It was the seventh year.
That time in a marriage when the fabled seven-year-itch usually sets in.
But all my partner Aditya and I scratched…
…were our heads. Why would anyone spend seven long years training their spouse according to their needs and then begin the whole process all over again with someone new? The superstition made no sense to us. So we decided to ignore it and instead celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary with a trip to Georgia (the country, not the American state).
But maybe there is a price to be paid for thumbing one’s nose at superstition, because that’s where Aditya’s seven-year-itch landed: His poor nose!
He contracted the mother of all colds that clung to him throughout our stay in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital and its largest city. We still managed to have a fun time.
After a week, once Aditya’s nose—and the body attached to it—felt a little better, we hired a car and set out to explore Georgia’s eastern region, Kakheti.
Thanks to its fertile soil and great weather, Kakheti is the powerhouse of Georgia’s famous wines. This region is home to several commercial and private vineyards that offer wine tastings and tours to the public during the spring and summer seasons. But since Aditya’s battles with his stubborn cold had left his taste buds muffled, we decided to skip the wineries and enjoy the sceneries instead.
We took turns driving our rental, a cute orange car which absolutely delighted my soul. The first morning was spent meandering aimlessly through the Georgian countryside, marvelling at the quaint houses, the lush landscape, and countless fluffy sheep munching their way through the green.
Almost every village we passed had some benches lining the main roads where old men in dark coats lounged and smoked. Sometimes these men were solitary, sometimes they had company. But they were almost always tall and brooding, their crinkle-eyed gaze alert and watching every passing vehicle, magically divining its secrets…
Or maybe they were just regular old geezers and I just read too many fantasy thrillers! Heh.
After a few hours on the road, we finally turned on to the highway leading to Kakheti. It started off as a six-lane city road near Tbilisi, which gradually narrowed to four, then settled at two as it snaked through Kakheti’s smaller towns. And as the road got narrower, the driving got crazier! I had no idea the freeway etiquette in Georgia resembled that of the infamous videogame, Grand Theft Auto (aka GTA). Reckless speeds, muscle cars, aggressive overtaking on blind bends, hair-raising games of ‘Chicken’ with vehicles hurtling towards us from the opposite lane, all had me muttering prayers to every pagan deity I could remember. Or conjure up.
I probably shouldn’t complain since driving in India is also quite chaotic, but at least the speeds on Indian freeways are mercifully low and our cars are compact, built for mileage not intimidation.
Contrarily, in the Gulf where I currently live, cars have more muscles than Tarzan on steroids, but the road rules are strict enough to keep at least some of those bullies in check. Georgian freeways are like a crazy combination of those in India and the Gulf…and not in a good way <insert spinal shivers here>.
All that stress behind the steering wheel soon sapped my energy. To fuel me up, we decided to take a pitstop at a nondescript red brick structure located on the highway, in a village named Sartichala. Our map claimed the place was a well-known diner, but there was no sign confirming the fact.
Mystified, we set about exploring the building whose entrance turned out to be a small, almost-hidden side door. The mysteries were mounting, but hunger warred with caution and won. We sneaked into the premises through the concealed door and found ourselves face-to-face with…
…a group of old grandmotherly ladies milling around a desk.
The women paused and scanned us with eyes that missed nothing. We blinked under the glare of their intense scrutiny.
Were they guardians of an ancient secret?
Was this some sort of testing arena?
Would only those worthy of a meal get through?
“Hello!” Aditya ventured into the stillness.
“Gamarjoba!” the lady seated behind the desk replied. She wore a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a ready smile.
“Do you serve food?” Aditya asked.
“Gamarjoba!” the lady said again, her smile turning mischievous.
“Umm…food?” I decided to jump in by miming the act of eating. Maybe they didn’t speak English here, and I wasn’t well-versed in Georgian. But stuffing food in one’s mouth had to be a universal sign, right? Or so my hunger-addled brain believed. Firmly.
“Gamarjoba!” the lady repeated, grinning widely now. The women around her desk tittered. I whipped out my phone, and began desperately swiping through it for the translation app.
“Ga…mar…joba?” Aditya hazarded, sampling the sound of the word while I scrambled around like a digital butterfingers.
“Yes, that’s right!” the lady nodded affably, like a tutor pleased with her students’ progress. “It means ‘hello’ in our language. And yes, we do serve food. Come on in!” Her English was perfect.
“Oh!” Aditya laughed, relieved. “Thank you!”
“The word for that is madloba, my dear. You can say that when you leave!” the lady quipped and her companions giggled.
We had passed the test. Food lay on the other side!
One of the ladies broke off from the gaggle around the desk and ushered us down a long hallway to the simple but ample dining space. We noticed several tables already full of customers. For the odd hour (it was about 4 p.m. in the afternoon), the diner was doing good business. The kitchen, visible from several large open windows set in a common wall, showed more grandmotherly ladies in aprons and caps bustling about conjuring up delectable smells. My stomach growled its appreciation.
We took our seats at a table and waited for the menu. Instead, our server—the old lady who had ushered us in—sat down with us, placed her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands, and gazed soulfully into our eyes.
“So…what would you like to have?” she asked in a tone that offered us the secrets of the universe.
“Umm…what…is available?” I whispered reverently, falling under her spell.
“Well!” she leaned confidingly towards me, “We have some really good soup and barbecue, you know. Traditional Georgian style.”
“Umm…” I trailed off, unsure of what I was about to say. The sweet old lady had a mystical air about her that was beautifully distracting. Plus I couldn’t stop staring at the cute pink ribbon bobbing on the nest of grey-blonde hair piled messily above her head.
“That’s what we’ll have!” Aditya’s voice filled in when the silence stretched too long.
“Good! Good!” Our server conjured a small notepad from nowhere, scribbled happily in its pages, then looked up again. “How about a drink? Beer? We have good beer!”
She raised one of her greying eyebrows at me.
I gazed back like a bewitched twit. I was no longer capable of mundane things such as speech.
“I’m sorry but…we’re driving,” Aditya’s voice filled in for me again. “No beer for us.”
Under my spellbound muteness, my heart broke a little at not being able to sample something this greying goddess had offered us.
Would she deem us worthy of her food if we rejected her wine…er beer? Were we risking misfortune on our travels by offending her? I pouted a little at the thought.
“You know, babe, you don’t have a bad cold like I do,” Aditya’s voice pointed out helpfully. “You can have some beer if you want.”
His words dripped through the weave of our server’s spell, and lightly splashed me awake.
I turned to look at him, then narrowed my eyes.
“If I have a beer,” I began slowly, testing my returning powers of speech, “that automatically gives you full pass at the steering wheel of our cute orange car, right?”
Aditya gave a guilty sort of grin. The sneak.
“No way!” I declared, my words flowing perfectly now. “We’ve agreed to split the drive, remember? I want my fair time behind the wheel!”
“All right. All right. I’ll give you some lemonade,” our server declared rising up from her seat with a little sigh, probably disappointed at her failed spell. “That’s good too.”
She shuffled away from our table and left us waiting for the food. It seemed that we were still worthy of it.
We will never know if our server (and the other ladies of that fine establishment) had witchy powers or not, but her suggestions had been spot-on! The soup there was easily one of the best we’d ever had, the barbecue was perfect, even the local lemonade was zingy. And despite the hearty portions, it turned out to be the cheapest meal we ate during our stay in Georgia.
We made sure we tipped well and, before we left, we said a hearty ‘thank you’ to the ladies, even those working in the kitchen. And this time, we used the local-language word, madloba!
The road got even more scenic as we resumed our drive. It could be the afterglow of a great meal or the fact that we were approaching lush, hilly terrain.
Kakheti region comprises of several districts or municipalities, among them Sighnaghi (also spelled ‘Signagi’). Sighnaghi City, which is the administrative center of Sighnaghi municipality, rests on a tall green hill. It would be our base for the next few nights.
The city of Sighnaghi is probably one of the smallest cities in Georgia, but it is also among the prettiest. The whole city is surrounded by walls belonging to an ancient fortress complete with turrets and towers. This quaint old-world setting coupled with winding cobbled streets, bright red-roofed houses, breathtaking views of valleys and vineyards have earned Sighnaghi the title of ‘City of Love’.
Well, there is another reason for the tag too: The municipal house of Sighnaghi is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for weddings. You can literally wake up in the middle of the night, yank your partner out of their snooze, and drag them to get hitched in Sighnaghi’s marriage office. If your partner is willing, of course, ahem. Consent is important, even in the Georgian city of love.
Since Aditya and I were long past the hitching phase, we simply drove by the municipal house and checked into our hotel. Our room had glass windows and a large balcony looking out at the lush green valley. We feasted our eyes on the gorgeous view, but decided against lingering for too long. We wanted to spend the last precious hours of daylight exploring the city of Sighnaghi on foot.
We were trudging along the hilly cobbled streets, minding our own business, when a bike with a sidecar came speeding towards us, looking like it would toss us around like human bowling pins.
“Hello!” the bike rider, dressed all in black, flashed us a toothy grin before stopping the vehicle inches from our bodies. “You are from India? I can tell!”
Aditya nodded while I goggled at the strange vehicle that looked like it had jumped straight out of an old Bollywood movie. The passenger in the bike’s sidecar, a young man with blonde hair, gave a long-suffering sigh, and slouched into his seat.
The bike rider took Aditya’s nod as encouragement to launch into an enthusiastic conversation as if we were long-lost friends: “I love India! You have no idea how much! You know I used to be in the Navy? I have travelled everywhere! Everywhere! So tell me, where do you live?”
“We…er…currently live in the Gulf actually,” Aditya murmured hesitantly. He looked as dazed as I felt by the rider’s exuberant energy.
“Oh, the Gulf? That’s even better!” he laughed, “I have lived in Abu Dhabi too. Part of my Navy posting, you know! And now, here I am, driving people around on this bike in Sighnaghi! Life is so unpredictable, isn’t it? So, what do you say…would you like to ride with me? I can show you around town, all the hidden places!”
“I’m sorry,” Aditya replied in his polite charming way, “but we have a car. It was really nice meeting you though…”
“Giorgi*! What’s your name?”
Aditya introduced us and Giorgi became impossibly chirpier, “It’s so good to meet you folks! Really! You remind me of my Navy days, you know when I used to travel the world and—”
“Yes-yes,” the sidecar passenger interrupted hurriedly before Giorgi launched into another frenetic monologue. “I know I have a guide who’s really rich and cultured. But can we please get on with my tour? It’s getting late!”
“Duty calls! But if you change your mind about the ride, find me in the main square. Ask for Giorgi! See you later, my friend!” Giorgi flashed Aditya another grin and rode off with a departing honk.
We walked further into the city’s main square and found it riddled with all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and bikes fitted with beefed-up sidecars, ferrying tourists around. They were clearly a popular mode of transport and sightseeing in the steep, winding lanes of Sighnaghi. I wondered if Indian tourists riding those bikes ever felt the urge to break into the iconic Bollywood sidecar song Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge^ from the film Sholay^^.
I know I wouldn’t have been able to resist it. Therefore, it was fortunate (at least for everyone’s auditory health) that I wasn’t about to ride one anytime soon.
A half hour later, a soft hush settled over the city. Dusk was falling, and the cold wind slipped its icy fingers inside our coats. But we still loitered outdoors, unwilling to abandon the beautiful evening.
We made our way through the colourful street market, towards what seemed like the city’s main park. A musician sat on one of the park’s benches, busking for money. He strummed a guitar with his fingers and played a small drum with his feet. His words wove a soft little song to accompany the melody. A couple of happy tourists danced in time to the tune. Everything was serenely beautiful.
That’s when a familiar honk shattered the calm.
“Are you sure you don’t want to take the bike tour with me?” Giorgi called out as his bike came to a screeching halt next to us, this time mercifully a few feet away from our bodies. I suspect the pavement surrounding the park played a vital role in shielding us.
“Thank you so much, Giorgi, but like I said, we have a car,” Aditya repeated with a friendly grin.
“Okay, in that case, I must tell you that you need to drive straight out of town for ten minutes in that direction,” Giorgi pointed off in the distance, “and you will find the absolute perfect spot for a panoramic picture. Don’t miss it. And don’t forget to visit the churches here. They’re really old and pretty. I’m telling you this because you are my friend, my friend!”
“Why, thank you for the tips! We’ll surely keep them in mind,” Aditya nodded, and I made sounds of agreement.
“That’s great! See you around! Yalla**! Good night, my new friend! I wish I had met you when I was in the Gulf, but it’s better late than never!” Giorgi rode off again in a rattle of wheels, the now-empty sidecar bobbing gamely along.
“He seems rather taken with you, new friend,” I waggled my brows at Aditya suggestively. He rolled his eyes at my juvenile teasing, then tugged me towards a stone bench in the park where we could linger awhile and enjoy twilight in the city of love.
*Giorgi is pronounced ‘Gee-your-gee’ with both the ‘g’ pronounced same as the word ‘geese’.
^‘Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge’ is Hindi for ‘This bond of friendship, we shall never break’.
^^‘Sholay’ is the Hindi word for ‘Embers’.
**Yalla is a term used in Arabic slang. It means ‘Let’s go!’ in a manner that indicates excitement or encouragement.
Are you still reading this? Well, in that case, your patience must be rewarded! With more reading! (Yes, I’m mean like that.)
You see, this post was so long that I was forced to split it into two parts. That means there are more silly stories from our travels in Kakheti. They will follow tomorrow in another post.
Until then, here’s a clip of one of our most serene countryside drives in Georgia (no terrifying highway shenanigans here, I swear). If you watch until the last few seconds, you might get a laugh out of it :D
Oh, and the song playing on the car stereo is ‘Beautiful People’ by Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid.
