We left for Gori on the 4th October and a trip which normally took 1 1/2hours we managed in less than an hour with
a driver who did his best to try and kill us. I have never been nervous driving in India but he was flying along
in his old car at 140kms and although a good driver at that speed anything could happen. He didn’t really listen
to Maurice’s requests to slow down. We stayed at a guesthouse – Gogi Davashvilis wine cellar – They made only organic wine in special qvevri – clay containers placed under the ground and the wine is without any preservatives or sulphites.
We were joined at the guesthouse by two lovely Polish girls who were on a short holiday from Warsaw and we all had a good time together.
Tengo Gogi’s son showed us the process of making the wine in their wine cellar, just off the dining room.
It was fascinating to see the old methods that were still used and as a 30 year old man he has now dedicated
himself to producing organic wine. His father apart from running the guesthouse keeps bees and 18hives were brought down from the mountains for the winter while we were there.
We took a Maxim taxi the 6kms into Gori town to see the Stalin museum, his train carriage and replica of his house,
all situated in a lovely park. I found a good cafe and we then went to the ethnographic museum.
We had a very lively evening of wine tasting, dinner and more wine and a lot of laughs. At least Maurice could also enjoy some of the pure wine.
The other attraction apart from the Stalin museum was the cave city of Uplitsikhe which the four of us visited with
Tengo however we had a very gusty strong wind while climbing up to the caves which was a bit challenging. It was a
totally different set up to Vardzia but also very interesting with an Orthodox church built at the top of the caves which date from the 7th century.
We were dropped back in town at Cafe 22 and the girls continued to Mtskheta an hour away with Tengo who had recommended a wonderful restaurant to us called ‘Shindagori’ which sounded more Japanese to me but which meant home of Gori and which served delicious Georgian food.
I had wanted to see some Georgian dancing and luckily Tengo who was a Georgian dancer taught at the school which Stalin had attended. In the new sports hall he taught traditional Georgian dancing and it was a privilege to
see these girls and boys who were very enthusiastic about their dancing and some had only just started a few weeks before.
Tango and a girl who had been dancing for 8years gave us a display of a wedding dance. It was nice to see the
traditions of many years being upheld. The lovely boys and girls each shook our hands when they left and a couple
of them introduced themselves in their basic English. We were very touched by it.
One of Tengo’s friends too us on the hour’s trip to Mtskheta from Gori. It was also only about an hour from Tbilisi. We had arranged to meet Nikoloz, one of our previous drivers who was to take us up to Stefansminda to see Mt Kasbeg. We checked into our hotel and the old grandfather who greeted us spoke only Russian and Georgian. Nikoloz rang us and said that he was in Mtskheta and that his car was broken. I took this to mean that it had broken down but it was indeed broken. In the old part of town where we stayed there were many streets blocked off
with bollards and only the residents had the required card to lower them. Unfortunately one lot of these were down when Nikoloz drove in to pick us up and all of a sudden his car was lifted and the bollard had gone through the sump, the oil pump and the pan on the automatic transmission and broke the engine mountings. We were going nowhere with him and he was also going nowhere. We wanted to find him and a very kind local who had been fishing and who spoke excellent English came with us in the taxi to find Nikoloz. We were lucky to find this man later that night and gave him a bottle of wine. Such kindness.
There were no signs to advise of these bollards and a local told him that many cars who were unaware of them had also done a lot of damage to their cars. The dear man was only concerned that we were let down and insisted on finding another driver for us before his friend came and sorted his car out.
Any other time we would have just delayed the trip but it was a beautiful day and we were goingn on to Tbilisi the next day so we left with a substitute driver and kept in touch with Nikoloz while he had his car repaired which he managed over the next day.