Boosting Tourism? Perhaps over My Dead Body: Ogden on Georgian Taxi Drivers

OP-ED

That Georgia is a truly beautiful country with some of the most scenic landscapes in the world is something that is beyond contestation; the endless cheerleading of the government (and Georgians in general) about what a lovely country this is might become tiresome, but one can see their point. It is also easy to see why the government puts so much hope in Georgia’s potential as a tourist hotspot.

However, I, as a Georgian citizen who would tell his opinions to the lamppost if there was nobody else to talk to, have a few recommendations.

The government has invested significant amounts of money (and attracted a significant amount of investments from foreign countries) in its tourism sector, the most recent and notable example being the new ski resort in Svaneti. The country is now full of luxury hotels and resorts from Kakheti to Adjara and everywhere in between…and yet something rather obvious has been overlooked.

A few weekends ago, I undertook a rather disastrous trip to Kakheti with my wife and a friend of mine who is unfamiliar with Georgia. For those who don’t drive (like your correspondent), travelling to Kakheti involves first making the journey to Isani, a part of Tbilisi that Dante probably had in mind when he penned his Inferno. From there, one must negotiate with “drivers” (ie. men lucky enough to pass an easy driving test who then use cheap, damaged cars as taxis for want of anything better to do) to go to Kakheti.

I have done this several times before, but with my friend accompanying us, I was able to view the whole process with fresh eyes. I hastened to reassure him that the swarm of unwashed, shouting men slapping on the roof of our taxi yelling destinations and prices at us were not intending to attack; likewise, their bawling at my wife and his Georgian lady friend was not a stand-and-deliver, but a primitive form of negotiation. However, as the horde of heavy-breathing and open-mouthed Georgian men crowded around us, I could tell that my words were wasted.

I have covered the problems of Georgian driving elsewhere, but for my friend it was something of an eye-opening experience, and I can say with confidence that this is not something that tourists will remember as being a high point of their visit to Georgia. However, our first driver to Sighnagi, while not exactly a paragon of driving excellence, paled in comparison to a friend of his who drove us later that day.

This man, being a younger Georgian man, was more of a problem. It quickly became apparent that here was one with a bee in his bonnet; like many would-be alpha males here, he was clearly not overly happy with the idea of two young Georgian women being with two young foreign men. This did not manifest itself in an overt way as it has before (yet rarely when I am there, or when the Georgian man is confident I won’t understand), but our hero made his point by driving as though he was in competition with Lewis Hamilton.

Of course, any requests to slow down on an icy road were met with the casual shrug and a sneer that drives me to blind rage faster than anything I know, but it was only after he chose to overtake four cars in the face of oncoming traffic that even he realized that he was not trying out for NASCAR. The car coming the other way missed our own vehicle by inches and destroyed the wing mirror; our shining example of Georgian manliness promptly then went into shock, with his eyes wide and his arms locked on the steering wheel.

My friend wrestled the controls from him and brought the car to a stop, and it was at that point that I decided our driver would look much better if his head was removed from his shoulders, but my lady wife and our friends calmed me down. I consoled myself in the most British way possible: by muttering curses at him in a language he didn’t understand.

Despite wanting to go to Lopota Lake, a destination which our driver had assured us he knew, he instead took us to Kvareli, another body of water roughly thirty miles away. After a brief but fierce argument, we ascertained he had no idea where Lopota was, despite being a Kakheti native. However, too done to care, we stayed the night at the Kvareli Eden hotel, and spent a pleasant evening with Georgian wine, a swimming pool, and conversations about near-death experiences.

I’ll not claim that our Kakheti sojourn is a typical experience for all tourists, though I wouldn’t be surprised. If the government really wants to attract tourists here (and bring them back time and time again, which is how my parents became embedded in southern France), building resorts simply isn’t enough; a stress-free (and death-free) way of getting there is absolutely essential. After dealing with Georgian taxi drivers (again) and nearly getting killed because of the pathetic pride of a young Georgian man…well, Bognor for a holiday doesn’t seem so bad.

Tim Ogden