Tasty Gelati

Gelati Monastery near Kutaisi in western Georgia was my favourite thing of the trip until the next one (currently Uplistsikhe holds the crown). It dates back to 1106, founded by King David the Builder, who is buried there, along with a number of other Georgian royals including the famous Tamar who we met back in Vardzia. As we explored the extensively-decorated interior, I couldn’t help thinking it would be world-renowned and absolutely flooded with tourists if this was somewhere like Florence or Paris. As it was, I was fairly selfishly pleased that it wasn’t too crowded, although there was a fair smattering of tourists. The frescoes are rather weathered, but altogether it’s a really beautiful place. I don’t have much more to say on this one, but hope you enjoy the photos! (By the way, I’m having to blog this on iPad so I hope the photos aren’t too giant and/or wonky...)

There were really strong royal associations throughout the church. I’m not entirely sure who these two funny-looking customers are, but definitely someone important

Ol’ Wonky-Eye Jesus in the dome

Quite a graphic John the Baptist post-decapitation

The royals again. David the Builder is on the far right

We also stopped in at the nearby Motsameta church. I saw on the internet a few people saying that this was better than Gelati, which is overrated. To these people, I say there is such a thing as objectively bad taste and you have it and you should feel bad. Motsameta was in a pretty location, also on top of a hill, but the tiny church has been garishly overpainted/restored on the inside, and the views are not that spectacular. The church is so small that we couldn’t really go in either, as there was a mass going on the whole time we were there and a wedding party turned up just as we were leaving. Which is fair enough, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as nice as Gelati in any case.

Motsameta’s tacky frescoes

Some guy turned up with two lambs as an offering to the church. I assume for the monks to eat rather than some sort of sacrificial thing

Spelunking with monks

Monday mostly consisted of driving some 270km from Tbilisi to our guesthouse near Vardzia, an ancient cave monastery in southern Georgia, located less than 20 km (over some big mountains) from the Turkish border, and not too far from the Armenian border either. Although for most of the way the roads weren’t too bad, it was still pretty slow going. With breaks, it took us more than 6 hours to cover it. Although you’re less likely to encounter stray cows on the highway that made up most of the way, you’re practically guaranteed to meet many Georgians who view the centre of the road as a secret third passing lane. Their technique often involves following as close as possible to the back left of the car in front, in order to bully it over to the side of the road a bit, and then they merrily proceed in the assumption that anyone coming the other way will also make space. For most of the way, the passing scenery was actually quite dull, until we turned off the main cross-country highway and got into some more dramatic terrain on the way south.

About as bad as the road got, on the way down to Vardzia

Apart from the alphabet, this is kind of how I imagine a carwash in Georgia the state might look


Khertvisi Fortress

We finally arrived at our destination, a rural guesthouse in Nakalakevi, not far from Georgia. Here, again, we encountered some language difficulties. My Russian is just about good (or bad) enough to follow the general topic of a basic conversation, but often not enough to pull the threads together in a way that makes sense. We were greeted by the man of the house, who led us and our suitcases across the courtyard to speak to his wife, who told us a big group was coming in the next day for agritourism purposes - homemade milk, wine, fruit etc. Okay, got the drift. Then she asked if we wanted dinner - my attempts to say we wanted a ‘light’ dinner failed (I checked later and I did use the right word, but I think I mangled the pronunciation), so I fell back on asking for a small dinner. Then we, with our suitcases, were led back towards the car for a confusing spiel about the old guesthouse down the hill. It took quite some time before I was able to put two and two together and figure out that that is where we would be sleeping, displaced by the large group due to arrive the next day. Even then, I wasn’t sure whether we were expected to schlep back up to the main guesthouse (thankfully not, given the state of the road between the two). The teenage daughter, who spoke a little English, although not to great effect when all this conversation was going on, was bundled into our car to accompany us down to the other guest house. The poor thing later had to carry our dinner down the hill in buckets. I’m not sure whether school was over for the day by the time we arrived, or hadn’t started yet. Either way, it didn’t look like the most fun ever.

You shall not pass! Cows guarding the bridge to the ‘old’ guesthouse


A very small-scale trout farming operation at our rural retreat

The next day it was off to Vardzia, the cave monastery that had brought us to this isolated corner of Georgia in the first place. It was mostly constructed during the Golden Age of Georgia in the twelfth century, including under the rule of the female King (aka Queen) Tamar. The complex is made up of 119 dwellings, with 407 rooms arranged on between eight and nineteen tiers carved from the cliff face. We spent about 2 hours there and definitely did not see more than a fraction of this, but there is only so long you can look at mostly unremarkable holes in a cliff. Plus, if you think a cave visit would be cool, temperature wise, think again. Most of the time was spent on the edge of the south-facing cliff in about 30 degree sunshine, so with that and the 53 flights of steps we climbed (thanks, pedometer), we were pretty tired by the end of it.

If that sounds dismissive, it doesn’t reflect the site as a whole. While the caves themselves are mostly nondescript, the overall site is beautiful and interesting, with commanding views of the valley below and some highlights such as the Church of the Dormition, which can be fairly precisely dated at between 1184 and 1186, thanks to attributes of the frescoes of its royal patrons. 

We had read online that there is not much information on the site, which is true, and that the audio guide is longwinded and rambling, which is also true. It was useful for giving the basic gist of what you were looking at, but otherwise was pretty much the worst, with a penchant for confusing compass directions and giving the exact measurements of everything in sight e.g. ‘The fresco on the upper level of the southern slope of the western wall of the chapel measures 10 metres by 5 metres, while the fresco on the lower level is 2 by 8 metres.’ About the only interesting bit was when it was describing how the access tunnels had a system where you could roll boulders in to protect the complex against invaders, but I was too scared to go in that bit due to the roll call of measurements that made it clear you would have to crawl/stoop/shuffle through narrow rock tunnels to see it. 

From afar, Vardzia looks much like that Georgian cheese we had the other day. 

Jules encounters some difficulties with his audio guide when attempting a suave pose

Inside the Church of the Dormition

Queen Tamar and her father Giorgi III. This fresco can be dated because she is depicted as an unmarried woman and the text wishes her a long life, but does not do the same for her father, implying it dates to the short window between his death and her marriage

The line passing overhead is apparently still used to winch supplies up to the 5 monks who still inhabit the monastery

Many birds make their home at Vardzia

Descending into the bowels of the earth on the way out


Conquerors of Vardzia, much like the Persian army of Shah Tahmasp I

Naumin' Aroun'

Naumin' Aroun', Naumin' Aroun'. A monastery made for young adults, by young adults.

The Monastery of Saint Naum lies just inside the Macedonian border, near where we crossed over from Albania. It was founded by Saint Naum himself at the turn of the tenth century, although much of what remains today dates back only to the 16th or 17th centuries.

The monastery church

Something went wrong with the latest anti-tobacco advertising

According to one website we consulted, the peacocks of Saint Naum will "welcome you with their screams". This turns out to be very true. I've only ever seen peacocks one or so at a time, and haven't previously noticed much screaming, but there's peacocks running around all over the monastery, screaming their little heads off in welcome.

Not heeding the anti-peacock warnings

The church is liberally covered all over the walls and ceilings with frescoes from the 16th-17th centuries. A lot of the frescoes and icons we saw in Albania and Macedonia were deliberately and literally defaced, or had the eyes excised. I'm a bit confused as to why, since I don't think there was a Protestant-style movement in the region - could it have been done during the Communist period?

You can see two of these faces are scratched out - we saw too many similarly disfigured for this to be just by chance

Ceiling inside St Naum's

Legend has it that if you press your ear to Saint Naum's tomb, you can hear his heartbeat. I tried, despite the tomb being covered with a probably gross cloth, and could kind of hear something. Jules didn't, though. A Guardian article I read posited that it was the sound of "water dripping somewhere in the monastery", but I think it's much more likely to be the same effect as holding a seashell to your ear, i.e.  your own heartbeat. Proof at last that Jules is a zombie.

Inside a different, newer church built over a natural pool at the spot where three springs converge. Supposedly the water helps women conceive, so I didn't get any closer

We found Rachel Dolezal's sunscreen in the gift shop. How's that for a topical reference? Seriously though, think harder about appropriate names for sunblock, Macedonia.

The main church above, with the frescoes and tomb of St Naum, is the chief attraction as far as the monastery goes. I think, however, the site is a major tourist destination mostly because of its location. As you walk through the grounds, on one side you have Lake Ohrid, which appears mostly placid, as lakes do. On the other side, though, water rushes from a smaller lake through a stream into Lake Ohrid. This smaller lake contains many springs (which ultimately themselves are filled by water flowing underground from the nearby Lake Prespa) which feed Lake Ohrid.

There is a cottage industry taking tourists on boat trips around the smaller lake, which we partook of. The springs were nowhere near as big and obvious as the one at the Blue Eye, rather, you had to look quite closely and listen to the guide's local knowledge to spot them, which was pretty cool. The water, filtered through layers of karst rock on its way out of Lake Prespa and back into Lake Ohrid, is very pure (or so we were told), and we had a little drink leaning out of our boat.

Water bubbling up from these springs reminded me of bubbling mud at Rotorua

After we had finished our boat trip, a walk around the small lake, and lunch, we moved a few feet to Saint Naum's beach on the shores of Lake Ohrid itself. After sunbathing, we took a dip in the lake, which we shared with hundreds of tiny fish. The lake is so clear (with visibility up to 22 metres/66 feet) that we could look down and see the fish swimming all around us - and sometimes feel them brushing against our legs or arms. Quite bizarre! Finally, a trout sighting (maybe?) for my Dad!