Nate Buchanan and Kara ride rusty Soviet cable cars built for miners in the 1950s through Chiatura, Georgia, then visit a monastery perched on a 130-foot rock pillar where a monk lived until 2014. The cable cars are free and terrifying.
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October 31, 2018.
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Built in the early 1950s and reportedly not updated since then (per dialogue referencing 'the Internet').
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It's a good thing we've switched over to the Xterra instead of the Corolla.
I'm just gonna see. I don't wanna leave.
Thank you so much. Diddy Med Lova.
Far round. Wow, that was fantastic.
Those were the best people. I Do we know where we're going now? Yeah, towards ch. Are we going to.
Yeah, we're gonna go and ride some cable cars.
It looks super sketch.
So we've just arrived in the town of Chiatura and it's like an old City that's stuck in Soviet times. There's all of these factories sitting up on the hills. But the real draw to coming to the city is that they still have old cable cars from the Soviet times that are still running. They're completely free to ride if you're brave enough.
We see a cable car. It's moving. It looks super old and scary. I was kind of hoping it was under construction. We weren't going to be able to do it.
If the condition of the station is any indication of the condition of the cable cars that we're about to get in, I've just become more scared. It's so old, dilapidated, the paint's peeling off the building. And I think the cable cars that we get in are going to be the same way. No way. So old. It's not looking good.
I think that was the last one of the day. So we should probably just hit the road.
Yeah.
Yeah, perfect.
Love to hit him up.
Great. Scary. Wow. Whoa. It stepped down when you got in.
Here we go.
Oh, goodness.
Oh, it's like a metal. A metal coffee.
Really, really bounces.
Okay, bye. Bye.
Oh, dear.
Oh, this is too good.
This.
Oh, my gosh.
This all happened so quickly. We walked in, the man pointed in the direction of the cable car with.
A little Allen key.
And now we are riding inside the metal death trap. Who knows how I can just open the door right now.
Don't, Nate.
This is the crisis.
Wow.
We're going straight up.
It's actually smoother than expected.
I don't feel too stable. Wow. So steep. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. It is quiet. Like it's not.
Oh, it's creaking a little bit. Trying to say something.
Oh, that's just death down there. Oh, my gosh.
I feel like we're just about to go straight into the rock.
Why is I'm right like the rust?
How does this worries me.
And it wobbles every time you move it.
That feels scared.
I feel scared.
Look at this. This is how I connect it to the rope.
Two bolts. Two bolts. Two bolts. Are they tight?
That one looks loose. It's on an angle.
Oh, gosh. The worst part about this is once we get up there, we still have to go back down. Cuz we're at the top of the mountain.
Oh, I like that.
Oh.
What's happening? Oh, my God.
Watch your step. There's a mountain.
Oh, wow.
She says go, go. So I can thank you.
Whoa. Too funny.
This is the death trap that we just Rode in.
She's laughing at us. I love it.
Especially, like, how do people find this so interesting?
That is the motor. It looks very old and shaky. Motor doesn't exactly sound like it's running smoothly. Look at this rust.
Cable that may or may not be very secure where it's banged into this metal all of these years. More rust.
Oh, it's leaving us. There it goes. Oh, wow. It looks even scarier from the outside.
Just go straight down.
So what's going on up here?
Like, why it's a viewpoint for us to look at.
Kara, Was the ride worth the view?
I'm thinking no. I think if it was over, I would be happy. But we still still have to get back on that scary metal thing that's like a century old.
Oh, my goodness.
Who will come out of the metal box?
Ready?
Coming back down.
Bye.
Oh, gosh. Do you need my blowba? Oh, my gosh. Bye.
This is so sketchy, this step.
Okay, okay. Back into this metal box.
Oh, wow. Shit.
We're off. And we're off.
These cable cars were built back in the day for the miners to get to and from the top of the mountain efficiently. And according to the Internet, these rusty cable cars haven't been updated or replaced since they were built in the early 1950s. But the locals still use them daily. This is so dangerous.
We just touched.
Woo.
We're touching trees.
Did it.
We lived. If it falls from here, we just get hurt. Gosh.
Thank you.
Wow. Look at it bouncing.
So there are actually two different cable cars you can ride. But we decided we had pushed our luck enough with the first one. I know that the locals here ride those every day, but I feel very lucky that we didn't end up dead in a little metal box crumpled up on the side of the mountain.
So we've just driven 20 minutes outside of the city to this incredible monastery that sits on this 130foot rock pillar.
We literally Googled Pillar Church to find the address to it. And it is so cool. You can't go up there, but a monk actually lives in there, we read, and he gets his supplies with pulley.
Apparently you used to be able to climb it, and I'm so sad that we can't go up there. Here's the pulley system leading all the way up to the top of the rock. Here are the stairs that the monks use to climb up to the pillar.
I think this is one of those places that's cooler from far away because you can't really see it when you're this close.
That's cool.
Small chance that somebody's buried in there. I could. Oh, hello.
So we ended up meeting a monk who was hanging out down at the bottom of the pillar and I was convinced that he was the guy who was living at the top. So I used Google Translate to talk to him and ask him if he was living up there and he said no. And then I asked him if anyone lived up there and he said no. So now we have our facts straight. Apparently the last monk who lived there lived there in 2014. And the articles that we had been reading about the monk who lived up top, who was 59 years old, were published in 2013. So we think that he died the year after the articles that we read were published.
And that was our last stop on our road trip. Now we are heading three hours back to Tbilisi and returning the car, hopefully in one piece because it has been through a lot.
We hope you enjoyed this video. And don't forget, if you want to get some crazy good coffee for a crazy good price, click on the link in the description.
It's only for the first hundred people and you have to use the code Karanate. I'm sure these codes are going to go super fast, so make sure to do it now.
