Khashuri to Gori - 42km

We made it to Gori where our main objective was to find the Stalin museum on Stalin Avenue!!

It is a very grandiose building, and as soon as you walk through the door it has an eerie feeling and Stalin is everywhere, watching you. We got a guide as part of the ticket price, and she took us up the red carpeted stares into the first of four great halls filled with Stalin memorabilia. She spoke as if reading a script with almost no expression on her face. She told us of how Iosef Stalin was sent to Siberian jail 6 times and escaped 6 times, our great leader!! And then went through his whole life until his death, with no mention of any of the atrocities. There was a whole section on the industrial progress and it was filled with Soviet propoganda pictures; happy, smiling faces!

There were many pictures and the various conferences during the war, with Churchill and Roosevelt...and countless pictures of him in a variety of military uniforms! It was incredible, it was like a This is Your Life moment, with none of the bad bits. One room we walked into and the lights were dimmed and in the middle of a circle of columns was Stalin's death mask, a bronze cast of him soon after death!

Outside there was a sort of mausoleum protecting the house in which Stalin was born...the rest of the neighbourhood has been destroyed, most likely to build to Stalin Avenue and there alone surrounded by gardens and a roof over the roof, are where Stalin made his humble beginnings and from here rose to become the great man of Georgia...

We also managed to get a little tour on his train carriage. Not as spectacular as you'd imagine but Humphrey did get a shot of his loo!

We went to find a homestay that was in the guidebook, and were shown into a garden shed, with planks as beds and a concrete floor. We were too tired to worry and it cost 2pounds, but I was determined to get to Tblisi early the next day, I had only had two showers since entering Georgia and I was in desperate need.