Sighnaghi, ho!

This past weekend I pulled a page out of the old book entitled “Go On A Trip With Almost Zero Planning And See What Happens!” Myself and three other TLGers decided to head down to Sighnaghi, a town a couple hours south of Telavi which is known as the tourist destination of Eastern Georgia. We figured we would go down early in the morning and come back that evening. Fool proof, right?

So onto a marshutka we climb. A marshutka is a type of van that acts as a share taxi. They have specific departure and destination locations, as well as routes, but no prescribed stops. Instead, you can get on or off anywhere on said route. They’re also very cheap and, since they’re driven by Georgians, relatively speedy. They can comfortably sit around fifteen passengers, but uncomfortably that number hovers closer to twenty five. Think of them as Eastern European clowncars, cause that’s basically how they function. For smaller villages, marshutkas are a lifeline to civilization. People go into town to shop, then bring their newly purchased items back onto these vehicles to transport them home. Sometimes there’s even a ridiculously calm chicken in a plastic bag full of children’s clothing, like there was this particular day.

After a marshutka change in Gurjaani, we started the subtle climb up to Sighnaghi. The city itself is perched on the top of a very large hilly plateau that overlooks the Alazani Plain and has a front row seat for the Caucasus Mountains. 

Sighnaghi on the hilltop.

As mentioned previously, Sighnaghi has recently undergone intense renovations and most of the buildings in the town proper have been redone. Subsequently, the streets are lined with building fronts that look like they walked out of an issue of the Most Quaint European City Magazine – colorful balconies, beautiful doorways, impressive wooden facades. But that’s what it is – a façade. A closer look at these structures reveals that most of them are completely abandoned on the inside, usually with broken walls, trash littered floors, and broken windows in the back. So while Sighnaghi looks brand spanking new (or as new as you can make a city which is surrounded by a medieval stone wall look) it’s really just like the rest of Georgia; mostly abandoned. This place is seriously an urban explorers wet dream come true. Sadly, no one else in the program shares my enjoyment of crawling around weird abandoned places, and I’m sure as shit not going in any of them by myself, so I have to just deal with looking at them from afar.

Anyway. We ended up sauntering over to the Bodbe Monastery, a sacred location for Georgian orthodoxy, as it is where Nino, the Baptist of Georgia, is buried. The chapel on the grounds is painted floor to ceiling to floor with incredible icons, panoramas, and scenes. All the churches in this country have incredible artwork, actually, and they also have that same orthodox incense smell. I’m not remotely religious, but that particular scent has always been comforting, probably due to all the weddings and funerals my family attended while I was growing up.

Fellow adventurers! From left to right: Sam, Sophia, and Chris.

Psychoanalytic breakdowns of my memories aside, the monastery and convent had numerous signs for a “Holy Spring.” 

I know we should probably have guessed what a Holy Spring is, but I've never been to one, so I didn't know what all to expect. Was it a spring like in Legend of Zelda, with a crazy, half naked chick living in some water in a cave? How was I to know!

Curious as to what this was, we followed the arrows down a seemingly never ending flight of stairs that were on the side of the mountain. After we ended up walking down seriously half the mountain, we came upon a small chapel which housed the spring, complete with a willow tree outside shading the tiny courtyard. People were lining up next to this chapel, because for the low, low price of seventeen lari you could be baptized right there! Lines in Georgia don’t really exist. In stores, and even at the medical clinic I went to before, there is no “line” per se. There’s a mass of people, and you push your way to the front, even if it means bypassing people who have been waiting longer than you. It’s pretty unabashed cutting, and it really cracks me up (except for when some damn kid cuts in front of me when I’m about to get some ice cream. Then I get upset.). However, under the judgmental and mean looking stares of orthodox nuns, everyone was orderly and polite. It was very impressive, and Sophia even remarked that this was the most organized line she’s seen since getting here.

This little spring has a pretty decent view of the Caucasus Mountains, eh? Also, pretty jealous of all the people that got to just drive there. I do believe our way was much more...pure. Or something. Much sweatier, that's for sure.

Since I’m already baptized, and Sophia didn’t feel like shelling out the lari for her soul, we filled our water bottles up at the fountain that was there and started climbing back up the stairs. These stairs were reminiscent of Half Dome all over again, minus the sheer granite rock face, and impending death if you end up falling. Lack of imminent doom aside, it was just like Half Dome. At least it felt like it. I don’t really appreciate things that make my being so vastly out of shape super obvious, and that’s what walking up stairs that span half a mountain will do. At least I was slightly better than the ancient Georgian women who were making the ascent.  We even exchanged exasperated looks and desperate laughs as I [barely] passed them on the way up.

It looks much more steep in real life. Also, it's never ending. 

After our mini pilgrimage, we decided to secure lodgings for the night, since we had discovered that the last marshutka home had left about three hours prior. We ended up asking a random woman on the street who was drinking coffee and having a snack if she could help us find a cheap hotel or guest house. Next thing we knew, she was on the phone, then motioning us to follow her. So there we were, four super obvious American twenty something year olds and a Georgian woman leading us through the streets of Sighnaghi to a woman named Dodo.

Dodo’s guest house makes me want to get back on Foursquare and write a rave review. It was cheap, clean, had great bathrooms (Western toilets, even!), got a delicious breakfast cooked for us the next morning, and she let us dig into her homemade wine. Dodo is a tiny, vivacious little Georgian woman that resides in a small room in the large complex she owns and uses as a hostel as her means of living. She had piles of blankets for us if we wanted them, gave us our choice of what beds to sleep in, and was more than happy to show us a delicious restaurant right up the road from her. We ate a lot and drank even more before settling in for the night on the balcony with our beds and homemade wine. While the concept of a bed on a balcony is amazing, in a world where Lada Niva drivers go about fifty million miles an hour on cobblestone roads at four a.m., they are not exactly conducive to a restful nights sleep. Still, I would not have changed anything about that night for the world, since we woke up to a [relatively] sleepy, cloud covered Sighnaghi.

The view from our balcony, over to other balconies. I'd be pretty happy living in any of those buildings, honestly.

In true Georgian fashion, there were no marshutkas from Sighnaghi to Telavi that day, so we had to go south to Tsnori in order to catch one heading north. Because what is a trip in this country without it being slightly circuitous and nonsensical?

All in all we saw beautiful places, visited old ass churches (my sister really wasn’t kidding when she said I’ve been to more churches in the last month than in the last ten years), ate fantastic food, drank great wine, and laughed a lot.

Mighty fine shindig!