Monday, May 27 - Day 7
Finally, on day 7, the time has arrived that this Monday is true to the title of this blog - "hiking" in Caucasus. So, after two days in Kutaisi, two in Tbilisi, two in Sighnaghi, we were scheduled to go the mountains. In the evening, we still had something big waiting for us - remember, we had our train tickets to Yerevan, with departure in from Tbilisi. So the plan was to do the hike in the east of the country, take a car back to the capital, then get to the station.
The afternoon prior to this, we contemplated for a while whether to ask the same driver who drove us to Singhnaghi to drive us around - remember, he was not always very confident - or to ask Florian´s host for one of "his" drivers. We finally agreed on the same driver as three days prior, as I had forgotten my water bottle that I had received as present a little while ago from someone dear to me - and that was still in his car. So we agreed on our not-so-confident guy.
He arrived on time, we bid farewell to the friendly host, I collected my clean clothes from the drier and we were headed for the Lagodekhi National Park, not far from the borders to both Azerbaijan and Russia. In fact, the park was so close to the border, that there was a huge line of trucks lined up to make the crossing, due to this, there was only one lane free. The remaining lane was filled with car traffic going both ways and sheep traffic, going God-knows-where. Quite a congestion!
Our not-so-confident driver lost all his remaining confidence when dirving us to the trailhead, he stopped to ask multiple times - and even I understood which way we would need to be driving (and our understanding of the Georgian language is very basic), he asked others again and again. We tried to tell him the way, which was pretty evident, he did not believe us - a bit later, it turned out we were correct (what else? Nespresso).
Anyhow, we did make it to the trailhead, where there was a ranger, who spoke quite good English. There were multilingual signs describing the road ahead, two paths were starting from the trailhead. We took the one that would lead to a large waterfall. We had to register for the hike by giving our data - later, we found out this was pretty much useless, as the people leaving the park would not have to check-out. Whatever. The ranger told us the hike, about 8 kilometers long, could take about 5 hours to the waterfall and back, but he had seen Indian hikers needing like 12 hours.
So we started our hike, at around 11 am. There were some newly built wooden huts at the trailhead, so tourism is scheduled to pick up - but at least not then, not in May, not on this Monday. We met only a very few fellow hikers and the parking lot was close to empty. There was a river to cross, but the bridge made of wood was there to help.
The hike was a pretty one - and it was not the most taxing one. There was one thing about it, which made it a bit hard, especially on the way back - you have to cross a summit first, then descend (so on the way back, it meant first ascending, quite steep, before descending). Anyhow the views were very pretty, even if not very different than back home.
After about two hours, so definitely faster than those Indian hikers, we reached the goal of the hike - which was the Ninoshkevi (also called Gurgeniani) Waterfall, 40-meters high. According to a guide book, this belongs to one of the nicest views not only in Georgia, but also the whole of Caucasus. I have not been everywhere in the region, but it was definitely wonderful. Even though pictures tell thousand words, these photos do not do justice - with the notably exception of the rainbow - the roar of the water tumbling down, the vapor hitting your face, the blend of blue and green - it was really a bit of magic.
Very carefully, we lowered ourselves to the waterbed, from where the view was even nicer. There were two fellow hikers there - from Austria (from Graz, to be accurate). A bit later, we met two more from Switzerland. The folks from these nations do like to hike, it shows. I enjoyed the view up the top of the waterfall, where the clouds had a blue hole in the middle.
We had lunch, then started heading back to the trailhead and got there by around 3:30 pm and were relieved to see our driver not having left with all our stuff. We started heading back to Tbilisi, which was a long drive, we got to the outskirts of the capital at our 7 pm. We bid farewell to our driver and switched over to the metro, heading for the railway station. I was a bit tired, so was looking forward to a nice long sleep on the train and was happy to return to Armenia after 8 years. We were pretty much on time, with the train leaving only at 9 pm.
At the station, we were quite surprised to see how quiet things were. There were a few trains on the billboard, showing ours as well, Track No. 2 being indicated, without a departure time. I took a peak look at Track No. 2, there was no train parked ther: strange, the scheduled departure would be just an hour away. Behind a counter, three ladies were busy looking at some sort of large sheet and I knocked on the window and asked "Yerevan?". Without looking up, one said "cancelled". Mhhh. We then met a group of tourists from Russia, who confirmed our worst fear - yes, indeed, the train was cancelled, supposedly due to flooding (we suspected political reasons). What now followed was the bureaucratic procedure that Eastern Europe used to be (or still is) well-known for. We had to pull a number, that was not the issue, our turn came relatively fast. Then the Kafka-esque procedure followed. At the first window, two more followed, a long sheet of paper was filled out by hand, where we again had to show our passports about three times, were asked multiple times whether we really wanted to cancel both tickets (yes and yes). After some wait, we were called to window #2, where the lady did some administration manually, then in a computer. ,A stamp landed on our paper and were asked to wait for window #3. Here a lady who spoke perfect English asked for our passport again, then handed out the the one-way fare to the penny to Florian (his signature), the one-way ticket to me to the penny (my signature), the return ticket to Florian to the penny (his signature), the return ticket to me to the penny (my signature). Well, it was around 10 pm by the time we were done and we lost a couple of Euros, as it was not compulsory to cancel the return ticket.
To be honest, I was quite disappointed with the cancellation, for the reasons I had mentioned above (looking forward to the ride and Armennia) - but Florian told me to look at the bright side of life, that we would do other fun stuff - and maybe head over to Armenia at later point in time.
At the station, we met a fellow stranded passenger, Katarzyna from Prague, who had to go through the same ordeal as us. With 28 years of age, she is quite brave to have been touring the Caucasus by herself. We talked for a while and agreed we would go for a walk the following day in Tbilisi.
So, with the change in ou5 plans, we were now again in Tbilisi. I called Vic, our host of the nice bed & breakfast place, but it was all booked out. So with the help of booking.com (no advertizing fee paid to me), we found a nice 4-star hotel, called Hotel Capitol by Umbrella, someone outside the center, for about €30 per room, breakfast included and headed there with the metro. It was a very young, very pretty and very friendly receptionist lady, who gave both of us an upgrade, to a nice, large room with views of Tbilisi. I was quite happy to have a warm shower, then retired fort he night, pondering what Faith had for me, now that our plans had taken an unexpected change.