Beshumi

Luckily I had no trouble flagging this marshrutka down.  Everyone inside was delighted to see me and couldn’t wait to hear what sort of nonsensical adventures I had been up to, made all the more nonsensical by the fact that I was speaking in excited and heavily accented Russian.  They broke into peals of laughter when I told them that I was planning on getting to Batumi by nightfall (the sun had almost set at this point) and one of them, Maxim, insisted I come to their village with them as a guest.  Seeing few plausible alternatives and noting the rain outside, I willingly became their captive.

We ascended further into the clouds, where the landscape got more rugged, more populated, and much colder.  We were dropped off at the peak and were instructed to wait for the next marshrutka going to Beshumi, our final destination.  Beshumi, as it turned out, was quite the hub, but at the end of the line and almost right on the Turkish border.  What later surprised and delighted me is that the village I could see across the valley when walking earlier that day.  Naturally my first reaction was, “Holy shit!  I’ve been walking next to Turkey this whole time.  Turkey.  The Nato-Warsaw Pact border was right there.” 

Waiting at the turnoff, I used this opportunity to get to know my new crew.  Maxim worked for the government in Tbilisi.  I think for the army.  He had been in Iraq recently and now worked in intelligence or something.  His nephew/son/someone was also along for the ride.  This kid was the least village I have ever seen.  So Tbilisi.  Then there was a woman and her son.  Our conversation reached nearly fever pitch when Maxim discovered I didn’t have a phone. 

“How on earth do you not have a phone?”
“I…don’t have a phone.”
“That’s impossible. How do you contact people?”
“I have no one to contact.”
“What if there is a problem?”
“I’ll ask you if I can use your phone.”

At which point the woman interjected with her assent, noting that Georgians are very friendly and will   always offer to lend a phone.  Georgians are so friendly.  I just don’t get it.  Most of these people have gone their entire lives without mobile phones, who even knows if regular phones existed up in this village at 3300m in South Georgia.  And only now is it totally inconceivable that a person could exist without one.

Anyway, I changed into jeans and my jacket for the first time in two months and we all piled into the marshrutka.  I was the celebrity attraction, and was fed a few scraps of dried ramen noodles from a bag that a kid was holding.  We trundled along the muddy path all the way to the village, which seemed to exist in a linear fashion along a single topographical line on the side of a mountain.  This means that there was no natural collection or drop off point for the marshrutka and we stopped at every single house along the way.  It took an hour and a half to finally get to my hosts’ place, where I and the rest of the parcels from Tbilisi were handed over to the hostess as some sort of exotic gift.