Going to Tbilisi and not taking an hour or so for a sulphur bath is like going to Iceland and avoiding the Blue Lagoon or going to Paris and covering your eyes whenever the Eiffel Tower comes into view. The sulphur baths are a Tbilisi tradition. More than that, they’re the reason the city exists! In short, the Georgian King Vakhtang came here in the fifth century when this was just forest and hunting land. His falcon caught a pheasant but couldn’t hold up its weight. The two of them plunged into a narrow valley and the king found them in a natural hot stream. I don’t know whether falcon or pheasant survived either the fall or the potentially boiling water but they became the motif for the new city – King Vakhtang declared that he would have his capital built here, in “the warm place” – that’s literally what Tbilisi means – and there’s now a statue of the birds locked together in Abanotubani, the sulphur bath district now covering most of the gorge.
There are ten sulphur baths still in operation today across Tbilisi, down from possibly hundreds a couple of centuries ago. Five of them are here in Abanotubani. Back before houses routinely had indoor bathrooms, this was where ordinary people came to get clean. Now it’s a ritual and a tourist activity and to my knowledge, only one of the bathhouses in Abanotubani even has public rooms anymore.
I went to three of the bathhouses and rented the smallest private room. The bigger ones are more luxurious in every case – as you would imagine – but they’re also a little out of the price range of a single person. Split six or even twelve ways, they work out really good value. Imagine your own private room with hot sulphur bath, cold plunge pool, a sauna or even two and your group gets this entirely to themselves for £10 each. But I did the little rooms which are universally less luxurious.
Number one was Chreli Abano, which you’ll occasionally see as Orbeliano Baths. They’re the same place. This is the popular one, the expensive one, the tourist one. It’s the one with the big tiled Persian-style front. If you google Tbilisi mosque, this is the place that pops up in the image search. It’s not a mosque. It was never a mosque. It’s a bathhouse. Tourists and YouTubers alike flock to this one and my personal theory is that it’s because it’s the only one with a proper website, where you can pre-book your room and treatments online. Actually, this only works if you have a Georgian phone number to verify your booking but I sent them an email (in English) and arranged it all in advance and it was very easy. At Chreli Abano, the staff wear black spa-style uniform and there’s a phone in your room so you can call for help, for drinks or receive the call that says you have fifteen minutes left until you have to vacate, which saves you having to keep an eye on the time.
Chreli Abano has three 1-2 person rooms, which cost 100GEL (~£30) an hour, all pretty much identical although one of them is mirrored compared to the other two. You get a tiny changing area with a bench and a little bistro table and some hooks; there’s a toilet and then there’s a glass door through to the wet room. The wet room is dimly lit and tiled in some slightly crazy-looking beige and brown. It has a small square pool at the far end of the room, with steps so you can sit with just your legs in the water if it gets too hot. On the side of the room is a tiled slab for the kisa scrub or any other massage booked, and opposite the slab is a shower. This is your own private space for however long you’ve paid for. I went for an hour myself and found it was more than enough. This water is hot! Despite what all the YouTubers say – and I watched a lot, so I knew what was going to happen – I didn’t personally find it stank too badly of sulphur at all.
Next was the Royal Bathhouse and I had room number 4, at 110 GEL (£33) an hour. Spoiler: this one was my favourite. The changing area was three times the size, with chunky wooden sofas and table and hooks so high I could hardly reach them and a slightly bigger toilet.
Through the glass door, the wet room was easily twice the size and the pool much bigger too. In fact, this pool was deep enough to stand up in, long enough to starfish in and wide enough to lie with your elbows on one side and feet on the other. It also had a slab and a shower, although I’ll admit that this one didn’t have a proper shower head, just the end of a pipe. It was better lit, the tiles were easier on the eye and I really enjoyed the tiles on the floor and up the sides of the slab, which were painted in various blue and yellow floral designs. You also get a phone here for emergencies and requests but they expect you to keep an eye on the time yourself.
Third was No 5 Bathhouse, probably the most traditional of the three. Probably the most traditional in Abanotubani. This one has public rooms, where you’re expected to be naked around strangers, where the purpose is to get clean rather than lounge in hot water. I went for a private room, also number 4, and it was 70 GEL (£21) for an hour. It was bigger than the room at Chreli Abano, a little smaller perhaps than the room at the Royal Bathhouse and had no phone. Its toilet cubicle was tiny and home to the only squat toilet I saw in Georgia. Up above, you could feel fresh air from the vents in the domed ceiling and hear traffic noise – the only room where I’d heard it.
Again, the bath was big enough to stand up in, although a bit smaller than the Royal one and this was the only one that really smelled sulphurous. I had two showers for some reason in this room. Two conflicting thoughts on decor: the ceilings in the changing and wet rooms were really… well, gaudy, but the walls, especially in the wet room which is the one I spent most of my hour looking at, were just public toilet white tiles, which combined with the fluorescent light over the door, gave more of an atmosphere that you’d strolled into a school changing room. Over-bright, a little run down, a little low on ambience but for the price, not quite enough to complain about. Honestly, I’d probably pick this room again over the Chreli Abano 1-2 person room.
In all three cases, I’ve seen pictures and videos from their bigger rooms and they are universally more luxurious. If I had a group of six, I’d probably go for the second-biggest room at Chreli Abano but I think NO 5 has a pretty good large room too and I suspect I wouldn’t be upset if that was the one we ended up in. Honestly, it just blows my mind that Traverse didn’t book out the larger rooms and have a sulphur bath as a proper organised activity option. I suppose I’m not entirely sorry I didn’t end up changing in front of a load of people I don’t know but a sulphur bath really felt like something obvious to put in the schedule.
So that’s a comparison of the three bathhouses? What do you do, though? Well, I just lounged in the hot water for an hour. No phones (they all have wifi and the passwords are just lying around at Chreli Abano and Royal Bathhouse), no blogging, no nothing. Just an evening sitting in the hot water, breaking it up with a cool shower when it gets too much, and getting back in.
But at Chreli Abano, I did have a traditional kisa scrub. These range from 10-3o GEL (~£3-9) and although you book them at reception when you check in, you pay the scrubbing person in cash when they leave, so make sure you’ve got the cash on you – they don’t tend to give change. I left it on my little table for maximum convenience. At Chreli Abano, you can either bring your own scrubbing mitt or buy one but you seem to be supposed to provide it. They were more vague about it at the other two, where I declined to be scrubbed. Chreli Abano offers a pretty upcycled mitten made from an old carpet, which is 20 GEL (~£6) or a basic black one (I can’t remember how much but I assume 10 GEL). You get to keep your mitt, so if you go to another bathhouse afterwards, you can take it with you. Mine is hanging in the bathroom.
I gather women get a female scrubber and men a male one. If you book a room as a heterosexual couple, you’ll get two separate scrubbers and sometimes the male partner will be required to leave the wet room until the female partner’s scrub is done. But that definitely doesn’t happen every time, or probably even most times. Every video I’ve watched has one partner filming the other, then swapping round. You can be scrubbed naked but western tourists tend to prefer a little less flesh on show. Men usually wear their swimming shorts and women are required to remove the top half of whatever they’re wearing.
First, you lie on the slab and get scrubbed. The scrubber applies a tiny bit of something soap-like to the mitt and then scrubs you to within an inch of your life. Look closely and you’ll see black bits of filth rolling off you. Then they scoop up a bucket of sulphur water and throw it over you. Back first, then front. Then they produce a kind of bag, or maybe an old pair of white tights, I don’t know. They wave it in the air to inflate it, like you do with those festival sofa-things, and run their hands down it and it bursts into foam which they pour over you and then massage you again, front then back, then buckets of water. I have no idea how this is done. I would absolutely buy one of those magic bags if it’s on offer. Last, the scrubber rinses everything off under the shower, takes the payment and goes off, leaving you kind of red and raw and feeling cleaner than you’ll ever feel in your life. You’ve been well rinsed but hop under the shower one more time and then return to your sulphur bath.
This, I think, is what happens in the public rooms. You don’t go there to lounge. You go there to get scrubbed. These aren’t spas – or at least, they weren’t. They were bathhouses, where people went to get clean because they didn’t have showers in the house. I personally don’t need to be scrubbed like that more than once a week but I’ve been making use of my mitt ever since. I can’t get the same filth off me that the scrubbing lady did but I definitely feel smoother and cleaner afterwards.
Kisa scrub is entirely optional. I had four baths (went to Royal twice) and declined the scrub three out of those four, so if you’d rather not be scrubbed while topless by a stranger, you don’t have to. Private rooms all have locks on them but no one will walk in – you’re taken to your room by an efficient member of staff who shows you the facilities and isn’t going to show a stranger into an occupied room but they’re all lockable, so you don’t have to worry. Some bathhouses take bookings via Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp; Chreli Abano will do it online or by email or you can get your hotel to phone and make a booking. Very few will take a booking in person more than an hour or so in advance – I thought I’d try and book one of them for Sunday night on Friday, only to be handed a card and told “no booking – phone on Sunday and check”. Most people seem to speak some English.
Is there anything else? Take a drink, definitely. The pools don’t smell as bad as you think but they’re probably hotter than you think, and rooms range from 2-person size up to about 12-person size so they can accommodate pretty much anything you like. But definitely go and have a sulphur bath while you’re in Tbilisi.