Martvili Palace to Katskhi
Our final destination for day 9 was Katskhi Column, where we stayed a night in a house nearby. We took a slow drive to our destination, stopping midway at a big town, Kutaisi just to view its famous Colchis Fountain.
Colchis Fountain
The Colchis Fountain was a monument in the central square of Kutaisi. The fountain celebrated the ancient Kingdom of Colchis. There were 30 large scale copies of famous gold jewellery discovered near the town of Vani town and all over Georgia.
Presently Kutaisi was the third largest city of Georgia after Tibilisi and Batumi. Historically, it served as political center of Colchis in the Middle Ages, as capital of the Kingdom of Abkhazia and Kingdom of Georgia and later as the capital of the Kingdom of Imereti.
The fountain was very pretty, it was in the middle of a huge intersection. There were two gold armour horses at the top, a gold human statue and many gold animals.
Katskhi Column
We were in Katskhi to view Katskhi Column also known as Katskhi Pillar. The pillar was a natural limestone monolith some 40 metres high. On the top o the pillar were ruins of a church, a crypt, three hermit cells and a wine cellar.
As we driving up the road we could see the pillar and its ruins from far. We found a carpark nearby and walked to the base of the pillar. The ruins were of an early medieval hermitage dating from the 9th or 10th century.
The church on top of the tall column remindered us our visit to Meteora (Greece) many years ago. At Meteora we saw many monasteries seated on the tops of pillars/columns. The reasons that the monasteries were built on top of “unreachable” columns were that the monks wanted to be away from humans and be nearer to god. We wondered if those were the same reasons of this church on top of Katskhi column,
At base of Katskhi Column was a newly constructed Church of Simeon Stylites.
There was an open iron staircase that led to the top. Only local monks were allowed to take a 20-minute climb up the steel ladder to ther very top!
Near the parking space of Katskhi Column, we met a Georgian family picnicking. Surpurising they reached out to us and in limited English the young girl in the group conversed with us. The family was very curious about us as it was very rare to see “Chinese” looking faces in their midst. At the end of our encountered the seniors of the family insisted that we accepted their home brewed alcohol!
Stay at Katskhi
Our stay at Katskhi was Butichi Guest House found on Booking.com. The cost for one night (no breakfast) was 90Gel and there was no ensuite toilet in the room. It was the only “stay” around the vicinity of Katskhi Column at the time of our search.
We arrived early and could not get in till the family of the guest house came home. The family live on the ground level of a two storey building while the upper level were for guests.
The guest “spaces” in the upper floor has three guest rooms, a huge common living/dining area and a shared toilet. We were the only guest so our host give us a choice to pick any of the three guest rooms for the night.
One of the guest rooms had a private living room on the outside and two beds in an inner room attached to the private living room. The host gave us a key to the inner bed room.
It was this bedroom key that put us into a funny hilarious situation!!!
We locked our stuffs in the bedroom before visiting Katskhi Column. After we came back the key could not turn to unlock the door. Our host had to activate her husband and then her son to force open the lock.
After the key unlocked the door, we thought all was fine so that night before we slept we latched the door of our private living room and locked our bedroom door with the key. But the next morning the bedroom door could not be unlocked again. No matter how we turned the key the lock could not be unlocked!
After an hour wait we finally spotted our host walking below the window and shouted to her for help. Our host could not get through the latched private living room to get to our bedroom door. So she ended up activating her neighbours who brought a tall ladder to climb through our bedroom window and broke down the lock from within. It was such a dramatic event for our host and her neighbours!
