A Roadtrip through Western Georgia

Tbilisi, January 7

Tomorrow it's back to work after three weeks of Christmas vacation, so now is a good time to draw a curtain on our adventures in western Georgia, also known as Colchis, the Land of the Golden Fleece from Greek mythology.  The wind here in Dighomi is howling, so it's a good afternoon to sit indoors and type up this account of our road trip in Douglas the Delica.

A First Attempt at Goderdzi

On Friday, December 21st we rolled out of Tbilisi after a couple of lazy days recovering from our ski trip to Gudauri.  We rolled west all day, through increasing rain, along a modern double-lane expressway, then on a single-lane road clogged with slow trucks over the low pass (the Rikoti, now with a tunnel under it) that separates eastern Georgia (Kartli, or Iveria) from western Georgia (Kolkheti, or Colchis).  We kept going towards the coast, thus entering new territory for both of us, as on our previous trip we had diverted north towards Zugdidi and Svaneti.  This time our destination was the Black Sea coast and the resort town of Batumi, where half of Georgia seems to migrate in August.  In December it's dead, making for cheap deals on hotel rooms.  We stayed the night in a fancy apartment in the Orbi Residence, a towering concrete structure close to the shore.

View over the Lesser Caucasus from Sataplia

The following day we drove inland from Batumi into the small, mountainous region of Ajara, the only area of Georgia with a Muslim majority (thanks to the long Ottoman occupation of this part of the country.)  The road was new and paved for the first 30 km, then winding and potholed, and then turned to dirt and mud, making the entire 100 kilometre drive take more than three hours.  Our destination was the newish, small ski resort of Goderdzi, located near the Goderdzi pass which connects Ajara with the town of Akhaltskikhe to the east.  That road is closed in the winter, making our route from Tbilisi much more circuitous than it would have been in the summer.

We hadn't been able to get in touch with anyone from Goderdzi to find out if it had opened yet for the season.  We knew that this winter had been unusually snow-free, and Bakuriani hadn't opened yet, but Goderdzi is touted as the "Japan of Georgia" for its abundant fluffy powder, so we took a chance and drove up on a reconnaissance trip.  As we got up to 1700 metres, the elevation of the bottom of the lifts, we realized that there was far too little snow, and it was far too warm, for the ski resort to be open yet.  We talked briefly with some of the workers, who assured us that come December 28th, the lifts would start running.  We had lunch and contemplated our options.  There might have been enough snow to skin up and ski down, but it looked thin and rocky, and we were both on fairly new skis, so we decided that patience was the better part of valour and turned back downhill, vowing to return before the end of my holidays.

Birdwatching in Poti

Terri in the ruins of Gonio

The drive back down was just as slow and miserably muddy as the drive up, but our Delica's 4x4 handled everything well.  When we got down to Batumi, it was mid-afternoon, giving us time to visit a place that has been on my mental radar for years, the Roman/Byzantine/Ottoman fort at Gonio, just south of Batumi on the way to the nearby Turkish border.  It's a big place, with high walls (mostly dating from the Ottoman period) enclosing a 200 by 200 metre square.  There's not much left to see inside, but it was pleasant to walk up on the walls, gazing out at the surrounding citrus orchards, and to poke around the small site museum.  Gonio (or Apsaros, to give it its Greek name) is located at the mouth of the Chorokhi River, which flows down from the highlands of modern Turkey and which would have been a main trade route into the interior.  The legend of Jason and the Argonauts plays a role in the mythology of Gonio, as does the legend that the Apostle Matthew was buried somewhere inside the fortress walls.  

There was still plenty of light left in the sky when we finished up at Gonio and we decided to put some kilometres behind us and continue north along the coast to the town of Poti.  We booked a holiday apartment on booking.com and headed north into the darkness.  It took a while to find the apartment in the dark, and the grim crumbling Soviet exterior and stairwell were supremely unpromising, but the apartment proved to be lovely, with a view out over the water and a well-equipped kitchen in which Terri whipped up a delicious repast.

Me on the beach at Poti

We had chosen Poti as a place to spend the night because we knew that it was surrounded by a protected wetland area rich in birdlife; the parents of one of my students in Tbilisi are ornithologists, heavily involved in bird conservation, and had talked up the area to me.  Terri and I are not true "twitchers", but we have derived a great deal of pleasure from birding in places like Ladakh, Iceland, Antarctica and (especially) southern Africa, and we were curious what we would see in Poti.  

It was a fun morning; we walked out to the Black Sea coast, past an inland lagoon, and then along the beach.  We then drove over to Lake Paliostomi, the large lagoon just inland, and had a poke around there.  Both places were rewarding, even if it was the off-season and even though we didn't hire a boat to head out towards the uninhabited eastern shore of the lake.  We spotted well over a dozen species, from smews (a largely white duck that summers in Siberia, and a new species for us) through crakes, coots, herons and crested grebes, culminating in beautiful kingfishers and stately Dalmatian pelicans.  It was good to spend time scanning the shore or the air with our binoculars, trying to pick out new species.  It was also a good day to see the snow-capped ridges of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus floating ethereally above the waters of the lake.

The mountains of Svaneti loom over Lake Paliostomi

A Return to Svaneti

Winter wonderland in Mestia

All good things must come to an end, and we drove off mid-afternoon bound for Svaneti, where we had been two months earlier.  It was an easy drive, through the coastal lowlands, through the city of Zugdidi and then up the Enguri River.  We were anticipating a white winter wonderland in Mestia, but there was very little snow in the town when we arrived, dampening our excitement about skiing.  We took a room at Nino Ratiani's guesthouse, where I had stayed on my bike trip in the summer of 2011, and settled in for some skiing.

On the lift at Tetnuldi

We drove up to Tetnuldi, the big new ski resort located about 20 kilometres from Mestia, on December 24th and 25th.  It was an exhilarating drive, over snowy roads and up steep inclines, our 4x4 and new snow tires proving their worth by effortlessly handling conditions that stymied other vehicles.  Tetnuldi is high-altitude (from about 2200 to 3100 metres above sea level) and offers access to plenty of off-piste powder.  The gain in altitude from Mestia meant that there was much more snow on the ground, although most of it had been skied out.  We had two fun days exploring the runs and finding a few lines of untracked powder, and my new telemark skis proved their worth, effortless floating through the powder.  On the 25th it began to snow and visibility dropped dramatically, particularly as most of the resort is well above the tree line, providing no visual help in a whiteout.  Back at Nino's we built a tiny snowman in honour of Christmas (Western Christmas, that is; the Orthodox world runs on the Julian calendar and celebrates on January 7th instead).  

Terri's first-ever snowman

Tetnuldi

On the 26th it began to snow heavily and we took the day off, convinced that we wouldn't see anything, and reports from a Ukrainian group staying at Nino's confirmed that there was no visibility at all at Tetnuldi.  On the 27th it was still dumping snow, we drove over to Hatsvali, a tiny ski resort directly above Mestia and skied there, enjoying plenty of new powder and the visibility provided by abundant trees lining the runs.  Our enjoyment was marred, however, by Terri being knocked over getting off a chair by our seatmate and her glasses being broken, leaving her largely blind for much of the day.

At Hatsvali with our rather mud-spattered Delica

Snowy forest at Hatsvali

Bluebird pow day at Tetnuldi

Finally on the 28th we got the day we had been waiting for:  perfectly clear blue skies, dazzling sunshine and Tetnuldi full of freshly fallen powder.  We drove over early and were first in line for the chairlift.  We skied off the chair at the top full of purpose, and found an entire mountain blanketed in deep, fluffy, perfect powder.  That first run, flying through the snow, contrails of billowing white smoke streaming from our skis, was unforgettable.  We skied hard for hours, slowly working our way outwards from those first runs, whooping with delight at the sheer joy of graceful movement and the illusion of floating.  It was perfect, and by the time we took a late lunch, our legs were just about finished from the effort of skiing so much deep snow.

Beautiful mountains seen from Tetnuldi

At lunch we chatted with a couple of Swedish skiers whom we had met over the previous couple of days on the slopes, as well as the mother of one of my students from Tbilisi.  As we stood up to go to the car and drive home, I somehow managed to lose the ignition key for the car.  We didn't have a spare key, and so we couldn't get into the car, and couldn't drive it.  To make matters worse, I had left the lights on in my hurry to get out and ski the lovely snow in the morning.  We searched everywhere, but eventually gave up and hitched a lift back to town. 

To make matters more annoying, we had packed up all our possessions that morning to move out of Nino's guesthouse, as she had prior reservations that completely booked out her rooms.  We walked over to our new lodgings with only our skis and our skiing daypacks, only to find the power out.  It was a cold, somewhat miserable evening, but at least our host made some phone calls and arranged a rescue mission for our car.

Replacing our ignition system

The next morning a vehicle drove up to our new guesthouse, with a skilled car ignition specialist and a driver inside.  We drove to a non-descript Soviet-era apartment complex and bought a second-hand car ignition system from a wrecked Delica, then drove up to Tetnuldi.  The driver had brought a long, thin metal rod with him and, having pried the driver's side door slightly ajar at the corner, slid the rod in and popped open the lock.  Then Andrei, the ignition man, set to work.  Within an hour and a half, he had replaced the entire ignition system, and after jump-starting the car with our booster cables from our driver's vehicle, we were good to go.  Our car was completely frozen, we couldn't lock it and we didn't dare turn off the engine until the battery had recharged, but at least we could drive.  The best part was that everything (the car and driver, the work by Andrei and the purchase of the ignition system) cost us less than US$ 130.  We drove back down the mountain and over to the Becho Valley, where we had hiked in October and where we wanted to do a ski tour the next day, then drove back to Mestia and our guesthouse (where the power had mercifully returned).  We spent an enjoyable evening chatting with another group of Ukrainian snowboarders, twenty-somethings from Yalta who had left Crimea after the Russian takeover in 2014.

Ski touring up the Becho Valley

Our last day in Svaneti was wonderful.  We packed up our gear and drove back to the Becho Valley, where we drove to the foot of the Guli Valley, put on our skis and skins, and climbed up to the Guli Church, where we had hiked in October.  The scenery was magnificent, as the morning ice mist dissipated and left us with wonderful views of iconic Mt. Ushba and the glistening of millions of snow crystals in the crisp winter sunshine.  We headed uphill a bit further from the church and I climbed up a bit above Terri to try to get some decent turns in.  The snow wasn't bottomless and the underlying terrain was rough, but I managed a reasonable descent.  The rest of the way back down the valley to the car was pretty much just following the up track, but the scenery was ample compensation for the lack of quality downhill action.  We got back to the car with broad grins on our faces, glad to be alive and outdoors on such a beautiful day.

A Goderdzi New Year

From our ski tour we drove back down into the lowlands, reaching Zugdidi in the dark in time to be caught in enormous traffic jams in this small city.  We eventually reached the Green House guesthouse, by far the most genteel accommodation of our trip, and settled in for some well-earned rest.

New Year's Eve in Goderdzi

The following day was a long day of driving.  We poked around Zugdidi for a bit, buying food and wine and trying to visit a museum that was closed for the New Year's holidays.  We finally headed out of town at noon, retracing our path of a week before, through Poti and along the coast to Batumi, then uphill to Goderdzi again.  This time the drive was muddy at the bottom and snowy and frozen at the top.  The last twenty kilometres were a bit hair-raising, with icy roads making the potholes more treacherous, especially with steep dropoffs on the side.  It was dark when we finally reached Danisparauli, the tiny hamlet just downhill from the ski lifts.  We knew from our reconnaissance the week before that there were twenty or so tiny guesthouses there, but we weren't prepared for the fact that they all seemed to be full.  Luckily a guesthouse owner took it upon himself to phone around the entire village looking for a place for us, and eventually we found ourselves welcomed into the Iveria Guesthouse.  It was New Year's Eve, and we found ourselves welcomed into the bosom of the extended family that was celebrating downstairs in the kitchen.  It was yet another example of Georgian hospitality, and was a wonderful experience, although we were in bed long before midnight, worn out by skiing and driving.

On the wall of our Goderdzi homestay

The guesthouse was bitterly cold when we awoke in the morning and Terri never got warm as we dressed, ate and headed up to go skiing.  She was desperately chilly, and the howling winds buffeting the mountain did nothing to make her feel warmer.  We did one run, and then I left Terri indoors at the bottom of the hill while I went for a few runs.  There was definitely a lot more snow than there had been on our last visit, but it was hardly Japan-style bottomless powder.  Raking winds had pummeled the snow, making for a bleak landscape of cardboard crust.  I jumped off for a few powder turns here and there, but it was hardly a touring paradise as I had hoped.  Eventually Terri returned to the mountain, warmed by her indoor sojourn, and we did a number of runs before calling it a day and having a late lunch at the foot of the hill.  Georgian tourists, late-arising after the New Year's festivities, many of them having driven up from Batumi, were swarming the lower slopes of the mountain as we left, and driving back down to our guesthouse was alarming as we had to stay out of the way of two-wheel-drive cars with bald summer tires and no snow chains fishtailing madly up the rutted road.

Goderdzi looking cold and forboding

After another frigid night in our guesthouse, Terri decided that she couldn't spend a third night in the cold, so we packed up, paid up and headed back up for our second and last day of skiing.  The wind had strengthened overnight and the mountain looked bleak.  Terri bailed out on the idea of ski touring, leaving me to do a few runs on the piste before heading off to do a short ski tour.  The wind slabs on the snow made me cautious, especially as I was on my own, so I headed up through a summer village for herders and up the middle of a gentle valley.  I could see interesting-looking descent lines on either side, but as I had set off a tiny slab avalanche on my way into the village, I kept to the gentle incline and wide-open slopes of the valley.  I reached the top in an hour and peered over to see a wonderland of rounded peaks stretching off into the distance in the west.  Luckily there was a shepherd's hut at the top, providing welcome shelter from the searching wind as I took off my skins and got ready to descend.  The snow was surprisingly good and provided plenty of good telemark turns on the descent.  I skinned up and across to rejoin the pistes, and found Terri ensconsed at the bottom of the mountain, glad to be out of the wind.  We packed up and were on our way by 3:00.

An exploratory ski tour in Goderdzi

Overall Goderdzi was a bit of a disappointment.  Since it's so close to the Black Sea, it gets more snow than anywhere else in the country, but the constant winds scour the ridges and turn the snow into unpleasant slabby cardboard.  The accommodation, while adequate, is cold.  Until a hotel or apartment complex opens at the base of the lifts (both are under construction), it will be a bit of a hardship spot in terms of midwinter lodging.

Exploring the Colchis Lowlands

Medical waste on the beach at Paliostomi Lake

The drive back downhill was long, tedious and unpleasant.  There were more ill-prepared cars than ever trying to make their way up the road, which had been churned into sheets of ice by fruitlessly spinning summer tires.  It took forever to get through Danisparauli because of the narrow roads, lack of passing spots and the number of cars coming uphill.  It was a relief when we finally got onto pavement again 30 kilometres (and an hour and a half) downhill from Goderdzi.  From there we followed a familiar route back to Batumi and Poti, where we stayed for two nights in the same apartment as before.  The birdwatching was good, and we had a delightfully lazy morning watching the sun rise over the Black Sea, 12 hours after a full moon had risen in the same spot.  The only blight on our happiness was the sheer quantity of rubbish that was everywhere along the shore of Lake Paliostomi, including a huge quantity of medical waste from the local hospital, including syringes and intravenous tubing, that had been dumped beside the lake.  Georgia has a serious issue with trash disposal, and this was an unpleasant reminder of that fact.

Sunset over Poti

Prometheus Cave

Our last stop on our way back to Tbilisi was Kutaisi.  I had visited Georgia's second-largest city in 2011 on my bike trip, but hadn't really taken the time to explore much.  This time we stopped in at two caves, the Prometheus Cave and Sataplia, and found them to be wonderful.  Prometheus is a long cave system, and we were underground for a good hour, oohing and aahing at the stalactites and columns, lit up in different colours.  Sataplia's cave was smaller but still pretty, but the real attractions were the dinosaur footprints nearby and the primeval oak-hornbeam forest surrounding everything.  Kutaisi is the centre of ancient Colchis, where Jason and his Argonauts came searching for the Golden Fleece, and the forest felt as though it was unchanged from Jason's time three millenia ago.  In keeping with this theme, our guesthouse was called the Argonaut, and our delightful hostess told us stories of ancient myths, including the connections between Georgia and Sumeria and the story that the Holy Grail ended up in Georgia, where the drops of Jesus' blood that it captured fertilized the finest grapes in the country.

Dinosaur footprints at Sataplia

Gelati churches

Our final day on the road saw us visit two very different monasteries and an ancient archaeological site.  We started off with Gelati Monastery, built up by David the Builder, Georgia's most accomplished medieval king, as a centre of royal prestige, religious power and secular learning.  His tomb lies beneath one of the monastery gates so that everyone entering could step on him and remember him (a strange mix of humility and egotism).  I loved the churches as well as his Academy, and spent a long time trying to capture details of roofs and stonework on my tiny ski camera.  The beautiful frescoes and stunning mosaic of the Virgin Mary are some of the best medieval art to be found anywhere in Georgia.

At Gelati

Magnificent mosaic at Gelati

Motsameta Monastery

We drove from there to Motsameta, a much smaller and more isolated monastery perched high above a forbidding gorge.  The monastery marks the spot where two brothers were martyred by Arab invaders in the eighth century and tossed into the gorge.  The surrounding forest and limestone cliffs are in some ways more impressive than the recently rebuilt structures, and it was wonderful to stand looking out into the void contemplating the long history of this area.

On the final stretch into Tbilisi that afternoon we stopped briefly at a small archaeological dig near Gori called Graklianis Gora.  It's not yet fully ready for tourists, but we were happy to poke around the muddy hillside, looking at shattered potsherds and the remnants of Zoroastrian temples from Georgia's pre-Christian, pre-Roman past.  

Shattered wine qvevris at Graklianis Hill

And then it was all over, with a final 45-minute drive through frenetic traffic back to our house in northern Tbilisi, happy with the exploration we had done in western Georgia in our 2300-kilometre, 15-day odyssey (or should that be argossey?).  There is so much to see in this country, but we are finally starting to make inroads into it.


PS  Although I started this post nearly two weeks ago, I only ended up finishing it now, in Bakuriani, the fifth and last Georgian ski resort that we have visited.  I will have to have another blog post soon on our weekend ski trips out of Tbilisi!

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