Bye Bye Tusheti! Hello Tbilisi!

23. – 26. June 2023

 

 

When we woke up the next day, the weather looked friendly – but it didn’t stay for long. Upper Omalo is the only place with a kind of “centre”, where the car is parked at the top left. Nino had taken care of all the accommodations, which is not a bad thing since not all of them are open early in the season – and later in the season it could be partly full.

 

 

 

The return journey was a bit cloudier, so I was glad to have seen everything on the way here. Here are the visual impressions of the return journey:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we continued with a marshrutka and then we were back in Tbilisi, where we each took the metro home. The metro didn’t like my credit card and is so noisy that it’s rather difficult to have a conversation.

 

 

 

 

In Tbilisi, I still had 3 days until my departure. Besides busy computing, I walked around the city again and discovered things and had fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then there were more undiscovered houses to look at. And I’m still a long way to see all of them. I keep having to stop and look at all the details. And then share them here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, all these house details excited me again and I curiously walked around here and there.

 

Inwardly, I began to say goodbye to Georgia. But one thing was still missing: a visit to the famous sulphur baths! With an outside temperature of around 30°, it didn’t seem quite as attractive, but I thought I absolutely had to try it out for myself – and it was an experience after all! “Mean” or also “close to the people” as I am, I went to a public shared bath, namely Bath No. 5. This was very cheap. However, I did have expectations that I would take a bath. But there were only showers….. So I entered an underground realm, administered by a gaggle of ladies who, oddly enough, were desperate to persuade me to have tea. But I didn’t want to. So then into a room to strip naked, stuff into a locker locked by a lady. Next, a medium-sized room, steamy and damp with about 10 shower stalls on the walls. In 9 were old, wrinkled, naked local women showering and showering. You could regulate the temperature yourself and that’s how I showered. However, I was actually done with it quite quickly. But I had invested a little money in a rubdown and a massage. A lightly dressed lady came in and rubbed me down with an exfoliating glove. Then I was lathered up and squeezed around. It was actually quite nice – but it was all over very quickly. Again she sort of insisted I should have a tea. I still didn’t want. But it wasn’t all that expensive. I had another quick shower and then went out. A group of Asian women just came in, they were a bit shy about being naked and left their pants on. All in all, there were sometimes more women in the room than there were showers. I actually thought I would spend at least 1 hour there, it felt more like 30 minutes, but afterwards I was clean and had soft skin.

 

 

And that was now the end of my trip to Georgia. Afterthoughts will be shared in my next/last Blogpost.