James Duncan

We went through the south of Tbilisi, it's quite USian in the large parking lots and designed-for-cars architecture. Lots of auto repair businesses in a Brooklyn like sweaty tanned macho guys at the front way. From the low quality of driving they must be busy. The outskirts further out are Soviet industrial in a Halflife 2 way: lots of pylons and factories interspersed with residential blocks and environmental damage like nobody cared about it. Interesting for a uckoeli (foreigner) like me but it must be a bit depressing to live in. The concrete looks like it was falling off almost as soon as it was built, and it is really often right between two factories. I'm curious if it was originally factory worker accommodation. (Nati says probably, and it was often provided for free).

I'm further out and it's just agricultural now, it looks like mainly corn. Not having to wear a seatbelt is still somewhat of an illicit feeling thrill..I need better vices. The road is the main one out of Tbilisi but currently has only two lanes, and I keep seeing people almost die while overtaking, driving down the middle of the lane divider etc. The road is currently being expanded and it's an interesting contrast to UK roadworks; almost all of the work is done by hand, and the machinery is limited to a bulldozer and two steamrollers. Low labour costs changing the economics, I guess.

We just passed Gori, the proud main city of Stalin's province. Home of the Stalin statue, Stalin statue and probably suspicious amounts of forgetting about gulags as he appears to still be the local hero. It is very noticeably poorer here, and for all that people don't like the USSR it looks suspiciously like a lot of the houses have not been maintained for 20 years or so. Looking back at my comment it's an interesting contrast: was the higher quality healthcare, education and housing worth the loss of almost all political freedom? It's difficult for me to say, and a real challenge to my democratic beliefs.

I return from lunch. Lunch was pretty much insane. Meat, katchapuri, and bread and spices. And, without any exaggeration, the best chips I have ever had. And a spirit. Oh, the spirit. It is chacha. I had chacha on Tuesday and it tasted normal. 40-50%, moderately intense but aged in an oak barrel and quite smooth. Today I had country chacha. It was 70-80% maybe, but homemade so I will never know. I have had ouzo and raki, sambouka and strong vodkas, but this was unquestionably the strongest. I have bought a bottle, and I am quite prepared to smuggle it back.

Now we are far in the mountains. Rock tracks, steering round cows, rapids and gorges below us - it's definitely a dramatic landscape. The people have become poorer and poorer, and the houses now often have an incomplete set of windows or roof. We briefly stopped as Nati had a headache. The temperatures here were in the 40•C range, so I checked her forehead and she had run out of water to sweat. A stop to a nearby house gave us some water and she later said she hadn't mentioned she couldn't see properly (presumably from heat stroke). Too little information passed on up to that point, really! The caves have come now, and look stunning.