Trampers in Sakartvelo (Georgia). Part 3: the KIDNAPPING!
After more than 10 days of unbearable suspens (I had to let my bruises heal and recover from the psychological trauma...), let me tell you the story of our kidnapping.
As we prepared to explore the wildest part of Svaneti (the area between Ushguli and Lentekhi... extreme travellers only...) Tabea and I were abandonned by our last male travelling budy as he just couldn't bear the thought of all the dangers that were ahead. Ok, the truth is that everybody had told us that no car was even going that way and Josh had no time to waste, Tabea and I decided to stay in Ushguli a little bit longer, and soon we were offered a ride to Lentekhi. Ignoring the chill in our spine, we decided to leave with the relatives of the family in whose barn we had stayed. We quickly put our things together and hoped that they wouldn't leave without us. But when we came back to the car, we found the men having lunch and drinking rakhi (Svan alcohol). We joined the table and had some food to get some strength for the trip (they say georgian cheese is good for chasing bears away...). After a few hours, two other meals and many more rakhi shots, we were finaly ready to go. The road was beautiful, it was narrow, and so were our seats as we were squeezed at the back of the red Niva with a not so sober man who had serious thoughts of marrying Tabea. On the way, we met not bears and wolves but two men with whom we had another bread and cheese meal and series of toasts (for Jesus, for friendship, for the pretty girls in the car... and many other things) during which the 2L bottle of rakhi got finished...After a few hours driving in the beautiful and empty mountain landscape, we reached a little village. All the men except the driver were pretty drunk by then, and they started driving us around the village, stopping everytime we encountered somebody and showing us around like war trophees. Tabea and I were having some fun, waving at people and enjoying the feeling of being exposed rather than being the ones watching people. Somehow, that's always what makes me feel bad when I travel, and I am glad whenever I leave the place of consumer and become the one who is being observed.
We visited of one of the men's family, whose wife, instead of supporting me not drinking alcohol for medical reasons heavily insisted that I had to drink as well. Then, we left again, and went back into the wilderness. We drove around, hd some more stops here and there and then were driven back towards the last village.
At this point, Tabea and I understood that we'd surely not make it to our destination and would have to wait until the next day. The men told us that they would take us to a nice house for the night and that we would keep driving the next day. But things happened a little differently. We were taken away from the village to a house, that was probably nice 50 years ago, when it was not overgrown by stinging nettles and still had windows and doors. The driver drove off leaving us there with two drunk men. I told Tabea, 'We don't want to stay here right? Let's go...'. We started to walk away quietly while the men where speaking and staring at the house. Now relax, I am sure that they wouldn't have harmed us, as we knew their families, and they just weren't the kind of violent guys. But as they came after us and told us to come back we started to run, jumped over the gate (and I fell in the stinging nettles, leaving my whole body burning for the next hours and giving me a huge bruise), and ran to hide somewhere in the forest. Again, we could have gone away calmly and they probably wouldn't have done anything to us, but hiding in the forest seemed like the best idea at that moment. We were laughing, high on adrenaline, and also wondering if they did actually have bad intentions.
After looking for us with torches for an hour, they left and we quietly walked back to the village. We knocked at the first house we found and I explained with a mix of georgian and a lot of mimics the whole story. They were surprised and amused and the daughters seemed very curious about the two strange muddy girls that just broke into their house. As it was a small village, those people turned out to be friends of our kidnappers, but they took very good care of us, fed us and let us stay for the night. The next, day, we had some conversation using my phrase book and I took some pictures of the girls. Then, surprise, one of our kidnappers appeared in the house, smiling, as we said in georgian 'bad boy!', he laughed and said that he could still take us to Lentekhi. We said that we'd rather go by foot and left with our backpacks. We hadn't walked for 30 minutes when a man told us that the police was about to come and drive us. I don't know if they'd come just for us, but soon the captain of the Svaneti police arrived and graciously took us until he found somebody to take us all the way to Lentekhi! That was the end of our Svaneti kidnapping story ;)