More than 5 months on from Georgia – the start of my real travels – it’s harder to piece together everything looking back on it now. Which strand of thought should be fleshed out from over a month spent in this amazing country? Whom to feature from the incredible array of people I met?
I’m a little bit slow at writing and I was slowed down immeasurably further by the slew of hangovers I subjected myself to in the country. It would be nice to journal every day, but that proves a huge time sink for me. There’s an uneasy balance to reach between living life and self-reflecting upon it.
It’s probably also the case that some days simply aren’t worth writing about though.
There’s nothing too profound or interesting I have to say about the act of balancing a tray of 10 Georgian Dumplings on my belly as I intermittently stir from my hungover stupor to skip Netflix intros and credits.
Travelling full time is not always quite so flashy as it may appear.
I’ve opted to share one special day of adventuring in Georgia already and I had some other shorter escapades in mind and travel guide material I could perhaps put together in the future. It’s certainly the country I’m most well equipped to write at length on. In this post however, I hoped to marry a very general overview of the country with some deeper introspection about my time there.
I can then hopefully pay better attention to the present moment, turning back to Georgia if I ever find the time.
The Country
At the outset it must be said that Georgia is absolutely must see. The country is replete with stunning scenery, incredible food and warm-hearted people. The city of Tbilisi is so liveable and vibrant that travellers routinely just get completely stuck there.
Citizens from most countries are allowed to stay in Georgia for 365 days without any visa and many foreigners had taken it upon themselves to grab their laptop and simply work remotely there full-time. These were travellers that at least had it in mind to stay a while.
It’s also a place where backpackers routinely come for a week and end up staying for 3 or 4 months.
I was able to zip between the most stunning snow-capped mountain scenery in the north west, to the rolling hills of wine country in the east with ease. I’ve never seen such top-class variety packed into such a small area in any travel destination before.
The Beginning
What made the experience, of course, and colours every aspect of my time in the country were the amazing people I met. After just a couple of days, after heading straight across to the Black Sea coastal city of Batumi, I met Pavel, Fernando and Georgi who became absolute mainstays of my time in the country.
Russian, American and Georgian respectively we proved very capable of smashing through many beers in Batumi. All it largely did was rain whilst I was in the city, which was never that much fun for the beach but, bizarrely, did mean that the beers all became cheaper as a discount applied every day it rained.
Following my usual approach to meeting people travelling I had started to organise a get-together in Tbilisi (the country’s capital) to which I invited many people from couchsurfing.com, throwing us all into a large WhatsApp group.
Having found the perfect replacement to the basketball court bedroom I had in London on airbnb (I was living in an old youth centre as a property guardian), I knew where I wanted to hang out when I first arrived!
Settling in Tbilisi
So we had some gatherings and I instantly met an even broader range of incredible people that it becomes impossible to list and reference them all. I found the locals incredibly friendly and the international community in the city was so varied and vibrant. It meant it was an easy place to settle, and settle we did after all moving across to the Bridge Hostel which essentially became our home for the next month.
There we could meet more travellers passing through and I used the city as a base from which to explore the rest of Georgia – by which I primarily mean the restaurants and bars of Tbilisi! Still some great exploration was found both inside the city confines and across the wilder mountainous and wine growing regions of the country.
Three others became mainstays of our group – Sophie from the USA, along with Skander and Antoine from France. As with all great travelling cliques, we soon essentially meme-ified each other. Pavel became the ‘old man’ despite being only 1 year older than myself and Fernando. In fact he was actually younger than Skander, but we justified his labelling by reference to the average life expectancy of a Russian male (67).
As far as Fernando was concerned there was little embellishment needed. Settling into a lifestyle of wandering around barefoot and defaulting to a series of set phrases and gestures whenever he drank too much such as ‘who even are these people’, ‘these people are the worst’ as he gestured condescendingly at others in our grouping with liberal abandon.
Skander and Antoine meanwhile were assigned all range of French stereotypes, which Skander in particular actively encouraged. He would spend hours promoting the virtues of his home country’s cheese and wine. Pavel would respond by extolling the virtues of ‘Russian Champagne’ much to Skander’s continued dismay.
Finally Sophie, despite my usual distaste for the term, was officially dubbed one of the ‘bros’. She regularly complained about the lack of other females in our party, but she also didn’t shy away from doing her best impression of a US / Louisianan frat boy when the opportunity arose. You reap what you sow in this life.
Social Issues
This time spent in Tbilisi also admittedly involved going on quite a lot of dates. It proved really fun to meet locals and a large number of Russians too, tinder’s also just a nice way to meet new people as I travel, but it was also quite an eye-opening experience. A few of the girls I met were fairly vocal about certain homophobic and sexist views. These views were usually delivered alongside various caveats and mitigations but definitely proved quite off-putting, especially given they thought this was decent first date chat.
Despite not feeling at ease with such encounters in what were potentially romantic encounters, they were an adequate reflection of the mindset that is endemic in this part of the world. Georgia is a wonderful poster-child for post-soviet success in numerous ways, being a functioning democracy that, though still replete with issues, has taken greater strides to quash corruption than many of its eastern soviet peers.
With regards to certain social rights however there is still a way to go.
LGBTQ marches in the capital have regularly been the focus of attacks from right-wing and religious groups. Such attacks have often been carried out with the explicit support of prominent Georgian Orthodox priests who have described homosexuality as a “disease”. It’s a bit of a crazy reminder about how rare many of the liberal notions of tolerance we have at home are across the wider world. It was made all the more jarring by the seeming ‘European-ness’ of everything else in Georgia.
One take-away from all this for me however, was a reminder that adherence to the correct liberal viewpoint is far from the only valid yardstick when it comes to the assessment of an individual’s worth. This probably shouldn’t be a controversial point but it did engender a feeling of dissonance for me at first. I think it will probably prove controversial to some of my peers back home.
It is admittedly easier for somebody that sits within the demographics I do to argue this, but it’s demonstrably not the case that those with less than ideal liberal views are necessarily inferior in character to somebody that is woke.
I formed plenty of friendships across the Caucasus with people that proved immensely compassionate and thoughtful, who later also revealed mild levels of uncomfortability or immaturity when it came to progressive social ideas. I don’t agree or like what they have to say on these issues but I’ve learnt that this doesn’t have to preclude me calling them a friend based on the many virtues in them I do recognise. I can bring to mind encounters with people back in the UK who possess all the correct opinions and yet fail to demonstrate any altruism that comes close to that of friends I have made here.
This broadening of my tolerance didn’t mean staying silent in instances I disagreed. I think one thing I’ve got better at over the course of this trip is being vocal where I think people have stepped out of line, or said something untoward in a calm manner. It’s a difficult line to tread though. I’m trying to foster within myself to not judge people on single instances of behaviour whilst at the same time not be naive or too forgiving in instances where doing so could result in harm to somebody else.
Given my routine practice of setting up large WhatsApp groups in countries I travel to I have sadly had to do a lot of policing, continually removing troublesome people. And it’s obviously always men.
I have lost count of the number of males who upon entering a group chat proceeded to private message every female member of the group asking to meet up 1 on 1. Others would write the most ridiculous sexist messages in the group chat that were often engineered to figure out which girls would be coming to an event (and therefore whether it was worth their time).
I obviously knew plenty of men were like this from what women told me, but I’d not really seen so much of it on display.
For this I had to be zero tolerance. Pretty easily done when confined to online removals but there were also a couple of in-person confrontations that resulted from me telling people to leave.
I’m not complacent enough to think my circles back in the UK are completely immune to any sexist thinking or action, but I’ve never before witnessed first-hand such a mass of overtly gross behaviour from men. For most travellers from liberal democracies, experiencing other countries first hand frequently results in a more empathetic approach to cultural differences. It’s part of the typical notion of travelling ‘broadening the mind’. Such relativism can go too far though.
There’s a tendency to be immensely critical of the west wielding its power to shape other countries in its own image.
I have a lot of time for such arguments but I think they are also frequently taken too far. There are clear areas where the increased spread of western values would be a very good thing. Women would certainly be, by far, the largest group of benefactors.
If my country can utilise its cultural and political capital to help maligned sectors of society I’m onboard.
Final Thoughts
It’s strange to contrast the person I was when I travelled at 18 with the person I am now. Many people I know have this story about themselves whereby they are on a path of continuous improvement. A very healthy ‘growth mindset’ by all accounts. It’s not always felt so straightforward for me though.
As I wrote in an earlier post there’s some kind of innocence, openness and confidence that I feel like I’ve lost and I’ve desired to recapture. An element of this must surely result from a rose-tinted view of the past but there’s also some truth to it too.
I think a return to travelling has meant I’ve been able to foster some of this within myself again, but it’s also become apparent that I cannot fully return to those days of innocence. I have also realised, however, such a return would actually not be so desirable as I first thought.
The cementing of my opinions is something I’ve always tried to guard against, fearful of becoming closed minded.
It’s become evident to me that I am no longer as open to alternative ways of thinking about the world as I was when I was younger though and this isn’t actually a bad thing.
Being clearer headed on what I regard as beyond the pale has granted me a more powerful voice than I ever had when I was 18. I am far from some perfect barometer (or example) of virtue and I still fall short of an ‘Obama-esque’ vision of ideal character I have in mind.
I am increasingly able to stand up for myself and others in a way that I’m prouder of though and this was a pleasant thing to realise in Georgia.
Song of the Post
I'll aim to follow each of my posts with an associated song. It might be something which fits my current writing or perhaps it's simply something nice I've heard recently.