind of like, once again, it's your bread. Sort of stuffed bread. Stuffed bread, but it's full of beans. And so this is great for vegetarians as well because you can have that vegetarian option and lobbying.

Yeah, it's normally vegan, actually.

It's even vegan.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, it's beans and bread, gluten free. You're in a bit of trouble. And butter, it's almost always going to have butter on it. Sometimes it has walnuts in the mix.

You can't have butter if you're vegan.

No, no. Oh, sorry, yeah. Oh, yeah. If it's got butter on it, you're in trouble, aren't you?

Ask about the butter.

You have to ask the no butter version, please. So that can work for sure. And then if you want to make your lobby completely not vegetarian, then you add ratcha ham to it, which is George's. George's version of Parma ham. Obviously not really connected to it. Everyone's been curing their own ham across Europe for hundreds and hundreds of years. But yep, this is their version of cured ham.

Delicious.

You have a shed in your back garden, you get your pig in November and then you, you hang the pig in smoke for months and then that's it, you eat the ham for the next few months.

Chunkier bits of ham than if like.

Oh, yeah, they don't slice it thin. No, they're not using one of those deli slices. It is just chunky, cut off with a knife sort of business.

Yeah.

Sometimes this is served in a way that's like Parma ham, where it's like just cured and cold on the plate and sometimes it's boiled and then you have like this hot, softer version of it, which I also like. Both are, but yeah, they sometimes mix little bits of ham into the lobby bread and I love that. But of course you might want to check if you're vegetarian because you're going to have a surprise, a wonderful, tasty, meaty surprise that you won't be happy about. But I am. So, yeah, it's yum yums. Yeah, that's sort of the main stuff. Also Surami pillars, if you want. Just a natural landmark that's about 30 minutes drive outside of Ambra Lowry. Just these crazy Natural stone pillars that stick up out of nowhere.

This area is just more about natural attractions.

Very much so. Very little tourist development. You know, even the hotel options. There's not really anything above 2 star in Ambrillari. I mean, there's a couple of things that are sort of just about trying to be above two star. But yeah, it's very rough and ready. It's very undeveloped, but it's wonderfully authentic and the valley is beautiful. And then get up into the mountains and the scenery gets even better.

Yeah. All right, so we're going to go to the complete opposite and one of the other major places that people go to. Still a hiking place, still really popular with hiking, but I think most people coming to Georgia will have heard of Kasbegi. Or to be more specific, the actual town is called Stepatz Minda, but people just refer to it as Kazbegi.

Yeah. So this mountain is the most famous mountain. It has a glacier on the top, so it's always snow capped. Whenever you go up there, you're always going to see the snowy mountaintop. Obviously, during the winter it can be a lot of snow, in fact, to the point where the roads are closed and you can get trapped up there. We know people who have.

Yep. But they're staying at rooms and they're like, we're fine.

It is not the highest mountain in Georgia. It is over. Is it third, I think third? Yeah, it's maybe third. It's over 5,000 meters, just about, I believe. But it is not the highest mountain. It's just the most famous one. It's also the sort of easiest high mountain to get to because there is the main highway that comes from Tbilisi to connect to Russia. So this is basically the highway that connects Russia because most of the other stuff is not in Georgia. It's. Yeah. Going through Abkharja, which is Georgian but occupied by Russia, or going through South Ossetia, which is Georgian but also occupied by Russia.

Yeah. So there can sometimes be truck traffic jams.

Yeah, there can be a lot of trucks up there sometimes, but during the summer, because it is the only highway, although they are building a tunnel that eventually will relieve some of the traffic. The tourist track, like all of the tour groups going through there actually do stuff up the road pretty bad. So even though Google Maps may tell you you can get to Kasbegi from Tbilisi in three hours, it could easily be four hours if the tourist situation is very heavy and there's a lot of trucks as well. So do bear that in mind. But yeah. When you get there, Georgia's probably most iconic picture, the thing that you just see posted around everywhere.

Go Getty Trinity Monastery.

It is. Go Getty Trinity Church.

What's the difference?

Monastery. Normally they actively have monks living. Yeah. This doing monk stuff.

Yeah, that makes sense.

But I believe that although some people are there permanently, I don't think it's active as a monastery that I'm aware of. But maybe I could be wrong.

But yeah, the way to get there is you can either hike, so you'll get up in the morning and do the hike up there, or there are down in the town, there are 4x4 drivers waiting to take you up and they'll wait for you and while you take your pictures and do your stuff and then they'll bring you back down again as well.

Yeah. So they actually did finish the road and you can now drive up there in any sort of competent vehicle by yourself. It's pretty steep. It's pretty steep in a couple of places. If you're taking your Prius up there, maybe, maybe not. But if you're taking like a good, decent, modern vehicle up there, then yeah, people are driving up there in a Prius as well. I've seen Priuses up there, but it's sort of like by fixing the road they've taken away a massive business from all of the locals and it's a bit harsh. So, you know, it's only going to cost you like $15 or something to get the 4x4 driver, like per person. It's going to cost you like 10, 15 doll person or something. So, you know, and they take you up there, they bring you back as well and yeah, why not do it? Support the local economy a bit more by doing that rather than driving up yourself if you can. But also if you're really on a budget, then hike up there. Why not? It's a two hour hike.

Yep.

It's a very scenic hike. As long as it's not the middle of August, it's not too hot normally. Yeah. So that's the most iconic photograph. Once again, a church. It's a religious site and we keep telling you genuinely, these churches and monasteries, nunneries as well, there's so many of them. But all of them have their own unique characteristic and scenery and they are all worth taking a look at.

Definitely.

Yeah. We're not going to recommend ones that are rubbish. We recommended the ones in this highlights episode anyway that we genuinely think are worth stopping at. Yeah. So that's great. Just the views in general are Amazing, Beautiful.

And you can go see the horsies. Go say hi to the horses up there.

Horses up there. So yeah, on that side, up by the monastery, you're facing east. So if you get there sort of mid morning, not only is there already a lot of tourists, but also you're just literally facing towards the sun. So you might want to get there in the afternoon instead. So the sun's behind you, you get some views with the mountains behind the church. Depends what you want. Lots of different stuff if you're a photographer, but it's a great place to go up to Then the village itself, the sort of small town of Stepanz Minda is really now just a tourist hub. It was a very small village before and now it is just all hotels, guest houses and a limited number of restaurants. Not as many good restaurants as you'd expect given how many tourists are there.

We found ourselves at Rooms A Lot, which is one of the major hotel there. There is a wonderful little restaurant in the little village of Gurgheti way up the hill. Can you remember what the name of that restaurant is?

Off the top of my head, no.

Okay, I'll add it into the show notes. Incredible little restaurant there, great service, really nice garden and really good food that was really wonderful. But other than that we just sadly found ourselves at Rooms A Lot. But they do have an incredible view.

Rooms Hotel has the massive, massive terrace, really good food and just the perfect panoramic view of the whole valley with the, with Mount Kazbeggi and really nice cocktails. Yeah, yeah, totally. Fabulous place to hang out as well.

I'm going to mention.

Yeah, you're going to mention this, aren't you? I know, I know you're going to mention this.

Okay, so we, when we were there, we did a hike to the Vetti Waterfall. Waterfall. So if you happen to Google this or you, if you happen to be looking up like walks or hikes or anything and you've come across a blog that says it's an easy stroll, I.

Think he said it's literally so easy I couldn't categorize it. I had to create a new category for it of zero because it was such an easy hike.

Lie, lies, lies.

Now look, if you're doing the four day hike to Ushguli and you're just literally pacing through that in three days, then sure, the hike to Kvlati Waterfall is obviously a zero. But if you're a regular tourist who normally doesn't go hiking and you just wanted to go out for a casual walk with your 2 year old. Turns out this is not a casual walk for a two year old because.

Or anybody with any sort of any disabilities, any problems.

I had to carry him the entire way. I was literally clambering up rocks carrying a two year old. Ridiculous. So this is definitely a hike.

We actually had a stroll. We actually had some friends go out after us who didn't have a 2 year old with us and they were the same. They were like. That was not a stroll. What is that blog talking about? Listen, it's not the hardest hike you've ever done in your life.

It's an easy hike by hiking standards, but not by walking. Casual family standards.

Stroll is like having a casual walking around Tbilisi.

Old town.

Daisies in a field. That's a casual stroll. So yeah, Maria in the Sound of Music was having a casual stroll as she was singing about the hills.

Yep.

Although it was a pretty high hill, it must have been a bit of a hike to get there.

Oh, but it was flat. This is like clambering over rocks. Uneven ground. Like you need to be wearing proper shoes. Yeah, I don't even flip flops carrying a two year old. Yeah, because I was told it was a stroll. Anyway, we learned our lesson. Don't listen to hiking blogs. Because hiking blogs think that anything that's not a seven day hike in the wilderness with camping is not a real hike.

Do the hike. It's a beautiful view and it's actually really lovely. So totally do it. But just be prepared.

Don't take a two year old.

Don't take a two year old.

Yeah, no, I mean totally fine. If I'd gone by myself with regular shoes, I'd have just. Great. No issue. But yeah, just saying it's not this casual stroll. So fun, like random tangents. Just because we had to get it out there, I had to say something. Any blog that says it's super easy is someone who either hasn't done it and is reposting something they read on that one blog. That's like the top ranking one or. Yeah, they're a mega hiker. So unless you're a mega hiker, don't listen to them. Okay, so let's move on. Gowdowri is the other area just a little bit before you get to Kazbegi. So essentially you drive north from Tbilisi up the river valley and then you go up a high hill to Godowri, which is a ski resort. And then if you keep on driving another hour north from there, you're in Kasbegi So yeah, this is a ski resort. So it's obviously winter tourism is the main thing.

Yeah. So if you're going to Kasbegi in the summer it looks weird because you drive through this very ski looking resort place. But in the summertime.

Yeah, of course. But you can go mountain biking there. The ski lifts are open in the summer at least some of them are. There's actually this amazing ski lift that goes all the way from Godowri over the top of the mountain and back down into Kobe on the other side.

Very cool.

So if you've got your own driver rather than driving yourself, then the driver can drop you at the ski lift, you can go all the way up, jump in the cable car, keep going down the other side, like incredible panoramic views in every direction and then get picked up on the other side. So that's definitely a cool thing to do if it's open. It's not open year round but it's sort of open during peak season and normally open during winter season depending on weather conditions and everything else.

Yeah. It's also a place where you're going to find, because of the whole ski lodge thing, you just find a lot more sort of modern apartments and stuff to stay in there. Where we were saying like. Well, Stembatzminda has lots of guest houses of.

They have some nice hotels like rooms. They have a few other nice hotels. Wooden hotel is quite nice. Like there's a few nice hotels there as well. It's not just the guest houses.

Yeah.

But there's also a lot of small guest houses.

Stay down the hill a little bit.

But. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's a lot of accommodation options of different levels in Stepanz Minde, but Godowri has sort of gone with the. We're a little bit more fancy.

Yeah, they're a little busy.

They have a lot more sort of four star places as well as some family home places as well. So it depends what you're looking for of course. But yeah, ski in, ski out rooms as well, like up the mountainside a bit. So it's. Yeah, but if you're going with this.

Group of people as well, they've got like the big places, you can rent the whole sort of place as well.

It's also massively cheaper than going skiing in the Alps like in Western Europe, like massively cheaper, like a quarter of.

The price, ski pass prices and everything.

You will be like $10 a day or $12 a day to get a ski pass there. It's so cheap compared to other places. I mean, I'm sure the prices are going up constantly, but yeah, it's very, very, very affordable for skiers.

Another thing to go and check out while you are there is the Russia Georgia Friendship Monument.

Always controversial name, but it was built.

In 1983 where Russia was like, you will be our friends.

Yeah, yeah, we're definitely friends because we sort of own all your stuff at the moment.

So it was built back then, but actually it's a beautiful monument to go and check out. And the views around it, it's like sort of on a cliff face. It's sort of out from the cliff a little bit down. When you first arrive there, it's a bit touristy. There's like, I don't know, there's like real weird little like pop up bars that have like bed swings that you can lay on and stuff.

It's just. It's a tourist stop. It's a tourist stop.

Yeah. But it is actually really pretty. Yeah, I thought it was pretty.

Look, you're driving from Tbilisi to Kazbegi. That's what every tour does. Every single tour in Georgia that does a Kasbegi tour. That's all they're doing every single day. They drive up, they drive back, and they want somewhere to stop on the way. And that's one of the places you stop, have a little coffee, take some photos. The valley is beautiful from there. Beautiful views down the valley from the monument. So whether you care about the politics or the monument itself, the actual scenery is wonderful. And also October, I went up there October, and the autumn colors are just stunning. Some of the best photos I got in Georgia were just that day doing a photo shoot up there. Yep, that's a great place to stop off. And another place that just on the way to Godowri is Ananuri Fortress, which is about an hour from Tbilisi. So you can either visit Ananuri Fortress as part of your sort of local trip around from Utsukheta and that area, you can drive a bit further north and do that. Or if you're going up to Kasbegi, then stop there on the way because that's a fortress on the side of the river and then reservoir after that.

Definitely worth stopping at because you, you can get some really great shots from there. Like just the picture of the church with the water reserve in the background. Really, really pretty, really pretty stuff. And you don't have to stay there for long. It's like a 10, 15 minute stop.

Nice. So yeah, that's Two areas that are very much central north of Georgia or northeast Georgia. Straight north from Tbilisi. Let's move to somewhere that's more southern Georgia. So it's sort of southwest of Tbilisi. You can drive there in about two hours to Borjomi, which is the. Famous for the water. Famous for sparkling water. We did a whole episode on Borjomi water and the history of it. If you want to go back and listen to that.

The sparkling mineral water.

Very intense sparkling mineral water. Very, very minerally salty. Interesting.

It's meant to be very, very good for you. Yeah.

But I think if you drink more than one per day, you're gonna get a bit.

You will end up with a bit.

Of kidney stones or something.

I don't know. I'm gonna give you the poopies.

The poopies. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know.

Minerals. We might give you kidney stones.

Yeah, yeah. Who knows? But still, it's good water to try. You can find it everywhere in Georgia. But if you want to actually go to the town where it's made, I think currently you can't visit the factory that was closed. It got sold off during COVID and the war. The war situation. Because it was Russian owned before it got sold. Yeah. I don't know. To Georgian government. I don't know. We talk about that a bit more on the other episode. But yeah, so if you're going there, you can head into the Borjomi Kargaoli National Park. So it's a really nice national park just to the west of Borjomi and quite a big one. You can go and hang out there if you want to go do some hiking, just some general walking around.

Yeah.

Or you can go and swim in the natural spring water if you want. I don't think. It's not actually fizzy, is it?

No, no.

Borjoby in a bottle is fizzy, but the natural spring water is there. It's just a hot springs.

Yeah. So that also is. You know, I wouldn't call that a stroll either.

Yeah. It's described as like an easy walk, which it technically is an easy walk.

It depends on the weather.

But yeah, it was very wet and muddy when we went along there in October. And it was not wheelchair friendly.

Let's just say that it was not wheelchair friendly. We did manage to eventually drag Isaac in his stroller all the way to the end. And it was worth it. It was a really cool little spa.

Yeah. Yeah, the spa is great.

Yeah. And actually the whole walk is really lovely. It's a beautiful walk with rivers sort of crossing in and out and stuff. But yeah, it was wet and a bit muddy and not wheelchair friendly.

Yeah, quite uneven. I mean, not like badly uneven. Not like the Veletti waterfall path, which is just steep, uneven and rock clambering.

I would never take your mum to that waterfall. But we got your mum pretty far along this track.

Yeah, yeah, but it was a lot of up and down, but mostly flat. Mostly flat sort of path. But yeah. Anyway, so something to do if you want to just walk around. That's a nice casual thing to do.

Highly recommend it.

It was nice. But some bigger sort of like. Yeah, big attractions in that area. Vadzia is the most famous. This is on the list for consideration for UNESCO. This is another ancient cave town, Bronze Age cave town. So a bit like Uplitzike, which we talked about in the last episode. But Varzia is considered to be like the slightly more impressive one and it's very far south, so from Borjomi you still have to go like almost 2 hours drive further and to get there. So this is not a one day trip.

No, you've got to be one of those places that you've got to be going there to go there.

There's a one day trip. We spoke to someone who went on the one day trip. They were like, yes, I sat on a bus for five hours. We got to Vadia, we spent like 30 minutes at Vadia, then we sat on a bus for five hours to come back.

Oh, no.

They're like, this is basically the worst tour I've ever booked. So if you see someone at the street side in Tbilisi saying, vadzia tour, one day tour, like 60 lari, do not do it, don't do it. It's such a scam. So, yeah, they're just making money running a bus basically. And it's such a terrible tour. You know, you stop at some truck stop for a khachapuri halfway there and you just.

Oh, no.

Yeah. She said it was like literally the worst tour she'd ever done in her life. So bad.

And it's not worth it because Vadia is a beautiful spot and it doesn't deserve that sort of treatment.

Yeah, yeah. It's not Vadia's fault. It's the fact that people are pedaling this attraction and anyone who's a tourist who doesn't know how far it is goes, oh, that sounds great. I'll do that. Don't do that. So, yeah, but that's a place that you need to go. So do a two or three day tour to that region if you want to do that. Definitely two days minimum. You can stay in Borjomi overnight, then do Vajir and you can go to Bakuriani as well. You could go to Bakuriani. You could do that even on the first day. You could do Bakuriani and Borjomi on the first day and then you can do a excursion down to Bardia on the second day.

We didn't really mention Bakuriani, but that's a ski resort as well.

Very close to Borjomi.

Very, very close. But you can. On the way up there, there's some really cool places that you can stop and there's great views like looking down onto Borjomi. I think there's a cable car.

Yeah, there's a cable car. A little cable car there. So you could do the cable car from the central park in Borjomi up and do photos, which is obviously very touristy but not too crazy but a bit. Or you can just drive around up to that ridge which is like a 10 minute drive up round to the bridge.

There's a famous bridge on the way that was built by old mate who designed the Eiffel Tower.

Yep. So there's like a railway bridge up there. There used to be a train that traveled between Bakuriani and Borjomi all the time.

They reopened it. It the coolest trip.

It closed during COVID Now it's never reopened. Really sad.

I'll say it once again. If anybody out there can tell us what's going on with the train and why it hasn't reopened, I'd really like to know because that's something I would like definitely recommend to anybody going in that region. I did it. I went up there in February so it was all snowy and it was taking a train through Narnia or something. It was very cool.

Well, we call them pretty much once every three months and every time they just say not open, not open, not opening. Don't know when it's opening. Yeah, because I haven't done it. You did it without me. And I've been like wanting to do it for years. So maybe that will reopen. If it does, then that's definitely one of the highlights. But as I was saying, if you're heading towards year, what you can stop at on the way there as well is Rabati fortress in Akhaltsiki, which is a pretty incredibly well restored fortress. It's huge fortress. Also getting towards the border with Turkey. And. Yeah, I don't know. It's epic. It's an epic fortress. It's probably the most impressive fortress in Georgia and also not massively in a tourist area. So, you know, you can wander around it for an hour or so and it can be busy during August and whatever, but if you go there out of season, it's not going to be that busy at all. Yeah, really nice. And you can also eat some food in that area as well. Of course. Of course.

Unique food to that area. Every area has its own unique food. So this is why we have to talk about it, because there's unique food and wine to all of these different regions. And you just gotta try it.

So this area where Akhaltsika is, it has a historic name which is called Muschietti, which is like a separate area to what the modern political divisions are. But I like to call it because it is Muschiettian cuisine. It's considered Musketian cuisine. I use that term to refer to that area. So Borjomi is sort of north of that, and then the part south of that is Muschietti. So tenel string cheese is super interesting. So if you had string cheese when you were a little kid from the supermarket, this is the real thing. This is not some weird commercial factory product. This actually you can go into people's like small farmsteads and little home places and you can see them make this tenel string cheese. So that's something we do tours down there, which we don't do very often because very few people want to go to that area because it's so off track. You can go and actually meet the cheese makers there, which is really cool. Also snails. This is the one part of Georgia that's famous for snails. They're seasonal. It's mostly in spring, as I remember. Snails is not my favorite food, so it's not something I'm rushing to eat, but you can go and get it there. And also they have their own version of khinkali called Apotka Khinkali or Apotka khinkali. This is made with a dried beef. So this area, they definitely have a bit more of a beef interest. They do beef miti instead of pork mosvati, which is like the barbecue, like barbecue skewers. They do beef down there a bit more. And they do this dried beef, which you can have as if it's like just a piece of dried beef on a plate, like jerky. It's not as dry as jerky. Or they put it in Khinkali.

Is it remnants of Muslim occupation?

I don't know. I don't know the history of it. It's just that it's a thing down there. So there's a few dishes that you can try if you're going to that area. All right, let's move on to the far west of Georgia to Guria and Samogrello, which are two different regions in this area. This has not been as well developed for tourism mainly. So this is not like a big well known tourist area, although I'm sure it will start to develop a bit more. But there's a few. Well, there's a couple of really more famous attractions. Martville Canyon is probably the most famous one. This is quite touristy now. It's been like very developed. You know, it's got a full ticket stadium almost at the front view. You line up and there's just loads and loads of ticket booths and it's. It's. So, yeah, they're pumping through a lot of tourists there. But the waterfalls themselves are really beautiful.

Is that the one that we took, the rubber boat thing?

Yeah. You can do a little boat trip through the canyon at the bottom as.

Well, which I liked that a lot.

It's cute. It's cute. It's family friendly and cute as well. So, yeah, definitely a place that you can stop in at. You can go a bit more off track and find some of the lesser known waterfalls and canyons and stuff in that area as well if you want to. But that's the easiest one to find. I think we talked about that a little bit on one of Emily's episode about things to do that are within an hour of Kutaisi. This is within an hour.

This is really pret to go and visit, but it is just quite developed now, but that's right, yeah, yeah, it's very developed.

Yeah. You can go to Colquetti national park, which is on the border of Guria and Sangrelo. So it's in both districts, states and that recently got its UNESCO status. This a very large park with wetlands and forest areas and yeah, loads of stuff. If you're a nature walker type person.

Yeah, you can just wander around.

You can just go there and wander around for ages. So that's nice. Now Sangrello, though, and western Georgia, they're also famous for their own local cuisine. So this is another reason to be going there. One dish that's incredibly famous is carcho, normally made with beef, but you can have the mushroom version, which is it's not quite vegan because there's going to be butter in it normally, but maybe they'll do it for you with sunflower oil instead. Sometimes it wouldn't be quite the same, but, you know, you get what you get some. So it's basically like a walnut sauce curry. So they're using this Georgian spices along with ground walnuts to make this sort of curry thickness, type of.

That's a good way to describe it. Yeah.

And then pieces of slow cooked beef in there as well. So it's nice and tender. Or wood mushrooms is the vegetarian option.

And then you have that with the alagi on the side.

Alagi is probably one of the most fun foods that exists on the planet.

Our two year old loves it. So basically it is cornmeal that they have put a bunch of cheese in.

Lots and lots of squidgy, gooey cheese.

So if you like how sort of like mozzarella, like just stretches for a really long time. You're gonna love this dish.

Yep. You try and put your fork in it and then you pull it towards your mouth and half the plate comes with you and it just gets stringier and thinner and stringier until you. You've got it like a meter above the plate and then it snaps.

Yeah.

When it's done right.

Love it. Super fun to play with and tasty too. And I like it on its own. I also like it with the cacio as well. So I think it's a standalone dish by itself if you're just a lover of cheese and carbs, which I am. But also it does really go well with the kaccio.

Yeah. And the kaccho often also served with the simpler version, which is called gomi, which is without the cheese in it. I know, Boo. But the slightly healthier version of velache is the non cheese version. It's not stretchy and fun though, is it? It's just cornme. But no, it's good. I don't say it's just cornmeal. It's actually very, very tasty. And umami and lovely.

It's like the Georgian mashed potato on the side sort of thing.

Basically. Also, guria and sammogrello are getting known for some wine. I know we talk a lot about wine. That's because basically Georgia is the wine country. Every region, apart from the high mountains is wine. So there's different varieties of wine, there's different grapes. We've got like over 520 endemic grapes in Georgia. A lot of them are being used to make wine. So it is a big thing. And that area, they're famous in Sangrelo for the Salkino region, which makes Ogileshi, which is a fantastic red wine. Quite a light and high acid red wine. And then down in Guria, they're famous for the Caveri, which makes a very light red sort of wine normally, but it can be made in a few different styles, so look out for those. There's a few wineries around. It's not big on wine tourism yet. It's not somewhere that we've sort of opened into because it's still very, very, very undeveloped. But eventually it'll get more interesting. And there's still definitely some fantastic winemakers down there making great wines. All right, onto the final one. So we've been to a lot of Georgia. This is the one that we haven't been to, but we have to include it in the list. There's a reason we haven't been to it. Quite a few recents, but. Yeah. What's the last one we're going to talk about?

Okay, so we can't do these two episodes without talking about Tushetti. So the reason why we haven't been there is because it's really hard to get to. It takes a really long time to get there. It's really far out of the way. And it's only open for a certain amount of time in the year because the remainder of the year it's basically snowed in and inaccessible. Yeah, it's for your extreme adventure hikers.

We're talking about Tochetti. Ah, yeah. Sorry, I missed that. Well, we're talking about Touchetti.

Just hammering it in there for a Touchetti.

This is the region.

Which region is it again?

Touchetti.

Oh, Touchet.

Touchetti.

Touchetti.

Touchetti. All right. Let's say it too many times, it stops making sense. Yeah. So this is very remote. It's known as having one of the world's most dangerous roads, which is frequented by drivers who definitely don't. Shouldn't be driving. They drive like crazy, even though this road is insanely dangerous. So my first recommendation is don't take the public bus because you get what you get.

Yeah.

Book a private driver. But of course, backpackers have taken the public bus and lived. And then some have died, some have not made it. Yeah, well, I don't know how many or if that many because there's not a lot of news reports about it.

But every year it's just. Has happened, happened.

It's still considered one of the most dangerous roads in the world.

Yeah.

It was on one of those TV shows about most dangerous roads, I believe. Yeah. So that's one of the reasons we haven't been there. It's not that I'm massively afraid of heights and we've done some crazy roads, but I was like, is it somewhere we need to go?

I'm good. I'm good. I'll look at, like, I'll let you go and I'll look at your pictures on Insta.

The other thing is that also it's not a wine region. It's in the high mountains, so there's no wine. Mostly they drink cha cha vodka and eat cheese, which is, you know, also good. They have a Touchetti and cheese festival every year, normally in May, I believe, when the road opens, like, right at the start of the season. So, you know, they get all that dairy during the spring and they make some cheese, and then cheese is ready to eat delish. So, yeah, they're very famous for making Gouda cheese, which is a mountain cheese that's incredibly salty.

I love Gouda.

Yeah. Very, very intensely salty. It's a lot, but I still find it. It's very interesting, especially when it's mixed with other things, so that the saltiness is not just by itself.

Yeah. It's one of those ones that you're gonna love on. It's really like a divisive.

Other people make it as well. It's not just in Tichetti, but, I mean, that's sort of the area that's most famous for it. I think it might have originated there. I'm not actually sure. I don't know the full history on Gouda cheese. Not the same as Gouda from the Netherlands. This is Gouda spelled G U D A very much a Georgian cheese. Yeah. But, you know, there's a small settlement there called Ormalo, and that's where sort of the main hotels and guest houses are. And from there you can do a whole bunch of trekking. You can do horse trekking, you can do regular hiking. You're up in the mountains. It's super remote. Everyone who's been up there that I've spoken to is like, you are so out of the way. Tourists don't really make that much effort to come here. It was one of the few areas during Soviet occupation where I believe they barely. They just didn't even bother.

Yeah.

They just went, you can keep it.

We're good.

We don't need this because we only want to do factories and produce massive amounts of stuff.

Yeah.

And we don't care about your. Your cheap. So they just left them to it.

It's for the more adventurous people. But hey, if you're up for it, off you go. Enjoy. It's beautiful. There's incredible things to see. I've heard it's fantastic, but I'm just. We're not going to be doing a Tachetti episode.

No, no, I don't think.

Unless we do it.

If we go there, eventually we might do a Tachetti episode. But yeah, I mean, it's beautiful. Out of the way nature. You drive there, you go to Karketti and then from Karketti you can drive up there. So you can go there that way and then you can come back and do some wineries to chill out on the way way back. Because why not? Croquetty is fantastic for that stuff. So, yeah, do a bit of both. All right. We've covered loads of places, two episodes, highlights of Georgia, of which there are so, so many. All these different climate zones.

Talking so much.

Yeah, just all these different areas. All these different types of food from all these different areas. All different scenery that you'll get from the high mountains down to the Black Sea coast.

So hopefully amazing. The main thing, we wanted to do a highlight just so that you have an idea of what there is, but also just to highlight how different all the regions are and how blasting through in a couple of days is just not, well, one. Not really worthwhile.

It's just a little sad, isn't it?

You're going to spend a lot of time in a van because it actually takes much longer to get these places than you thought it would. But, yeah, just sort of consider your itinerary a little bit more carefully. Pay attention to maps and how far away places are to each other, because you're not going to be doing.

I see maps is a little bit inaccurate. Accurate as well, which it normally is, and won't necessarily account for a certain traffic.

But don't think you can do Sfanetti and Signagi in the same day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Definitely can't. Not even close. Yeah, yeah. So there's things that you assume are like, oh, the map says it's two hours, it'll be fine. And then it's actually going to take three hours. So you got to plan that stuff in. Yeah, like any of the Kazbeggi, it takes a lot longer.

Maps are incorrect. Roadworks, just traffic in general, mudslides, avalanches, just crazy.

We've had all this stuff since we've lived here.

It never takes the amount of time you think it will.

Yeah, mostly. Mostly not gonna happen. But you know, some places relatively easy to get to if you're close to Tbilisi. Tbilisi traffic is a bit of a nightmare as well, especially during rush hour. So people ask me like, why do your chores, come back at 9pm rather than coming back at like 6? I'm like, if you come back at 6, you spend an hour in traffic. If you come back at 9, you spend 10 minutes in traffic. Yeah, why would we do that?

Yeah, yeah.

Like, can we just come back earlier? It's like, yeah, but you'll get back about an hour earlier. But you'll spend like you could have come back, spent three more hours at a winery and instead you came back an hour earlier and just sat in traffic. Is that more fun than studying in a winery?

No, thank you.

No, it's not. So, yeah, lots of things like this little bit.

I said it before, Georgia runs on gmt. It's Georgia. Maybe time. It might take a bit longer, but you'll get there. Just be relaxed when you hear you can't work on strict time based efficiency because you're just going to stress yourself out.

Don't try and pack your itinerary with 17 things in one day. It's very hard to achieve. Just relax, take it more easy, do it Georgian style. Just do a few things per day and yeah, keep it casual. Yeah, good. All right, there we go. So that's it. Georgia highlights. If we missed anything, obviously we will have done because there are so many. There was no way we could ever mention everything, not even close. If we've missed some regions, I mean, we know we've missed some sub regions, of course, I don't think we've missed any massive regions. Abkharja people might ask us, why haven't you talked about Abkharja? It's got a Russian border at the moment. It's occupied and for tourists to go there right now, I don't recommend. That's the main reason. And I think even tourists can't really go there at all right now. It was open for a bit before the Russian war. You could sort of go in and out, but there's a lot of problems with doing it. So. Yeah, and now I'm pretty sure you just can't as a foreigner get in there at all.

What's the name of that other region that starts with Pankisi?

Yeah, Pankisi is not really a region. It's a very small sub region in northwest Karketi, which is it's got groups from Chechnya. So Chechnyan Muslims, Chechen Muslims live in that area. They moved there, can't remember how long ago, but you know, in the last century they moved there because of problems in Chechnya. Of course there were loads of problems a little bit before the more recent problems in the 90s, I think that was. But yeah, yeah, so they've been there quite a while. They're quite established. They also have their own cuisine, mosques and they have non alcoholic beer and it's, you know, it's a alcohol free zone, this sort of thing. So it's a completely different part of Karketti compared to the rest of Karketti, which is all wine. This is like alcohol free. It's non alcoholic beer made from buckthorn.

But yeah, so there's lots and lots and lots of interesting places that we haven't had time to mention. Maybe as the podcast continues on, we will talk about these places and maybe get to a few of these other places that we haven't had the chance to get to as yet.

Yeah, so many places.

You know, Stay tuned and we, we're going to try and do an in depth episode of all of the major spots that we've mentioned in the last two episodes. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. It's been awesome, you know, talking about Georgia and we love it as always.

It's basically what we do on every episode being the Tbilisi podcast.

Funny that.

Did we do an episode that wasn't about Georgia? I don't think we did. No. That would be weird. Probably. People were like, what's that doing in here? Doesn't make any sense.

But yes, as the slogan says, spend your summer in Georgia, get on a plane, get here.

Now it's spend four seasons in Georgia. Now they're like, let's actually don't just cover in the summer. There's lots more stuff to do.

So. True. There's so much to do. Autumn is gorgeous. Winter you can ski for very cheap.

The spring, Spring and awesome are the, like spring and autumn are the best.

Yeah.

They're better than summer.

Summer's hot. It's hot.

Yeah.

So hot.

Yeah. But if you get out to places like Borjomi, it's a lot less hot.

Yeah.

So, yeah. Or to Shetty if you want to.

If you want.

Yeah, it's, it's a lot cooler out in those places than it is down here in Tbilisi.

All right, let's wrap it up. And go get some more wine.

All right, thanks everyone for joining us once again. If you're interested in wine tours, obviously, speak to me. Just get on eattistours.com take a look at what we've got. As we said, there's lots and lots of wine regions. Everybody wants to go to ktti, literally everybody. It's almost impossible to sell tours anywhere else at the moment. And there's nothing wrong with that because Karketti is a fantastic wine region. But if you are looking for something a little bit more off track and you want us to plan you something, especially if you've got a group of four or more people, then, yeah, we can look at doing some other trips. I like to do trips myself and sometimes I take people with me, go to some more off track wineries that people don't normally go to. So, yeah, pop me a message. That'd be awesome. All right, so that's it for this episode. We'll see you in another episode.

Yep.

I think that's how it works, isn't it?

I think so, yeah.

Hopefully that was the plan.

All right. It might not be in two weeks time, but it'll be sometime.

All right, it's gonna come out.

Just be patient. All right, love you.

Bye.

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