Holiday in the Caucasus (10): Gori, Georgia
Next day was a long one with a lot of travel, but the weather was milder. We set off at 9 am and travelled south on the same winding road that had brought us to this part of the country yesterday. At first, the mountain tops were capped with white clouds and the hillsides were bright green but, as we descended further south, the terrain became flatter and browner.
Our guide Nick continued his mini lectures about different aspects of Georgia with microphone sessions on education, welfare and politics. It was noticeable how sympathetic he was to the Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili who served as president from 2004-2013. Our destination was the city of Gori which we reached at 1.20 pm. Time for a much-desired lunch.
Gori’s claim to infamy is that it was the birthplace of Communist revolutionary and Soviet leader Stalin. In the war of 2008 between Russia and Georgia over the territory of South Ossetia, the Russians actually occupied Gori for nine days.
The city houses the Stalin Museum which was built in 1957 and I went to it in 2017. This time, we had a museum guide who spoke very fast in very accented English who, like the museum itself, had little to say about the atrocities committed by Stalin. In fact now, as in 2017, only two small rooms tucked away from the main displays mentioned the purges and gulags. Outside this bizarre celebration of 20th century dictatorship is Stalin’s childhood home and his wartime train.
Just to the east of Gori is Uplistsikhe which, between the 6th century BC and 1st century AD, was an enormous cave city that, at its peak, housed 20,000. Not everyone in the group could manage the steep and uneven climb to the top where our guide regaled us with lots of ancient history. The trouble with history is that it’s one damn thing after another!
After a night away from Tbilisi, we were back for two more nights in the same hotel (the Mercure) which we only reached at 7.40 pm – almost 10 hours after we left our previous accommodation.