It's been a long and eventful journey. After flying to Poland for £15 courtesy of Ryanair, I crossed the Ukrainian border with a few hundred cigarette smugglers going in the other direction, and took an overnight train back to Moldova. I met a lovely girl called Irina, enjoyed the first of their Christmases (Moldovans celebrate both 25th December and the Orthodox one on 6th January) and eventually left on a train for the Black Sea port of Odessa. The festive spirit of giving & receiving was interpreted absolutely by two Transdniestrian border guards who got me off the train, locked me in their office and demanded I pay them $35 for some fabricated (though "seriouzniy") reason.
[Subway under Dnepropetrovsk city, Ukraine.]
I had time for a mini-tour of Ukrainian industrial cities before catching a huge cargo ferry across the Black Sea to Georgia. The three-day voyage was enlivened (enloudened) greatly by the contingent of thirty-odd truck drivers living on a diet of vodka and backgammon, two of whom shared the single upper bunk in my room. The Black Sea itself was true to its name: not even the moon pierced the thick cloud at night and there was a tarry blackness in every direction away from our slowly-moving island of light. In the mornings I jogged around some of the 190-metre deck length; and while the captain gave me batteries for my radio I couldn’t find the BBC on any frequency: only China Radio International's English-language service (changing times...)
[The back half of our 22,700-metric tonne cargo ferry, Black Sea.]
My mother helped me across the border to Abkhazia - an unrecognised republic the Foreign Office advises against all travel to (like parts of Iraq and Chechnya) - though where the kidnappers use horses & carts as getaway vehicles, and sometimes provide good Georgian hospitality and alcohol while they wait for their ransom. A steady trickle of people were trudging more than a kilometre in the rain to cross the border from Georgia; and I passed UN military observers from Bangladesh, Sweden and South Korea, and CIS peacekeepers from Russia.
[Sar, from Bangladesh - a UN military observer on the Abkhazian border.]
On finally reaching the small metal huts under an Abkhaz flag, an Abkhaz soldier found no paperwork permitting my visit ("bumaga nyeto"), and not even my elementary Russian could persuade him I was legitimate. I reached for my trusty mobile phone, but found the Georgian cellphone networks still bar calls across this disputed border. So I called back to north-east Hampshire: my mother called my Abkhaz friend, who called her friend the Abkhaz deputy-Foreign Minister; he travelled to his office (even on Christmas Day here: 7th January) and suddenly the border guards' bakelite phone started ringing. A high-volume argument followed, owing to the poor phone lines rather than aggression, and I was permitted to pass.
[Me just after crossing the same border; notice I have adopted Georgian mufti, i.e. black.]
I spent the night with a friend-of-a-friend in Gali district, amongst derelict dream villas from the Soviet era, and hazelnuts and mandarins growing nearby. Meanwhile Charles Kennedy made the evening news, and I see my smartly-suited friend Gupreet (his aide) on the TV screen in this rather unlikely place.
[That's me with friend-of-a-friend Eka in Gali, where some of the 250,000 Georgians who fled during the Abkhaz war are returning.]
Further up the road in Abkhazia's capital city, Sukhumi, there was running water only three times a week, and everyone including me was dressed in woollen socks & cardigans indoors. The city is still spattered with bullet holes, but things are gradually being renovated, painted, prettified, as thousands of Russian tourists venture back in each summer. Palm trees coexist with Ladas.
[Here are the palm trees coexisting with Ladas, in Sukhumi, Abkhazia.]
Still, things felt more normalised there than in South Ossetia - another separatist region of Georgia. I travelled to the border out of curiosity, but soon found myself the other side, having been squished out of sight in a minibus full of elderly women and their shopping bags, and thus waved through the checkpoints where foreigners are obliged to have applied weeks ahead. Getting back out was pretty nerveracking, since I had to pass on foot the menacingly balaclava-ed Ossetian militia, dressed all in black, and possibly rather surprised to find a foreigner coming back out when they'd never let him in. With Ealing-comedy timing, a large lorry appeared demanding all their attention and I snuck round the back of it as it passed, diving into a minibus on the other side. Nerves quickly turned to quasi-farce, since we still had to return through the Georgian checkpoint, and my lack of paperwork was now exacerbated by the fact my pockets were being hurriedly stuffed with illicit cigarettes by the babushka sitting next to me (in order to dissipate her own stash). Luck, and God, were on my side, and soon I was on a train from Stalin’s hometown to Tbilisi.
Returning to the sulphur baths - an anachronistic experience, to see such large, hairy, macho Georgian men, strip off and soap up communally with as much joy as hippopotamuses in mud - I picked up a copy of 'Georgia Today' and realised this ablutionary oasis itself was the scene of recent scandal.
(Page 4):
"The incident started with the detainment of Alexandre Kurasbediani and other criminals in the sulphur bath in Tbilisi. Kurasbediani was being treated in the Tbilisi First Hospital and was guarded 24 hours a day by a special watch. For as of yet unclear circumstances he was found in the bath with three of his guardsmen.
"Ministry of the Interior representatives say that Kurasbediani made a deal with his justice ministry guards, who for a certain price took him to the bath where he met with Tariel Kurasbediani, another representative of the criminal world. During the arrest both criminals and their guardsmen from the Justice Ministry gave armed resistance to law enforcement officers.
"'The reason why there are no attempts to escape from prisons lately is that whoever wants to go out in the city can do so without needing to escape,' stated deputy public defender Akhalaya."
[Scene of the crime: Tbilisi bath house.]
[Mandarins galore on the Abkhazian/Russian border.]
[Aliona's grandmother insisted on ironing my socks before I went out.]
[The Halo Trust, a British NGO, doing amazing work to remove landmines in Abkhazia. Some of the Soviet 'anti-group' mines were suspended in trees with trip wires, with fragmentation explosions which kill everyone within 50 metres, maim up to 100 metres, and injure up to 200 metres. This is Ali (from Chechnya), Izmit (an Abkhaz, who lost his left arm while demining) and boss David (from Ireland).]
[Wacky border guards on my way back to Georgia. I look a bit pale but I promise I have been eating well.]
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