Profanities and Prayers
I am struggling to find the words to describe yesterday…
I used up all my best ones on the day before…so Mrs Speechless of Somerset is going to have to dig deep!
Let’s start with the good news…the one excellent thing that came out of our need to find another hotel yesterday, was finding out that the trains to Tbilisi were all booked up until the 2nd of September, in five days time. Which, whilst not in fact being good news at all, was at least confirmed for us by a lovely Georgian man running a hostel when we were sitting down somewhere dry and warm, and not after an hours walk to the train station…
Clearly we would be going by bus, apparently there were regular minibuses…and they went from right outside the hotel we chose, so that was definitely good news.
We had a leisurely morning, sorting out our stuff, and headed down to the street – after a haggling session that took about ten minutes we secured our places on a sixteen seater. We were ushered to the back – to the crap seats without opening windows, but it was only a four hour and thirty-five minute drive so we’d cope.
There were four seats along the back, Theo sat next to the young Turkish man, Rosa sat by the window and I sat between them, in the seat in front of the aisle. Thirty seconds into the journey I felt grateful I’d written a will.
There were no seatbelts, and no obvious rules about driving. Don’t get me wrong, there were speed limit signs, there were lines in the road showing which side of the road you were meant to drive on, there were even traffic lights…but none of them seemed to mean very much to our driver.
When we hit a traffic jam he overtook into oncoming traffic, and when that stopped working he drove on the dirt track off the inside of the road – through the cows, potholes and any passing humans…I found myself switching between muttering profanities to saying heart felt prayers to any gods that might be listening.
I think it helped that I quite liked the driver, he was a big bear of a man with a bit of a twinkle. His t-shirt had one word on it ‘ARMY’ and he did actually get us to Tbilisi in one piece…and I kept my sanity during the last three hours of that 8 hour journey by pretending I was in an arcade game in Weymouth.
Lovely Weymouth where no-one much knows my name, but they know which side of the road to drive on and they stop at traffic lights!!
…we were all delighted to arrive in Tbilisi. We didn’t care that we had been dropped on the outskirts of the city, we could get a taxi, catch a bus…skip to the hostel singing the Wizard of Oz theme tune, none of us cared at that point because we were not on the bus anymore.
I suggested we started to walk rather than get a taxi at the bus station because part of my haggling at the start of the longest ever minibus journey, was to say we didn’t have any more money and I didn’t want to suddenly produce more cash under his nose (…and it did look like everyone had paid more than we had! Once I realised that I persuaded him to let me buy him his coke and ice cream at one of the brief respite stops along the way…(morals are funny things) and no, the irony of buying him a nice big sugar hit wasn’t lost on me – nothing could have made his driving any worse – other than perhaps a blindfold 🙂
So, we shouldered our packs and headed out …our map showed the hostel as being just over an hours walk away but we had no intention of walking the whole way…our rucksacks are heavy (well Theo’s and Rosa’s are…mines actually a bit lighter because I have a bad back, but I had the guitar so I was doing my bit…). Anyway – about seven minutes into our journey, and we were had just began to look longingly at buses, it started to rain. Big, fat ‘we mean business’ rain drops. We took shelter in a clothing department store to wait it out.
Ten minutes later, it seemed to be slowing down a little so out came our lightweight purple rain coats, ones thar Rosa had researched we definitely needed. They had hoods and were big enough to cover either us, or our rucksacks…we chose our rucksacks and headed out into what was now, Tbilisi by night.
We had barely made it across one of the six lane highways, that are a big feature of life in Tbilisi, when the rain turned biblical….sheets of it falling with incredible force – it was one hell of a sight (best watched on telly I reckon) but the slightly too small shelter of a closed shop doorway was better than being out in it…
After about fifteen minutes Theo went off to see if there was any better shelter near by…as he walked off into the dark the rain turned to hail and we saw our first flashes of lightening – there were a few brief moments when Rosa and I thought he might have been swept away, but he came back, looking like a little like a colourful bedraggled gnome – but I won’t hear a word said against our £1.99 purple raincoats.
We held the first of many conferences we would have over the next two hours and decided we would head out, Rosa pointed out that the hail had definitely stopped, so off we went…
Our first priority was to get off the big main road on to the parallel slightly smaller one because for some inexplicable reason the entire pavement area on our side of the road was being dug up and we were effectively walking through rubble and mud.
Five minutes later we were huddled under a slightly better shelter and had a proper look at the map.
We were 54 minutes away from the hostel.
In the next ten minutes we realised three things:
- Taxi drivers don’t want want soaking wet people with loads of luggage in their cabs
- People who drive fast and close to pedestrians to deliberately soak them are in need of truth and reconciliation sessions – so we can tell them what utter bastards they are
- ‘I’m singing in the rain’ …is a great song 🙂
I can’t remember when it became obvious that we would be walking all the way…or when we noticed everything except our rucksacks were wet…and I truly don’t know how we made it the three miles across Tbilisi, but we did, the lightening and thunder accompanied us all the way, we sang a lot, we waded through roads that had become rivers in our sandals…and we did it!
I’m proud of us for not losing it with each other (total miracle) …I can’t say we enjoyed it (we definitely didn’t) but we did look out for each other, and the packet of bruschetta and bar of chocolate we scored as we dripped all over the shiny clean floor of a petrol station was some of the tastiest food we’d ever eaten (thank you petrol station guy for letting us in!)
Finally we found our hostel, following the numbers up the street, then when the key pad code didn’t work ringing each flat in the building until someone let us in, and then, the delicious moment when we walked in and realised it was somewhere we could call home…
Epic!
What can I say? The bus ride with Army-man as your driver…. Sounds nothing short of the plot for a Hollywood blockbuster…. You should get Keanu Reeves to play a fellow passenger (who is secretly a CIA agent).
I love the photo of you with Army-man. And the photo of the rain-gnomes. Rain gnomes are usually considered good luck, especially the purple ones. Fantastic fantastical fantasy journey to Tbilisi indeed! Xxxx
What an adventure…sounds a bit like Lord of the Rings with purple hobbits. Great writing all three of you – I am greatly enjoying everything you’ve written! It sounds epic…and taxi/bus driver must have learned to drive in South Africa…
Remember to trust in Allah, but also remember to tie up your camel.
Sorry, sounds awful but am chuckling away as I read this. Someone told Lowy and I before we set off that if we don’t have moments where we wonder how the hell we got ourselves in the situation that we were finding ourselves in, then we’re not really having an adventure and living life! Getting out the other side with sanity and life intact can only leave us both wiser, and with great stories to share 🙂 Loving reading your posts and look forward to welcoming you in Aus. Love to you all.
OMG! Good job your rucksacks were heavy otherwise you would all have been swept away! All very exciting to read from the comfort of a (very late) breakfast table! Hope the weather improves!
This is the first blog of yours that I have made time to read – what a fabulous adventure that stirs delightful memories in me> I used to love that way of living. I am so happy for you guys that you are going for it.
GREAT TIP – When on bus journeys in the more rustic, rule-ambivalent countries – never look out of the front window to see where you are going or how the driver is navigating the road! (Side windows are much better unless driving next to a sheer drop!) It is better to trust in the Universe, enjoy & appreciate every minute that you are alive & to imagine that you have a long adventurous life ahead of you 😉
Wishing you a safe & wonder-full journey
Much Love
Jem
p.s. Thanks for sharing it by blog with us all 🙂