Ginger and Curls on the Road: Ushguli, Georgia

Friday, October 22, 2010

Ushguli, Georgia

26th - 29th September 2010

Our police driver took us to three different guest houses before we found a half decent one, through muddy streets dotted with tiny little piglets. We wandered round the tiny little town sitting at the bottom between hills and across a river. Ushguli was full of run down houses with broken windows if they weren't missing completely, houses with missing roofs or topped with charmingly irregular pieces of natural slate and all scattered randomly about muddy rivers for paths. The rain herded us back into the house, we ate, watched a film and slept.

From Ushguli, Georgia

The next day was glorious, blue skies white puffy clouds and crisp clean mountain air. We had our breakfast early, asked the owner of the guest house to make us a packed lunch – she had no idea what that was so we got a lump of cheese, a cucumber, a couple of tomatoes and a wedge of bread to do with what we liked, and off we set. The glacier was a four hour round trip but we made it last for a good eight hours, it was a gorgeous day and the trail was all flat – hooray! We basically walked followed a single flat valley, passing a cowgirl with her herd, a man with a couple of horses collecting hay, hillsides covered with trees in flaming shades of red and orange as well as green and yellow. We crossed the river a couple of times, it flowed directly from the glacier and was the best marker for the trail. About half an hour away from the glacier we were called across the river, we thought for tea, but it was some Russian border guards who took our details before waving us on our way.

From Ushguli, Georgia

We stopped and had made some sandwiches on the way and once we got there. It was incredible seeing one up close but it was all grey and dirty, not the pristine white I hoped for (but didn't expect). The stream was torrential and it gathered in pools around red rocks which turned the water and covered the sand in a bright orange rust – I blended right in. Djalma had the wonderful idea of climbing up round the side over loose rocks and then further up the valley sides with only dirt, loose stones and a prayer to get us up. All this in an effort to see some fresh snow, before long but not as soon as I should have done, I stopped and turned to go back, slipping and falling and swearing a whole lot on the way back down. We made it back to the bottom after a lot of worrying – it really wasn't the best place to go climbing (I was wondering if we had not learned our lesson in Al Hoceima, Morocco well enough to be learning it again) and I stopped swearing at Djalma's rubbish ideas long enough for him to give me a hug and then we set of in the direction of home. We scrambled back down over the lose rocks, it all took a lot longer going down than going up ever seemed to and walked the rest of the way back on very wobbly legs.

From Ushguli, Georgia

The next day we rested although it was mainly from laziness rather than a real need for recuperation, it was another beautiful day and after doing our washing and hanging it out to dry we got a big 2l bottle of beer and drank it with dinner – the most delicious lamb shashlik ever – before sleeping like babies.

Feeling slightly worse for wear the following morning we were up early to walk/hitch to the next village before going onto Kutaisi. It was raining like a mother which lifted long enough for us to think we had a good chance of walking without getting too wet. We ended up getting an expensive lift from a guy in town and halfway to our drop off point we caught up with a nine car caravan, 20 odd Israelis on holiday, and managed to hitch a lift with them instead. We spent the next ten hours driving to Kutaisi, further on than we expected to get for the next two days. They were a really friendly bunch of people and nearly everyone spoke amazing English. At some point in the afternoon we all pulled up and they started unloading tables, chairs, stoves and cooking equipment and made macaroni with tomatoes, sweetcorn and bacon along with a salad, we even had pudding – chunks of bread dipped in chocolate spread. It was one of the nicest rides and definitely the longest.