A Week in Magical Svaneti

The idyllic mountain village of Ushguli

Oak leaves

November 5, Tbilisi

A symphony of autumnal tones

There are places that I visit around the world that don't stick in the memory that much after I visit them; Denmark, Uruguay and Saskatchewan spring to mind off the top of my head.  Others are fun, but somehow don't live up to the expectations I created in my mind, like Tunisia or Morocco.  Then there are places that I visit once and spend years thinking about afterwards, hoping to arrange a return visit because I feel there is unfinished business there.  Svaneti, a mountain-girded valley in the far northwestern corner of Georgia, is in this category.

The quintessential Svan structure

I first visited in the summer of 2011, on a bike trip from Tbilisi to Tallinn.  With so many kilometres to cover during summer holidays from school, there was not nearly enough time to spend to get to know the hidden corners of this Caucasian jewel, regarded as the bastion of the purest essence of Georgianness because its remote inaccessibility spared it the not-so-tender attentions lavished on the rest of the country by invaders such as the Arabs, the Seljuks, the Persians, Timur, the Persians and the Russians.  I rolled across the high Zagar Pass and down into Ushguli under grey skies and spitting rain, then rolled onwards to Mestia.  The next day the weather was better, but I had a deadline to meet Terri in Sochi and had no time to linger.  I remembered the views of mighty Mt. Ushba and of the distinctive Svan towers, and cast longing sideways glances at the tributary valleys as I raced past on my bicycle.

Deep burgundy red leaves

For years I had dreamed about returning to Svaneti, enticed by stories of its culture and the wonderful mountain trekking to be done, but there were other adventures to be undertaken, and the dreams remained unfulfilled.  Then in February of this year I signed a contract to teach in an international school in Tbilisi, and I began thinking much more seriously about when and how I would return to Svaneti to do some hiking and to show Terri the sights.

Vibrant fall colours above Mestia

As soon as we arrived in Tbilisi in August, we raced off to Tusheti, the other great mountain wonderland of Georgia, for a week of trekking.  After that, we started the process of looking for a Mitsubishi Delica, the ubiquitous 4x4 minivan that serves as taxis and marshrutkas in regions of the country.  With so many Delicas on the road, we had no idea that it would prove so difficult to buy one for ourselves, but with only a few days left before my fall break, it became clear that we wouldn't have our own wheels and would be travelling by local marshrutka minivans instead.

Terri underneath a Svan tower in Mestia

Early on the morning of Saturday, October 13, we jumped into a taxi with our backpacks and headed off to Tbilisi train station.  The day train to Zugdidi was inexpensive, modern and very comfortable, and the trip across the central mountain barrier of the country and down into the lush plains of ancient Colchis (fabled destination of Jason and his Argonauts, where the Golden Fleece was to be found) was comfortable and scenic.  At Zugdidi station we hopped into a battered Ford Transit minivan and, after much waiting around for passengers, we eventually drove off, past villages lined with walnut orchards and uphill into the first folded creases of the High Caucasus.  We were following the Enguri River and soon found ourselves looking down on the artificially azure waters of a giant hydroelectric reservoir.  The hillsides were cloaked in dense ancient stands of oak and hornbeam, their leaves various pastel shades of orange, yellow and brown in the afternoon sun.  Once past the reservoir, each tributary offered views of tall square-based stone defensive towers up below glaciated pe.  aks.  Eventually we tumbled off the marshrutka in the main square of Mestia, a town that has seen massive investment in tourist infrastructure over the past decade, resulting in a feel not unlike a small French Alpine resort.  We walked to our chosen lodgings, the Keti Pilpani Guesthouse, dropped our bags and then headed into town for a meal.  We picked the most touristy restaurant in the main downtown and ate well, serenaded by a group of the polyphonic folk singers for which Svaneti is famous.

Beautiful late-season wildflowers

Mt. Tetnuldi

Our first full day was spent climbing high up above Mestia town.  The weather, as would be the case all week, was perfect, with cool morning temperatures but bright sunshine and nary a cloud in the sky.  The light on the autumnal foliage was perfect, and it was almost sensory overload to walk through Nature's palette of colours.  It was a brutally steep ascent to a viewpoint just north of, and some 800 metres above, Mestia.  As we neared the top, some of the highest peaks in the High Caucasus hove into view.  Ahead of us to the northwest loomed the steep ramparts of twin-horned Mt. Ushba (4710 m), while behind us the broad pyramid of Mt. Tetnuldi (at 4858 m, it's 50 metres higher than Mont Blanc)  almost obscured the even higher peak of Jangitau (5058 m).  To the south a chain of anonymous 3500-metre peaks sported a heavy white covering of glacial ice caps.  We were on the roof of Europe, with the continent's highest peak, Elbrus (5642 m) just out of sight and out of reach on the Russian side of the international border.  After we caught our breath, we continued uphill for a while towards the Koruldi Lakes, but didn't quite make it, seduced by the perfect picnic spot that we found beside the path.  We ate a lavish picnic, watching Delicas shuttle non-hiking tourists up towards the lakes along a road that looked impossibly steep and narrow and precipitous.

An unusually patterned ladybug

Mighty Mt. Ushba

We walked back down the jeep road, passing a newly-built chalet that wouldn't have been out of place in the Swiss Alps.  It would make an amazing base for hiking, mountain biking or ski touring (although winter access would definitely be a serious issue).  We dropped back into Mestia along a country lane lined by oak trees and stone towers, perfectly content with our day's walking.  We were back in town in time for a matinee showing of the award-winning Georgian feature film Dede, shot entirely on location in Svaneti and with a cast of almost entirely amateur actors plucked from the village of Ushguli.  It was a well-made film, although more than a bit dark.  

The reds of autumn

Monday morning found us in a marshrutka headed towards Ushguli.  The government has been lavishing lots of money on improving roads around the country, and the Ushguli road is no exception.  The climb up to the low Ughviri Pass and down the other side to rejoin the Enguri River (Mestia is located in a tributary valley) was all on newly laid cement.  From that point onward we were in the midst of a muddy construction site for the next ten or fifteen kilometres as the government tries to finish the work before the snow sets in.  The final fifteen kilometres are the same muddy, rutted dirt track that I remember from seven years ago, but the view as you pull into Ushguli is worth it.  We wandered into town, selected a guesthouse from the dozens on offer, then set off to explore the valley.

The view from Ushguli towards Mt. Shkhara

Birch leaves showing yellow against the rhododendron bushes

When I had last been in Ushguli, it was cold and rainy and I had barely even seen its famous towers.  Now the village was bathed in sunshine and the immense rocky ramparts of Mt. Shkhara (5068 m), the highest peak in Georgia, dominated the view to the north.  We pulled on our hiking boots and set off towards the base of the mountain along a valley so gently inclined that a Delica track runs along it.  An hour and a half of quick marching brought us to a point where we could sit and contemplate the source of the Enguri River as it bursts forth from the tongue of the Shkhara Glacier.  Shkhara is a broad, imposing mountain that reminds me of a shorter version of Nanga Parbat.  A half-dozen glaciers drop vertiginously down its steep face, carving deep scars that eventually melt out into pristine mountain streams.  We sat atop a glacial erratic and had a late lunch, contemplating the immense mountain architecture around us, before turning back towards Ushguli.

An autumnal morning in Ushguli

Back in town we wandered around the streets, photographing Svan towers and looking at the outsides of St. George's Chapel and the Lamaria Church, both in improbably grand settings with Shkhara as a huge white backdrop.  As we were returning to our lodgings, we ran into Mose, the eight-year-old child star of Dede, perched precariously over the saddle of a horse.  He was trying in vain to adjust the girth of the saddle, and couldn't quite reach, so Terri gave him a hand.  He gave a quick smile of thanks, then cantered off down the main street.  I thought that having a taste for fast horses was probably healthier than some of the lifestyle choices of Hollywood child actors.

The unbeatable backdrop of the Lamaria Church

That evening we had company in our guesthouse in the form of a Dutch couple, Harry and Roelie, in the midst of a round-the-world cycle tour.  We devoured a typically voluminous Georgian supper while swapping cycling stories and tips for sightseeing.  Harry commented that while on a 3-month bicycle trip the previous year along the Great Divide Trail in North America, they had experienced an epiphany:  they were just as happy living out of 4 panniers as they were living in a flat with three bathrooms and a closet full of tailored business suits in Eindhoven, so they decided on a radical downsizing of their lives.  I thought of all the happy months that I have spent in the same situation and was happy for them.

The bells of the Lamaria Church in Ushguli with Shkhara behind

Tuesday was spent in a state of pleasant sloth, ambling around the streets of Ushguli.  We found the Lamaria Church open and peeked inside.  Its tiny interior still boasts the remnants of medieval frescoes, and has a peaceful, contemplative air that captured my imagination.  I find the atmosphere inside the intimate confines of a typical Georgian or Armenian church to be more conducive to contemplating the infinite than the Pharaonic scale of Western European Gothic cathedrals.  The small dark interior also contrasts vividly with the blazing reflected sunshine and epic scale of Shkhara behind.  Both the Lamaria Church (dedicated now to the Virgin Mary) and the Jraag (St. George) Chapel nearby are repurposed pagan shrines.  Lamaria seems to have been dedicated in pre-Christian times to the Svan sun god Lile (or Lileo), whom many scholars seem to identify with the Sumerian sun god Enlil.  Jraag seems to be the Christian reincarnation of the pagan Svan moon deity, probably associated with the Mesopotamian moon god Sin, whose temple I visited near Harran in Turkey back in 2009 on my Silk Road Ride.  To this day there are strong surviving elements of the indigenous Svan religion overlaying Christianity, and it excites me to think that the ancient Sumerian and Mesopotamian gods live on in some form in this magical out of the way corner of the world, millenia after they died out in their ancestral homelands.

The Lamaria Church in Ushguli, dwarfed by Mt. Shkhara

Terri with Sopho, our new movie star/waitress friend

After saying goodbye to Lamaria, we tried to hike up to another Svan tower high above the town in the middle of an ancient oak forest.  We passed the hilltop tower associated with Queen Tamar, the only female ruling monarch of Georgia and the queen at the time of the greatest medieval flourishing of national independence, power and culture.  Our hike led us steeply uphill through some cow pastures but then petered out in a stream bed that got steeper, wetter and more overgrown with rhododendrons.  No sooner had we given up and turned around then a lone bull with a bellicose attitude came ambling down the stream bed, snorting, pawing at the ground and goring bushes with his horns.  Terri, who has prior history with ill-behaved bulls, hid in the forest along with me until the bull stopped staring at us malevolently and began heading downhill.  We set off quickly on a different downhill trajectory and calmed our nerves with a lunch and a beer in the Cafe Enguri.  As it turned out, our waitress Sopho was another cast member from the film Dede, while one of the patrons drinking chacha at the bar was Nestor, a third cast member.  We sat in the sunshine, soaking up the views, until the attentions of a pack of feral dogs became a bit much, sending us indoors.  There we found a shrine to Dede, with a collection of trophies and awards from film festivals all over the world.  As it turned out, the owner of the cafe is the twin sister of Miriam Khatchvani, the film's director, and the film is shown several times daily on the cafe's video screens.

The trophies amassed by the Svan film Dede, on display in the Cafe-Bar Enguri

The Mulakhi Valley near Zhabeshi

After much fussing about, our return lift to Mestia finally rolled up around 3:45 and we got going at 4:30.  The sun had almost set by the time we got back over the Ughviri Pass and hopped out for the stroll up the Mulakhi Valley.  It was a long walk, but eventually we were offered a lift by a passing pickup truck and were dropped at a huge guesthouse where we got a room and a sizeable meal before tucking ourselves into bed for an early night.

The Gates of Georgia above Zhabeshi

Wednesday saw us up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for a long hike up into the mountains.  It was a comedy of errors when we set off at 10:00 am.  I managed to forget both the paper map and the GPS unit back with our luggage at the hotel, and we both forgot which valley we were supposed to be hiking up.  We got to the start of the Tvibeeri Glacier walk, then convinced ourselves that it was in fact the Tanneri Glacier we should be heading for.  After backtracking into the village of Zhabeshi, we set off upstream again through a stunning autumn-tinted landscape but soon found our path dying out in series of impenetrable rhododendron thickets that had overgrown the disused path.  We retreated again and tried our luck on the Tvibeeri trek again, and took almost half an hour to find the start of the trail.  Eventually we got onto the right path and climbed steeply up towards the impressive narrow gorge known as the Gates of Georgia.  We had a late lunch under the shadow of these impressive cliffs, contemplating the perfect weather and wonderful views, then trudged back down towards our guesthouse to pick up the rest of our luggage.  We retraced our steps back to the main Ushguli-Mestia road, thumbed down a lift almost instantly and zipped the 10 kilometres back to Mestia in a quarter of an hour, past numerous clusters of Svan towers punctuating the copper and gold foliage of the hillsides.

Looking back towards Zhabeshi

Fall dried flowers

From Mestia we kept heading west, hiring a taxi to drive us along the main Zugdidi highway and then up the Becho Valley to the end of the road at Mazeri.  The road was in abysmal condition up the valley, and apparently a week before our arrival angry Becho residents had blocked the road and staged angry protests until the government promised to hurry along a three-year road improvement project that had to date paved less than one kilometre of the eight-kilometre road.  We tumbled out of the taxi, oohed and aahed at the imposing sight of Mt. Ushba dominating the head of the valley in front of us, then made a beeline for the nearest guesthouse.  Luckily it was a wonderful choice, as the Baba Nikolozi is run by the gruff but hospitable Ange with assistance from her vivacious cousin Miranda.  We spent three nights there, and found it the perfect base for our excursions.

The west side of Mt. Ushba seen above its eponymous glacier

Thursday morning saw us up and off in the crisp cool of morning.  Once again it was a bluebird day, and Ushba looked very vertical and hard to climb, meriting its title of the "Matterhorn of the Caucasus).  We walked up the valley, past a series of mineral water springs bubbling to the surface.  For the first time in Svaneti, the main forest patch was composed of pine, spruce and fir, giving the surroundings a very Canadian feel.  We passed a border police post, then began a long steep uphill slog up a rather treacherous scree slope.  We were bound for a point above a series of impressive waterfalls tumbling down the headwall of the valley, and we had to get up the precipitous incline.  A couple of groups of hikers turned back, leaving Terri and me along with a Canadian insurance broker named Shawn.

Becho Waterfalls

Eventually the path levelled off just below the tongue of the Ushba Glacier, leaving us with an unobstructed view of the west face of Ushba.  This is the standard mountaineering route, and it looked pretty daunting to my untrained eye.  We sat down and had a late picnic lunch, soaking up the view both towards the peak and also down the Becho valley to a series of glaciated 3500-metre summits to the south.  The scramble back down was less treacherous than we had feared, and we eventually found ourselves marching back down the banks of the river, getting back at 6 pm after 8 hours on the trail.  Luckily Ange had brewed up an exquisite mushroom soup (the woods are full of tasty fungi rather like Portobellos, and the soup was rich with their earthy flavours), which took the edge off our hard-earned hunger.  We sat around the toasty warmth of the kitchen stove, chatting in English with Miranda and in Russian with Ange, until we could no longer put off the return to our cold bedroom.

Terri with the irrepressible Miranda at our guesthouse in Becho

Moon over Svaneti

On Friday we took it a bit easier and walked to the deserted hamlet of Guri.  On the way we passed the village school where Miranda teaches (and where Ange once taught as well).  Ange had told us the night before that they had once had 15 or 20 children in most grades; now there are only 40 students in the entire school (with a staff of 20 teachers), a symbol of the declining population and birthrate in rural Georgia.  The walk was idyllic, with not another soul to be seen in the valley.  This route can be extended high above Guri and then down to Mestia, via the Koruldi Lakes that we had almost reached on Sunday from the Mestia side.  We sat outside the locked church, eating the immense picnic of bread, cheese, jam and persimmons that Ange had lavished on us, looking out at the colours of fall and feeling immensely at peace with the world.  I felt as though I could gladly have spent weeks in the Becho valley, walking to perfect little spots like this and soaking up the atmosphere.

Glaciated peaks south of the Becho Valley

Ange, Miranda and Terri in Mazeri, in the Becho Valley

After another convivial evening around the wood stove, talking about Georgian history, bemoaning the collapse of the USSR (a common refrain among many Georgians) and eating more mushroom soup, and another slightly chilly night in our room (luckily our comforters were warm), Saturday morning found us saying goodbye to Ange and Miranda with real regret; we felt that we had been welcomed into the bosom of the family.  We shouldered our packs and ambled downhill towards the Zugdidi road.  Along the way we found the perfect Delica van beside the road being washed by its owner.  He said that he was looking to sell it for the reasonable price of US$ 6000; we shook hands on the deal and continued along the way, happy at having found our vehicle at long last.  (Sadly, it was not to be; the owner kept raising the price when we called from Tbilisi, and eventually we gave up and bought another Delica instead.)  We caught a passing marshrutka back to Mestia and spent the afternoon at the Mestia Museum.  It's a surprisingly good collection, lovingly curated and well displayed.  The things that struck me most forcefully about the museum were the strong trade connections between the mountain fastnesses of Svaneti and the Mesopotamian lowlands 4000 years ago, and the wonderful illuminated religious texts preserved in some of the churches of the region.

Gorgeous gold repousse work in Mestia museum

Vivid fall colours

And then, sadly, after a final meal at Cafe Laila and a night back at the Keti Pilpani guesthouse, we were up early on Sunday morning for nine hours of hair-raising driving back to Tbilisi in a marshrutka.  It was a relief to extract ourselves and our luggage from the cramped confines and stagger back into our house late on Sunday afternoon.

It was an unforgettable week, and it could not possibly have had more perfect weather or fall colours.  Terri and I both look forward to returning to Svaneti over Christmas (this time driving our newly acquired expedition van) for skiing in the Tetnuldi resort, ski touring and (we hope) cross-country skiing.  Svaneti was everything I had hoped for, and I expect to be back there more than once before I leave Georgia.  It was definitely worth waiting seven years for!

Below the end of the Ushba Glacier

Our first weekend warrior expedition, from Juta to Roshka

An Ansel Adamsesque photo of Chaukhi

The impossibly contorted green felt of the high Caucasus

Tbilisi, September 3, 2018

Nana and Terri on Saturday morning

It's Monday evening after a wonderful weekend spent hiking in the Caucasus.  On Friday afternoon, Terri and I caught a shared taxi from Didube station to Stepantsminda, formerly known as Kazbegi, the tourism epicentre for hiking in Georgia's mountains.  It cost us 20 GEL each (about US $8) and we got there relatively quickly, in about two and a half hours, including two fuel stops and a tourism stop at Ananuri fortress.  By 8:00 we were standing in the rain in Stepantsminda, trying to figure out where the bed-and-breakfast joint we had booked on Booking.com was.  Eventually we called, and Nana and Alex came to pick us up.  It was a lovely, welcoming, big room, and after an overpriced but tasty dinner in town at a new restaurant, we slept the sleep of the dead.

Insect life in the wildflowers

Camberwell Beauty butterfly beside the trail

Saturday morning we awoke at 7:30 to Nana's tap on the door, bearing the first of a succession of trays groaning with a lavish breakfast spread.  We fed ourselves silly, made lunch from the rest of the feast and then shouldered our packs and walked down to the main square to find a lift to Juta village.  Within a few seconds we had a lift for 60 GEL and were zipping back south along the Georgian Military Highway, then east up the Sno Valley on a newly-improved gravel road.  By 10:00, we were in the village of Juta, a rapidly-developing tourist village, and on our way.  Ironically, although we had a new technological toy (a Garmin 64s handheld GPS) and a new paper hiking map, we left town in the wrong direction.  We had planned to climb the Chaukhi Pass, but we ended up heading towards the Sadzele Pass instead.

Terri climbing up towards the Sadzele Pass

The skies were grey and threatening, but the scenery and weather slowly improved as we marched upstream, along a newly-constructed dirt road leading to a border patrol post where our passports were checked, just as they were last month in Girevi, Tusheti.  The Georgians are keeping a very close eye on their borders with the rapacious Russian Bear, and border patrol posts are popping up everywhere.  We continued upstream, looking up at a back route up the Chaukhi Pass that requires ropes and mountaineering skills, then climbed steeply to the Sadzele Pass, at 3056 metres some 300 metres lower than the Chaukhi.  As we climbed, a succession of buzzards soared above us, and a huge eagle, possibly a golden eagle, hurtled past at almost ground level like a feathered cruise missile.  The view from the top back the way we had come was curtailed by clouds wreathing the summits towards the Russian republic of Ingushetia, but looking ahead we had clear skies and a view of a beautiful valley scarred by the construction of another new road, this time north into an isolated border area; again, the Georgians seem to be improving the ability of their border guards and troops to move quickly to any border area.

Feeling pleased with myself at the summit of the Sadzele Pass

It was windy and chilly atop the pass, so we didn't linger and descended steeply to the east, with the first two hundred vertical metres being uncomfortably steep and crumbly underfoot.  Eventually we reached the first stream in the valley, via a tortuous series of switchbacks, and had a delicious, long-delayed lunch, lovingly prepared in advance by Terri for easy trailside epicurean delights.  As we munched on khachapuri, ham-cheese-tomato sandwiches topped with slatherings of fresh coriander, boiled eggs and a luxury trail mix, we watched two Georgian cowboys leading four sure-footed horses down the precipitous trail with nonchalant ease.  Terri thinks that Georgian horses are particularly good at handling steep terrain that would ordinarily only be suitable for mules; we were both amazed that one of the cowboys actually rode his mount down the path.

Eventually we resumed our descent and finally decided to pitch our tents at 2340 metres in the Abudelauri valley, where we rejoined the trail from the Chaukhi Pass that we should have been following all along.  We were rewarded with sweeping vistas of the stone spires of the Chaukhi massif as we cooked up another delicious meal (pasta with tomato paste, topped with more cheese, olives and fresh coriander).  We got chilled lying outside on the grass eating and toasting the day with a small amount of Georgian brandy, and were both shivering as we crawled into our trusty Big Agnes tent.

Feeling pleased with life as I brew up some soup on my MSR stove

Not a bad scene to wake up to!

We slept soundly, and woke up to clear skies and 3 degrees Celsius.  The morning sun caught the rock ramparts of Chaukhi, making a striking backdrop to our morning muesli, tea and coffee.  We were walking by 8:40 am, losing altitude gradually as the landscape softened and became lusher, dotted with increasing numbers of wildflowers and full of butterflies, bees, crickets and a host of other insects.  It was impossibly idyllic, especially as the morning sun dispersed the frigid chill of dawn.  We made it into the village of Roshka, perched at 2000 metres and looking as though it would reward a return visit some weekend for some more hiking.  

The characteristic brushed green baize of a Caucasus hillside

We then struck out downhill along a narrow path that had both of us questioning our route-finding a few times (we were reassured by our trusty GPS), across overgrown meadows and down through old growth hardwood forests to the main Shatili-Zhinvali road.  We reached the bottom at 12:15, near a series of beautiful waterfalls and swimming holes, and found a driver waiting beside his Nissan Pathfinder for trekkers like us.  We negotiated a lift to Zhinvali for 80 GEL and sat back to watch the scenery fly by as we took the rutted, potholed road at a higher speed than seemed feasible.  The only thing that slowed down our manic progress was a huge flock of sheep and goats being driven down from the highlands after a summer of blissful grazing, an example of the millenia-old pattern of transhumance that typifies the high mountains from Europe across to Central Asia.  We descended the Pshavis Aragvi River, passing numerous side valleys that all beckoned us to return for more exploration some weekend in the future.  By 2:00 we were squeezing ourselves and our luggage onto a marshrutka bus and careening towards Tbilisi.  We hopped off 300 metres from our front door and were unpacking and hanging our dew-soaked tent out to dry before 3:00 pm, very satisfied with our weekend of exploring a new corner of the Caucasus.

The south wall of Chaukhi, seen from our campsite

Bucolic scenery near Roshka

Terri and I would love to return both to Juta and to Roshka, perhaps to stay indoors and do some day hikes through the spectacular scenery, unencumbered by heavy backpacks.  In two weeks' time, when I will be celebrating my 50th birthday, we might well spend the weekend in Juta, this time climbing partway up the Chaukhi Pass to get a view of the spectacular north wall of the mountain, described as Georgia's answer to Torres del Paine and the Dolomites.  In the meantime, we hope to buy a vehicle this weekend for easier access to the remoter corners of the country; we are hoping to buy a Mitsubishi Delica, a rugged 4x4 minivan that would be a perfect vehicle for camping, carrying skis and bicycles, and handling the rough roads of the Georgian backwoods.  We are hoping to spend most weekends away from Tbilisi, getting to know the wonderful countryside and mountains of this appealing and enchanting country.

An ovine traffic jam on the way out of Roshka

Return to Tusheti

Tbilisi, August 28

The hard-won top of the Col de la Croix 

Since I last updated the blog, I have finished the second draft of my book (while in Bali), and then travelled for nearly 2 months around Namibia with Terri in our beloved camper Stanley before leaving him in storage for the next couple of years near Cape Town.  A month of catching up with my mother and working further on my book followed, and now I find myself in full-time gainful employment for the first time in three years as I start a two-year teaching adventure at an international school in Tbilisi, Georgia.  I will update my blog retroactively with stories of our trip through New Zealand in February and March, and of our Namibian escapades as well, but for now I want to keep the blog up to date by writing a bit about a trip that Terri and I did as a welcome-to-Georgia adventure.

Myself with former LAS students Ashley, Eric and Arshia

I arrived in Georgia on July 29th, bleary-eyed from two successive night flights, and was picked up by my school and taken to our new home, a spacious two-storey three-bedroom place in the far northern suburbs of Tbilisi, in a neighbourhood called Dighomi.  It's a rapidly-developing part of town, with plenty of new houses on sizeable lots being built.  It's also close to the US Embassy, so many American diplomatic families live nearby and send their children to our school.  

Reunited with Steve in Leysin

After two days I caught another night flight to Geneva and spent three nights in my old stomping ground of Leysin.  I picked up 40 kg of ski and mountaineering equipment to bring back to Tbilisi, and caught up with a number of friends and former students in the village, as well as riding a road bike for the first time in three years around a couple of my favourite local routes, up the Col de la Croix and around the Col de Forclaz-Voettes loop, the latter with my cycling and skiing friend Steve.  I was definitely a lot slower and more leaden-legged than I was three years ago, but it felt indescribably good to be riding in the beautiful
Alps again.

Yet another night flight, my fourth in eight days, brought me back to Tbilisi on August 4th, more bleary-eyed than ever.  The next morning Terri arrived from New Zealand and was promptly whisked off to dinner with Ardak, a former student from my Leysin days, in Georgia to visit her father.

Myself and my Kazakh former faculty daughter Ardak

Roadside picnic during landslide break below the Abano Pass

There was no rest for the jet-lagged the next day, as we got up early, shouldered full backpacks and set off for Ortachala bus station for a 3-hour marshrutka minibus ride to Telavi, the capital of the picturesque, historic Kakheti region of eastern Georgia.  Kakheti is abundantly fertile, and it was a feast for the senses.  We zipped past vineyards and stalls selling churchkhela, delicious snacks consisting of strings of walnuts dipped in thickened grape juice, along with peaches and melons.  Finally, in Telavi, we tumbled out and boarded smaller, tougher 4x4 Mitsubishi Delica minivans, the workhorses of Georgian mountain travel, for the crossing of the high, rugged Abano Pass into the legendary Tusheti region.

Dramatic hillsides below the Abano

I had been in Tusheti before, back in 2009 during the final leg of my Silk Road bicycle ride.  I rode my bicycle over the Abano and almost didn't make it; I had to camp beside the road partway up, worn out by the relentless steep grade and rough road, and then continued over the top into a magical landscape that stole my heart away.  This time, I thought it would be much easier sitting in the comfort of a minibus seat, but I hadn't reckoned on the weather.  It had rained torrentially a couple of hours before our departure, and the downpour had caused landslides that roared down the precipitous slopes of the pass and buried sections of the road.  We, along with dozens of other 4x4s, were stuck for hours until an ancient Soviet-era bulldozer hove into sight and set about pushing tons of boulders and mud over the edge of the road with nonchalant disregard for the vertical drop just centimetres from the centre of gravity of the vehicle.  In the meantime we shared in an impromptu feast of fish, khachapuri (cheese pie, the staple snack of Georgia), chicken and melon served up by some of the stranded drivers, washed down by some chacha, the eye-watering schnapps distilled from skins left over after wine-making.  Eventually the road was cleared and we roared up the pass, down the other side and back uphill to Omalo, the capital of the Tusheti region, where we spent the night in a pleasant little guesthouse and ate a lavish spread of local treats.

Galloping home in Omalo

Day 1:  August 7, Omalo to Pharsma, 24 kilometres

Wildflower

Wildflower

Terri woke up feeling not at all well; something she ate disagreed with her, and her jet lag probably didn't help matters.  She bravely decided to walk anyway, and to do a double stage; we were worried about getting back to Tbilisi on time at the end of our hike, and decided we could use an extra day at the end of the walk.  The first half of the day involved a couple of steep grunts uphill, first to the top of Omalo village and its impressive medieval defensive towers (a leitmotif throughout Tusheti), and then another to get into the Pirikita Alazani valley.

Omalo fortress

Psychadelic moth

Tusheti is located to the north of the Caucasus watershed, and the Pirikita Alazani River flows east out of Tusheti into Daghestan, on the Russian side of the mountains.  This was all new territory for me; in 2009 I had only ridden as far as Omalo's towers, and had done no hiking, so I was glad to see fresh vistas.  After the second climb, it was a long downhill to the village of Dartlo and its collection of towers, then an even longer level slog along the river, past the village of Chesho and its impressive outlying towers (located high up atop a long ridge) to our final destination for the day at Pharsma.  The scenery was magnificent, with the north-facing slopes mostly clad in forest of hardwood and cedar, while the south-facing slopes were open grassy meadows grazed by huge herds of sheep and the occasional cow.  Tusheti is only really inhabited in the brief summer months, when herders from Kakheti drive their sheep and cattle over the Abano Pass to fatten up on the lush grass and produce huge amounts of cheese, butter and wool.  Tumbling whitewater streams incised profound gashes into the green felt of the hillsides, while above us 3000 and 4000-metre peaks towered into the azure sky.  It was impossibly idyllic.

Another striking butterfly

Towers above Chesho

Terri was pretty worn out by travelling, illness and the rigours of a double stage and was keen to sleep indoors, but there was no room for us at the inn, so we ate a huge meal in a trail-side restaurant and then slept under the roof of its patio after closing time, as we were concerned about impending downpours.

Day 2:  August 8, Pharsma to Kvakhidi Meadows, 17 km

Fresh snow dusts the peaks above the Atsunta

Stone drywall construction

It did rain in the night, although not too dramatically, and by the time we were ready to leave the skies had cleared completely.  It was an easy stroll up the river to Girevi and its border guard post, where we showed our passports and got a border area permit while a curious puppy tried his best to devour my wet socks which were drying on the outside of my backpack.  From there we made our way steeply uphill past Girevi's beautiful towers and further upstream, staying high above the river.  The abandoned village of Chontio was spectacular and its elegant drywall construction and feeling of utter desolation reminded me forcefully of wandering around Mystra and Monemvassia in the Greek Pelepponese back in 2008.

Looking towards Chontio

A meadow viper (I think)

The mountains continued to dominate the skyline, and looking at the map we realized that the line of the highest peaks, a mere 7 kilometres to the north, marked the Georgian-Russian border.  We continued to oscillate vertically, climbing high above cliffs and then dipping down to ford rivers, before finally descending to the main valley floor and a campsite in a large meadow at about 2400 metres above sea level.  We set up Terri's trusty Big Agnes Copper Spur tent, cooked up a delicious dinner and shared some of it with Antoni, a personable Austrian with whom we had played leapfrog all day along the trail.  There were a good dozen other trekkers in small groups:  four Americans, five Russians, Antoni and a Brazilian couple.  There was also a large group of older Austrian trekkers who arrived not long after us but whose baggage horses didn't show up until after sunset, leaving them sitting around without food or tents for hours.  We were in bed relatively early, ready for the exertions of the Atsunta Pass the next day.

Day 3:  August 9, Kvakhidi Meadows to Khidotani Ridge, 17 km

Crossing the snow bridge

Pollinator at work

It was not a restful night, with a Biblical downpour keeping us awake in the night.  In the morning we were the first trekkers to breakfast, pack up and start walking, a highly unusual situation as we are usually among the last to leave a campsite.  We marched upstream, along a valley that was now much narrower as we approached the source of the river.  The banks were a riot of colourful wildflowers, and I spent a lot of time trying to shoot macro photos of the blossoms.  We crossed a rather precarious snow bridge; we had been seeing patches of old snow, sometimes several metres thick, at the base of avalanche chutes ever since Girevi, but this was by far the largest so far.  It surprised me that so much snow survives until August at such a low altitude, but it must reflect the sheer volume of snowfall over the long winter.  We forded the main river (a cold, unstable and rather unpleasant task), then headed up a tributary before turning away from the valley and clambering steeply up a grassy slope that turned into a long uphill slog across a soggy scree slope.

Yet another pretty wildflower

Antoni fording the chilly river

It took a few hours to climb up to the summit of the 3431-metre Atsunta Pass, and we were rewarded for our toil with views of the inside of a cloud and 5-degree temperatures.  As we descended abruptly into the Khevsureti region the cloud began to spit hailstones onto our heads intermittently, while thunderclaps sounded only seconds away over our heads.  When the clouds finally dispersed, we found ourselves on a broad grassy ridge surrounded by 4000-metre peaks dusted white with fresh snow.

Trekkers in the mist:  atop the Atsunta

Fresh snow dusting the slopes above the Atsunta

A brief moment of clarity on the Khidotani Ridge

We made the most of our ten minutes of clear views before the clouds returned, and then traversed endlessly across a steep slope before a cruel uphill and a final descent to a campsite oddly lacking in a clean water source.  No sooner had we set up our tent than the heavens opened on us for two hours and we crawled into our tent, eschewing cooking in favour of cold food and hard-earned sleep.  It had been a long, hard day, and the rain seemed like poor recompense for our efforts.

Day 4:  August 10, Khidotani Ridge to Shatili, 20 km

Wet flowers

Terri teetering above the muddy torrent

We awoke to a soggy world, hungry after our frugal repast of the night before, and cooked up sizeable portions of oatmeal before leaving camp with Antoni.  It was a steep descent to the Andaki River through the lushest fields yet of wildflowers, a quilt of violent pinks, purples, yellows and oranges.  The path was less slippery and muddy than we had feared, even after the torrential downpour of the night before, and within an hour we were beside the river, a grey mass of liquid mud, swollen by runoff.  A few dodgy bridges led over the river to a jeep track; one bridge consisted of a slippery log and a rusty pipe, millimetres above the raging waters, that required a great deal of concentration.  After that, it was an easy, almost flat stroll through wilderness, fields and the occasional village to the towers of Mutso, then on to Anatori, where the river led north to the closed Russian border barely a kilometre beyond.

Badland scenery between Anatori and Shatili

Anatori necropolis

Anatori was a lonely promontory high above a confluence, with a few old stone plague houses full of bones from the victims of an 18th-century epidemic.  From there it was just a short stroll upstream, past eroded conglomerate pillars reminiscent of Cappadocia, to our endpoint, the medieval tower village of Shatili.  We had anticipated spending the night there and then returning to Tbilisi, but we found Antoni, the two Brazilians, the four Americans and a handful of other trekkers waiting for us to fill up a chartered minibus that they had arranged.  Minutes later we were off along another dodgy mountain road, over a 2600-metre-high pass (less alarming than the Abano Pass, but still dangerous-looking).  Four hours (and a flat tire) later, we were being dropped off beside the highway, a short walk from our house, and our Tusheti adventure was over.

Blossom and insect

More wildflowers

I loved this walk for its combination of nature, big mountains and historic, picturesque villages, as well as its vast proliferation of wildflowers.  The Caucasus is a magical part of the world, and it was the memory of my bicycle rides through various Caucasian valleys in 2009 and 2011 that lured me back into teaching.  I am looking forward to returning to the mountains this coming weekend for another traverse, this time from Juta to Roshka, and I will post about that trip next week.  I hope you enjoyed this blog post and its pictures, and that it inspires you to get out into the mountains, either here in Georgia or wherever you find yourself in the world.

Tired, wet but elated at the end of the trek