Nekresi and Gremi
We wanted to go back to Kakheti: the landscape was so amazing, like a medieval idea of heaven, and we felt that we had left a lot to see. We contacted another driver and arranged to spend the day in Kakheti.
I really wanted to get to the other side of the Alazani valley; the mountains looked so amazing from the hills around Anaga. Like a wall, or something from a fairy tale. Today they looked twice as high as last week, with clouds shrouding the tops, at 10,000 feet. We drove across the valley from near Mukuzani, the village name of my favorite Georgian red wine. Mukuzani can be very variable, but the best variety tastes something like a cross between a french burgundy and some kind of italian red wine: soft, fruity, but with some backbone and that indescribable funky Georgian taste. Slightly like a home made wine, yeasty and slightly cheesy, which is, by antiseptic American technological wine standards, a fault, but here in Georgia is just a reminder that wine is made by people, and is just a beverage.
We drove for forty-five minutes across the dead-flat valley, past vineyards, orchards, cornfields, and pastures; past farmers out in their horse carts, donkey carts, three-wheel tractors, big forty-year-old soviet tractors, broken down Ladas loaded to the roof, rusted-out Volgas, and large groups of men standing in the shade by the road waiting for something. The mountains got bigger, then smaller, and finally started to emerge from the blue haze as tree-covered hills, sharp and beautiful.
We asked directions and finally, hidden in a bush, was a sign in kartuli that said Nekresi Monastery. We turned off the main Telavi road into an alley of poplars.
When we emerged we could see the monastery, high on the side of a hill.
Enver tried to drive all the way up to the monastery, but the road was too rough for the mighty Niva. He had taken out the really low gears to save gas during the summer, and the 15 to 20% grade on loose rocks was too much for the upper range of gears. We slid to a stop, abandoned the Niva and walked the rest of the way. I was glad to be on my feet after three hours in the car. I like to take a tent, sleeping bag, a stove, and food for three days whenever we go out for a walk here in Tbilisi, so I carried my usual backpack up to the monastery.
When we came out from under the giant, gnarled trees, we could see the drum church first and then, behind it on the hill, the monastery itself.
The drum church is a small gem of a church: tiny and dark on the inside.
But, up the hill, inside the monastery, is the really remarkable thing: a mid-fourth century church, built in 360. It is weird: the ambulatory leads into a narrow, very vertical space with an apse that reaches the top of the tower. It is hard to imagine more than one person in the church. A staircase leads down into a dark, tiny crypt.
Next to the fourth century church is the former bishop's palace, with a large marani in the basement. (A marani is a wine storage room with amphora buried in the ground.)
Wilson found frogs in the kvevris, and tried to bean them with small rocks.
The view out the windows on the second floor of the palace was out across the Alazani valley, and really remarkable.
The monks have moved back to Nekresi, and have built a house up in the woods above the monastery. The view from the edge of the woods, back across the bishop's palace and the tower shows the edges of the Alazani valley and the foothills near Gremi.
We hiked down the hill to the Niva, chatting with the students the whole way (and Enver teasing Wilson about the cute girls who wanted to talk to him), got back into the car, and drove about ten kilometers to Gremi, a fortified church palace from the 16th century. It looked so amazing, sitting on a hill over a small rocky river. The frescos inside the church were great, but the dwelling was a tower house, dark, scary, and bleak.
Finally, we were hot, tired and hungry. We got back into the Niva and I got head drop narcolepsy: eyes rolling back into my head with doubling vision as we bounced our way across the valley. Somewhere still in Kakheti, we decided to buy some churchkela, that soldier's treat made from boiled down grape must and nuts. It tastes like faintly fruit-flavored plastic (I think it is more flour than grape juice) with earthy undertones. It looks like something nasty. The old ladies who sell it hang it on stands by the road, so it has some car exhaust in it as well. We chewed our churchkela stolidly and rode back to Tbilisi in silence.