We are now settling back into Tbilisi for the next six-months (we think), and a few comparisons between the capital of Georgia and one of the country‘s most remote provinces come to mind.
Svaneti is a place of endless beauty, no matter the season or weather. You are IN nature with towering mountains walls, wildflowers and rocky cliffs all around you. Tbilisi is a city with a population of about 1.5 million. Noise, pollution and speed are all problems, but there is also a lot of culture, including music, visual arts (theater, cinema), international food, bookshops, and more. Svaneti, on the other hand, has a much smaller (but not zero) public transport system.
Tbilisi – regular electricity, water, and gas. If they go off, you will be notified by SMS and know the start and end times. Svaneti has only the gas you can bottle. Electricity and water is free but less reliable. There is no warning when they will be cut off for any reason. You can ask the village mayor if the water is running or the power guy to see if the juice is flowing again, but you might not get a definitive answer.
Tbilisi is a city where you can only grow what fits into flower pots and window boxes unless you own your own land. Svaneti allows you to farm as much as you own land, which is always a lot (unless you are one of the rare people who live in an apartment in Mestia). You better be able to do it yourself, or have someone in your family who can. I have my wife. You can go from hilariously wrong to disastrously wrong.
Svaneti is not bothered if you renovate your home or build a building, whether it’s for personal or business use. There are no signs or fences required, and no printed version of the finished project, with contact numbers or a due date. Tbilisi needs to do the opposite of all this. More control, more bureaucracy but also more adherence to building codes in order to make sure that everything is safe and right.
Tbilisi has changed since my parents’ first visit in 2004. They said that, after living in Indonesia and Zimbabwe for most of the 1990s, the worst roads they had ever experienced were in the capital. Traffic and road improvements have both grown rapidly in the last 20 years.
Svaneti has also made great strides since the days when it took six hours in first and second gear to drive 120 km between Jvari and Mestia on mostly dirt and gravel road. Almost everywhere, there is asphalt and cement. There are sections of this stretch where the road has lost half its width and needs to be repaired from a bi-directional single lane. They did the restoration as quickly as possible to show off how good they were before the recent elections. Many people say that the asphalt was laid too quickly and not properly. There’s also frost heave that dates back several years, which has been left untouched. It is dangerous. Very mixed results.
In Svaneti you can heat your home for free with electricity and a large wood-burning Svan Stove. The wood should be seasoned at least 6-12 months. In the city, central heating is provided by gas pipes that warm the water in your faucets and radiators.
Tbilisi is still very diverse politically, as you would expect from a city of its size, let alone the capital. Svaneti, according to what I’ve heard from many sources, is almost entirely GD. Saakashvili was able to pacify the area from the Aprasidze mafia’s rule and restart its hospitality/tourism, infrastructure and infrastructure sectors. The rule of law was restored violently, but decisively. And the place became safe for women trekking alone. Most people will not dare to mention or notice the re-flowering corruption post-Misha, but a few brave souls will.
There are definitely pluses and negatives in both places. We spent 10 winters in Svaneti, but decided that with no guests in the white season we could afford and needed to spend the winter in relative comfort in Tbilisi, and see everyone we had not seen in that decade. On our last two snowy days in Svaneti, the electricity was less on than on. They say that, if a village requests a comprehensive overhaul of its power system to avoid such outages in the future, the money will be recovered by charging for power. We’ve all gritted teeth and endured it. I’ll miss Svaneti and its winter beauty. I plan to return in February for Lamproba, a festival of torches that takes place at the end of winter. Tbilisi is the winner until then.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer is a writer and photographer who has been working for GT since 2011. He has lived in Georgia and Svaneti, respectively, since 1999. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
Read More @ georgiatoday.ge