It’s 5am at Tbilisi airport, and the air is laced with the syrupy smell of cherry cleaning products. After eight hours of travel, it helps situate my new location: the orchard and citrus scents of Europe are behind me. I’ve arrived at the point where eastern Europe meets western Asia – across the Black Sea from Ukraine, and the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, touching Russia to the north and Turkey to the south.
Seeing, smelling and tasting these coordinates is a recurring pleasure in Georgia: the acerbic tang of sour plum sauce with roast chicken; rice-flecked beef broth fragrant with parsley and tarragon; the alpine comfort of salty cheese-stuffed breads; pomegranates pressed into ruby-coloured juice by street vendors; the ornate Persian wooden balconies that float above the cobbled streets of Tbilisi’s old town and the turreted spire of the Armenian cathedral.
