Dmitri the Devil

Taken along for a Georgian death hike.

I’d heard there’s something called Type-2 Fun. It’s when something happens that’s miserable but only afterward you can think, Hey, I’m happy I did that, and it makes for a great story. 

This is not that. Not quite.

I met Dmitri initially at a stand up comedy event. It was my second night in Tbilisi, I went alone. It was an English-speaking event and meant for expats.

The show starts and the emcee is doing some crowd work: “Where my Georgians at?” he says. A few people clap. “Do I have any Brits in the crowd?” A clap or two. “Do I have any Americans?” “Any Italians?” 

“Any Jews?”

Ugh. I slid deep in my chair. Not that I’m embarrassed of being Jewish, but these days, admitting to it in a giant room of strangers is not my first choice. 

Well, right behind me, someone starts clapping, loudly. Proudly. And I said you know what, fuck it, I’ll clap too.

That man was Dmitri.

***

Dmitri and I hung out after the show, but we didn’t keep in touch after that. I knew I could catch him at another show if I wanted. A few weeks later, I added him on Instagram. He messaged me moments later. “Harris man, whats up. Let’s hang again soon.” We chit-chatted for a bit. Then he said, “Let’s do a road trip. I’m off work this Wednesday.”

When I hear “road trip,” I picture two guys, four to five hours of driving, some tunes, a podcast or two, and lots of snacks. So I dress appropriately — for that. I wear shorts, running shoes, a T-shirt, plus my camera, snacks, a book, and a notebook. 

First, I arrive at Dmitri’s and it’s about the biggest house I’ve ever seen. It feels like Entourage. We walk through the back and past the two full-time people who work on the grounds. We enter a giant kitchen filled with junk, which is the backup kitchen. Dmitri’s friend will be joining us as well, his name is Mark.

At this point, I still haven’t asked where we’re going. When I get an invite from a local in a foreign country, and he says show up at this time, I show up. I take pride, actually, in not knowing the details. My thing is, I have a pretty good read on people, and as long as I determine they aren’t dangerous, then I’m in. 

We go into Dmitri’s room and he’s getting ready. The first thing that should’ve tipped me off was his outfit. Dmitri is dressed head-to-toe in army camo. He pulls out a giant camo backpack with a radio attached. I think, Ok, he just likes to dress up like an army boy, or whatever. Then comes out the machete.

“Uh, where are we going again?” I ask.

“To a waterfall,” Dmitri says. “It’s super beautiful.”

Great. 

Now, stupid me, when he says “waterfall,” I picture driving to a viewpoint, taking some pictures, and heading back. Maybe we take a quick dip in the water or stop to eat a sandwich.

Again, for whatever reason, the machete didn’t really tip me off. I just thought the guy was kinda over-prepared — or paranoid — because he also asked if he should bring his gun. 

We get into his truck and head out. The drive is about 90 minutes. We’re chatting, laughing, all that, and weaving through beautiful Georgian mountain roads. Then we stop. On the side of the road. 

“Ok,” Dmitri says. “We are here.”

“Here?” I ask.

“Here.”

“Uh, where?” I look out. We are on the shoulder of a two-lane road. To my right is pure wilderness. To my left is the side of a mountain. 

“We will hike through that, down into the river, then come back,” Dmitri says.

“Through that?” I ask. I’m looking at a wall of brush. 

“Yes, through that. And down to the river.”

I gulp. He puts on thick socks and pulls them above his pants.

“And what are those for?” I ask. 

“Ticks.”

“Ticks?!” I ask.

“Yeah bro,” he says. “It’s nature.”

I get a little peeved. I’m here in my shorts. My running shoes. A huge backpack. Dmitri says “road trip" and so I dress like we’ll be listening to Joe Rogan podcasts, not hiking through the Georgian wilderness.

Fortunately, most fortunately, Dmitri has spare pants for me. He also has spare socks. This is fortunate, because five minutes into our hike, horror hit.

A tick is on my pants. 

I freak. I fucking hate ticks. If anyone who’s met me knows, I am horribly and irrationally afraid of them. Last year I took a quick forest walk with friends in upstate New York and was stopping literally every three feet to check my legs. 

So in this moment, I am not faring well.

First of all, a tick moves much, much faster than I thought. This little guy scurries down my pants and into my goddamn shoe. Without thinking, I take the shoe off, and in an image burned into my skull, the tick clamps his legs to his body, like bracing for a cannonball, then huddles into some tick-protective move. I take my shoe and start banging it mercilessly against a rock. I look inside and the tick isn’t there. I don’t see it elsewhere. I take Dmitri’s army-grade flashlight and look thoroughly, inside and out. It seems to be gone.

I am not — and I repeat not — having fun. And this is five minutes in.

We enter the brush. At no point is it a "calm trail.” At no point do we take two to three consecutive steps on level ground. Instead, I am swatting away horse flies, Dmitri is hacking at vines and branches, we’re scurrying and slipping down hillsides covered in dead leaves. I forget about ticks entirely and am merely focused on survival. At one point my foot goes entirely through the leaves and into some hole, knee deep, to which I instinctively jerk it out before something can hack it off. 

I’m having a miserable time. I’m boiling inside. Why the fuck did he do this? Why didn’t he warn me? Why the fuck did he not at least say, “Hey man, bring pants.” 

Dmitri senses it too. I was all bright and chipper in the car, and I’m not saying peep now. “I know Harris is cursing me under his breath,” Dmitri says. “But in a few weeks you’ll look back on this and say, ‘You know what, that was actually pretty cool.’”

Maybe, I think. But I can’t give him the dignity of saying it. Instead, I think about what it’d be like to shoot him. I want to shoot him in the face. 

Mark tells a story about an interview he heard from a Navy Seal. This guy commanded new cadets and said how he could never reliably guess who was tough and who wasn’t. Actually, many times it’d be counter-intuitive: The person he thought was the toughest was a total wuss, and vice versa. I get what he’s doing, but I have no energy to go along with it. 

Eventually, and I mean eventually, we arrive at the riverbed. I’ve never been so glad. We’re drenched in sweat, sitting and talking and taking selfies. Dmitri points to a giant plant, three feet tall with flurry white flowers. “You see that?” he asks. “If you touch that thing, it’ll kill you.”

I hate this.

“You know what’s my joy man,” I say, “a stack of books at the New York Public Library. That’s what I love. That’s what I do.”

“Bro,” he says, taking a sip of Pepsi. “That’s the gayest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“So be it.”

We walk along the riverbed in search of the waterfall. When I say walk, I mean we hop across slippery rocks and squeeze under fallen trees and shimmy around poisonous plants. Again, I hate it. Every few feet we are rewarded with a gorgeous view, but for the most part, it’s hell. 

I think: Why are we doing this? Nothing said we needed to do this trail. This is the stupidest kind of fun. It’s not like the original route was closed. We chose it. For no reason. To feel something, I guess. Or so Dmitri can play Army Boy or whatever.

We walk and walk. My legs are shaking. I’m beyond hungry. We get to a point where we can’t go any further. It’s a stretch of waist-deep water with no way to cross it, and I hear the sweetest words. 

“Well, I guess we’ll go back.”

Lord. 

My relief though is short-lived; because now, it’s getting dark. Mark pulls up his map. “We can walk back through the riverbed, but it’s a super far route,” he says. “Or we can try to go back up the way we came.”

I’m back to being silent. The sun is setting. Now I’m resigned that we’ll be walking back on a non-trail in the dark, with God knows what type of animals lurking about, plus the mosquitoes. Mark asks if I have a flashlight. 

“Yeah, my phone,” I say. 

“You didn’t bring a flashlight?”

“NO, MOTHERFUCKER. I WAS TOLD WE’D BE GOING ON A ROAD TRIP. NO ONE GOD DAMN TOLD ME WE’D BE MARCHING THROUGH THE GEORGIAN JUNGLE ON THIS POINTLESS SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE." 

Had to get that out. Mark, gracefully, is understanding. 

We make our way back along the riverbed. Now I’m picturing us sleeping out here. The only thing preventing me from all-out panic is that I do feel Dmitri is capable, what with his radio, his machete, and all that. We won’t die out here, I think, it’s just gonna be really, really, really uncomfortable. 

Not too long in, though, a miracle happens. “Hey guys, look,” Dmitri says. He points at this abandoned stone house, barely visible from the river. “If that’s there, then there must be a path, or a road, to get us back.” 

The goddamn guy was right. 

We hack our way to this abandoned house and there it is, a glorious gravelly path that leads us up the bank and back to the road. 

Relief pours through me. We’re safe. We get back with literal minutes before the sun sets, and I’m too tired to even feel happy. I just feel relief. Sweet, sweet relief. 

We get back to Dmitri’s house and eat Georgian shwarma. Mark has a tick on his shirt. I check my clothes, my groin, my scalp about 50 million times, and seem to be clear.

The thing is, as much as I hated Dmitri in that stretch, and as much as I cursed his name and his whole family, for those five hours, I wasn’t thinking about anything else. Not Instagram posts, nor checking my phone, nor daydreaming about the future. Rather, I was praying that I’d even have a future.

And you know what, I did feel good after. Really good. I felt more alive in that hike than I had in weeks, months. 

I said this wasn’t Type-2 Fun, and I never want to do it again. Yet somehow, weeks later, I can’t stop talking about it.

When I was leaving Dmitri's, he walked me out and we were saying goodbye. The back door was closing, and the last thing he said to me was: 

"You're tougher than you think."