Alamedin Valley—A Camping Tale in the midst of an Epidemic (June 1, 2020)

We woke early for us on a weekend—around 7 am—and had breakfast, made some coffee to go, and finished some last-minute packing of our bags. Then we loaded up the car and headed out for the Alamedin Valley. This time we had our tent, overnight packs, trekking poles—everything we would need for a night out in the fresh air, a night under the stars.

Alamedin Valley is located about a 45-minute drive to the south of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Since we live on the southern outskirts of the city, the drive is generally easy for us—we avoid most of the city traffic—and a nice quick trip to get out to the mountains. Alamedin Valley is in the Ala-Too Mountains, a chain of mountains in the north of Kyrgyzstan that, if followed through the various connecting ridgelines, will eventually lead you all the way to the Tian Shan and Western China. As such, the mountains are tall, towering, craggy peaks—the tallest peaks approaching 5000 meters—a beautiful backdrop visible from almost anywhere in the city.

Keeping in mind this was early on a Sunday morning, we were surprised driving up by the sheer numbers of people about. Cars parked in long lines along the side of the road. Pulling up to the parking lot by the trailhead, the lot was already half-full in the early morning. The dirt road leading up to the trail thronged with people and cars, moving slowly, directionless; large families carried picnic supplies looking for a good place to set up.

We parked and heaved our bags onto our backs, leaning over to strap in. We put on our cloth facemasks to make our way through the people, always trying to keep as much distance as possible when passing by. As Kyrgyzstan returns to normal fewer and fewer people are wearing masks—there were very few if any in Alamedin this day. People are congregating—mostly outside, at least, but still getting together in larger groups. And for me, it still feels awkward to get out after being locked at home for over two months. And I felt awkward as we passed people along the trail. This is the new reality—I always feel awkward.

It was not easy to breathe walking up the hill with the heavy pack on my back and wearing the mask. But we made it, and eventually we escaped from the crowds and were released into the valley and views of the snow-crested, jagged mountain peaks farther along. We passed the crowds and kept walking, following a path that skirted the ridge along the river, straining under the heavy packs and breathing heavy in the early morning. Our hiking legs yet waking up moved sluggishly. To our left, a magpie played in the meadow. Horses grazed in the field and laid lazily in the grass; while some, full of sudden energy, took off in a galloping frolic. Long legged young foals stood close to their mothers. They eyed us wearily.

The river ran high and fast, much higher than just the last week, and its roar was somehow soothing to me now. The glaciers are melting, feeding the streams and rivers, and irrigating the country. The wildflowers in the meadows were in full-bloom—whites and yellows and blues like a pointillist painting dotted the landscape.

The water and the birds and the bees were our soundtrack, the flies buzzing past. With aching shoulders, we took a break for a moment to rest—warmed by the sun—and take it all in.


We kept walking. That’s what you do when you head out into the mountains. Eventually the question arises—usually from me (always, as they say, thinking of my stomach).

“When should we stop for lunch?”

And the typical reply, “Can we go a little bit farther?” This said in a way that makes me feel just a little judged, for sure. Like the little boy in the car, always asking, "How much farther?"

So we continued a little farther, along one last rise slanting up across a slope along the valley, before finally stopping for a break in a shadowed glen. The pack came off and landed with a heavy thud. My backside was not far behind; and seated on a damp clump of grass, I surveyed our lunch choices. Peanut butter sandwiches (on home-made bread); a peanut kozinak bar (basically peanut brittle); some trail mix (of peanuts and raisins). There were other choices, as well; but we somehow settled for a peanut-centric lunch. We dawdled for a little while—my shoulders were aching from the bag and we tried to take a break every hour or so—before continuing. We were making good time.

As we enjoyed our repast, lying prone on the grassy hillside and propped on an elbow, a couple small groups passed us by. They all had the same question as they passed—Куда вы идете? Куда собираетесь?—“Where are you going?” I guess we were a bit of a curiosity with our heavy packs with sleeping bags visible, strapped on the outside. Still, their question confused me.

We pointed further along, down the valley. “A little farther.” There was only one direction to go—it’s a narrow valley with steep cliffs on either side. Where else could we possibly be going?

The second group went by on horseback—three riders at a trot. “Куда вы идете?”

Again—Подальше. “A little farther.”

And where would they be going, I wanted to know. We hadn’t thought to ask—they continued on up the path along the valley. But we never saw them again, and we set up camp along that path. Perhaps they had a herd farther along or were riding through to the next valley. They didn’t seem to have any supplies with them. We’ll never know because we never thought to ask: “Where are you going?”

We found a nice campsite along a stream at the foot of a tall mountain we’d been tracking from the start of our hike, all the way from the mouth of the valley. It was a peaceful spot of earth, with the sound of moving water soothing to the ears, the twittering of birds. We set up our tent so the door opened on the view of the mountain; and, by leaving the mesh window open we were able to look out at the snow-capped peak illuminated in the moonlight all through the night.

To the left of our campsite, high up along the rocky ridgeline, a waterfall trickled down the rockface leaving behind a trail of mist. We re-filled our bottles with filtered stream water and scoped out the best place to set up our food area before a light misting rain sent us to the shelter of our tent. I read a Hemingway short story, which seemed appropriate to the setting (I read “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” not one of his Nick Adams stories, but still: man v. nature and man v. himself in nature, classic Hemingway).

The rain cleared quickly. I looked forward to a night out in nature, hoping for clear skies and a bright canopy of twinkling stars overhead. Having grown up in the country, I remember fondly staring at the stars in the night sky—it seemed like almost any night—rapt in wonder. It is tragic how rarely we see the stars in the modern world. I’ve spent too many years since in cities, cocooned in their artificial light: streetlights and lighted signs and the blinding headlights of passing cars on constantly thrumming streets.

Nature had other plans for our night, though; and very soon—before we were even able to prepare our dinner—another storm blew in. This one was accompanied by booming thunder that echoed down the valley, and we were again forced to shelter in our tent. No misting rain now, we watched the water running down the sides in sheets and wondered if we would manage any dinner tonight, let alone see the stars overhead.

The rain lasted for half-an-hour, maybe more, before passing on. The campsite was left a little wet, but otherwise fine. The breeze reduced to a stillness. The clouds cleared, and we set about making our dinner and finished setting up camp.

After dinner, we hiked a little further down the trail to where we could see a pass that continued, between peaks and glaciers, to the next valley over—Ala-Archa—where we’ve done a lot of hiking in the past. The trail was on the other side of the river and led up a steep slope into the mountains. A temptation that will likely always elude us—I’m not sure about the distance or difficulty, but imagine some mountaineering experience is a must—but fun to fantasize about, nonetheless. It was like looking through a doorway on another world.


The stars were dim that night; and I slept, as I always do when camping, fitfully. When I woke, I would sit up and look through our window on the mountain. The stars looked brighter in the middle of the night, but I wasn’t about to get up, search out my shoes, and leave the comforts of the tent. I must have slept at some point.


We woke late and started on breakfast, and watched as the rising sun crested the eastern ridge and lit up the snow-crowned peak of our mountain. After spending the night at its base, I had started claiming ownership rights. The thought of our return journey loomed in our minds and we were silent and contemplative. I made coffee in a travel French press while slowly eating a bowl of bland instant oatmeal. We filtered more water and began the tiring task of breaking down camp: folding and rolling the tent back into its bag, sorting through the food, repacking bags.

There is something post-climactic about the return journey. Re-covering ground you have already covered. Seeing again the sights you have already seen (from another direction, but still). The real-world beckoning, the world you made all that effort coming out here to get away from. No, there is a reason that fantasy epics never spend much time describing the return journey.

We loaded back up, felt the weight back on our hips and shoulders, and set out, once again, on the trail. The sun blazed overhead, and we saw not a thing—not a person or animal (save for some variety of marmot that darted back in its hole)—for two hours. Over rock falls and through meadows we trekked. I imagined my hiking poles like a horse’s forelocks at times, leaping and galivanting through the meadows; at other times, through difficult terrain, like an insect’s proboscis, probing the ground ahead for the best footing.

Clouds gathered in the valley behind us, pushing us forward. Thoughts of the storm the night before. We hurried our pace.

A horse appeared on a promontory ahead, the first sign of civilization. Then a herd of cattle. Voices drifted on the breeze from overhead. Suddenly there were people walking on the other bank, close by. It was strange how strange it felt to be near people after just one night away. We saw cars parked on the road ahead. Children running about in packs and groups of teenagers playing games on their phones.

We put our masks back on.


We were back.

Peace and Beauty in Suzdal, a City of Churches

May 2017

We took the train to Vladimir early in the morning, and then the bus to Suzdal, the crown jewel of Russia’s Golden Ring cities. This involved rising early in the morning to get to the station, the chill morning air full of the day’s promise, walking and dragging our overnight bag on legs stiff with sleep. Everyone was sleepy at the station, the train full of half shut eyes and quiet acknowledgements. We put our bag on the rack and settled in across from a babushka and a man with an oval face in a sport shirt who glanced briefly at his phone before settling back with eyes closed for the trip.

The train pulled slowly out of Kurskaya Station under a dripping sky, rolling past a skyline of apartments with golden onion domes rising above and behind, piercing the dark gray sky. We rolled past brick warehouses and concrete barriers in brightly colored graffiti, and further out past the crumbling facades of old Soviet buildings. On the outskirts, we picked up speed, gently rolling side to side on the rails, the cabin still quiet in the morning, filled with sleepy and sleeping passengers who sat in uncomfortable positions on the stiff upright seats.

Outside the city, the hills were covered in the verdant colors of spring—a long time coming in Russia. The branches of the birch trees, drooped under the weight of wet leaves, hung like garlands and the fruit trees were bursting in brightly-colored flowers. The horn sounded for a crossing and the train continued down the track, past dachas set back in the trees behind sheet metal fences.

In Vladimir we disembarked and walked to the bus station. The temperatures had dropped further and we walked under a heavy sky. The gloom hovered over everything like a filter; the wind chilled the skin even through my light jacket. Following a short wait at the station, we boarded a short bus for Suzdal among a crowd of other foreign tourists and some Russians, most carrying small bags going to Suzdal only for the day. We huddled in our seats awaiting departure with the door open. The outside air at the station smelled strongly of exhaust.

But then we were off. The bus jerked suddenly between gears at the start before settling to a soft rumbling on the highway. A couple behind us read Russian signs to their young daughter and sounded excited about the simplest things: bread! ice cream! flowers! We made several stops along the way and the bus filled with passengers, but soon we were in Suzdal—at the bus station, at least, one mile out of town. The driver came around and explained that for 17 rubles more we could be dropped off in the town center. Most people agreed to pay.

In Suzdal, we were staying at a guesthouse just a couple blocks from Leninskaya Street, which was the main road. Our guesthouse was located on Engels Alley amongst an assortment of brightly-colored cottages with elaborately carved window frames. While the communist-themed street names endure, Suzdal is a different kind of Russian town, stuck in a time far earlier than the revolution.

Our host, Vladislav, met us at the door. He wore military fatigues with a smoothly shaved head and wide, ready smile, and spoke rapid-fire Russian. He showed us around to the back of his home where he had a well-tended yard with a small pond and garden. In the far back there was a small wooden cabin that contained the banya and next to this stood an open grill under a canopy.

The guest apartment on the second floor had floor-to-ceiling windows in the common room that looked out on the morning sunshine and a large wooden table with long benches for sitting. The rail along the landing was lined with an abundance of potted plants, a small-scale jungle that made the room feel alive. It was all very simple, but exceedingly comfortable, clean and well-kept; and Vladislav was very welcoming with his wide smile as he invited us to use the banya and made sure we had his number if we should need anything or wanted to order breakfast for the next morning.

We settled into our room to collect ourselves before heading out around the town and I read up on the many different churches and monasteries of Suzdal.

We walked to the center of town and stood on a bluff over the river behind Torgovaya Ploshad, the old arcade where there is still a market today full of stalls selling souvenirs and potatoes and local honey. Looking along a bend in the river, the town’s Kremlin was visible above a copse of trees, its onion domes dark blue and decorated with stars like the night sky, offset at the moment by bright cottony clouds in a sky lit by a resurgent sunshine.

Lawns around town grew thick with weeds and dandelions the size and shape of bushes. The croaks of bullfrogs echoed along the river bank as a family of ducklings floated past and a cold wind blew. We retired to a café to warm up and had weak cappuccino and mushroom soup and blini with apples and honey before setting off to explore more of the town.

We walked along the road down toward the Kremlin and climbed the old earthen ramparts, built up along the river for defense in the 11^th Century. From the top, we see a nice view down through town along the river. Suzdal is full of nice viewpoints; there are so many nice things to view.

We continued to the Kremlin and walked around the grounds, looking at the churches. None were open, so we were relegated to our wandering. But we admired the old churches. The main cathedral, the Nativity of the Virgin Cathedral, or Rozhdestvenskiy Sobor, was originally built in the 1220s, but only the lower levels are from that time. We could see the line where the original white stone met the brick used for reconstruction in the 1600s, and the carvings on the white pillars decorating the outer walls.

We wandered the grounds behind the cathedral which were thick with dandelions and thistles and laid down in the flowers under a bright sun with a line of fruit trees breaking the wind. Here was respite from the weather, and the church appeared beautiful towering above us, with the lawn a bright yellow carpet.

One the farther bank of the river, we passed an old woman selling pirozhkis from a baby carriage. She kept the pastries under a blanket to keep them warm. We passed old wooden churches and walked along a dirt track by a fence, past more of the colorful wooden cottages that dotted the town, and more old churches that were half in ruins. Not quite old or important enough to warrant keeping up, but beautiful in their own way, as certain building can be when left to rot. A pigeon cooed in an open bell tower window.

When we came back around we had worked up an appetite, but the old woman had already sold all her pirozhkis. She explained this to us with a shaming smile—we should have bought them when we had the chance—but lucky for us her daughter was there with her. They were seated together, and we followed her daughter to a second baby stroller on the other side of the road. She reached under the blanket and gave us two cabbage pirozhkis—the potato were all gone—and we walked away from there feeling like we had won the lottery. They were nice and greasy, the cabbage filling mixed with a chopped hard-boiled egg.

We headed down the road as we ate and, as we finished our pastries, into a strong wind up a bluff above the river. A much newer church had been built here and we were directly across from the Kremlin with a good view of the Rozhdestvenksiy Sobor across the water. In the other direction, across a low meadow, we could hear the shrieks of gulls in the distance at another bend in the river. The sun had been fighting the clouds all day, but it was a losing battle, and the wind howled in our ears. We felt alone to the world.

At this point, a man with a weathered face, thick lips, and tattoos on his hands approached us and asked for money. He had recently been in a car accident, he said, and something about children at home. We shook our heads uncomfortably, deciding it was time to leave. There was nobody else there on our bluff above the river, and there was something threatening about this man and the way he talked. The tattoos were likely from prison. We couldn’t know for sure, but listened to our instincts; and civilization suddenly seemed like a nice place to be, surrounded by wonderful crowds of people. We headed across the meadow with deliberate speed.

On the main square in the arcade, we found a young man selling, amongst his herbs and jars of honey, sbiten from a tall vacuum flask. Sbiten is a hot drink made from honey and spices—usually very good. Unfortunately, we seemed to have gotten the dregs from the bottom of the flask this day, but it was warm and we drank as much as we could stand while we sat on the steps of a side entrance to Voskrenskiy Tserkov, Resurrection Church.

The church dates only to the late 1600s, so very young by Suzdal standards. But for 50 rubles, we could enter a little side door near the entrance and climb the rickety wooden steps to the bell tower, all coated in dust and pigeon droppings, to a view of the trading arcades. We did this and carefully climbed the steps to look over the town as far as we could see.

The square below us was mostly empty on a cold, blustery day, but we could see past the square and down along the river and over the fields. We could see again the Rozhdestvesnskiy Sobor in one direction and the bell tower on Leninskaya street in the other—this now under renovation and covered in scaffolding. In every direction onion domes crowned the town in golds and dark blues and grays. The square below us was empty, but the churches stood as markers of permanence, sentinels of the town. They have been here longer than anybody.

From the arcades, we headed to the north of town. We had only one day in Suzdal and tried to see as much as we could, though there is a limit to the amount of churches one can appreciate in such a short span of time. We wanted to see the Monastery of St. Euthemius on the north side of town, which was built like a medieval fortress and formed the town’s northern defenses from the 14^th through 17^th centuries. There were some sample post cards of sites around town in our guest house and the churches of St. Euthemius with their green and golden domes had made an impression.

To enter the Monastery of St. Euthemius cost 400 rubles, about eight dollars a person, an all-inclusive ticket that included entry to all the kitschy museums on the grounds. We only wanted to enter the grounds and look around and balked at the price. Church fatigue was setting in.

Instead we walked around the fortifications to a high bluff over the river. Across the water, we looked down on the shining white walls of Pokrovskiy Monastir laid out perfectly in a wide field below behind a small grove of trees in full leaf, shining in the spring sunshine. The water of the river flowed gently past a narrow wooden bridge, the banks edged in yellow marsh grass. A few people cast rods for fish in the stream, or they were just passing the hours in their small town suspended in time, caught in another century when people lived without the distractions of smartphones and the 24-hour news cycle.

The sky cleared now, with wisps of soft white mist swimming in the deep blue and the sun shining through. We returned to our guest house to get cleaned up for dinner in a restaurant and I looked out the large bay windows at the neighbor’s flowering fruit trees, dressed in decorative white in the soft evening light. We went out to dinner and returned to sleep, and in the morning Vladislav served us an amazing breakfast with siyrniki, fried cheese fritters with homemade peach varenye, Russian jam which is really a syrup with sugared fruit and an herbal tea made with fresh greens from the garden, mint and something else we couldn’t place. Vladislav gave us a ride to the bus station and we rode back to Vladimir.

In Vladimir, we caught another bus, this time to Bogolyubovo. The sky threatened rain, and started dripping when we got off in town. We were in Bogolyubovo to visit yet another church, the Church of the Intercession of the Nerl, just outside of town across a large field. As we crossed the railroad tracks and could see the church, alone and unguarded in the distance, peaking out over a vast plain, the sky closed with dark clouds and the dripping rain became a full storm. The wind blew in gusts. We wore our raincoats, but our legs were soaked. There were people there less prepared than us, but they were all leaving, and still we had a long way to go to reach the church.

Thunder boomed nearby, but the rain quickly passed. This felt a fitting place to end our trip. The wind died down. We could see the church, bright white and standing tall with the dark storm clouds swirling behind. Some ways off in the distance lightning flashed. The church stood in a meadow with a small stream in front and dated to the 12^th Century, when the field probably looked much the same only without the powerlines cutting across, or the smokestacks of Vladimir off in the distance, or the sounds of cars on the nearby highway.

The setting is perfect for pictures where you can cut all those details out, you can frame the picture just so, with the church reflected in the stream and the storms clouds swirling behind. We took several pictures. And if you ignore the cars on the highway and close your eyes, you’ll hear the birds singing of springtime in the trees and the wind rustling the leaves.

Don't Go Hungry in Tbilisi's Old Town

The courtyard at Ezo, our end destination

April 20, 2017
 
We met our guide, Kristo, near the Sioni Church in old town Tbilisi. The church is the oldest church in Tbilisi—a church dates to this site from the 300s, the current church from sometime in the 1700s—and the most important to the city. From here, we could look up into the hills and see the statue of the Mother of Tbilisi on the ridge-line holding out her grapes for guests in one hand and a sword in the other—for unwelcome guests?—the white marble of the statue glowing in the sunshine. We were ready for our Tbilisi food tour with Culinary Backstreets, ready to eat Georgian breads and sweets and dumplings and to drink Georgian wines and their native grappa liquor called chacha.

 Kristo first brought us to a bakery near the church, down a stairway with only a small sign to mark the way, and only in Georgian script which is to our eyes indecipherable. We entered a basement to the yeasty smell of baking bread. Kristo explained that Georgians don’t really eat what we consider breakfast food in the West, but will usually only have some bread and maybe some matsoni, or Georgian yogurt. Behind the counter, a baker stood over a cylindrical oven watching the bread bake. Seeing us, he came over and opened the counter so we could come back and look at the oven. He demonstrated how they stick the dough to the side of the hot oven and used a long hook to pull out the bread as it finished baking.

We took a loaf of bread to try. It was good with a crisp crust and light flaky interior, salty and yeasty. Next, Kristo took us to a small shop attached to the church where they sold homemade foods: honeys and churchkhela, the Georgian treat of walnuts dipped in grape juice and dried to a candy—Kristo called this the Georgian Snickers bar. They even sold homemade chacha. We were looking for matsoni, but on this day they were out, so Kristo asked for the Georgian version of cottage cheese topped with some sour cream and honey and a string of churchkhela, and we went outside and sat on a stone ledge to eat with the sun shining and the bees buzzing around the flowers in the lilac bushes nearby.

Table of churchkhela at the Deserters Bazaar

All the food was delicious; we ate some more bread and our little cups of cottage cheese and Kristo explained to us how Georgians traditionally shop for food. They have grocery stores now, and we would later go to the Deserters’ Bazaar which is the main market, but in Georgia, buying good quality food is largely about who you know, about relationships that often go back generations. So Kristo’s grandparents would buy large containers of matsoni from their supplier every week, exchanging containers, and this would be their breakfast when they had it. She said matsoni especially was the super food that leads Georgians to live long lives. Hearing so much about the matsoni, it was a shame not to get to try some. I imagined a thick, Greek yogurt, a little sour but creamy and maybe lightly sweetened with some natural Georgian honey—some of the best honey in the world—from one of the unmarked plastic jars in the little shop by the church we had just visited.

Often the tastiest of foods have no name and no recipe. They are passed down through time, through generations, over the course of hundreds of years until nobody understands anymore why something is done a certain way, only that it must be done that way and is better for it. I had this sense of Georgian cuisine. They claim to be the birthplace of wine and have in fact proved wine to have been produced in the country for 8000 years—this is even advertised at immigration control in the Tbilisi airport. They still make wine in Georgia in clay pots buried in the ground as they always have. Small-scale agriculture still exists in the country—they are just now waking to the potentials of agro-tourism—and almost everybody owns a small plot of grapes they harvest and some walnut trees.

Kristo is more in tune with the current state of Georgian agriculture than most. She owns an organic restaurant in the city—the restaurant is called Ezo—that gets supplied largely through small farmers from the different regions of Georgia. It’s a very exciting project. They even have their own farm now and hope to start stocking their own produce soon, and they host a farmer’s market at the restaurant every week with the extra produce they don’t need for the restaurant.

The flavors of Georgia at the Deserters' Bazaar

From the church, we caught a cab to take us to the Deserters’ Bazaar, the main market in central Tbilisi, where farmers come and set up stands to sell their produce. The bazaar was quieter than usual this day because we were less than a week after Easter and all of Georgia had been feasting for the past few days; but Kristo was able to show us how most people set up their stalls on the outside of the market because the new building charges such high rents. We tried some spices: coriander and Georgian red pepper; and then we took a quick walk around the echoing interior where vendors tried to sell us fruit straight off the trucks from Turkey. In the next building we tasted some Georgian cheeses and dried fruit leather—like fruit roll-ups, made from fresh grape juice dried in a thin layer under the hot summer sun.

The market was interesting, but more of a curiosity: something to see because we must. But now we caught another cab to drive us back into town. The time had come for the real eating on our food quest. We were off in search of khinkali, or Georgian dumplings.

For those who have tried them, khinkali are one of the world’s wonders, filled with a tasty broth and succulent meat and flavored with the tastes of Georgia: coriander and tarragon, some red pepper and caraway seed. The dumplings are shaped by folding the dough together to form a handle, which is then put to use when eating.. Because there is a proper way to eat khinkali—first you pick up the dumpling by the handle or khvost as they call it in Russian—the “tail”; then, you take a bite from the rounded edge of one side of the dumpling to make a small hole from which you drink all the delicious broth before nibbling up the rest of the dumpling. It is a food as fun to eat as it is tasty and one of the highlights of Georgian cuisine.

At Zakhar Zakharich we ordered a plate of pickled vegetables, including jonjoli, a flower of a native bush that is one of the few edible flowers in the world. It had a tangy taste, made more so by the pickling process. We also ordered a plate of mixed herbs we were instructed to eat separate with a pinch of salt, and four different varieties of khinkali; also Nabeghlavi, a Georgian mineral water less well-known than Borjomi but, we were assured, better, and a couple shots of chacha. The varieties of khinkali were cheese, wild mushroom, lamb, and minced meat, and the wild mushroom was especially good. We came back the next night for more. We drank the chacha with a second lamb khinkali and left the restaurant with a nice buzz on our way to a Georgian wine tasting.

We walked from Zakhar Zakharich, holding our jackets in the afternoon heat, up to the Dry Bridge over the restaurant and through a flea market of historical knickknacks, amber necklaces, random oddments of kitchenware, and toys—relics of childhoods past. Through another park, booksellers lined the sidewalks and talked with people passing by. Up through the old town, we stopped at new restaurant Kristo has just opened, a wine bar with an open grill set up in a large room at the end of a stairway. The restaurant was cluttered as they were still working on setting things up with drills and pieces scattered just inside the door.

We continued on around another corner, down a side street on the edge of a construction site, stopping before a red door on an old stone building that said in hand drawn letters, “Vino Underground.” We went down the stairs to a large stone vault: an old wine cellar. Inside the air was cool and musty, and I put back on my jacket. We tried seven different varieties of Georgian wines, from crisp dry whites, to golden ambers, finishing with the famous Saperavi, a deep viscous red heavy on tobacco notes and the char of grilled meat.

The cellar at Vino Underground

We talked about Tbilisi and Georgia—where we should go during the rest of our trip. We talked about the wines. They were all delightful, all unique—in some we swore we could taste the clay notes from the pots used in the fermentation process. They ferment some white varieties with the skins, creating golden amber wines with robust flavor. Georgian wine is difficult to find outside of the country; though they have many producers and many different varieties they do not produce enough wine for mass export. Georgia remains a small country; a country that likes to drink its wine rather than ship it off to distant ports. For this reason, the only way to get an authentic tasting of Georgian wines is to visit, and Vino Underground is a good place to start. We determined to come back and purchase our favorite bottles before the end of our trip.

Some Georgian whites, both unique and delicious

To finish the tour, Kristo brought us to her restaurant in a courtyard set amidst a historic Tbilisi neighborhood: streets of dilapidated buildings with grand doorways and large glass windows set in ornate frames. Ezo is actually Georgian for courtyard. We stopped along the way to explore some of the buildings—Kristo is something of an enthusiast—and discuss Tbilisi architectural history. She showed us through the doorway of one to see an opulent stairway, wide and tall and curving upward. In this neighborhood before Soviet times lived the aristocracy of Tbilisi: merchants and other affluent families. They brought in Italian architects to design their homes, but the buildings were divided into communal housing during the Soviet period and have, I’m led to believe, been slowly crumbling now for decades.

Finally, we arrived at Kristo’s restaurant. She showed us around. The restaurant is made to feel like a house, with an entry hall filled with tables and a back room where the living room would be. The kitchen and dining area included a walk up bar. At this time of year, with the sun shining and the air nice and still, the courtyard is filled with tables. The restaurant is named after the courtyard where Georgian families traditionally gathered, kids played and adults socialized. We picked a table outside to bask in the heat of the sun. Kristo ordered our food for us—we barely looked at the menu—and next came a salad made of jonjoli with a hard crusty cornbread, and pkhali, the Georgian molded salads made of walnuts and beets, sometimes spinach, and other spices, all processed together, blended to a paste. We tried the house white wine, which was delicious and supplied from a vineyard especially for Kristo’s restaurant.

The waiter brought more food to our table, including a grilled dish made of the stomach of some animal—I was a little too far into the wine at this point to pay too close attention to details. We had a crusty flatbread topped with chicken walnut sauce and the local suluguni cheese. The fried potatoes were a marvel. Kristo was especially proud of her potatoes, grown by a farmer she knew in the upper hills of Georgia where the water was fresh and spring fed and could only be reached cross country. There are no roads. She said they were the most organically grown potatoes you could find anywhere in the world—something along those lines—and we could taste the difference.

The neighbor’s dog came and rested by our feet, watching us eat with pleading eyes. Children of friends played with Kristo’s children around the tables, talking in walkie-talkies and riding toy dump trucks. A couple stray cats loitered about the yard.

A Georgian feast at Ezo, with jonjoli salad (bottom center)

We sat for a time, picking at plates of food we could not finish. It was all so good. We hated to let any go to waste. The cats watched us. The dog thumped its tail—a rhythmic noise on the concrete floor of the courtyard. Its tongue lolled in the afternoon heat. The waiter brought another glass of wine—the red, which Kristo insisted we try before leaving. She was very proud of the restaurant’s Saparavi, the classic Georgian dry red. Once again the restaurant has a special supplier; and, though very affordable, this particular red is not available anywhere else. This wine is an Ezo special, like much of the menu: old-fashioned, simple, but good and unique to Georgia. From the jonjoli salad to the plate of Georgian cheeses served with delicious local honey and the tekamali plum sauce that came out with the potatoes.

Stuffed from a day of eating and drinking, we reached our limit and had to say our farewells. We made our way slowly through the dusty streets of the old town, needing the walk. Passing Freedom Square with its giant pillar topped with St. George defeating the serpent, we turned up the hill to our hotel both pleasantly exhausted from the day’s exertions and ready for a long, late afternoon nap.