Goorgeous Georgians 💅

Are Georgians gorgeous? I don't know, but our first impressions were that they were certainly rude. Not French rude admittedly, but definitely in a blunt, Slavic, straight to grunts and giving-evils kind of way. More on that later, but more importantly, back to my pun. Georgia does have some of its own Horrible Histories too, and I'm not talking about the Born 2 Rule song.

No, Georgia's version is much less of a musical number, featuring two Russian-backed separatist states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as the fallout of the 2008 war with their noisy neighbours from the North. Russia rolled in the heavies over five days, laying waste to large parts of Northern Georgia. Most of the world still sees the breakaway regions as Georgian territory, but Russia basically said 'New phone, who dis?' and still refuses to save any contacts, like that one friend we all have who never knows if they're texting their mum or the local pizza delivery.

But before I turn this into a deep dive on regional geopolitics, let's talk about the battles we had to face. Namely, a twelve hour journey across the rugged, semi-arid plateaus of Armenia, a place so empty I almost confused it with the state of my phone notifications (not counting Subway Surfers obviously).

This first leg was easy enough, as we squeezed into a mashrutka to Tbilisi, one of the charming Soviet death traps disguised as public transport. On the journey, we stopped only to bag some outrageously cheap sesame-breaded dates and met Peter, a Slovak who looked like if Martin Skrtel had traded Premier League red cards for being bitten by dogs in India.

Upon first impressions, Tbilisi seemed like a delightful and westernised city, lined with cobbled streets and ornate balconies. Don't be fooled though, one metro ride later from sorting SIM cards and cash with a woman who probably hadn't smiled since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we were back in the thick of it. Shacks were jumbled together with corrugated iron, road crossings seemed to be for decorative purposes only, and stray dogs paraded around like elected officials.

With all the seats on our following mashrutka seemingly sold out, this is where the real fun began. Rather than simply driving off, the driver, who had all the likeability of a wet ash tray, saw it as the perfect opportunity to chain-smoke 43 cigarettes, each one lit from the last, leaving us all to cook like unloved hotdogs in the back of the van.

I had no clue what was going on. People were laughing and arguing at the same time; one man, apparently their ringleader, waved around a sweaty wad of cash like he was investing in the FTSE 100; and the woman to my left looked at me with the disdain I usually reserve for war criminals and people who clap when planes land.

Things hardly improved when we did get going. I can only assume that the driver never really loved his wife or children all that much, as he took us hurtling along the roads like an unpaid stuntman. We tore round hairpin bends with enough force that my seat repeatedly folded up into the woman who already despised me in one direction, then snapped back the other way to almost eject me through the door, which for reasons I'll never know, stayed open almost the entire time.

Still, after a few painful butt cheeks and a few more painful hours, we finally arrived in Stepantsminda.

The next day was a much more tame affair. Thomas pulled up his freaky toe socks, and we descended on the town, picking up some unidentifiable fruit on our way to trek the Truso valley.

The valley itself was beautiful. Vast expanses of open plains were ringed with jagged peaks and dotted with rust-red mineral springs. These fed sulfur pools that bubbled and spewed with the pungent tang of rotten eggs, before spilling into the torrenting river which ripped through the landscape.

The path up the valley took us to the crumbling remnants of a men's monastery, only a kilometre from the women's nunnery (sneaky links definitely went down between the two back in the day, come on now). We also stopped briefly at a lonely hut, where the angelic harmonies of a group of girls had me thinking that Georgia might just have a dark horse entry for Eurovision next year.

We trudged until we could trudge no further, eventually reaching the barbed wire gates of the South Ossetian border, manned by a group of armed soldiers, who must have seen far too many idiots with backpacks confuse their geopolitical frontline for just another scenic hike.

That's a wrap for now. Tune in tomorrow where the Horrible Histories theme could continue with Stupid Deaths if things go wrong (hope next time it's not you.)もっと詳しく