our favorite country of the trip...
now with footnotes!
Greetings from Glenorchy, a beautiful territory of the south island of New Zealand great for watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy from the comfort of your airbnb/Lord of the Rings shoot location. We’ve been so slow to churn out these newsletters that we’re only about halfway through our tale length-wise but can count the remaining days of our entire BTIF experience on one hand. Yet still, like the minor-but-annoying unshakable cough we’ve had for a month1, we persist in our efforts to enliven your days and nourish your intellects…
[cut to September, 2024]
Ever the non-planners, Georgia was the only new country we had committed to visiting when the trip began. TLDR: It exceeded high expectations, with excellent enough soup dumplings2 that we’re already scheming about a follow-up expedition in the next few years - we’ll begin accepting applications from Premium subscribers Fall 2025.
Tbilisi
Waking up after our late-night arrival to Georgia’s capital city, Alex pushed early-rising Chester through the very uneven, stray-dog-mess-dotted sidewalks in search of a coffee. Buildings were grand and crumbling, grape-vines were everywhere, and Tbilisi was laden with the gritty cultural variety we’d been starving for between Ireland and the Nordic countries. Everyone was beyond chic. Even the octogenarians in Tbilisi look like they’ve just stepped off a runway with their sassy knitted balaclavas and the neon dyed flowers they attempt to peddle to obvious tourists like us wearing cargo pants. We were sadly the only ones in cargo pants in all of Tbilisi so Liz had a meltdown and demanded a solo shopping day where she swam in vintage Italian leather in the grungy boutiques across the city. We had traded in countries that seemed hyper-pleasant yet almost fragile for a place that has weathered as many geopolitical and other storms as any, yet persists with a vibrant cultural identity3 and all the edible, drinkable proof that comes with it (queue the Anthony Bourdain intro-music.)
The people here are wildly affectionate -- father and adult son, bffs, everyone is holding hands clinging to one another as they walk down the street. Again, we were floored by the generosity to Chester everywhere we went. Restaurants would insist on carrying him off to the kitchen and blasting “Baby Shark” over the speakers while we finished our meal, strangers showered him with tokens of affection great and small, even our “Uber”4 drivers insisted on carrying him around as we visited different roadside attractions on long journeys to different parts of the country. Sincere regard and joyfulness for children is a Georgian value, along with always eating cheesy bread. In traditional homes, families spend years hand carving large wooden thrones designated exclusively for the patriarch, visiting dignitaries, and children of course. As our mountain guide and trip MVP, Beshko explained, “How can you expect a child to not want to sit in such a beautiful chair?”
Kutaisi
After several days surveying Tbilisi’s verve5, we began a long journey to our trek in the Caucasus mountains by way of Kutaisi, Georgia’s second largest city, former capital, and current member of the New York Times 52 Places to Go list. During our relatively short stopover, we found some of our very favorite restaurants6, potentially the best hotel of the entire trip, and a bustling market that felt like soviet era ბებია7 cheesemongers setting up shop in a bushwick warehouse.
Svaneti
After driving through the mountains and visiting one of the largest dams in the world, we arrived in Mestia to begin our Caucasus trek! We instantly fell in love with the family-owned Old House where we were hosted by the highly attentive Nini and charming grey mastiff, Massi. Each morning we were greeted by beautiful mountain views and breakfast of local yogurts, jams, fresh salads, and pastries; we decided to extend our stay in Mestia following our trek just to luxuriate a little longer at this charming inn.
Hiking from Mestia to Ushguli (the most popular route of the region, but still uncrowded) was a major highlight of our trip. Our guide, Beshko8 was world-class. Offering to carry Chester for the duration of the trek, the two became fast friends and Chester still shouts “Beshko” four+ months later when he sees a picture of him. After setting off on the three-day walk in a drizzle, we were met with totally clear skies featuring initial peeps of fall foliage amidst the myriad standalone towers that sprinkle the horizon in each village. Beshko offered a helpful narrative of which towns and people had been affected by past conflict with Russia while also offering his mountaineers perspective on tourism, trekking, music, and life in general. “On the mountain, everything tastes better.” We took lots of notes.
Words can’t properly capture our time walking inn-to-inn in this remote, wonderful pocket of the world, so we won’t bother describing it in any more detail. Here are some images that tell part of the story. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys good experiences, you should visit some day!
Kakheti
After trying and failing to participate in a rtveli (grape harvest) near Kutaisi, we still wanted a taste of the famed Georgian wine country and, for the final chapter of our Georgia excursion, made our way east to Kakheti, where our tour organizer9 owned a horse ranch/brewery/inn called Lost Ridge. We whiled away the balance of our time in country hanging on the lawn/dining room, riding the occasional horse, watching the occasional horse gallop disruptively through the lawn/dining room, feeding Chester figs and pomegranate seeds fresh off the branch, and learning to make dumplings, khachapuri, and eggplant with walnut from the grandmothers who tend to the ranch.
And thus concluded our time in Georgia. No amount of footnotes/multimedia in this newsletter can accurately convey our delight visiting this place. In the end, our only regrets were that A. we were too tired from enjoying the trip to pick out some nice rugs and B. the trekking conditions broke Chester’s allegiance to a crib, and he’s been co-sleeping ever since. As we mentioned up top, we hope to return to Georgia in short order. Good luck to our friends and acquaintances made in-country; many of them, as we mentioned, are spending time protesting or supporting those who are.
Stay tuned for future newsletters covering our time in Asia and Middle Earth, not to mention special bonus wrap-up content! We swear we’ll finish this thing.
mask on planes!
Stay tuned for Alex’s Khinkali Shed, coming soon to an Asheville back-alley.
We happened to be in Georgia when Asheville was hit by Helene/flooding and couldn’t help but take some inspiration from a place routinely battered by unfavorable “winds” that seems to keep coming back, stronger.
They don’t have Uber in Georgia hence the unprecedented hospitality and service we experienced.
Georgia remains a politically volatile country of large-scale protests and hunger strikes, as well as lots of uproar following the most recent election held shortly after our departure
Georgian word for grandmother
In addition to wild mountaineering and alpine skiing, Beshko’s music modernizes ancient Georgian folk music
We generally organize our own travel, but not knowing what to expect from Svaneti we organized the trek through Living Roots, a food/culture-oriented tour company recommended via the excellent book Tasting Georgia.
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