Days 3 and 4: Eastern Georgia and Azerbaijan

So, remember when I said I would try to take a lot of pictures this weekend? I ended up taking around 300.  I'll try to resist showing you all of them.
We left Tbilisi on Saturday morning in a little white van that looked like this:

There. 1 picture down, 299 to go.













One thing I can now definitely say about Georgia, and which my kidneys can attest to, is that the roads are terrible. Even on the highway heading out from Tbilisi we were bumping and jolting all over the place. And when we turned onto the backroads, it somehow managed to get even worse. It also didn't help that our driver drove like he was racing somebody. These factors, along with a complete lack of stop signs or traffic lights, made for a very... interesting ride that ranged from fun to nauseating to terrifying.
Fortunately, before too long we were distracted from this by the view. Instead of trying to describe it, I'm just going to make use of my remaining 299 pictures.

But first, cows. We ran into a fair amount of livestock on our way out into the middle of nowhere.

This, fortunately, was not our road. Ours was at least paved.

Those mountains in the background are the Caucasus Mountains, the border between Georgia and Russia.

We finally reached our destination, way out in the middle of nowhere, and hiked up into the hills to a monastery dating from the 6th century. The monks lived (and still do) in rooms carved into the rock.

Then we continued upward. We had amazing weather- cool, but not unpleasant. And there were literally no clouds in the sky. The climb was fairly easy and the view continued to get better and better, hence the massive number of pictures.

We reached the top of the hill and came out onto a ridge that looked out over a valley which, our guide happened to mention, was Azerbaijan, the country that borders Georgia to the east. In fact, on reaching the ridge we had actually crossed the border. So now I can add Azerbaijan to the list of countries I've visited.

Azerbaijan on the left, Georgia on the right.

All throughout the hike along the ridge we passed caves that had been carved into the rocks. Some dated back to the 6th century and some were more recent, but they all at some point housed black monks. These were a type of monk in the Orthodox tradition that lived by the most strict religious rules, often in very isolated areas like this one.

The caves were filled with frescoes.

After the hike we drove to the town of Telavi, where we were given a very big dinner and some very cold bedrooms at a guest house.

Here's a picture of the first course of dinner.

This is a Georgian dessert that a few of us helped make. It's a string of nuts covered with a kind of grape sauce.










The next morning we took a walk through the town. It had an incredible view of the Caucasus mountains.

This was the view from my very cold room in the guest house.

We also went to a market, which was very hectic but also kind of interesting. I felt awkward taking pictures, though.

Later that day we drove to a little village near Telavi and walked around a bit. It really brought the fact home to me that Georgia is not a first-world country, and that there are a lot of people here who are very poor. I felt a little awkward walking around the village like a tourist, but our Georgian guide had a farmhouse there and knew everyone, which made things a little less bizarre. 

The first thing we saw in the village was this memorial, commemorating people from the area who were killed in World War II. 

 

The Caucasus Mountains, as seen from the village. 

In rural Georgia wine is made and stored in massive jugs that are kept buried in the ground. Here you can see the top of one.

And here are some of the jugs.

This is an oven for baking bread. The dough is actually pressed onto the inner sides of the oven, where it sticks.

Here's what the bread ends up looking like. 

After visiting the village we went to have dinner, then had a long and bumpy ride back to Tbilisi. It was a really great, insightful trip and a good introduction to some of the parts of Georgia that aren't Tbilisi. 

...I feel like this post was mostly pictures. If you have questions, ask and I'll try to answer them.