Stripped bare and scrubbed down
Nothing exposes the core of humanity more than inside the banya (sauna).
Batumi, Georgia.
The iron hatch unlocks and the door creaks open. Staring back at me is a posse of six grandmothers who scan me silently. Up and down, down and up. I inch forward, introducing myself with a stutter.
Did I mention they are all naked?
I’m puzzled by the huddle that follows but quickly realize they’re voting on whether to invite me into their ritual or show me to the private room next door. They’re picky about who they allow inside, and for good reason.
This sauna is a holy place, one that they’ve religiously visited every Saturday since 2003. If it sounds cult-like, that’s because it is!
Everything is exposed inside these wooden walls. Dark matter bubbles to the surface like a geyser. Healing transpires with every crack of bundled branch against bare skin. Vulnerability is the default as belly laughs and absurdity cushion intergenerational truths and traumas. Surface level doesn’t exist here.
Their bond is a testament to the sacred sisterhood born through ritual. In this heat, borders dissolve and bodies become but a vessel. The shared language is one of care and reciprocity; the power contained is absolute and divinely feminine.
For over twenty years, they’ve collectively witnessed their bodies change and souls evolve. Magic, connection, rawness, alchemy, nakedness - this defines the sauna sisterhood.
“We don’t just let any straggler in,” they finally announce. “But we like you.”
Upon my democratic induction, their exteriors melt much like the honey scooped into my honorary mug. I untie my shoes in the gleam of their gummy smiles.
“Now drink,” they command while pouring chai. Hydration is key before sweating, hacking, exfoliating, and purging all the dark matter from within.
In a matter of minutes, my necklace is removed and all my earthly clothes are stripped. After a rinse under the humble shower head, the ritual begins.
Before introducing herself, Makvala is already massaging my limbs with the fine ash of coffee grinds - Turkish, everyone’s favorite. The gentle exfoliant is scrubbed until my pores are deemed ready for the next round: corn flour. Milled using a mortar and pestle, I learn it’s the same kind used to fry the beloved cornbread of the region, mchadi.
As the resourceful remnants swirl down the drain, a woolen hat is tenderly placed on my head and I’m finally ushered inside the sauna. Hot rocks sizzle violently as a soup ladle splashes water with precision. The sudden wave of steam consumes my horizontal body and my lungs awaken as eucalyptus expands their capacity.
Out the chimney goes the smoke and with it, the thoughts of how I even got here…
After weeks of looking out my apartment window with curiosity, I finally decided to climb the distant hillside flirting back at me. I was intrigued by its mysterious slope, dotted with village homes I could barely make out and a cable car that relentlessly glided past its peak.
It was Saturday morning and I woke up before dawn to catch the cool air. I hopped on my bike until the once distant hillside was under my feet.
In pursuit of a foot trail, I stumbled into the backyard of a villager. Her shock quickly turned into an invitation. “Every guest is a gift from God,” she recited, while stuffing me with freshly fallen hazelnuts and meringue cake. Assuming I’d gotten lost while headed toward the familiar smell of burning wood, she pointed me in the direction of the sauna.
I opened the unmarked gate to find a family crunching on toast and cucumbers on the patio. The father of the house was stubbing his cigarette on the patio. “Saturdays are for women,” he said while waving toward the hand-built sauna attached to his home.
“But I’m not prepared…”
“What do you need?” he asked.
I thought for a moment.
“A towel, I guess?”
I paid the small entrance fee, plus 3 Lari for a towel.
“But you’ll still need permission.”
Confused, I watch as he knocked on the wooden door, giving the posse a warning before retreating back outside.
My emptied mind swirls as we alternate between the contrast of dry sauna, cold plunge, and an overhead ice bucket operated by a woven rope. With one hand adorned in a kessa glove and the other holding a clay rock, Nati dictates our synchronized movements. “Arms up,” she demands.
With peculiar accents of varying degrees, we communicate in Russian, the shared language of their Soviet-era education. Natives of Armenia, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, and Russia, they each married Georgian men during the occupation. The stories they share are like portals, instantly teleporting me to foreign societies and distant eras all the while slimy egg whites coat my raw body. The bubbles of soap that follow in the shower are well-deserved.
As we armor ourselves to face the outside world once more, the flesh of fresh aloe vera is smothered across my face like war paint. The healing is sealed with one final layer of cow lard, “nature’s moisturizer.” Tamara winks at me as the three-hour ritual concludes in all its magic, connection, rawness, alchemy, and nakedness.
The sauna is a revolutionary place — literally. Inside its womb, dozens of revolutions were born, as were hundreds of babies. I too felt reborn, or “fresh as a cucumber” (свежий как огурчик) as they say. The air felt crisper and my shoulders lighter as I waved goodbye.
Throughout my time in Georgia, I would visit them week after week. If ever I missed a Saturday, they’d welcome me back with winks and cheeky grins: “We thought you forgot about us!”
