The Caucasus

The Caucasus  - how romantic.  High mountains and glaciers at the edge of the old Russian empire.  It sounded remote and mysterious.  In fact its most accessible part, Kazbegi, is about two hours north of Tbilisi.   A taxi took us to the mini-bus station, which was really just a huge parking space for hundreds of mini-buses, with no ticket booths or platforms.  There must have been some organisation somewhere as our hotel had rung up and given us a time of departure but it certainly wasn't apparent.  The mini-buses sat there and you went and found yours - difficult when the notices of their destination were in the Georgian alphabet.   However, our taxi driver inquired of people who told him where to take us, and then when he tried to rip us off, people shouted him down - he reduced his proposed fare by 300% or so.  We paid about £5 for the bus ticket.

The mini-bus was full and had a strip of low, narrow windows, which meant to see anything you had to crane your neck sideways.  We set out on the main highway north, the E117, which is the main route to Russia.  It was busy, with plenty of lorries, and reasonably wide, but there were patches when its surface was in very poor condition. 

We drove past huge reservoirs and up into the mountains, stopping by a spring falling from a steep slope and forming a pool which was edged with concrete.  At stalls women were selling felt hats and a kind of sweet, which is long fingers of a tasteless gelatinous coating around walnuts..  There were toilets there, which C. said were unspeakable.  I had a cold and I was feeling travel sick.  

 C.  does not like heights and was made nervous by the long steep drops at the edge of the road.  We continued past avalanche tunnels which are used in the winter and a ski-resort, with the dishevelled, sad appearance of out of season holiday spots.  Occasionally the driver (thankfully sober-looking and middle-aged) would slow down and swerve past groups of cows which wandered along the road, as sheep do in the Scottish Highlands.   They were healthy, well-fed cows and placid, and didn't seem to care about the container lorries that were passing them. 

Nearing Kazbegi the driver stopped to pick up locals from the roadside who didn't seem to pay for their trip of a couple of miles.  

In the town square the owner of our guest house met us and took us the few yards to where we were staying - a  basic room painted blue with mould creeping along the walls, a squat toilet (clean) and shower (non functioning).  The owner was a friendly fellow and his daughter spent her time cooking some kind of cabbage soup in the kitchen.   They like the village and area looked poor and we were glad to punt some money their way.

 

House in Kazbegi

Frieze, Kazbegi

We walked around Kazbegi, a large village of scattered houses and not attractive, except for the setting.  We looked east and our eyes were filled with mountainside, steep and gullied and scree-sloped. The mountain range is young and reminded me of the Remarkables in New Zealand, only higher - about 5000 metres.  Looked south, down a beautiful river valley.  Looked north along the highway to Russia and Chechenya very close.  Looked west, and on the top of a steep hill was the Holy Trinity Church, famed in pictures of Georgia, and as fine a sight as I've ever seen. 

Church of Holy Trinity, most wonderfully placed

There are a couple of hotels in Kazbegi, some cafes, and shops that are just long rooms.  It's a tourist town - not just for mountaineers and trekkers who can hire climbing gear here but for sight-seers and religious pilgrims.  People make money from driving taxis, hiring out horses and selling access to the internet.  The surrounding agriculture was evidently cattle grazing, whether for milk or meat, and I would guess it's subsistence.

I spent the rest of the day and night sleeping off my cold and travel-sickness and woke at dawn.  I went outside.  It was cold.  The rising sun was lighting up the snowy peaks so they turned gold.   The landlord pointed to these and then crossed himself twice as the Holy Trinity Church appeared out of the mist.

After breakfast I set out to walk to the Church, up to the next village of Gergeti and then further up past men pitchforking hay into small stacks in the fields.  There were other people walking - mostly young Georgians (students I guessed).  Some were camping by the roadside.   Coming downhill was a priest in the full black tunic and hat, and with a long beautiful silky black beard.   He was a handsome sight, the only modern touch being his camouflage coloured daypack.  I continued up through the pinewoods.  The sun was out but it was not hot being so high up - about 2000 metres - and each time you turned there was a view of cloud and mountain or the church,.  So I climbed until I heard the sound of voices and there were people picnicking on the big grassy area before the final little hillock where the church stands.  Past the taxi drivers smoking,  some steep last few yards, and there was the Church of the Holy Trinity.  I can't judge Georgian architecture so can only say the Church is simple, pleasing - in fact that particular church shape, a square cross with its dome, is always attractive.  It dates from the fourteenth century.

Haystacks

 

View of Kazbegi, at the foot of the mountains

The road through the pinewoods

Dramatic setting for a church

Dinosaur like reliefs

Coloured stone and lichen

Decoration - don't know what those hand grenade things are

 

View from the church

I put on a scarf, there was a skirt to borrow and I went inside but these dark spaces and icons, candles and a priest selling religious bric-a-brac are a language I can't read.  So feeling an intruder I left the place to a few of the pious pilgrims. 

 I took photos of the lichened walls and the view, then walked back down to the grassy slope.  It was delicious to stand there and look up to the higher slopes and peaks where there are glaciers.  I would have loved to continue further but I'm not fit enough and didn't have a map so could only go downwards, avoiding the taxis and smiling at the occasional family ascending with children.    I went down past an old woman foraging for branches in the forest, the horses in the fields, the men piling up hay. Altogether a grand walk. 

Walking back

Gergeti Village

Funicular - the Soviets built it to take people to the Holy Trinity Church, but after the break up of the empire the Georgians tore it down, thinking pilgrims should walk there.  You can take a taxi though.

When I got back the clouds that had wreathed the mountains descended and coalesced and the village was chilly and grey.   C and I pottered around the rest of day and had dinner - fried  potato and sausage - in a cafe, where the waiter (called George) chatted good English to us - he had learned it off the internet he said - and to his mates, male and female who hung out there.  

The next morning we went to the square to catch the bus back to Tbilisi.  Other tourists were there - a young Latvian woman in the back-packers' hip trousers which are vaguely Turkish in shape, very baggy and with a crotch hanging to the ankles.  She had the Baltic look of fair hair and light eyes, and she said this journey was the first time she had spoken the Russian she had learned at school. 

We crammed into another uncomfortable mini-bus.  I was sitting behind a middle-aged Polish woman, who in bossy tones asked about our journey.  Did we speak Russian?  No, but we got by in English.   How can you travel here without Russian? she said accusingly.  I repeated my mantra that we want to buy things from people who want to sell us things, and we can usually work it out between us.  Besides, many of the young people speak English.  She went on about the food, saying how bad it was, which I thought rude since most of the people sardined in this bus were Georgian and some would understand English.  I said the bread was excellent and the produce very good.  She had been to the seaside resorts on the Black Sea and said they were terrible.  I make her sound nasty - in fact she was quite interesting about their travels. Her aggressive manner may have been how English comes out of a Polish mouth (though Poles I've spoken to in Edinburgh don't talk that way, come to think of it - nah, she was a belligerent cow). 

We stopped again at the line of stalls beside the spring, but lying on the road was a dog,  freshly dead and very large and bloody and most stomach-turning to look at, so I kept my eyes averted as far as I could.  C. said the toilets were better than last time though still disgusting.  A stream running down the hillside was full of rubbish.  We thought they should get their act together - at least they could get rid of the dog as a feature unlikely to attract prospective customers.

We returned to Tbilisi and though I found a few possible outings in the guide book the thought of squeezing into another mini-bus designed for Georgian sized people put us off, and in fact there was enough for us to do in Tbilisi for the next few days.

But I would be very happy to return to those pointed sharp mountains in the Caucasus, as beautiful as their name.

Comments

[Flesh]

Wondrous. I'd like to walk there. But at the same time it's impossible for my type to find a decent meal in that region.

[Rosie]

It's tough for veggies in Europe. I remember someone telling me the only worse thing than being a vegetarian in Spain was being a vegan in Spain.