Despite my unwavering love for Kutaisi, I must admit that there is not much to do or to see within the city, which is partially what makes it so charming as well. However, it is, much like Batumi, an excellent hub town, and in fact a better one. There are many short and long day trips one can do out of it, and a more outdoorsy one is visiting the Gelati and Motsameta Monasteries that are found nearby. Read on to find out why I ended up walking more than 30 kilometres on this fateful day, and why I do not regret a single meter of it.
The moment you go to the centre of Kutaisi, or anywhere with an abundance of drivers within the city, you will be hassled by all sorts of people who will offer taking you to Gelati Monastery, or offering whole day trips starting from 40 GEL and the like. Simply, refuse whatever they may say. Download Bolt or Yandex Taxi to your phone, and look for a cab from the center of town to the Gelati Monastery. It depends on a lot of things, but I waited for around ten minutes only, and ended up paying 13 GEL for a taxi ride to the said monastery. Though I love walking, doing this whole trip both ways would have depleted me for the unforeseeable future, especially because the way to Gelati is uphill.
Despite getting there early on and more or less being the only tourist there as a result of that, there was not much to see in the Gelati Monastery for me, due to the ongoing restorations that I was not aware of. Nevertheless, I was more hyped for the journey ahead than seeing how some cool old monasteries looked like on the inside. I have seen my fair share of these beauties in many other countries, so I am okay with some such bad luck like this one. After spending a few minutes wandering around, I decided to start my journey walking slowly to the Motsameta Monastery.
After walking down the hill a bit, I realized that Kutaisi was certainly further away from me than I imagined. It is that town on the horizon, my final destination. Not disheartened in the slightest and in fact emboldened a bit realizing the true length of the journey that lays ahead of me, I stuck to the paved road to put my mother’s worries to rest a bit.
I was not kidding when I wrote the “paved road.” It is true that these monasteries are relatively far away from the city centre, but they are not far away from civilization. Both monasteries see a huge influx of tourists, and despite the ongoing repairs in the Gelati Monastery, two buses full of German and Korean tourists ended up arriving there just as I was leaving the premises. This is a view of the Gelati Monastery from a bit below, and admittedly it looks a bit better from this angle given how getting close to it meant only seeing folks working on renovating its insides and a lot of machinery and scaffolding to go along with it.
After listening to Miki Matsubara’s wonderful “Stay With Me” on the loop for a period of time that I am ashamed to disclose, I came across this wonderful little building at the “frontier” of the Motsameta Monastery. Contrary to the writing, there were no cold drinks inside, nor even a clerk, heck not even an inside to speak of given how the door was locked… Nevertheless, I marched on to finally make my way to the monastery proper.
Well, the good news was that there were no renovations here, the bad news was that compared to Gelati, not only was the monastery in Motsameta much smaller, but also less architecturally pleasing to the eye, at least for me. There was not even a way to photograph it properly due to the way you go in and out of it, as well as the bridge that connects the monastery to the rest of the mountain range. Thankfully though, the nature on which this monastery was once built went above and beyond my wildest expectations. Once again, my phone’s camera cannot do it justice, but the meandering river that encircles the monastery (nestled somewhere to the left of this photo) is mesmerizing, and so are the green mountains that in turn shadow it.
Much like its exterior, the interior of the Motsameta Monastery did a poor job at impressing me as well. At the risk of sounding too entitled, I simply have seen much better ones back in the days, so this was not really a sight to behold for me. Nevertheless, it was never the destination but the journey itself that mattered the most to me that day, so I continued my zealous walk towards Kutaisi, as I backed down a bit to go back on track on the main road that leads to the city.
As I conclude this piece of mine, I have to do one big shout out to all the wonderful souls that stopped by on this main road just to tell me that they can get me to Kutaisi, free of charge, despite me not trying to hitchhike even once. Some were families, some were mothers with children, a few apparent clergymen, some gentleman with a rally car, and a few others. They all seemed genuinely worried that I was out under the sun near the asphalt, but in all honesty, I was enjoying every single second of it. One of my “goals” for 2023 was to walk 30 kms in a single day, and that was the day I wanted get it over with. Therefore, I kindly rejected all these offers and ended up walking around 20 kms in this first “walk” of the day. Later on in the day, I made up the difference and then some more within Kutaisi to reach 31 kms. Though the monasteries themselves provided a lacklustre “entertainment” for me, it was this goal on my mind that kept me full of morale all day long, as I enjoyed my walk around the Georgian countryside.