The Magic of Borjomi

To be honest, this blog is a little boring.  It's almost entirely a recap of a weekend hiking, with little insight into my life or thoughts on Georgia.  I hope you like it, but if you're bored by it, I apologize.  I'm adding pictures, but words and images both fail in their attempts to capture the magic of Borjomi.

Now that it is spring, people are coming out of hiding.  Last Friday, when I went to catch my marshrutka to Tbilisi, I think I saw at least half of the male population of my village loitering around the main square.  Granted, they’re digging up main street and also building a new Public Service Hall, plus there were about 5 taxis in the center, but that still did not account for the excess of employable males who were there.  Now my daily walks include seeing several students.  When I walked by the park this evening, I saw several mothers with young children there, a sign that summer is surely just around the corner.

main street of Manglisi all torn up

 As a result of the lovely weather, I decided it was time for another adventure in Borjomi, or more accurately, Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park.  It takes up somewhere around 2% of Georgia’s land mass, is the site of my favorite sight in Georgia (the sunrise from the last time I went camping there), and has a decent tourist infrastructure for hiking.  This time around, however, I was more prepared.  One of my friends, who loves botany, was more or less the guide for the weekend.  On Friday night, he, I, and four other friends started our journey.  He gave us a few basic lessons along the way, like stinging nettles hurt but make good tea and sorrel is delicious.  We also stopped at the ruins of a 9th(?) century church along the way.

We made it to the base of the mountain we were going to climb on Saturday and made camp.  Since we had originally planned on making it to a shelter before time got clearly away from us, we decided no one wanted to carry a tent all weekend so figured the open stars were a good enough covering.  While this idea seems fitting for such a beautiful, magical place as Borjomi, it was perhaps not the most sensible idea in drizzly May.  Thankfully, it rained only enough to make us so thankful it did not rain more, and to get everything cold and damp.  We still got a roaring fire going that night and enjoyed a delicious dinner of cooked potatoes, onions, and cabbage.  Some of us also had some vodka to make sleeping on damp ground easier, and it worked like a charm, especially since I had optimistically left my jacket and anything warmer than a thin long-sleeve T at home in the village.  I only woke up once, realized my sleeping bag’s zipper didn’t work, inwardly grumbled about the cold for a few minutes, and then woke again several hours later, wondering who was shining their TLG phone (with an incredibly handy flashlight) at me until I realized that was the sun, and I had survived my first night sleeping under the stars.  Not all my friends were so “well-rested”, so one decided to head home instead of camping, and the rest grudgingly broke camp for our hike.

The first part of the climb was possibly the hardest-steep switchbacks that made us stop probably as much as we hiked for the first hour or two.  Still, it was hard not to marvel at the green beauty of it all.  We got to our night’s shelter around 2, and two of the girls decided they were done for the day, while two of my friends and I decided to finish our intended climb to the top of Mt. Lomi.  I was sore, but I was not about to be so close to climbing to the top of a mountain and backing down.  Shedding our bags, we started climbing along the green trail with more wildflowers around us.   

Two of us headed over to a small church that gave us a view of the valley around Marelisi and Kharagauli, two villages nestled into the park.  Then we walked back to our waiting friend and headed up to the top of the mountain.  My stubborn pride was the only thing that kept me going as my legs cried for rest after about every few feet.  I slowly, very slowly, made it to the top. 

But, that’s ok, because I made it; I CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN.  Yeah, that felt really good. 

Photo documentation of me at the top of Mt Lomi, not the beauty of the area

The view from the top was spectacular.  Mountains and valleys, forests and snow, surrounded me, topped by perfect clouds.  I took pictures but they can’t even begin to capture the beauty of Borjomi, which makes hiking the trails even more worth it.  Eventually we climbed down and chatted as we built a fire.  We went to bed soon after the sun, deciding to wake up at 6:30 to ensure we had time to hike down dreaded trail 6, which had spelled doom for me the last time I was here.

We were cold inside the tourist shelter and so lit the fire in the stove there, but one of my friends woke up in the middle of the night to smoke (inhalation), so she extinguished the fire and saved all of us girls from carbon monoxide poisoning.  We were cold, but alive the next morning.  After another feast including my remaining half jar of peanut butter and halva, we started down.  We were making great time and not feeling too exhausted as we mostly had to hike down, when I made a stupid decision.  Instead of letting us all slink back together at a turn, I thought my friend in the rear saw us turn and had us keep going.  Realizing we had lost her delayed us an hour and made the rest of us all feel very guilty.  Thankfully, we were able to reunite and face the dreaded downhill of trail 6 together.  This time my leg was acting fairly normal so I only fell once, instead of about 9 times, and made it down in one piece.  I was worried, as always on Sundays, about making my marshrutka home, so a friend and I split off early and headed to the exit without our friends.  It was strange, as it meant I had to say goodbye to a good friend in the middle of a forest, on a narrow switchback trail.  Still, the other friend and I were able to make good time through the easier part of the trail, despite the onslaught of rain.  She decided it was God’s way of giving her a shower so she could still make it to church in Tbilisi, since she had not been overly enthused about showing up to a church full of expats after a weekend of hiking and no shower.  The rain had abated by the time we made it to the road, but it and the ticking clock made me decline the 2 offers from cattle herders to share in their food and drink.  (Thankfully, the friends we had left behind were able to share in the herders’ bounty and ended their journey with a well-deserved shot of chacha.)  When we got to the main road, I tried to flag down the next marshrutka to Borjomi, but it sailed on by.  A car behind it stopped and agreed to take us to Borjomi.  I had not tried to hitch a ride; Georgians are just that nice, and I’m sure two wet backpackers looked in desperate need of ride.  The man turned out to be Turkish, so I couldn’t rely on my Russian and had to resort to my abysmal Georgian.  He got us where we needed to go, and we got the marshrutka back to Tbilisi I wanted, after cleaning up and returning our sleeping bags at the BKNP information center.  We had a bit of time to kill in Tbilisi, so my friend and I feasted at a Georgian restaurant, having deserved our khinkali and lobiani.  It was also a good chance to reflect on the weekend and chat one-on-one with my friend before she headed to church, and I headed to the train station for my marshrutka.

I considered it a great victory when I could walk home that night and could walk without wincing yesterday. While the original idea had been to go so we could see the rhododendrons in bloom, they were still not blooming.  Still, the adventure was a success, because many things were in bloom, we all had fun, and no one got severely injured.  I got to test my physical and mental endurance, gaze upon one of the prettiest places I know of, and get to spend some quality time with some good friends.  Here are a few pictures that begin to showcase the majesty of the park.

Speaking of good friends, I am getting two visitors in the next two weeks.  This weekend, a friend from Izhevsk, who is Korean and currently working in Baku, is coming to Tbilisi. I am a wee bit nervous about speaking to her only in Russian, but I’m also excited for the challenge, to see her again after three years, and to show her around one of my favorite cities in the world.  Then, a week from tomorrow, my best friend from America arrives in Georgia for five days!  I’m pretty pumped but also have a little trepidation as to how she will react to my life here in Georgia.  I’ve already realized that my host family’s toilet will require about a five-minute explanation alone.