Georgian food is arguably one of the world’s most underrated cuisines, featuring flavors from Greece and the Mediterranean, as well as influences from Turkey and Persia. This Georgian food guide is drawn from experiences traveling across the country — visits to local markets, meals in family homes and restaurants, and even an impromptu cooking course. It offers an … [Read more...]
Georgia Travel Articles and Photos
This Land Is Not Your Land
Before this journey, our experience with the disputed regions in the Caucasus - Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh - amounted to a few news articles and flashpoint body-count news tickers drifting across the bottom of our television screens. Something bad had happened, people had died, but we never truly appreciated or understood the details. … [Read more...]
Blue Eyes, Gold Teeth: The Fabled Land of the Svans
When you get there, you'll meet the Afghan at the telephone pole. These instructions given to us in Mestia by the Svaneti Mountaineering Tourism Center left us baffled. Is our mountain guide a member of the Mujahideen who’d lost his way and made his home in the mountains of Georgia? After all, in Svaneti just about anything seems possible. … [Read more...]
Svaneti, A Mountain Inauguration
As the first tourists to take advantage of the Svaneti Mountaineering Tourism Center (SMTC), we planned our arrival in the town of Mestia to coincide with the organization's inaugural party. Because of our exceptionally long ride from Zugdidi to Mestia, we barely arrived in time for the opening speeches, including one which singled us out and unexpectedly turned the … [Read more...]
Tbilisi, Georgia: A Scavenger Hunt
Some cities seem to exist in two dimensions, best taken in with a camera from afar. Not Tbilisi. Its turbulent history is a veritable bullet list of invasions, destructions, occupations, and reconstructions. As a result, it tends to reveal itself in layers, both architecturally and culturally. Labyrinthine and tactile, Tbilisi invites visitors to dig into it like … [Read more...]
Georgia Travel: A Beginner’s Guide
Every inch of our map of Georgia seemed to covered with little icons marking churches, monasteries, ancient settlements, caves, mountains, towns, villages, and vineyards. We spent close to a month in Tbilisi, and here are a few of the nearby sights we experienced in that time. We also traveled further afield to explore the historical sites, monasteries, … [Read more...]
Svaneti: Why and How To Go
I tell you, the Svanetians are crazy. Their brains are deficient in oxygen. - A Tbilisi resident describing how the high altitudes of Svaneti have affected its people. Svaneti, the high Caucasus mountain region in the northwestern corner of Georgia, has a long reputation of fierce independence characterized by the 12th century defensive towers that still dot many … [Read more...]
The Case of the Missing Parents
While putting the finishing touches on our website, we spent a considerable amount of time at internet cafés in Tbilisi, Georgia. At one café, we noticed a semi-private room set up with couches, comfortable chairs and computers outfitted with webcams for video Skype calls. The typical configuration: children and grandmother crowded around the computer and Mommy or … [Read more...]
Shota and Misha’s Excellent Adventure
We were enjoying a late evening stroll in the Kakhetian countryside with Lali, our guide and host, when we were beckoned by a group of young men having a picnic at the church. Lali and Audrey sacrificed Dan to Shota and Misha, the leaders of the group, and waited out the encounter at a distance. … [Read more...]
Kakheti: Two Donkeys and a Vineyard
Before arriving in the Georgian wine region of Kakheti, we'd imagined rolling hills and old vines. Throw in some looming mountain ranges, medieval churches, bad roads, small villages full of crumbling houses, beautiful rose gardens, donkeys, old Russian cars and large gasoline jugs filled with murky wine and you’ve got Kakheti. And while the region is full of … [Read more...]