An illuminating trip through a reborn nation at the crossroads of Europe and Asia

KIT MACDONALD

ALTHOUGH getting to Georgia from Scotland is by no means a short hop, arrival at Tbilisi International airport feels like it should be the culmination of a much longer journey. The first thing that hits you (if you go, as I did, in the middle of summer) is a distinctly exotic brick wall of heat, and then there’s the inevitable double-take as you glimpse Georgia’s deliciously alien writing for the first time. The language has its own 33-letter alphabet, the elegant, flicking letters of which look like they’re formed from ornamental Persian swords.

This is all in a country just across the Black Sea from a couple of EU member states, a geographical position that has conferred on the former Soviet satellite a tumultuous history that hasn’t given way to a particularly stable present. The tragic week-long war with Russia in 2008 left a new set of psychological scars and, in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, entrenched two separatist-controlled enclaves in the north.

The starting point of a strange but illuminating road trip through the country was a long, blissful sleep at the Rooms Hotel in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. Housed in a former publishing plant in the hip middleclass Vera neighbourhood, Rooms is one of the most impressive design hotels I’ve seen, with an amazing attention to detail that runs all the way from stunning retro furnishings and lighting to specific aromas being assigned to waft around specific areas of the building. You’ll pay Western prices for Rooms’ level of luxury although you can bag a bed in a Tbilisi hostel for under a fiver a night. The eye-popping low cost of everyday goods – a box of cigarettes costs just 35p – is another aspect that makes Georgia feel further from home than it is.

In the morning we set out for the historical monuments of Mtskheta, which together make up one of Georgia’s three UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Perched on a rocky mountaintop a few miles north of the capital, Jvari Monastery dates from the late 4th century. A stern doorman stopped us from entering for unspecified wardrobe offences, but its astonishing setting was what interested us. We lingered for an hour or more to drink in the view over the town of Mtskheta and the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers. Mtskheta itself is one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited settlements, and was the capital of the Georgian kingdom of Iberia from the third to the fifth centuries. As such, it’s hugely important to the nation, as well as being the obvious base camp for any visitor looking to binge on Georgian and/or Orthodox Christian history. With the help of free shawls at the door we made a more successful visit to the Living Pillar Cathedral in the town’s historical Svetitskhoveli complex, before heading to a restaurant for the first of many absurdly generous lunches.

Georgian food is delicious and filling but it can get a bit samey if you stick to it too rigidly. The ubiquitous duo of vegetables stuffed with hummus-like substances (tolma) and flat slabs of bread with a gulch of melted cheese in the middle (Khachapuri) is great in moderation, but that’s not a concept that looms large in Georgian cookery. International alternatives abound though, particularly in Tbilisi. Churchkhela, a sweet, sausage- shaped stick made of dried and compacted grape must, nuts and flour, is an interesting oddity and packs enough sugar to perk you up in the middle of a hot day of sightseeing but you’re unlikely to want to smuggle bagfuls of them home with you.

A long wander around the huge flea market that sprawls over Tbilisi old town’s Dry Bridge area left several lasting impressions, primary among them the realisation that paintings of Joseph Stalin are still very big business here. Uncle Joe was a Georgian, of course, and attitudes to him in the country are complex, but can be very loosely parsed along generational lines. Generally, the old like him, the young do not. Under the trees at the market, though,