Healing Waters of Georgia

the country not the state

When I started Substack, I didn’t think that much about who would follow me. I assumed it would be the same people who always follow me. A couple hundred writers and editors that I know in New York (1/8 of them hate reading), my sister, and my best friends. I was wrong. Most people I know don’t pay for the blog! And what a relief! It’s much more fun to interact with strangers. The readership here feels different than my experience on Instagram and Twitter, which kept me tightly in my professional circle. (You never learn anything from writers, they only talk to each other.)

It was not my design—but it has been my delight—to meet readers, and ask them to write for the blog. I prefer guest posts to my own writing. (I’ve always wanted to be an assigning editor.) Anyway, today, Lily Scott has an incredible article—top ten of all time?—for us on the healing waters of Georgia. I asked Lily for a bio and she just said, “Lily Scott is trying to live a quiet life of truth and beauty in Montana.” I respect that.

Going to Georgia

At the end of each academic year, I long to check in to a kind of half-hospital, half-spa. I imagine mornings of exercise, days of experimental medical treatments, chess- and billiards-playing, reading, smoking, deep solitary contemplation. In other words, I long to spend 2-6 weeks at a rest resort for Old Bolsheviks. A sanatorium in the Caucasus like the one where Trotsky was receiving treatment for fevers and a mysterious melancholy during Lenin’s funeral. Hopefully one as beautifully appointed as the resort in Kislovodsk that compelled Aleksandr Serafimovich to spit on the floor and wear his shoes to bed lest he be corrupted by such bourgeois comforts... Maybe in a poignant literary setting, like on the banks of the Lake Issyk-Kul at the famous Avrora (whose experimental design was inspired by Chinghiz Aitmatov’s The White Ship).

The ship-like Aurora.

But I also want to spend this time with my boyfriend, and balneological therapy and solitary contemplation have not yet been enough to convince a fisherman to leave Montana during bull trout season. And so, exciting (secretly bathing-themed) road trip has emerged as an especially successful genre of travel for us. And maybe it could be for you? Perhaps nowhere is better suited to an exciting “healing waters”-themed road trip than Georgia. Here is a place with mountains that make Montana’s look like a quaint diorama. The capital city was founded when King Vakhtang I discovered hot springs while hunting pheasants in the 5^th century. Georgia is also home to my personal white whale. Tskaltubo, a major Soviet resort town connected by a direct train line to Moscow during the golden age of the nomenklatura, now largely abandoned!

Our driving route was basically: Tbilisi – Javakheti plateau – Vardzia – Meskheti – Chiatura – Racha – Kutaisi – Tskaltubo – Black Sea coast – Batumi. We took the train from Batumi to Tbilisi and spent a few days in Tbilisi on both ends. “Healing waters” were my particular fixation, but one could also structure a Georgian road trip around public mosaics, Soviet modernism, exotic fruit leathers, unusual weightlifting gyms, Demna Gvasalia’s visual references, etc. I wish I had thought to get spontaneously married at the House of Justice hiding in the shade of mushroom caps or at the big freak cathedral of secular rituals! 

Here are some Georgia suggestions mostly related to “healing waters”:

“Holy Trout” at Berta Monastery: The monks at this remote monastery on a forbidding volcanic plateau keep a special pool for “holy trout” thought to have disease-healing powers. You can strip down and dunk in the trout pool in a special building built for this purpose. I did not see the trout but splashed around in and drank some of the special water. Minor ailments have since steadily improved, but perhaps the full power of the holy trout has yet to be revealed!

Chiatura: The healing powers of any waters here are likely compromised (or enhanced!) by mine tailings, which I do not say to discourage you from visiting this little city—Chiatura’s web of gondolas, bustling market, abandoned Young Pioneer’s Palace and army of street sweepers stole my heart! Besides, the nuns at Mgvimevi Convent will sell you all kinds of teas and ointments to heal you. Indeed, some of the best shopping in Georgia is at the cave monasteries where the nuns are getting up to all kinds of alchemy. Dinner at Lunch at Lia was excellent and Lia was curled up on a chair reading a book on the female orgasm when we showed up—respect!