Georgia, Take Two

There was something exciting but strange about being in an airport again. By the time Amanda and I boarded our flight from Kazakhstan to Georgia on August 16th, it was only our second flight since April 10th. In the four months between, we had crossed through five countries largely by bus, marshrutka, car, and whatever other form of ground transportation could get us from one place to the next. Airports had somehow gone from being the default way I thought about travel to feeling a little foreign.

Georgia, though, did not. We were returning to one of our favorite countries from earlier in the year, and that brought about a certain comfort with it. We knew the food, a little of the chaos, and that punctuality could sometimes be interpreted more as a suggestion than a commitment. More than anything, I remembered the warmth of the people we had met during our first trip.

But this visit also came with two firsts. It was the first country Amanda and I were returning to together, and the first time since leaving home that someone would actually join us on our travels; Derrick was coming to Georgia!

For months, our trip had been this little world Amanda and I shared between ourselves. Every long bus ride, strange hostel experiences, mountain trail, bad stomach day, absurd logistical problem, and memorable meal had been ours to experience together. Now, for a few weeks, Amanda’s brother would be stepping into it with us.

The morning Derrick arrived became a blur of errands around Tbilisi. We needed cash for the coming road trip, SIM cards, and, because Derrick was arriving sick, wellness shots and anything else we could find that might help get him back on his feet.

The more complicated problem was where exactly to put him. We had arranged an in-between accommodation where Derrick could sleep and recover while Amanda and I checked into the place where the three of us would actually be staying. In theory, it was a simple plan.

Check-in time came and went without instructions, the host stopped communicating, and hours passed. We sat on a bench, involuntarily basking in the sun, and thinking through our options. The few remaining same-day options around us had jumped to roughly five times what we had paid - so rebooking wasn’t an option. Waiting hours was our only choice.

It was our first reminder that time in Georgia occasionally operates under its own laws. When we finally sorted that out, we ran into the next problem: our bags.

Months of travel meant that the two of us were already carrying plenty, and Derrick joining us did nothing to make our little caravan look more reasonable. Uber drivers would pull up, stare at the pile of luggage, visibly reconsider every decision that had brought them to that moment, grumble a little (a lot), and leave. Others simply refused the ride. Eventually, we got ourselves and our mountain of belongings where they needed to go. By then, none of us had much interest in sightseeing. The second half of Derrick’s first day in Georgia became a recovery day. He needed the rest from being sick, and Amanda and I needed a break from spending the morning running around Tbilisi trying to solve problems that should not have been problems in the first place.

Our actual introduction to the city as a group began the next day.

We wandered through the old streets of downtown Tbilisi and eventually found ourselves eating underneath one of the city’s historic theaters at one of its most reviewed and visited restaurants. What made the lunch and day particularly special was sharing a first experience together; it was Amanda and I’s first time in old town and Derricks first glimpse at Georgia. We climbed toward the golden chapel overlooking the city and found a park bench to sit at as we enjoyed the beauty of the chapel gardens.

After all the running around, the sickness, the check-in mess, it felt like the first point where the trip actually slowed down enough for us to connect.

The few days after the first day chaos settled into a much easier rhythm. We walked… a lot. Tbilisi provided the first small test for the hiking that would define the coming weeks in Georgia and, not too long afterward, Nepal. We climbed the endless stairs toward the Mother of Georgia statue overlooking the city - old stone architecture and natural greenery guiding our path to the top.

Behind the statue we also made our way into the botanical gardens where we befriended a furry companion. A sweet street dog began walking with us and apparently decided that we were his hiking group for the afternoon. He followed us through the gardens and our meditations until near the end, another group of four came along. Without so much as a goodbye, he joined them instead. Apparently we had only been one leg of his itinerary.

Food filled the time between all the walking. There were familiar Georgian staples we had missed, khachapuri and khinkali most importantly, along with dishes we hadn’t tried during our first visit. And then there was the decidedly less Georgian frozen yogurt that we ate one evening from high above the city.

We sat watching the sun fade and the lights below slowly take over Tbilisi. After the chaos of the previous days, it was exactly the kind of evening I had wanted. We had food, a view, nowhere urgent to be, and no logistical problem demanding our attention.

At least until a group arrived and decided that the exact place we were standing was apparently essential to their content filming. We were displaced from our viewpoint so they could film drone shots and a collection of social media reels that were painful enough to watch. After judging their life choices and integrity, we found another spot.

The city was beautiful and seeing it in a new light, from above, with the hills and clouds capturing the horizon filled us with a quiet calm.

Our favorite day around Tbilisi, though, began with us running in circles around a marshrutka station. We wanted to visit a monastery outside the city, and finding the correct bus involved approaching one person, being pointed toward another person, walking in that direction, asking someone else, being redirected again, and somehow ending up back near where we started.

Eventually, through enough pointing and confused facial expressions, we located our marshrutka. It was our first one in Georgia. Once we were moving, we discovered a new problem. None of us were completely sure where we were supposed to get off.

This was Derrick’s moment. He had memorized a few Georgian phrases before the trip, and spotting a younger passenger nearby, he leaned over and tried:

“ბოდიში, ინგლისური იცით?”. Excuse me, do you speak English?

The answer, unfortunately, was no with some additional Georgian included in the end of the response.

Which meant Derrick was immediately forced to use the other Georgian phrase he had memorized.

“ბოდიში, ქართულად არ ვლაპარაკობ. Sorry, I don’t speak Georgian.

It was a remarkably efficient way to begin and end a conversation.

Eventually, we realized the marshrutka was moving away from where we needed to be. So we did what seemed reasonable under the circumstances and got dropped off along the highway. There the three of us stood, waiting on the side of the road for a taxi to rescue us.

The monastery itself ended up being surprisingly forgettable. It was crowded, and by that point Amanda and I had seen so many monasteries and churches over the past several months that I think we were becoming a little jaded. What I remember much more clearly is everything around it.

We wandered through the nearby downtown, visited a beautiful church, and finished the day at one of the nicest restaurant settings I can remember.

The patio sat directly along a river overlooking a quiet valley. Inside, the restaurant felt warm and elegant. It was a type of luxury that presented itself in how professional the service was to details as simple as our beautiful brass napkin holders. We drank delicious Georgian wine, ate slowly, and spent the evening laughing - basking in the value of the experience.

It was exactly the kind of dinner that turns a good day into an extra special one. And with Tbilisi behind us, the next morning was supposed to mark the beginning of the road-trip portion of Georgia.

The plan was simple. Pick up our pre-arranged rental car, leave the city early, and make it to Juta comfortably before dark. I should have known better than to describe any transportation plan in Georgia as simple. The rental guy we had used during our first trip had been one of the best car rental experiences we had ever had, which was exactly why I contacted him again.

Then he ghosted me for two days. Our scheduled pickup time arrived. Nothing. One hour passed, then another, then four hours.

We finally got a response. There was no car for us - unless, of course, we wanted to take a non-4x4 Toyota Prius onto the rough, unpaved roads of the Georgian mountains.

We did not. So instead of beginning our peaceful drive toward Juta, the morning became another frantic logistical exercise. We checked out of our accommodation, dragged everything ten minutes down the road, and established temporary headquarters inside a coffee shop. From there, we split responsibilities between errands, watching the bags, and desperately searching for a reasonably priced 4x4 that we could somehow rent immediately.

What should have been frantic pivot worked itself out as best as it could, and five and a half hours after we had hoped to leave, we finally had a car.

We packed everything inside, climbed in, and prepared to put Tbilisi behind us.

There was only one final obstacle: a very very very angry man. For reasons I still don’t completely understand, while blocking us in from our exit from the parking lot, he began yelling at us. His eyes were seemingly trying to escape from his head while, what I can only assume, were some very creative Georgian insults that came flying through our closed windows. It felt like the appropriate ending to the morning.

Once we finally broke free of Tbilisi’s traffic and reached the open road, I could physically feel the tension of the day begin to disappear. We were moving, we had a car, and we had mountains ahead of us.

And, naturally, we celebrated by eating an ungodly amount of food. At one stop along the drive, the three of us managed to put away twenty khinkali and 2 kebabs.

For approximately thirty seconds, this felt somewhat impressive while we struggled to wobble back to the car. Then we looked up the world record and discovered that someone had eaten more than 150 in a single sitting.

With our stomachs full and our bodies beginning to resemble the khinkali we had just eaten, we still had roughly two hours left to Stepantsminda. The sun was beginning to disappear. We knew the roads ahead weren’t ideal for night driving. We had also known that before ordering twenty khinkali. But, Priorities.

The last stretch slowly tightened into winding mountain roads and tunnels as daylight disappeared around us. Outside the windows, the mountains became a little more than dark outlines. Somewhere in the silhouette sat our base for the next two days.

I had pictured Stepantsminda as a small mountain town buzzing with hikers, the kind of place where everyone woke early with boots already tied and backpacks leaning against café chairs.

The next morning, it felt almost strangely quiet. We walked downtown to pick up fresh shoti bread and found ourselves mostly surrounded by locals going about their mornings. There weren’t crowds of trekkers flooding the streets or the outdoor-adventure atmosphere I had imagined. It felt sleepier and smaller. Maybe a little more ordinary.

That changed quickly once we got into the mountains. Our first hike would be in Juta, and getting there brought back one part of Georgia I had not particularly missed: the roads.

Calling them bumpy feels generous. They made the roads of Indiana and Chicago look like they were being run by Zohran Mamdani.

We had heard about landslides near Juta earlier in the year and knew there had been periods when cars were forced to stop outside town. So when a man wearing a vest stepped into the road and told us we couldn’t drive any farther, it initially seemed plausible.

Amanda wasn’t convinced. Something about him felt off. We watched for a moment, paid closer attention to what was happening around us, and slowly realized that the road may, in fact, be open. Well we weren’t sure, but when he walked to stop other tourists, I kicked it into drive and sped off.

The landslide warning was real. His roadblock was not. He was apparently using old warnings to convince tourists they couldn’t continue, presumably hoping to make a little money out of the confusion.

Our actual hike began with another smell Amanda and I had hoped we had finally left behind in Kyrgyzstan. Horse poop. Lots of horse poop.

Between that and the crowd gathered near the beginning of the trail, I made the executive decision to start moving quickly. Very quickly.

Amanda and Derrick kept pace behind me as I charged up the first climb, determined to put some distance between us and the larger groups.

When we finally reached the top and the trail opened up, I slowed down. I explained why I had been pushing so hard. Derrick immediately looked relieved.

He had spent the entire climb believing this was simply Amanda’s and my normal hiking speed, and that he was going to be expected to maintain it for every hike we had planned in Georgia.

Thankfully for all of us, it was not. And once we slowed down, Juta became one of those places where there was almost no reason to hurry anyway.

Green hills rolled around us in every direction, the kind of deep, saturated green that normally makes me think of San Luis Obispo after a wet winter. Jagged gray mountains peaked behind them in every direction.

Usually hiking involves some bargain with yourself. You climb for a few hours because somewhere ahead there is supposed to be a viewpoint worth the effort.

Juta didn’t really work like that. There was no single view to earn. Everywhere we looked was already the reason we had come. We passed a small restaurant halfway up, set in the grass with hammocks and lounging areas scattered around it. On one side was the valley. On the other, the mountains. Immediately, we made a mental note to stop there on the way back.

Farther up the trail, we reached a small lake and rested beside the water before finishing the climb toward the hill above.

At the top, we finally pulled out the shoti bread we had bought that morning. It tasted considerably better after carrying it up a mountain. We sat there tearing pieces off and eating while looking across the valley, eventually attracting another furry hiking companion who slowly wandered toward us.

He received his share too. We made quick time back, stopping at the restaurant for one last bask at the serene views.

By the time we made our way back toward Stepantsminda, my legs were tired and my body felt properly spent for the first time since arriving in Georgia.

We made the most of our time in Juta, waking up early the next morning, at 5am to be exact, to visit the acclaimed Monastery before the crowds arrived - but not without a coffee and shoti stop first. The only problem was nothing was open. No bread. No coffee.

So we sat outside the shop that opened first and made our way in the second their doors opened.

By the time we got to the church, we were no longer the early birds. But, we found ourselves there at the right time; in time to witness a local service. Standing at the back of the stone walled building, the room echoed in harmony as the male choir belted deep powerful psalms. As incense burned and we found ourselves captivated by the music, it became one of the most profound experiences I remember in our trip. It was a real glimpse into the Georgian tradition that is still being carried on.

We overlooked our hike for the day from the walls of the monastery, which seemed daunting as the steepness of the hill revealed very very slow moving people in the distance. That became us. Hill by hill, plateau by plateau, we worked our way up the monastery adjacent hike which revealed remarkable reviews of the monastery with the vastness of the Juta landscape behind it.

The other direction revealed snow capped mountains.

By the time we made it to the top, we treated ourselves to the best orange juice every squeezed and two local beers. We earned it.

Getting clean and cozy after making our way down settled in the fact that we were exhausted. But it was the satisfying kind of exhaustion.

After days of airport travel, sickness, missing check-in instructions, rejected Ubers, confused marshrutkas, a vanished rental car, frantic errands, questionable roadblocks, and twenty khinkali sitting somewhere inside us, we had finally reached the version of Georgia we had been looking forward to.

The three of us were in the mountains. And our road trip had finally begun.