Tbilisi HHH Celebrates #200 in Telavi

What better way to celebrate your 200th hash in a country that is known for its wines, than by going to a wine tasting? On Saturday morning, Meg & I packed our bags for the weekend and met some folks to drive the 2 hrs to Telavi. The drive was overall uneventful and much better than the drive to Shatili. (Read: the roads were paved the entire way.) We showed up, checked into our hotel -- which was surprisingly quite nice, though they didn't have enough beds for all of us due to a shipment problem earlier in the week. (Somehow they found enough cots to fill our needs.) We went for a hash in the beautiful country side around two old monasteries (one seen here). The run was great fun, despite the trail disappearing at points.

The guy who had set the trail earlier that morning came back with stories of highly agitated shepherds who were beside themselves when they spotted him running through their pastures dropping handfuls of flour every 20 feet or so. One shepherd approached him and gestured to see this mysterious white powder that he was dotting their fields with. When he handed over the bag of flour the shepherd reached a hand inside and took a handful, asked in Russian, "May I?" and proceeded to put the handful of flour into his shirt pocket.

After hearing this we were not surprised to discover that many of the trail marks which had been carefully laid earlier that day had disappeared. Either the shepherds diligently rubbed out the marks to keep the crazy Westerner from returning with his friends or they scooped up each little mound of grain to run home and start baking bread for the coming winter.

We then went home and had a "supra-lite" -- which is to say a supra composed mostly of foreigners and only lasting 6 hours. (That's a lot of heavy wine drinking in my book.) The food was great and I think the wine was good, but who really knows. (For real supras, apparently they budget 20L PER PERSON.)

Some of us staggered up in the morning for breakfast, then we had a quick little hangover hash outside the hotel. (I got nominated to live hare it as I think I was the only one really willing to carry a 5 lb bag of flour around in the morning. I found another shepard that was none too thrilled about me throwing white stuff on the ground.) We came back, cleaned up a bit and went wine tasting before we drove back home.