Episode 17

Although not actually raining when we left Tbilisi it was
still very threatening. We managed to
get in a couple of visits to more Monasteries before the heavens opened and
nearly drowned us. The rain was so heavy
that D gave up trying to drive in it and pulled off the road and had a sleep
while the heaviest rained itself out.

Jvari monastery is another one that sits on a high point
over looking a confluence of two rivers.
It is a very popular day trip for people from Tbilisi so it gets far more
visitors than most we’ve visited. Also
it is a particularly sacred church to many Georgians because of its association
with St Nino who converted King Mirian to Christianity. King Mirian then raised a wooden cross in
this spot in the 4th cent AD.
The first church was built on this spot in the 6th or 7th
cent AD.

Got a great view of Mtskheti from here before driving by a
very roundabout way to reach the town and visit the Cathedral there. Being Saturday it seems wedding occupy much
of the priests time: During the time my
lot were visiting 3 weddings took place, and they were quick ceremonies.

It is believed by many that Christs robe lies buried under
this church. The story is quite involved
if the guide book has got is right. Too
involved for me to go into after all I’m just the stuffed toy. While visiting the Tourist info office next
door to the cathedral my lot met an Australian lady who is teaching English in
Turkey.

The Ananuri church complex, a large and a small church
within a walled compound was visited by us between showers. Probably the thing about the bigger church
here is the carved decoration around the entrance and the large cross on the
exterior walls. I fear that my lot a
beginning to get a bit jaded with churches and monasteries and they still have
several more that are ‘must sees’ in this small country. It got a bit that way with Serbia a few years
ago and Greece too.

We are now heading up the Military road into the mountains
towards Kazbegi near the Russian border and presently camping beside a
particularly swift flowing muddy looking stream. One can only hope it’s not going to flood
from the recent heavy rain.

Well, we didn’t get washed away so we could continue on our
way. The weather remained very dismal
and as we climbed up and over the Jvari pass at 2394m we didn’t get much of a
view. The small ski resort village tries
to have a bit of an alpine appearance but fails somewhat. Grey concrete half built abandoned building
sprouting weeds, piles of broken concrete an occasional grazing cow, and the
not so good workmanship of many of the ‘alpine’ hotels leaves a little to be
desired. It would probably be a much
cheaper option for the ski enthusiast than most of western Europe and it does
offer heli skiing too.

Pulling up in the square in Kazbegi we were swamped with
people touting for the various guest houses.
We disappointed the lot of them as we didn’t want a guest house, and
especially not before lunch time. D
continued driving up the pretty gorge towards the Russian border to within
about 3 k’s before turning around, and heading back to Kazbegi. Then we took the 4wd track up to the Tsminda
Sameba church that sits on a hill top 400m above Kazbegi. L was anticipating having to walk up the very
muddy track to it, not aware that there was this vehicular track that we
comfortably negotiated thanks to D’s skill on such tracks. Bit of a very tight squeeze when we met a
mini bus coming the other way. We all
help our breath, even me.

We timed it just right to see yet another wedding. It was being celebrated as we entered the
church so we joined the crowd of onlookers.
Can’t say the happy couple took a great deal of effort with their
outfits, though to be fair it may have cost them all they had. He wore an average dark gray jacket and an
ordinary pair of light gray trousers, casual ones, not smart ones, she wore a bright pink scarf, imitation
leather jacket,black, not new, black skirt knee length with black patterned
tights and reasonably nice black boots, again not new.

The ceremony in this Eastern orthodox church involves the
priest at one point placing a crown on each ones head then after much more
reading of the script the attendants, one man, one woman, left the crown, the
priest anoints their heads or does something else, couldn’t really see, then
leads the procession of these 4 people, bride and groom, each with an attendant
behind holding the crown over the respective head, around the altar 3 times.
After that a bit more is read, the crowns removed and the ceremony over. Two priests are involved, or at least they
were here, but not at the bit we saw of the ceremony the other day.

This 14th century church is quite small, what with the
wedding party and guests and gawkers like us, 20 people and the place was
packed. There are just a few icons in
this church, no frescos that we could see, mind you, it was fairly dim
inside.

Outside the view over Kazbegi was great despite the drizzle
but we couldn’t see much of the mountains.
Didn’t see much point in hanging around so we made our way back down:

When we crossed the Jvari pass again the weather was just a
little better and we got a good view of the valley below, the mountain tops
were still shrouded in fog. We returned
to just below the reservoir then took a less used road up the east side of the
reservoir and on towards Shatili near the Chechnya border. With the weather somewhat improved we drove
over the Darvisjvari pass and got splendid views all around. This is a higher pass at 2672m.

Along this route we drove beside rushing, tumbling mountain
streams the colour of liquid concrete.
In a couple of places they roar through tiny narrow gorges with a
ferocity that photos just can’t capture.

Shatili is only a tiny village, an old village with these
tall, stone, towers all built beside each other so that they look a bit like a
fortress. Most of these towers are
abandoned now in favour of houses in the new village which looks very poor and
ramshackle. There seems to be some
electricity up here because we did see an electric light on in one or two
houses. There is one small hotel that looks as though it has only a couple of
rooms for guests.

This is quite a poor area, because of its altitude the
cattle and sheep are only up here for the summer and will shortly be moved to
lower pastures on the south side of the pass.
There seems to be mostly old people living in the few houses that are
occupied. We did see some cattle sheds
so presumably not all the animals are moved south.

Beyond Shatili are some stone crypts that were used in
medieval times of plague. It’s told that
people who were ill with the plague would come out here and entre a crypt and
wait to die. There are still heaps of
human bones visible in these crypts and they gave L the heebies. She wouldn’t even let me go near to have my
photo taken.

The road ends about 6k’s further on than the crypts at
Mutso. If you want to continue on from
there then it’s time to get the hiking boots out and the wet weather gear on.

We returned back over the pass without any problems and near
Kosha met a group of 4 Israelis who were hitching. Being fully loaded as we are we didn’t have
room to take them and they still had about 3 k’s to go to the nearest
village. With very little around in the
form of vehicular traffic we hope that managed to arrange a lift when they got
to Kosha as they seem to be very anxious about getting back to Tbilisi that
day.

On the road from Zhinvali to Tianeti we passed over another
lower pass after which the countryside seemed quite a bit drier. Then around
Pshaveli we turned north to head over yet another pass. This would be the highest pass to tackle in
Georgia at over 2800. There are higher
passes in this country but only hiking and horse riding trails cross them.

As we climbed higher and higher over this pass we had to
contend with some large army or works trucks coming the other way. Often the only places where the road was wide
enough to pass was on the mostly steep hair pin bends and it was a case of
shuffling past each other in such places.
The few Georgian and Russian cars we passed didn’t seem to think that it
was plausible to wait just a short while in a wider sections for a car to
pass, so if we could see that a car was
approaching we would wait in a wider spot until they passed. They certainly wouldn’t have done so. No matter how narrow the road might be they
would try and squeeze past. On such
occasions even I held my breath. We did
see one car that didn’t make it, but fortunate it had gone over the edge where
it was only a few metres to the stream below and somehow it had managed to stop
before toppling into the stream and seemed little damaged. No idea if or how they would ever be able to
retrieve it.

When we got to the top of this Abano pass, 2860m, we stopped
for my lot to have a bite to eat. Within
a couple of minutes the fog had closed in and we could barely see more than a
few metres. We all had a rest for about
3 hours while the fog swirled about us and the wind tried to blow us away. Then very suddenly the fog cleared so we headed
off down the northern side. Later when
we camped in a valley in this region we had frost on the ground in the morning.

For those so inclined there is some really good hiking in
this region. It is beginning to be
developed too, with a couple of hotels in the small villages. There is also a park ranger station that we
passed and a visitor centre though, as we didn’t go in there we don’t know what
they have to offer. L has read that the
hikes are not well marked.

It is certainly pretty with villages set up on steep
mountain slopes, didn’t see roads to some of them so presumably the only access
is by foot or horse. They seem to use a
small mountain pony in these parts, we have seen a few locals on horseback or
herders with a packhorse loaded with all their gear. High snowy peaks of the main
Caucasus ridge rear their heads in the background.

Now that is another fun thing to met on a narrow mountain
pass road, a large mob of sheep or herd of cows. One shepherd got quite upset at us coming
along while his sheep were crossing the road, yet most were very friendly and
gave us a wave. One cow herder even
asked us the time in very good English.

On our return trip over this pass the fog again engulfed us
as we passed over the top and in a couple of places as we came down the
southern side.

Our route from Pshaveli towards Telavi took us through a
wine producing area and we passed the Alaverdi monastery and winery without
going in. My lot really aren’t into
wine. We did see people busy picking the
grapes as we passed, and some way further on we passed a truck loaded with
grapes heading for a crushing place probably.

We had to cross yet another pass, the Gombori pass at 1650m
on our way to Sagarejo then we had some rough gravel roads with a stretch of
good sealed road in the middle to reach the Davit Gareja Monastery on the
Azerbaijan border. After leaving the
lovely greenery of the high country in the Caucasus we had now arrived in semi
desert, a very dry region with stark barren hillsides.

This is a cave monastery as well as having some
buildings. They are still in the process
of rebuilding and restoring some of the buildings here after they were over run
by Shah Abbas soldiers in 1615 and during Soviet times they were used by the
military. Apparently some monks are back
in residence but we didn’t see any sign of them when we visited.

As part of the same complex of Monasteries there is another
cave monastery not far away. To reach it
involves a steep climb up the mountain side behind the first monastery. We all started off up this track but it was
too much for D so L and I battled on alone.
L did threaten to leave me on a rock if I started to weigh too much,
just as well I hadn’t had any more stuffing added to me. I really didn’t fancy the idea of being
abandoned here, especially as there are poisonous vipers living around these
parts. We didn’t see any fortunately.

After a good deal of effort on L’s part, I really didn’t do
much, we arrived at the top of the ridge and looked over the edge at a vast
barren plain spread out below, that is in Azerbaijan. It is a part of that country that is
separated from the bigger portion by Georgia and Armenia. We saw some other visitors and found we
were all looking for the caves of this Udabno monastery. One of the others asked a border guard about
the caves and was told that we couldn’t visit them at this time because of the very
high winds. The wind was just about blowing us off the ridge. It seems that the Georgia/Azerbaijan border
is really just below the caves that face out over that plain we could all see. Never-the-less we enjoyed the view then made
our way back down to the car and D much quicker than we had come up.

Back in Tbilisi we are now staying at a Hostel in the city
centre. The passports were collected
complete with Azerbaijan visas and we all took the funicular up the mountain
side and got a great view over the city on a very sunny day. This is a much high spot than the fort and
Mother Georgia statue, we could look down of them.

D is busy repairing the car keys that have just about
died. L really hates these electronic
things. It seems that if it isn’t one
thing then it’s another. Quite
frequently the keys won’t send the
signal they are supposed to and this is a real problem as with out that signal
the engine won’t start. Only one set has
been working for weeks now, and it only works properly part time. So D has the things in bits at present, and
is endeavouring to repair them. If he
doesn’t succeed then we could well be stuck here for some time. No, it’s not the battery, that has been
checked and although quite good it was replaced with a brand new one, it’s the
circuits in those little buttons that you have to press.

Just to end this episode we, me included, would just like to
tell our Stef that we are all very proud of her. Our Stef
(L’s neice) is a property manager and through her work won a trip to
Dubai. Well, win really isn’t the right
word because she was awarded the trip for being the best in her field, no luck
involved, just skill and hard work. Well
done Stef, we love you: me too!

© Lynette Regan 29th September 2014