My name is Brian Evans. I'm a cinematographer and fascinated with travel. In the summer of 2011 I was hired to shoot the pilot episode of a travel TV show. A few weeks later I found myself in the Republic of Georgia.
So what do people really know about Georgia? Let's ask this French guy.
Georgia is really well known for the fact that we don't know it.
Georgia sips at a crossroads between Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Throughout history, empires made their way across this region and everyone had left something behind.
We took a speeding cab from the airport to the capital city of Tbilisi and got our first lesson in Georgian driving.
We got into a cab, strapped the GoPro onto the hood, boom, cabbie hits 120 miles an hour on the freeway. We shoot out of there like a race car, never seen anything like it.
We secured our guest house and explored food options. Perhaps some potato on the Mexican or chicken of tobacco. Clearly a few items on this menu had been lost in translation.
After a shovel of Bavarian pork, wash it all down at the Kazbeki beer dispensary where beer-loving Georgians fill any jugger container with Georgia s finest malt liquor. I wish we had this in the States.
Tbilisi was a sensory overload, a mix of the modern and ancient.
We dropped into this amazing food market and it had a little third world status to it. It was pretty hardcore shooting in this market.
We got people everywhere, really poor people. We're running around with equipment that could be a couple of years worth of their income.
Everyone was super kind to us, super happy to say, oh, English, and they'd say thank you and thank you for coming to Georgia.
It wasn't long before we met some characters. This is Goga.
This guy's a freaking insane Georgian maverick. So cool. Just him and his buddy take us and they say, okay, we're going to go and show you some things today.
So we're jumping in his car and it's fucking insane. Swerving left and right. I think he went beyond the cabbie from day one in the airport. This guy was balls out insane.
Goga was taking us to some monasteries.
We're talking just ancient, ancient religious history. And these guys get totally silent. They're just totally into the really religious, very religious people.
But right beforehand, we're rocking out and drinking beers, talking about prostitutes, things like that.
Back in Goga's speeding death trap and we were headed for his home.
His family and friends shared their food in line with us and made sure we stayed entertained.
Our first days in Tbilisi passed quickly and it was time to move on.
Smells like Georgian cigarettes.
The next morning we took him our shoot cut to Wine Country in the city of Sugnagi. Sugnagi was famous for wine.
I'm really stoked on the food I ate today. It's the best I've had in Georgia so far.
The wine is amazing. We're in a beautiful wine country. Some little kids on ATBs, you know, who ramp me around, get me where you need to go.
And tomorrow, apparently, we're going to ramp up into the mountains, into the Caucasus. And we're going to see some truly amazing things.
We left Sugnagi early the next day and found a guide to take us deep into the mountains.
This is Schumacher. That wasn't his real name, but we called him Schumacher after the German race car driver, Michael Schumacher.
We came to give him a big ego and kept him smiling, so we kept with him.
It would be a five hour Jeep ride on a treacherous dirt road to get us deep into the mountains and to the ancient region of Tusheti.
I was about to go back in time.
A dream I once had.
A dream I once had.
A dream I once had.
I went through the most amazing valley, most amazing mountain range I've ever seen in my life.
We're in the Caucasus Mountains here, deep, high in it.
There's ancient villages here, ancient castles and just the greenest pastures and flowers and nature and so many things.
We're in Omalo, which is this amazing valley.
I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
We're staying in this medieval watchtower. These windows show where they used to shoot arrows at their enemies, yet there's energy saving light bulbs in here.
We left Omalo this morning and came to the town of Dartlo, surrounded by hardcore rivers just streaming down.
It looks like snow, but it's just like coming down so fast and coming into a huge river that just cuts this whole valley.
Dartlo, a very, very small town, is set along the hillside and there's more medieval towers from the ancient, ancient times of Georgian culture.
That's what we came into today and it was incredibly mind-blowing.
After four days in the mountains and a few hundred mosquito bites later, we were back in the valley in a need of transportation.
Our taxi took us back to Tbilisi.
From Tbilisi, we took another Marschuca towards the Black Sea. We had to take rest and stopped in a small beach town called Kobaledi.
We just took a, I don't know, six-hour Marschuca drive from Tbilisi to the Black Sea here.
This is a little unknown village. It's not in the guidebooks.
Marschuca was hair-raising to say the least. There's crosses everywhere along the side of the road, along the whole trip.
All's good. We're still alive and on to the next chapter.
The next chapter.
The next chapter.
The next chapter.
The next chapter.
As they say, the language of music was universal.
From Batumi, we took a night train back to Tbilisi.
It sounded like the rails were going to bust through the floorboard any minute.
This continued all night, and I arrived in Tbilisi for our final day of sleepless rec.
I had shot over 60 hours of footage over nine days, and had been on the greatest adventure in my life.
Some people said I shouldn't go to Georgia. Some people even said I might die.
That fear mentality is what keeps everyone from realizing their dreams.
I made great friends and met amazing people on the other side of the world.
I knew that if I had said yes to this opportunity, I would get to discover a country so few will ever visit.
That alone was reason enough for me.
