Racha trip

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Hello readers!  I have so much to tell you!  I am beginning by including pictures from my trip to Racha, which was on May 13th.  I will tell you about my trip in this post, and will continue writing posts to update you until I fall asleep.  I am able to do this tonight because my village gave me too many cups of coffee.  Very good, because I need to catch you up on lots of stuff.

We left off last with Saba’s karate, the English club play in Tsalenjikha, etc.  After the play on Friday night, Stephen and I went to bed late after cooking and hanging out with my family, and woke up early to go hiking in my village so that we could catch early-afternoon marshutkas from Zugdidi to our destinations (Stephen went home, and I went to Kutaisi).  My marshutka was fairly empty and comfortable most of the way; as comfortable as marshuktas are here, anyway.  It took a bit less than 2 hours to get to Kutaisi, where I found a hotel for the night and bought the first thing at McDonald’s since arriving in Georgia in September (an ice cream cone).  From there, I found a hotel, did some bargaining until I got the price that I wanted, and then settled down for the night.  I met some great Georgian friends in the hotel – the workers – who talked with me for a long while and made me coffee and tea.  Georgians are so friendly to foreigners, especially Americans, and once they find out that you are an American, they sometimes tell all of their friends.  This is how supras have begun in some instances.  In any case, it was a great place to stay for the weekend.

I chose this hotel because it was close to the McDonald’s.  That sounds like something an American would say, right?  Anyhow, McDonald’s happened to be the meeting place for our TLG excursion the next morning (Sunday  May 13th), so I thought it best to be nearby, since I know neither the city nor the public transport system there, and we were to meet at 8 AM.  I woke up in plenty of time, got to McDonald’s where everyone was waiting, and since the drive through was open, I stood in line there and bought a coffee.  There were 25 English teachers there for the excursion, and most of them were living right near or in Kutaisi, but there were several stragglers like myself on the trip, also.  I chose this trip (out of 10 choices for our free excursion) because I would probably not have gone there without a guide, it being so far away and in the mountains.

The mountains in Racha are the highest in Georgia, part of the Caucasus mountain range that I can see from my window in Sakalandio.  Though we didn’t go to the highest of the Racha mountains, they could have fooled most of us, with some of the amazing views we saw from the road.  So as you can imagine, the road up these mountains was a long, steep, and bumpy one; we traveled via the old Soviet roads (read: no longer maintained) that were built for easy access to factories in the mountains, which were primarily mines from what I could tell.  Luckily, our marshutka was the special TLG marshutka, meaning that it was new and very comfortable.  It took about an hour to get all the way up the mountains to the church and then to the lake.

And now, about the photos!  I learned a lot about the history, having an English-speaking tour guide.  If you guys have questions to ask, write them here, as I made sure to get the guide’s email in case of further questions, or if I should forget information.

Nikortsminda church was built in the 11th century, one of many churches commissioned by King Bagrat III.  Each window around the dome has a unique design on its frame – the designs are of different grains grown in Georgia, and very delicately carved into the church.  On the inside of the church are paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries, as the cathedral had to be restored by another King Bagrat III, of Imereti (a region of Georgia), this time.  The writing on the walls is all in old Georgian, meaning only historians and church elders can read it, besides the occasional older people in the village who know the old alphabet.  The church, along with others in Georgia, was hit a number of times by wars and earthquakes, but has survived besides the subsequent need for repairs.  Apparently, the Turkish invasion was very present here, which can be seen in some of my pictures where the faces are chiseled out.  Although I knew that the Muslim religion does not allow faces to be shown, and had seen this same lack of faces in other churches in Georgia, I never had made the connection until our tour guide brought it up.  It occurred to me that this was probably the origin of the term “defacing.”

In the church are many scenes from the Bible painted on the walls of course, and one wall that primarily depicted judgement day in a very Dante-esque style (which makes sense, perhaps, considering the period in which the frescoes were painted).  There was also a room that looked much newer, but I am not sure in which year it was built/restored.

While we were there, there were men working to dig up the yard around the church, which happens to be filled with human bones.  There were piles of bones that had been dug up, some of them sitting in old flour sacks along the church yard.  I discovered this as I was following the tour guide and almost tripped over a femur.  I wish that I knew how old the bones were, but I am thinking that we may never find out, because these men seemed to not be a team of archaeologists.

Well, that is most of the history part of the travels to Racha.  The rest of the day was spent picnicking by Lake Shaori, a giant mountain lake in the area.  It was beautiful, and the water was freezing, but in the refreshing sort of way.  Some of us decided to go swimming, against the advice of the Georgians.  None of us got sick as predicted, because it was a warm, sunny day and we dried out quickly.  I had forgotten my swimming suit, but that didn’t stop me from swimming – I just jumped in with my clothes on, and so did a friend of mine.  Once I got knee-deep in the water, I just had to keep going!