From ‘'A Guest is a Gift from God'. Travels in Georgia’ by Conor McKeever

….age-old Georgian maxim that ‘A Guest is a Gift from God’…….

Tbilisi, their capital, has been literally wiped off the map by invaders over forty times……..Georgia is an enchanting land, its scenery is breathtaking. Few places on earth can match the snow covered High Caucasus that separate Georgia from Russia in the north, and that contrasts with the gentler valleys and exuberant rivers of the Lesser Caucasus marking its southern border with Turkey. To the west is the spectacular Black Sea coast, and to the east, where Georgia merges with Azerbaijan and Armenia, there is the beautiful stark semi-desert landscape tailor-made for poetry and contemplation.

Then there is Georgia’s farming land and the variety of its crops ………All rich and lush and natural with hardly an artificial fertilizer in sight. No wonder Georgia produces some of the most healthy and delicious food in the world.

The Georgians are rightly celebrated for their welcome to strangers who visit them in peace.

……….many of the roads throughout Georgia, are in serious need of attention, with potholes verging on the size of craters.

……..apart from their neighbor Armenia, Georgia was the second country in the world to adopt Christianity as the national religion way back in the fourth century, and they have carried on in their own sweet way ever since.

…….Georgia, with such a rich soil and wonderful climate, is a land of plenty. …….its own tea on the shores of the Black Sea and, of course, its magnificent wines just about everywhere but especially in the lands near the Caspian.

….Russia’s continued influence in Georgia, and the pressure it exerts on the country, is a national pre-occupation. The Russians are furious with the Georgians for cosying up to the Americans and to the West, and are showing their displeasure by encouraging some of the Georgian provinces to break away. At its most dramatic, this ‘encouragement’ has recently taken the form of an actual Russian invasion of part of Georgia……They already have managed to dislodge the Province of Abkhazia, with its beautiful Black Sea coastline, from Georgian control, and this has led to thousands of refugees flooding into Tbilisi…..including many children, could be seen roaming the streets begging, and sleeping rough in bus shelters and other public places. I noticed that people in Tbilisi seldom passed a beggar in the street without making some contribution however small. This is because so many of the beggars were refugees from Abkhazia who have lost everything. South Ossetia, which has a minority Russian population, is a Georgian province where the Russians can also spread discontent, encourage separation, and have most recently invaded.

……… ‘……We Georgians toast our friends in wine but our enemies in beer.’

Georgians are poor by our standards but no expense is spared when it comes to food and wine…….The Russian poet, Pushkin, once remarked that “every Georgian dish is a poem”, and visitors often say that even the Georgian names of our dishes sound like edible poetry.

Georgians have taken to the mobile phone with a vengeance, and they never switch it off. They call each other incessantly, and in the middle of explaining some …things, a Georgian colleague’s mobile would ring, and the lengthy call that ensued would disrupt everyone’s train of thought, and quite often derail the meeting altogether.

……..Georgia’s very greatest literary giant – Rustaveli ……..

The standard of driving in Georgia is appalling.

……irregular eating is a feature of life in Georgia. Our Western notion of punctuating our day with regular meals seems not yet to have caught on, and you can order the most elaborate meals in Georgian restaurants at the oddest times, and get freshly cooked even if you are eating ‘lunch’ at four o’clock in the afternoon in a largely empty restaurant.

………the historic mountain pass called the Gates of the Alans…..in the High Caucasus…….the road has been the main highway into Georgia from the north for up to three thousand years. At first it was only a bridle path, then was fashioned into a more recognizable road…….and finally widened and paved by the Russians when the King of Georgia, Irakli II, handed the country over to Orthodox Russia for protection from Georgia’s Islamic neighbours in 1783.

….the Alan tribe. They were great fighting men who from time immemorial had guarded Georgia’s northern frontier. The so-called ‘Gates’ are where the Military Highway enters the very narrow Daryal Gorge and runs high above the river for about twelve kilometres, with very steep cliffs on both sides, up to the border with Russia at the Devil’s Bridge.

‘It is spectacular and a bit frightening,’…… ‘Before the coming of air travel it was the only land route through the Caucasus to and from Georgia.’

....fortress monastery of Ananauri…… on the over-arching dome of the canopy….There in the torch light were vivid and magnificent frescoes depicting scenes from the life of Christ …….all painted on the canopy of the tomb over a thousand years ago………I experiences a kind of epiphany for I sensed for the first time how men and women in the Middle Ages must have felt as they entered their local church. Until the Puritans whitewashed over them, the walls of most of the churches of Christendom were covered in vivid paintings like this, and to those men and women, the great majority illiterate, the pictures meant everything. They would have entered the church, even more dimly lit by candles …….and it must have been easy to believe that the saints and martyrs covering all the walls and ceilings were actually present and worshipping with them.

……..Gates of the Alans. The valley had become a narrow gorge the walls of which looked a kilometer high, and along one side ran the road high above the thundering Terek River before both river and road disappeared into Southern Russia. I ……could see why travelers…..had been awestruck by it, why the Romans had considered it the end of the known world, and why it had stopped so many conquering armies in their tracks. Through this narrow formidable pass have come, over three thousand years…….some to trade, some to murder and rob…… the Gates of the Alans have always been a front line between nations and cultures……This is surely one of those places on earth where history and geography collide.

The knowledge of the average Georgian was often remarkable. Everybody seemed to speak two or three languages well; their knowledge of their history, literature and indeed world literature was formidable. I had an animated discussion about Oscar Wilde’s plays with a Tbilisi taxi driver…..It was not unusual to find Georgians who were familiar with the work of Dickens, the Brontes, Galsworthy and many others.

The country is beautiful of course, has a fascinating history, holds exquisite treasures, and its food and wine are literally incomparable. But it is the Georgian people that we all fell for in a big way. Their friendship, unstinting hospitality, and unique way of doing things and making progress in their own time-honoured fashion won our admiration, respect and love.

……..everywhere we went in the Georgian countryside is bathed in birdsong. It just proves to me that in the West we must indeed be killing our birds with darn pesticides on a grand scale……….Here the air is pure, the water is pure, the crops are largely fertilizer-free, and so the birds flourish……my abiding memory of Georgia will be the birdsong.

…….Georgian food…….is, quite simply, delicious!

……the magnificent Georgian institution, the supra, is something the whole world would do well to embrace………The supra is all inclusive: the dishes come thick and fast, the rich wine flows in abundance……….and the feeling of well-being and fellowship around a supra table must soften all but the hardest heart.