Tourist hot spots in Kakheti

Sitting in a bungalow in Scotland the wine growing region of Kakheti, which reaches as far east as Newfoundland is west, now feels like another world. The furthest point I could see from the watch tower on the battlements was the peaks of the Caucuses on the way to Dagestan which stood as two layers of silhouettes almost beyond the horizon. Stretching out bellow me was a continuous flat plain reaching as far as I could see either direction with small clusters of houses and vineyards sheltered at the feet of the range of small but serrated hills which Signagi commands.

At night the landscape twinkles peacefully like some forgotten holy land but during the day it's charming tall buildings face a grave future. The government have recognised the outstanding beauty of the town and as a result had decided to redevelop it for western tourists in a the most incompetent way possible. Simultaneously every house in the town is to be ripped apart, reconstructed and refurnished. The streets have been up lifted and over an inevitably prolonged time scale will be replaced with a squeaky, half finished and possibly deserted monstrosity.

Of course I'd like to be wrong and I wish the best of luck to the Georgian government in their projects but they would be better of developing their transport infrastructure and information offices than engaging in intervening soviet style face lifts. The evidence was there in Bakuriani - a town of colourful chalets surrounded by misty forests and another designated tourist hot spot; a tourist information sign in German style right next to the bus stop but no building or personnel.

However, in the same town, wandering a few meters down the street we drawn to a sound of a hundred Georgian men chatting. Peering through the gate way we were insistently placed at the head of a long table next to the host and the tamada. From somewhere at the far end beyond where we could see ladies brought plates of freshly slaughtered lamb, sturgeon caviar and lobio as the feasting was punctuated regularly as the tamada, as his role demands, proposed toasts to mark some tragedy seventy years ago that day probably attributed to Stalin. The glasses of wine, emptied each time, were soon replaced by chacha - their potent grape based vodka - which made way for a very hazy period which some how contained a local who was sure we were Russian spies...

Similarly, wandering through a park back in Signagi had led to us been invited for drinks and sausage with what turned out to be the mayor (drunk) and some superb young singers who treated us with traditional harmonised melodies. No organised tourist route or project can hope to provide you with such spontaneous hospitality.

Our return journey West took us to the desert region on the Azeri border where six thousand cave dwelling monks had been slaughtered by Tamerlane, over the Trans-Caucasian Oil Pipeline which runs through the thousands of deserted factories once operated by the inhabitants of the soviet blocks unceremoniously plonked at Rustavi. We sat in a restaurant hidden in the back streets of Tbilisi at a table next to three absolute master singers from three distinct regions of the Caucuses and their apprentices who filled every corner of the room with diverse sounds and textures.

Our £4 mini bus trip the length of Georgia returned us to the, what now appeared to be, incredibly affluent and modern port of Batumi. Under a different light, we traversed the lush, mosque studded, subtropical Black Sea coast full of healthy and openly warm Turks. And before the hoards of tourists accompanied by the draining continental mid-summer had arrived we had circled the Byzantine walls of Constantinople and were gone.