So let’s meet Georgia. Bounded by high mountains to the north and south, it occupies a strip of intermittently blossoming, green, fertile, sun-baked, barren, tropical, alpine and urbanised land between the Black and Caspian seas. The story goes that when God was dividing up the world between the peoples He’d created (this is an 82% Orthodox Christian country by the way), the Georgians were too busy drinking wine and making merry to take part. When all was done they were left with nothing, so God gave them the land he’d intended for his own retirement. It’s a pleasant parable, but one slightly derailed by the chaotic nature of Georgian history and the precarious political state it finds itself in today.
Life under Russian and Soviet control, which ran almost uninterrupted from 1801 until 1991, has left Georgia with struggling infrastructure. And the modern Russian Federation still won’t leave Georgia be, having invaded (yet again) as recently as 2008. The situation is further complicated by the breakaway regions of Abkhazia in the west (once annual host to 3.4 million beach tourists in the USSR-era) and South Ossetia in the north (determined to assert cultural and religious autonomy like its trans-border neighbour North Ossetia in Russia) turning to the Federation and, many maintain, being manipulated and controlled by it to further weaken the Georgian state. Not strictly in the mix, but near enough to be worth mentioning is the sporadically volatile Chechnya region, just over the northern mountain wall. In short: sleepy Bedfordshire this is not.
What does this mean for travellers? Very little. The bulk of Georgia is relatively safe to visit, and the Foreign Office’s current advice supports that. But nobody would describe it as easy. The roads are badly maintained and ill-used and accident rates are correspondingly high (an annual 16.8 deaths per 100,000 people), accommodation options vary wildly in their quality, sanitation can be poor, internet connections routinely drop out for hours at a time, telephony isn’t great and there are occasional power cuts. In other words: you’re in for an adventure.
On the plus side, you may be taken aback at the warmth of the welcome in the strangest of places: limitless top-ups of chacha (homebrewed brandy) and more meat dumplings than you could eat in a week await you if you maintain a genuine interest in the people you meet on your travels. It helps if you speak a little Russian as Georgian has no relation to any other language and is expressed in its own distinct alphabet – a barrier if you intend to learn anything beyond a few pleasantries.
