October in Kakheti

A week ago, with winter closing in, we decided to act on a longstanding plan to visit fellow volunteer Kelsey Olson in Kakheti, Georgia’s wine country in the west. We had been in the region before, and Melissa had even been to Kelsey’s village of Apeni, but never in autumn.

It’s a long road out from Akhalkalaki, with some errands in Tbilisi (stacks of grad school application supplements, a bazaar bag full of books for my English resource room, and various materials for Melissa’s training project) in between. We got in about sunset and went straight to a supra for a departing TLG (Teach and Learn with Georgia) volunteer. Melissa and I joke that we’re about the only volunteers in Georgia who sit around saying, “You know, I could really go for some khachapuri right now.” So it was great to pull right up to a feast of khachapuri, khinkali, and all the other Georgian delicacies we miss up here on the Javakheti plateau.

The next day , we decided to head up to the Lagodekhi National Park, where we’d heard of a really pretty three-hour hike up to a waterfall. It was a gorgeous day for it, warm but not too hot, and we walked along a riverbed, gradually climbing and occasionally taking detours into the woods, with the hills around turning their autumn colors (a few weeks later than Akhalakalki).




A really nice hike, although our luck ran out at the third river crossing. A flood had knocked down the crossing, and all that was left was a nice round log precariously poised over the rapids.

We started to try (well, Melissa did), but we decided, in the interest of life and limb, to quit before halfway. We had lunch and enjoyed the walk down, wishing we’d made it all the way up, but not regretting the time.


In the afternoon we walked out in the huge garden behind Kelsey’s host grandmother’s house. All kinds of fruit trees, vegetables, and especially grapes. We were coming to the end of harvest time, and the wine would be coming soon, but in the neighbor’s yard there were still acres of white grape vines to be harvested, and Kelsey was volunteered to help the next day.







Unfortunately, we had to leave in the morning to make our long trek back (stopping to pick up my metric ton of textbooks to (mostly) finish off my English resource room), so after one more night of celebratory khinkali, Sporcle quizzes, and homemade root beer, it was time to bit farewell.

But Kakheti in the fall is the kind of place you want to go back to.