The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Wacky races from Tbilisi to the Caucasus
James Stewart takes a spin through Georgia with professional driver Zoë Whittaker, undaunted by breakdowns and an altercation with an earthworm
There are occasions in life when swearing is profoundly therapeutic. Being stuck on a lonely Georgian mountainside at dusk with an earthworm lodged in your fuel pipe is one of them.
This hadn’t featured in my expectations of the Driving With Zoë classic car rally at all. In fact, when I heard that professional rally driver Zoë Whittaker was running her second tour through Georgia, I made several assumptions.
First, I assumed I’d get to watch the scenery from a leather passenger seat, an idea which made the otherwise chipper Zoë frown. “You should drive too,” she said. “These cars are pieces of history. Their character on the road – the way they steer, their smell and feel – is part of their personalities. That and their breakdowns.”
There went assumption two, then: that this trip would be all plain driving. Still, there were keen amateur mechanics among our amiable group: a classic Porsche dealer, two City traders, a Russian couple from St Petersburg, two adventurous retirees.
Plus there was assumption number three to fall back on – that these would be elite classics. Apparently not. What we had were Georgian-owned motors: a 1939 Auto-Union (the forerunner of Audi) which sounded like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; a contemporary Opel powered by a Seventies’ Russian motor; a Volga, the Cadillac of the Communist bloc; an ex-Soviet police Lada with working siren; and a kit car like a Wacky Races dragster.
We also had Paul. But a Georgian guide/mechanic can only get you so far. To be exact, he will get you peering into a fuel pipe as night falls with a particularly disheartening thud.
I’m not saying my five-day rally was a disaster. If you like adventures on your road trips, I’d recommend you sign up for the next as soon as it launches on Feb 10. Just expect a few challenges when you go.
My first inkling that things weren’t going to be straightforward came shortly after I jumped into the Lada to leave the capital, Tbilisi. We convoyed around Freedom Square, parting the traffic on a wave of nostalgia and goodwill. When we fired up the siren, people actually cheered. It was all terrific fun until two scowling highway policemen pulled alongside.
Then, an hour down the road, a red light blipped on the dashboard. The engine spluttered… coughed… stopped. It had seized.
Onwards into the Georgian landscape, the Lada abandoned to a tow-truck, me now in the back of the Auto Union. And what scenery. Our route north-east through the Kakheti region was gorgeous: shepherds guiding flocks across hills, farmers selling tomatoes on the verges, vineyards peeling to hazy mountains. It would have been a lovely drive if it hadn’t been for other motorists.
Georgians interpret the highway code as suggestions more than regulations, which sounds like a cheap joke until you learn that, until fairly recently, they could buy a driving licence without having to bother with the boring lessons or test. People overtook on blind corners and cut in abruptly, forcing you to slam the brakes. That’s when I noticed something else about driving a classic – no seat belts, perhaps why a pendant of Jesus hung on the Auto Union’s rear-view mirror.
After four nervous hours, a wall of peaks began to slide across the windscreen – the Caucasus Mountains along the Russian border. Beneath them was our hotel in Tsinandali and the first of what became daily feasts fuelled by the local hooch, chacha
(see Table Manners, right).
The next day, the Auto Union wouldn’t start. All part of the fun of classics, Zoë insisted: “Everyone pulls together to help and these cars are easy to fix.” They did and, yes, easyish, once we had located a new fuel line. Two hours behind schedule, with me behind the wheel of the Opel (skittish, smelling of petrol and leather), we thrummed through Telavi town – with old boys beneath chestnut trees, a statue of a king brandishing a sword at the old foe, Russia – and looped south of Tbilisi into bosky hills.
This was the Trialeti region. Ever heard of it? Neither had I. That was the other reason I was keen on this rally – to see a Georgia beyond that touted as the hottest new destination of the Caucasus.
It was soul-stirringly lovely. In scruffy farming villages, cows swayed along verges and women in bright headscarves waved from doorways.
On highland slopes, shepherds stood among their flocks haloed in golden light like a Victorian Academy painting of a lost southern Europe; a scene as ancient as Georgian civilisation.
Paul in the passenger seat chatted happily about Georgia as a cradle of humanity – home to the world’s longest wine tradition (8,000 years) and its oldest honey (5,500 years). He also told me about Georgians’ problems with the neighbours. The Romans, Persians, Turks and, more recently, Russians had taken turns to conquer. “Our ancestors took swords and hoes to work. They had to be ready to fight at any moment,” he said.
Something about being invaded must make you sanguine. Paul merely sighed later when the Auto Union futtered out on a remote mountainside. We were three hours behind schedule. Night gathered.
While I raged into the wind like an exiled King Lear, Paul rummaged among the engine’s guts, emerging with the fuel pipe. Blow, he said. I blew and something fell to the ground – a desiccated earthworm.
Paul laughed like a happy bear. At such times, you realise this rally is about more than cars and scenery.
Over the days that followed, averaging 180 miles daily, we drove beneath crumbling Silk Road fortresses in the Kura valley, an ancient route between the Black and Caspian seas. At Sapara we visited a frescoed monastery smelling faintly of incense and Byzantium, and at Uplistsikhe explored a cave-city as old as civilisation itself. When actually
How to eat and drink well in Georgia
Foolish is the novice diner who loads up on bread in Georgia. This is a country that believes in plenitude. During traditional meals, plates (always communal) arrive from the kitchen like some culinary Sorcerer’s Apprentice until they cover the table completely. Nor are they removed. Rather, the empties pile up as a display of hospitality.
Just as ritualistic is the tradition of toasting – frequent and generous. That’s fine if the toasts are made with Georgia’s wines. After being blacklisted by its former main market,
Russia, independent Georgia upped its game. Wine from premier terroir the Kakheti region, east of Tbilisi, rivals anything you will drink in Italy. Things become problematic, however, if you have advanced to chacha,a potent brandy distilled from grape skins. Georgians swear it benefits digestion if downed in one. Good luck.
The cuisine itself varies by region but is a wholesome, healthy fusion of herby, nutty flavours influenced by neighbouring Turkey, the moving, the cars bowled along merrily. The Volga was magnificent – a symphony of chrome and orange bench seats with a horn that wouldn’t have disgraced a cruise ship – even if it steered like a sofa.
Yet better still were the Georgians themselves. There were the shepherds who appeared with wine during a breakdown (what we needed was a new starter motor), flashing their gold teeth then waving their crooks to cheer us off: “Oish! Oish!” During another unexpected halt there was the motorist who returned unasked with replacement fan belts.
There were also people like Shio, a monk at Katskhi monastery in west Georgia. The 27-year-old told me
Mediterranean and Russia. Traditional starters include pkhali, a cold vegetarian tapa of puréed vegetable (often red pepper, spinach or beetroot) mixed with about his routine – up at midnight, prayers until 2am, regular chores such as making beeswax candles or collecting honey, late-afternoon prayers, bed – and about the monk who lived in the monastery’s hermitage on a high rock pillar. “He is very old; over 80. Two years he has been alone in prayer.”
We returned to Tbilisi bonded over boisterous chacha-fuelled meals and bizarre breakdowns; for a time the Volga’s accelerator had been a clutchcable fed through the passenger window. Zoë seemed elated to have made it back – though at that moment, vowed never again.
And yet a satisfying road trip is about more than the road. It is about unexpected encounters, even challenges. So I’m glad Zoë changed her mind, and is returning to Georgia after all. I’m sure her tour would be simpler in a rented Ford Focus. But consider the choice: a predictable journey led by satnav, or five days of spontaneous adventures. I know which I’d prefer.
James Stewart was a guest of Driving With Zoë (zoewhittaker. com) and the Georgian National Tourism Administration (georgia. travel). Applications for the next rally open on Feb 10. The week-long trip costs £3,500 for two people, including flights, hotels and food, plus about £110 per day car hire. walnut paste and vinegar. There is often soft or salty cheese and nearly always khachapuri, a cheesy bread which arrives in myriad varieties. One has an egg in the middle.
Veal, lamb or pork kebabs are popular, but the ubiquitous Georgian main course is khinkali dumplings, usually filled with minced beef and pork. Looking like mushrooms, they are eaten with the fingers (hold the “stalk”). Georgians don’t believe in spilling a drop.
First choice for upmarket traditional dining in Tbilisi is Barbarestan (mains from £11; 00995 322 94 37 79). It’s touristy, but recipes are updates of those from a 19th-century cookbook the owners found in a flea market – dambal khacho,a fermented cottage cheese, or country chicken with walnuts and spices – and the rustic decor is lovely.
Otherwise, join the cool kids at Shavi Lomi (mains from £10; 00995 322 96 09 56): small plates of modern Georgian cuisine, a choice between traditional and modern dining rooms and a garden for summer.