My travel adventure to Chiatura began like most of my travel obsessions – with an internet-acquired obsession that set upon me like a flash flood.
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:
