Georgia: In the Mountains of Poetry by Peter Nasmyth reads like a travel diary, combining the author’s personal stories and observances over multiple trips to Georgia, which he visited shortly before the collapse of Communism to 2017, the year the book was revised. Nasmyth travelled to all regions of the country, including the breakaway states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The book was evenly divided into two parts, pre-independent Georgia followed by independent Georgia.
Nasmyth sure packed in a lot of information within the 368 pages. While I never shun a book solely based on its page layout, if one opened the book and turned to any page without illustrations one would see a small font, narrow margins and minimal space between the lines and think that it might be a heavy read. I definitely thought that I would need about two weeks to finish it, but am happy to say that I could not put this book down and finished it in eight days. Nasmyth included over two hundred black-and-white photos which I genuinely appreciated. He often wrote of landscapes and architecture which would have lost their impact without photographic accompaniment. I knew that if a certain place or building was described at length, that a photo of it would surely follow. I never flipped ahead to see, but Nasmyth never proved me wrong; when I turned the page a photo was there. All the photos had captions in italics. I do not like to read italics as I find the slant difficult on my eyes, so I used a magnifying glass. Since the photos were all in black-and-white and small, I appreciated the magnification.
If there are two main points that Nasmyth could make about the Georgian people, it’s that: 1) they’re the most hospitable people on the planet and you will not be turned away from any household even if you just walked up to anyone’s door and knocked; and 2) they can be loud and argumentative yet the next minute act as if nothing ever happened. They’re just letting off steam and everyone is soon friends again.
During Nasmyth’s travels throughout the country, often through the mountains to villages that had never seen a single tourist, he was welcomed into every home. As a blond (at the time) he was always aware that he stood out among the dark-haired Georgians. He felt safe walking around alone yet there were times during the post-Communist period when the mafia ruled the country where he felt unease amidst crowds where every man walked around bearing arms–and he’s not talking about pocket-size handguns. However that experience was like point #2 above, where the guns served as mere props rather than effective killing machines. They were symbols to absorb the built-up steam in the unsettled post-Communist Georgian soul. Still, I’d feel as if I was risking my life every time I took a stroll in Tbilisi if Kalashnikovs were on every street corner.
Stalin was born in Georgia and is still revered there to a degree, more so as the Big Local Guy who ended World War II versus the dictator who unleashed a reign of terror among the entire population. Nasmyth would occasionally see portraits of Stalin in shops and even a monument or statue, even though those were outlawed after the Khrushchev edict of de-Stalinization. I had a chuckle at this passage, when the author was in a shop trying on hats:
“Deciding one of the distinctive black Kakhetian felt hats (still widely worn) might make a good souvenir, I found a shop and asked to try one on. As I aligned it in the mirror I noticed a portrait of Stalin staring back at me from a corner of the glass, as if to say ‘I think it suits you.’
“It turned out a suitable marketing ploy for Telavi as his picture seemed to re-occur everywhere: on war memorials, shop windows, even in the taxi home, this time pasted against the dashboard. I realised how much this provincial capital lagged behind Tbilisi. It resurrected the last Georgian Big Man into rural daily life, like a kind of absent king. To the locals he still appeared as the biggest, jolliest leader of all time, one who corrected their sense of smallness–his international fame serving as a kind of adrenalin drip to the remoteness of this valley.”
During all of Nasmyth’s travels he relied on locals to gain access to places the ordinary tourist might not see. His frequent visits had established himself as a friendly foreigner bringing worldwide attention to the country. He could also speak the language which always helps when travelling to places that have never seen tourists. Over the three decades since the collapse of the USSR, Georgia has tried to reestablish itself as a tourist hub, as its Black Sea coast used to be a prime destination among travellers living behind the Iron Curtain. However civil wars and the mafia have scuttled these efforts. Nevertheless, travel writers have joined Nasmyth in their assessment to see Georgia now, during a period of stability, before it is overrun with fast-food franchises and kitschy shops.