2022 Year in Review

Looking back at the highs and lows of 2022 – plus a preview of 2023 (including a big announcement!).

Read my previous yearly reviews for 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017.

Normally I enjoy writing my annual review and looking back over my travels and life experiences from the previous 12 months.

But this time around, I have been putting it off.

2022 has been a turbulent year. I reached new highs in blogging and business – highs that a few short years ago, I couldn’t have even imagined.

At the same time, I hit all-time lows in other aspects of my life.

Now, as the year draws to a close, I am determined to put a positive spin on all that has unfolded over 2022.

Here is a brief recap of the year and a preview of my plans for 2023.

• Also read: New in Georgia 2023 – the restaurants, tours and projects I’m most excited about for the year ahead.

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My biggest milestone of 2022: Buying a house in Georgia!

If you don’t subscribe to my newsletter or follow me on Facebook, you might not have heard the news that Ross and I bought a house in Kutaisi. This was by far my biggest ‘moment’ of 2022 and it set the tone for the entire year.

Buying your first house is a huge life event. It should be cause for celebration. But for a long time, it was something I didn’t want to share publicly or even talk about with friends and family.

Don’t get me wrong: I love our house. It was the first of about a dozen we inspected. From the very get go, I knew it was the one.

I will tell you more about the house itself in a future post (in the new year, I will be publishing a special blog series about the buying/renovation process).

Briefly – it’s a classic post-war home, built in 1956 in one of Kutaisi’s oldest districts.

It has good bones, an unbeatable location, an endless supply of mandarines, and a whole lot of potential.

But our timing was kind of terrible.

We signed the papers for the house in February, just a few days before everything unfolded in Ukraine. At first we felt like we had made a huge and irreversible mistake. That dissipated fairly quickly, but with so much anxiety and general gloom going around, ‘being happy’ about our house felt wrong.

Then a few months later, we started the renovations.

I don’t think anyone looks back at a renovation and says, ‘Oh that was faster, less expensive and less painful than I expected!’. We knew going in that renovating a house in Georgia would be all kinds of stressful. But for various reasons, it has been one thousand times worse than I predicted.

Things are still ongoing and I can’t say too much about it yet. I know that everything will work out in the end – and as soon as the end is in sight, I promise I will tell you all about it.

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2022 in travel

In 2022, I visited a grand total of two countries – a 100% increase on 2021!

OK, so I haven’t been a very good travel blogger these past few years. The ‘return to travel’ has been slow for me – and besides, I still have plenty to see and do here in Georgia.

This year I was more than happy to stay local, travelling a lot of Georgia and re-visiting Armenia and Turkey.

My 2022 travel highlight: Visiting Tusheti

Tusheti was definitely my most adventurous and rewarding trip of the year. I honestly thought I might never make it to Georgia’s most remote mountain region, but then a golden opportunity to travel with Georgian NGO Elkana and the FAO presented itself.

The roads were terrifying and it rained almost constantly, but still we had an incredible few days filled with great food, spectacular scenery, generous hospitality, and endless cups of herbal tea.

You can read more about my experience in my Tusheti Travel Guide and in this short guide to the village of Dartlo.

If you’re planning to visit Tusheti, be sure to check out these tips for getting there from Tbilisi.

A close second: 10 glorious days in Istanbul

In June, Ross and I did an extended ‘border run’ to Turkey and spent a wonderful 10 days in Istanbul. It was our second visit (we were also there in 2019 at the end of our big overland trip through the Balkans). I enjoyed it much more this time around.

This trip felt like a return to the kind of carefree travel that was normal in my pre-blogging years. (I think the last time I took a trip and did what I wanted, when I wanted without worrying about the blog was when we visited Oman in 2016.)

I ended up writing a few articles about Istanbul – including a 4-day itinerary, these travel tips, this travel budget, this guide to seeing the Whirling Dervishes, and this guide to Arnavutkoy district.

For as long as we stay in Georgia, I think I will try to visit Istanbul once every year. There’s something refreshing about being thrown into a city so enormous and so overwhelming.

After almost 30 months straight in the one country, it was a good reminder of life and travel ‘beyond Georgia’.

My travels around Georgia

Having said that, I had some wonderful experiences in Georgia this year visiting lots of new places and re-visiting some old favourites.

Most of my 2022 travels were in Western Georgia.

I started the year with an Easter road trip through my favourite region, Guria. With local festivals returning this year after a long pause, I had plans to attend as many as possible. That didn’t really eventuate – but I did get to participate in Lelo Burti in Lanchkhuti on Orthodox Easter Sunday. It was quite an experience.

On the same trip, I visited Poti – the last of Georgia’s ‘big’ cities that was on my list. In spring, I made a few more trips to the Black Sea Coast, visiting both Kobuleti and Batumi.

After Tusheti, I was invited to tour Kakheti and Imereti as part of a development project led by GIZ and the European Union. It was a great opportunity to meet local artisans, winemakers, and other small business owners from the regions.

I made a long-overdue return visit to Gori and signed up for a Soviet Tour with my incredible friend, Zhana Odiashvili. I also made it back to Zugdidi for the first time since 2020.

On both these trips, I reconnected with people whose businesses I had written about a few years previous, including Lia Zautashvili (Guest House Nitsa) and Tsira, Manana Kakulia and Roberti Absandze (Orkol Studio). To see them doing so well post-pandemic – and to hear that my blog has played a role in their success – is both wonderful and humbling.

This definitely feels like my biggest achievement for 2022.

In autumn, I managed to squeeze in a quick road trip to Sachkhere and Racha to see the fall foliage.

Then in November, I spent a couple of days in Borjomi and Bakuriani and finally managed to write up a proper guide.

Last week, I made my final trip of the year to Zestafoni as part of a tourism initiative led by Polish NGO Solidarity Fund PL. And I got to experience one of my coolest days in Georgia thus far when I was one of the first foreigners to tour the 1930s Ferroalloy Plant.

I’m so excited about the future of tourism in Zestafoni and I look forward to sharing more about that project in the new year!

In 2022 I made more trips to Tbilisi than I can count. Most were for house-related research and shopping, but I also enjoyed being a tourist and exploring the city with fresh eyes.

Two of my most popular new guides for Tbilisi this year were this list of reclaimed spaces and this look inside the incredible Tbilisi State Academy of Arts.

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A year of Kutaisi

Tbilisi has changed a lot in the past 12 months. Every time I go back, it feels a bit less familiar.

Even though I will always love Tbilisi, Ross and I are more confident than ever with our decision to move to Kutaisi.

2022 was our first full year here. It was a huge pleasure to watch the seasons change and to watch the city evolve.

Ross and I have made some great local friends over the past year. The expat community is growing, too, so there are always new faces around.

We also welcomed old friends, new friends and family for visits.

Kutaisi is a good place to run into people. As well as meeting many of you, my readers, I got to spend time with several bloggers who I really admire, including Mark and Kirsty from Kathmandu and Beyond, Jiayi from The Diary of a Nomad, Caroline from Veggie Wayfarer, and Cynthia from Journal of Nomads.

And earlier this month, I was lucky enough to spend a whole day with Polish blogger Kami, whose website and Facebook Group have been a huge inspiration to me ever since my first trip to the Caucasus.

Last year I predicted that Kutaisi would continue its trajectory – and from my perspective, that certainly turned out to be true. New businesses are continuing to open up, cool events are happening, infrastructure is improving, and interesting people are relocating here to start all kinds of projects.

Despite this, Kutaisi hasn’t lost any of its charm.

I love exploring this city, and I’m lucky to have some very generous people in my life who have been teaching me about their city and showing me around some of the ‘secret spots’.

Some of my favourite and most popular guides on the blog this year were for Kutaisi – including this rebooted Kutaisi itinerary, this neighbourhood guide, and this list of hidden gems.

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2022 in blogging

2022 was a huge year for the blog. I surpassed all the goals I set for myself this time last year and grew my business considerably.

I’m not in the habit of sharing stats in these reviews, but there is one number I’m particularly proud of: 2.6 million. That’s how many people visited Wander-Lush in 2022.

I worked hard this year to publish more guides than ever before and to update almost everything across the site (that’s 500+ posts).

I also co-wrote and released an ebook, the Digital Nomad Guide to Tbilisi.

My travel consultation gig has been going great (thanks to everyone who booked a call with me this year!), and I was lucky to land some great opportunities both freelancing for online publications and partnering with small businesses and NGOs here in Georgia.

All in all, 2022 was my most ‘successful’ year in blogging by a long shot. I’m very excited to see what 2023 brings.

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What’s next? Looking ahead to 2023

My main priority for the new year is to finish the renovations on our house. We are desperate to get out of the apartment we’ve been renting and start living there.

There’s still a long way to go, but we have our fingers crossed for spring.

One of the best things about being based in Kutaisi is having access to the international airport, which is the base for Wizz Air in Georgia. I have yet to take advantage of the low-cost flights, and I’m hoping that 2023 might bring more international travel opportunities. So far we have one trip to Germany booked for March.

I have lots and lots of travel plans lined up for Georgia, including Gudauri for skiing (if it ever snows!), Vashlovani National Park (for the first time), and Svaneti (for the first time since 2017) – among other places.

This coming February will mark our three-year Georgia anniversary, and I’m not even close to completing my personal wish-lists of places to visit and things to do.

I really enjoyed partnering with NGOs this year and channeling my previous career in international development. In 2023, I’ll be on the lookout for new partnerships and ways to help amplify the important work others are doing here in Georgia.

Aside from continuing to create helpful content for you, my biggest business goal for 2023 is to diversify and explore new opportunities.

I still don’t know exactly what that will look like, but I have a few ideas in the works that I’m sure you’re going to love…

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Announcing the Tbilisi City Guide – coming this spring!

I do have one project I can share with you now: I have written my first proper guidebook!

The Tbilisi City Guide has been a work in progress since 2020, and I’m pleased to announce that it will finally be released this coming spring.

Originally the idea was to repurpose and reformat information available on the blog into an ebook. But I’ve expanded and rewritten so much of the content, it’s now far more comprehensive than anything I’ve published online. It’s also structured in a more user-friendly way for travellers who are on the ground.

I did everything myself – the research, writing, photography, design and layout. I have put thousands of hours of work into it.

It has been a great distraction from the chaos of 2022, and I’m so proud of how it has turned out.

In spring, I will release the Tbilisi City Guide as an ebook (PDF). If there is enough interest, I will do a print run ahead of summer.

What format would you prefer? Is printing the book a good idea? I have been going back and forth on this for months now, so if you have a strong opinion either way, please let me know!

If you would like to join the waitlist for updates about the guidebook and presale announcements, please leave your email here.

In January, I will reveal the cover and give you a preview of what’s inside.

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Wishing you a very Happy New Year and a positive, productive start to 2023!

As always, thank you for your readership and support.