Nuts and Bolts: Chiora

PLEASE NOTE: This is practical info to go along with the ‘Chiora’ letter that can be found HERE.

Chiora is a tricky place to do a write up of restuarants and hotels for: theres only one business: ‘hotel’ and I can assure you they don’t have a website. With this being the case, this post will focus on how to get to this remote Georgian village, and, if you’re not feeling like roughing it up in the mountains, I’ll provide a description for another town in the region that is much more accessible and nearly as breathtaking: Oni.

As always, if you plan on visiting Racha, I would strongly recommend picking of a copy of the Bradt ‘Georgia’ Guidebook by Tim Burford from your local bookstore.

Getting to Racha (Oni)

The first step, when trying to reach Chiora, is to get to Oni.

From Tbilisi, Molly and I traveled to Kutaisi (a large city by Georgian standards) via marshrutka (minibus). On our way, we stopped at Borjomi for two nights, however, marshrutkas run to Kutaisi, daily, from the didube bus station in Tblisi. The trip to Kutaisi takes roughly four hours and should cost around 20GEL (6.22USD) per person.

From Kutaisi you will need to travel to Oni. The marshrutka to Oni leaves from the Okriba bus station in Kutaisi next to the McDonalds at 67 Chavchavadze Ave. Be warned though, the Okriba bus station is a bit discorganized. It’s described in the guidebook like this:

[Okriba] is perhaps Georgia’s most disorderly bus station, a scene of third-world chaos especially when it rains; also the food is bad.”
Tim Bufford

The bus station is even more difficult to navigate because all the destinations on the marshrutkas are written in the Georgian alphabet. For what it’s worth: the bus to Oni is located in a small enclave along the main road about 100 yards left of the Mcdonalds.

All that said, the people around Okriba seem to have very kind hearts 🙂

The marshrutka ride takes about two and a half hours, costs about 10GEL (4 USD), and winds through picturesque Georgian countryside. You’ll pass cow pastures, misty valleys, and stunning lakeside villages that overlook deep blue mountain waters. We shared the marshrutka with only one other passanger.

Getting from Oni to Chiora

Chiora lies about 15 miles north of Oni as the crow flies. However, the road meanders along the edges of a river making the drive take an hour long and in the last 2 miles, the road turns to pothole-ridden dirt. There are no public transportation options to take you to Chiora, so you have two options: one, you can hire a taxi in Oni to drive you. But it gets a little expensive (I believe 50GEL was the quote) and these taxis are not always available. So, option two, the one Molly and I went with, is to hitchhike just outside of town.

I know hitchhiking may sound unnerving, but I felt incredibly safe doing so everywhere in Georgia. The very first car that passed us stopped to pick us up and took us all the way to where the paved road turned away from the dirt road. Here, after about 5 mins of walking, once again the first car to pass us stopped and we got a ride in what must have been a soviet era two-door:

After about a 20 minute ride, we arrived at Chiora. The rest, as they say, is history.

Oni

Like I said at the top of this post, if you don’t like the idea of hitchhiking to a remote Georgian village, you don’t have to! You can still see Racha’s beauty elswhere in towns like Oni.

The Guest House

The main reason to visit Oni is to stay at the Guest House Gallery. It’s owned and operated by the Gugeshashvili Family, and is like a cozy, magic, forested oasis where bikes are provided for cruising around town. The woodwork in the home is all hand carved by the Mr. Gugeshashvili and features beautiful, traditional Georgian designs on everything from chair handles to balcony bannisters. The mother is a masterful chef of Georgian cuisine: dinner and breakfast are served every day. The son, Nika, is the only member of the family to speak English and he is a delight. He’s friendly, funny, and always seems excited to help guests even when those guests ask a lot of questions. Nika showed us the Chickens, ducks, and the Georgian wine they were fermenting. I could go on, but there are more treasures in that home than I could fit here so you will just have to go and visit yourself.

The Town of Oni

Oni itself is a small network of streets that interlace to form shaded squares and gathering spaces with white-capped mountain backdrops. The pace in town is slow and spending an afternoon seated on plastic furniture outside a small convenience store eating ice cream and sipping beer while watching kids ride their bikes is a simple pleasure I’ve found few other places. You can see the whole town by making use of the bikes provided at the Guest House Gallery.