Field note 18 The Silk Road
A small country that keeps getting fought over.
Five weeks in Georgia in 2025, from the Turkish border to the Russian one: Tbilisi, the vineyards of Kakheti, Stalin's home town, the Black Sea at Batumi, and the high Caucasus.From Rodrigo's road archive
The Silk Road
A small country that keeps getting fought over.
Five weeks in Georgia in 2025, from the Turkish border to the Russian one: Tbilisi, the vineyards of Kakheti, Stalin's home town, the Black Sea at Batumi, and the high Caucasus.
- 18Stops logged
- 5,033 mMount Kazbek
- 8,000Years of winemaking
18.1Camp beside a river, which is how most nights went.
18.2Jacko finding the water first, as usual.
18.3Flowers for sale on the pavement.
18.4Batumi on the Black Sea, which looks nothing like the rest of the country.Five weeks in Georgia in 2025, from the Turkish border to the Russian one: Tbilisi, the vineyards of Kakheti, Stalin's home town, the Black Sea at Batumi, and the high Caucasus.
Between the mountains and everyone who wanted it.
Georgia sits where Europe stops being Europe, with the Greater Caucasus along its northern edge and Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan around the rest. That position is the whole story: Persians, Ottomans, Russians and Soviets have all taken a turn.
Half the people I mention it to cannot place it, and a fair number assume I mean the American state. At the border the signs carry a different name again: Sakartvelo, which is what the country actually calls itself. Georgia is what the rest of us settled on somewhere along the way.
It is small enough to cross in a day and varied enough that you would be mad to. Semi desert in the south east, subtropical coast on the Black Sea, and peaks over five thousand metres in the north.
What the road kept
The table is the country.
Georgia is mountains and history, but what a traveller actually remembers is being sat down at a table by people who had no reason to do it, and not being allowed to leave.Fifteen centuries, and a glass bridge.
The capital sits in a gorge on the Kura, with sulphur baths, wooden balconies and a fortress above it. Sameba cathedral, finished in 2004, is one of the tallest Orthodox churches anywhere.
It also builds things like the Bridge of Peace, a curve of glass and steel dropped in beside buildings that predate most of Europe. Nobody there seems bothered by the contrast.
I got shown around by Lily, a Russian friend who has lived in Tbilisi for nearly three years. She explained the bridge: all glass on purpose, joining the old city to the new one, and meant to stand for transparency and for having had enough of fighting, in a country that has had wars and trouble with Russia for most of its modern history. A Russian, a Chilean and a Jack Russell crossing it together is about right for this city.
This is also one of the oldest Christian countries on earth, official since the fourth century, and one of the oldest wine countries anywhere. It is not a stop on the way to somewhere. It is its own place, and most people could not point to it on a map.
Thirteen euros, and the dog sleeps in the storeroom.
I arrived in Tbilisi late at night at a hostel costing forty three lari, about thirteen euros. The family who ran it were friendly until they saw Jacko, and then very nearly threw us out. The agreement in the end was that the dog would not come into the building. After a good deal of arguing, they let me sleep in a storeroom.
I went down twice in the night because I could hear him whining, and at one point tried to smuggle him upstairs. They caught me, came into my room, put the light on and told me there were cameras. Half asleep, I agreed it would not happen again.
There was no card machine, so the following morning the outstanding thirty lari were settled at the market instead: tomatoes, loaves of bread and a few other things, bought with the son of the house alongside me. With the bill square, they invited me to breakfast. They watched Jacko with some curiosity, and I got a few smiles out of them before the day was over.
They were friendly at first, until they saw Jacko.
Two things Georgia is known for, in opposite directions.
Kakheti, in the east, has been making wine for about eight thousand years, longer than anywhere else that has been found, and still ferments it in clay vessels buried in the ground.
In Gori, an hour west of the capital, there is a museum to the town's most famous son. Stalin's face is on carpets and statues and postcards, and the museum has never quite worked out what to say about the rest of it. It is one of the strangest hours on the whole ride.
North until the road hits Russia.
The Georgian Military Road climbs from Tbilisi to Kazbegi, under the 5,033 metres of Mount Kazbek, and ends at the Russian border. West of it, the Racha valleys run up towards the South Ossetian line, which has been closed since 2008.
Between them there is enough gravel, river and empty valley to spend a month, and I did. There are still armoured vehicles by the roadside where they were left.
Half a litre of oil short, and no lights.
Georgia was the last stop before the long ride east, so the motorcycle went into a workshop in Tbilisi: the same one that had serviced it three weeks and two thousand kilometres earlier. They found it was half a litre of oil down, which was not a comfortable thing to hear at that point.
I had asked them to fix the horn. They fixed the horn, and in the process broke the lights. I went back, explained that the lights were wired to each other, and they could not work it out. I left with a working horn and without my Denali lights.
The last job was a warm coat for Jacko, bought at the best clothing shop I could find, ready for what was coming. Then that was it: the closest I would get to Europe for a long time, and everything ready to go.
The next country east was Kazakhstan. The engine that was half a litre of oil short in Tbilisi died in the desert eight days into it.
The field archive
132 more frames from the road
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