I’ve been traveling in fairly offbeat/exotic places for a solid chunk of time now, and one thing I find myself talking to folks about over and over is how I choose a place to stay. Now keep in mind that, despite having closed the hostel chapter of my life (temporarily, at least), I don’t crinkle my nose at staying at places that wouldn’t be considered luxurious. Quite the opposite – as a story collector, I often find that a night or two at a grotty “hotel” in a random corner of the planet (I’m looking at you, Casa Iguana on Little Corn Island, Nicaragua) can yield some incredible memories that dazzle at cocktail parties. And while I admire the long term travelers who stay at such places without qualms (as being thrifty with accommodation is one prong of a strategy that allows those folks to stay on the road for so long), putting in my time at my 9-5 for 11 months a year financially allows me to spend a moderate amount of coin to ensure relative creature comforts while on the road.
When I was planning our trip to Turkey and Georgia last year, I hadn’t originally thought to make a little jaunt into Armenia. But after doing additional investigating into various places to see and things to do, I couldn’t help myself and booked a shoddy hotel in Yerevan – the Erebuni Hotel, if you’re wondering – for three nights in the middle of our 10 days in Georgia.
We had planned to spend 4 days and 3 nights in Armenia in total, one of which would be spent in Yerevan, one on a day trip, and two going to and from Tbilisi. I arranged transport (with the help of lovely folks at Envoy Hostel in Yerevan) so that we could see different things coming to and from the border – an arrangement that basically meant we took two different routes when coming from the Sadakhlo-Bagratashen border to Yerevan and back. Basically I was a total ninja in making sure we used our time in Armenia to see as many damn churches and monasteries as we could.
Georgia (the country, not the state) had been on my bucket list of travel destinations for many, many years before I developed the chutzpah to buy a ticket there. When David and I were looking into places to travel this past December and January, we knew we wanted a more “difficult” vacation – that is, one that wasn’t relaxation focused. We had recharged on the idyllic beaches of Little Corn Island the past March, and were ready for a real adventure. So, as I do for every trip, I started obsessively watching plane fares, and when I found a cheap ticket to Istanbul, an easy hop away from the South Caucasus, I knew it was time to check Georgia off my list.
Exploring Tbilisi in Winter allowed us to avoid the tourist hordes.
I fall down rabbit holes easily, especially when I’m bored at work, thinking about where I’m traveling next. It may or may not be related to my OCD, but when I am fascinated by something, I will stop at nothing to learn everything I can about it. This extends to searching for hashtags on social media on a topic, looking at pictures tagged on flickr or google maps, to asking ridiculous amounts of questions on tripadvisor – I will go to any length to obtain every last bit of public information on an obscure place. This obsession became all consuming one day while I was planning David and my trip to the South Caucasus last year.
Chiatura, Imereti. A small town in Georgia, near the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Former Manganese mining capital of the world. I don’t know where I found the page, but it was likely through some serendipitous hub and spoke chain of hyperlinks. This town:
Chiatura’s greets you with rusty cable cars dangling over the highway you use to enter the city.
