Can a thing be staid and yet the most magnificent?

 When the mountains – stacked like an immeasurable disarray of Toblerone – appear at the turn, it isn’t the altitude that presses against the ears, silencing everything. It isn’t their enormity that draws the breath out. It isn’t their rosehip-studded, snowy cassock façade that makes one say a prayer. The Georgian mountains don’t beat their chests tempestuously, demanding devotion. They don’t preen or primp. In fact, they don’t care if one is in attendance at all. But, they arrest. They turn time into a minor detail and empty one of many feelings previously held familiar. Similar things can be said about much of Georgia.

 The under-researched tourist’s expectation of rustic views and gorgeous churches is quite quickly made obsolete by the variegated sensations that Imeruli cheese and shoti bread - procured at random by the wayside - supply. There is another table where cheese and bread are had with Georgian tomatoes that are of a distinct red… a non-shiny, distinctly non-coquettish red. The bread is made in a sturdy old torne oven, by a woman who can also be described thus. One should be hard of heart to not yield to this yeast-y peasant’s meal. Raptures are burst into and numerous ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ warbled, much to the complete neutrality of the farmer at the till. There is no art to the service industry in Georgia, and no artifice.

 There are also no shortcuts to the food here. No ‘2-minute’ khachapuris or instant khinkalis. Wait you must. As we did, for a good hour at a small establishment in a remote alcove in the mountains. The fare that arrives is almost always swoon-worthy (but maybe don’t swoon, because dramatic gestures find no audience here). Texture is not up for discussion. There are no smooth pastes or sauces – they are grainy, pulpy, hardy. Nary a ‘pillowy’ anything. Even the meats are robust, never once allowing themselves the travesty of melting in the mouth or falling off the bone. Kuchmachi is an elegance born of chicken liver and walnuts, and ojakuri dares you to not have visions of him when you liaise with his skinny distant cousin ‘fries’. In the Nigvziani badrijani, you’ll find a very non-Georgian sight of embrace… as slivers of eggplant wrap themselves cozily around a center of crushed walnuts.  

One day in Old Tbilisi, spent in a Tsinandali-induced haze is ceremony. Wandering around the city’s cobbled pathways, sometimes from cafes and almost always towards them, sights can be collected like souvenirs. Overpriced cups of alluring berries, multi-hued curtains of churchkhelas, pumpkins and all other manner of squash in tasteful pastels, functional wine shop fronts which are about wine and no jazz, soft stoles with pomegranate embroidery, the hardworking Indian man whose sole job is to beseech you to visit the Indian restaurant. Mother Mary graces churches and wine bottle labels with equanimity. People watching is a treat. Soviet-era fashion rubs shoulders with Euro-punk – fishnet stockings et al. Spot an outfit with color and you will have found yourself a tourist. There is a secret cache of cosmetics and clothes stores somewhere in Tbilisi – maybe some hapless tourist will stumble upon it one day and saunter out a spy. Mandatorily boot-clad young people pound the pavement on Europe Square with as much abandon as allowed, behaving themselves and minding their business. There are no sudden urges that are quenched with a quick kiss or sweaty squeeze. Is this because there is always an ancient church round the corner and the reverence it exacts? The city’s graffiti isn’t artistic in a way that pleases the eye – but it does carry an organic anger. Not misplaced, perhaps?

The churches in Georgia are cool, austere, and magnificent in a way that somehow reminds one of the Bronte sisters. A mandate to remain spartan. The caves are caves, and the canyons are canyons.

One almost doesn’t want to start with the mountains, because then one would have to end. The Caucasus Mountains seem to have many faces. Rocky in one region, angular as if chiseled by Michelangelo in another, bucolic, icy, rugged. Sublime fir and spruce, savage berries and peppers, wild mushrooms and lichen, baby pinecones tipped with dewdrops, the paddle of the local dogs’ feet and their promise to protect. Large lakes, smaller ones, a farmer’s cottage here, a flock of sheep and cows. The crunch of boots on gravel, slippery on autumnal twigs and leaves, sinking in rotting vegetation. There is powdery snow too, and the pleasant sensation of a cold nose. One’s fingers long to touch everything everywhere. Swallow the sights and hammer them into memory with a fleet of photographs that really do no justice. Walking towards a hike’s destination but in the knowledge that a minute towards is also a minute that has passed. Time sublimates. Where do the seconds go? Can one be overwhelmed by calm? Be hit in the face by content? There is a sort of yearning ache that comes with this kind of tranquility, because it is an alien sensation.

The testosterone-fueled buggy ride to a spot in Gudauri on the mountain with swathes of snow. The Wrangler ride on another day to a spot in Borjomi where paradise resides. Mere vehicles to a means. For some, a means to experience something unreally pretty. For others, a means to something a little more profound. A conclusion that utter stillness can be had.