What do you wear when you go to Georgia in winter? What’s the weather like and what do you need to take? Well, I think I got it kind of completely wrong but that’s ok because now you’ll know.
I started with finding out the weather in February. January too – I titled this Georgia in February but actually, I arrived the evening of January 29th. January weather could range from 6°c right down to -2°, averaging 0.9°. February was -1° up to 8°, averaging 2.6° with respective average rainfall of 21 and 26mm. Cold and wet.
I only had hand luggage. I don’t think any posts yet have mentioned how many flights it took to get there and back but Tbilisi-Istanbul-Amsterdam and then Amsterdam-London on a separate booking did not lean towards hold luggage reaching Heathrow at the same time as me. So 45l of space for winter clothes, and the additional complication of 36 hours in Cyprus on the way.
I took two long-sleeved thermal tops, one black and one grey. I took one pair of thermal leggings and one of Primark’s velvet fleece-lined tights. I had lined showerproof outdoors trousers for outdoors days and much lighter zip-off summer hiking trousers which I could wear the thermals underneath. A black t-shirt with hidden pockets, my red Skaftafell t-shirt, a long-sleeved red t-shirt and a looser yellow one. I wore my dark red hoodie with lots of pockets and took my 66° North Vik jacket, which is somewhat sleeker and less bulky but has no pockets. I also had a really fine lightweight athleisure hoodie that makes a great layer under a proper hoodie. Mountain boots for warm feet and good grip on ice and snow. Two hats, fleece mittens and a scarf completed my outfit.
For outer layers, I had my battery-operated heated coat and in case I needed anything else, my packable Uniqlo down jacket.
You don’t need to know the details of underwear or electronics or sketching kit but I took two swimsuits, a travel towel and a dry bag for sulphur baths.
This lot meant a very full bag and a very heavy personal item. The bag is an Osprey Fairpoint 40, which doesn’t swallow stuff as easily as it could. The personal item was hand sewn by me from ripstop nylon to Icelandair’s size limits and I’m relieved to report that after its fourth trip, it’s still looking good. I wore all the heavy and bulky stuff. Please picture someone who proclaims herself a polar bear piling on a thermal top, a mid layer hoodie under a bulky hoodie and an electronic coat in the Cyprus sun to walk 400m down the road to get a bus. “I’ll be grateful for this in Georgia this evening” became my mantra.
Reader, I was not. Tbilisi in winter is chilly but I didn’t find it cold. I took the heated coat with me on the first day but I didn’t switch it on and I undid it within ten minutes although I’ll admit the Chronicle of Georgia probably was the coldest place of the whole week. After that, I left it behind and carried my packable down jacket in case I wanted it. I wore it to the sulphur baths in the evening a couple of times. I never wore it back home again. The boots were overkill. Didn’t need to wear the gloves or scarf at all, although for photos I wore the scarf up to Mtatsminda thinking it might be chilly enough up on the mountain to be worth it. I did wear a hat pretty much all the time I was outside but I didn’t need two, especially when the Musselburgh hat is reversible.
I never wore the thermal leggings. On the days when I wore the red Skaftafell t-shirt, I wore the lighter thermal top underneath but I didn’t bother when I wore one of the long-sleeved tops. I kept the yellow one for conference – this is the top I haven’t been sweating around Tbilisi in for four days! The black t-shirt I kept for travel – its pockets are the perfect size for a passport. And I wore the bulky hoodie with pockets literally every single day. It’s bulky! It’s heavy! It’s hard to do up, especially when there’s a camera in the pocket! But how else do I keep my wallet, travel card, hotel key on a huge keyring, mini mic & receiver, mini tripod, camera and phone safe and close at hand if I wear the 66° North jacket? That’s a me problem, not a Tbilisi problem because I’ve never clung to so many pockets in that way anywhere else. Maybe it’s time to design that packable day bag I keep thinking about.
I did use one of the swimsuits, the travel towel and the dry bag. But if you have a private room in the sulphur baths, swimwear is entirely optional and you can rent towels, which means you don’t need the dry bag to get the wet stuff home. I had a good heated towel rail in my hotel room so everything was bone dry by morning and ready to go again but I could have saved a little weight in my bag by hiring a towel each time for, frankly, very little cost.
I say all this knowing we were fantastically lucky with the weather. We had sunshine and blue sky about 95% of the whole week and while it wasn’t t-shirt weather, hoodie weather was a lot warmer than I’d anticipated. But one thing struck me. One of the Traverse group went to Uplistsikhe a few days later than the official tour – maybe after the post-event trips – and she had snow that made it difficult even to get up to the centre of the cave town. It could so easily have snowed on me too. I think if I went back, I’d still want to take at least one full set of thermals, the scarf and mittens and the big coat, just in case.
But for me personally, when I was there, it was almost quite pleasant spring weather and I rapidly began to feel like I’d drastically overpacked.
