Tuesday through Sunday

Tuesday - things we take for granted As citizens of a first world country we are accustomed to services such as ordering things via the Internet and expecting them to be delivered to our house.  Imagine, if you will, our unnamed friend who now has a Visa card and lives in Tbilisi and would like to order something in the US over the Internet.  First one gets to the web site and selects that which they want to order.  Next it wants to know mysterious things like whether  you want to shop as a guest or establish an account.  Then it requires filling in the blanks for addresses...billing address, shipping address etc.  Opps, what Georgian do you know who actually gets mail delivered to his/her home? Once an item is purchased, the problem remains on overseas shipment to Georgia.  We have yet to find any on-line retailer who can/will ship to this country.  Someone recognized the problem, though, and has set up a service called USA2Georgia; an outfit located in Minnesota to which the retailer ships your order and they in turn ship to you in Georgia, with rather reasonable fees. Now imagine helping a non-English speaker getting his head around on-line shopping PLUS setting up this intermediate shipping agent!  Our friend watched in amazement as David filled in the various blanks on the screen punctuated with "Oh my Godt" as he realized he was becoming a member of the 21st century.  With a couple of practice runs, he would be liberated from our help and would be able to order whatever he needed, whenever he needed it.

Wednesday morning we knew we would actually make it to Mestia when we checked the Mestia and Tbilisi weather reports and the weather was good in both places.   We took off just after 11:00 and arrived at 12:18.  After following along the Mtkvari river to about Gori, to avoid S. Ossetia air space, we headed northwest toward the Greater or Northern Caucasus and over Racha, through mountain passes that seemed to be within reaching distance of our finger tips.

Mountains were covered in snow and as beautiful as any others we have ever seen. After we landed and disembarked then plane in Mestia we wanted to take a photo but were told that we could not...same as taking a photo of the airplane in Tbilisi!  Security?  There are so many photos of the new Mestia airport on the Internet that we were really surprised.

Our guest house is a basic kind of place with no central heating, however, there are the portable electric heaters of which we have one and it is taking the chill off our room.  In the morning and throughout the day the room is perfectly headed by sunshine!

Dining area in the Ushba Guesthouse, Mestia

We spent nearly two hours exploring Mestia after we checked in to the Ushba Guesthouse.  Much to our amazement there are many more new hotels, guesthouses, city and country government buildings under construction or recently completed than we had anticipated.  The place might have had an interesting main street at some point, but whatever historical essence it might have had is now long gone.  To get a feeling for the real city one needs only to go on the back streets where renovation has not taken place.  This town, destined to be the base for a ski resort, will be even more touristy than Signaghi when they are done. It will become, we fear, a tourist-infected blemish in a beautiful mountainous location.  Yes, the local economy will have prospered, but at what cost or loss of culture and identity. We have met our guide for the next few days, (his name is Giorgi) during dinner.

Typical breakfast spread at the Ushba Guesthouse.

We ate well, with sliced tomatoes, fried potatoes, wonderful trout, vegetable soup, bread, meat and mushroom filled bread, and supra style wine. Now back in our room we are experiencing power outages every 10 -15 minutes which last 10-15 minutes.  We can hear river just down the hill from us and the moon has risen!  Tis a beautiful evening in Svaneti. We asked Giorgi his preference for name, Giorgi, Givi, Goga, or Gia.  He responded that he preferred Gio.

Thursday morning

The electricity was intermittent last evening, and has gone off again while David was in the shower.  He returned to the room saying that it gets mighty dark in the bathroom when the power goes off. We had a great breakfast of eggs, pancakes, bread, jam, khachapuri, and yogurt.  We were given way too much food so offered some to a group of young people.  This broke the ice and soon we learned that they were students from Israel who came to Georgia on the break just to go trekking.

Gorge and bridge along the Enguri between Ushguli and Mestia

 
We drove the 45 km to Ushguli over a road that was often slick mucky, muddy,  under water, bumpy, and generally one-vehicle wide.  The views were amazing.  We were often on the edge of a gorge with breathtaking drops to the river below. We stopped in a small village to see St Barbara's church which dated from the 6th century and has some amazing frescos.  We also stopped prior to that in Nakipari to see a small 11th century with maybe the best preserved frescos we have ever seen in Georgia.

One of the Ushguli hamlets!

Ushguli is comprised of four hamlets of houses on a hillside, each with it's own set of Svan towers.  It is at an elevation of 2,200m making it the highest continually inhabited village in Europe.  There are no streets per se, just winding alleys sometimes wide enough for a jeep to drive through.  These alleys are also used by livestock, mainly cows, so the footing is mucky and fragrant.  We try to step from stone to stone, but that isn't always possible, so we're careful to leave our shoes outside on the guesthouse's porch.  It's name is "Lileo, The Guesthouse of Dato Rationi".

Another view of Ushguli, this hamlet is where our guesthouse was.

After we checked in, we walked around town, took photos, and visited the museum in a tower.  The tower itself is interesting, but also contains Icons and other church artifacts dating back over a thousand years. At this point we were ready for a break, so we visited the local watering hole and had a beer along with small groups of other tourists.  The Georgian guides also enjoyed the chance to socialize.

We dined with Gio, our young guide, as we are the only ones at the guesthouse.  Dinner was far more than we could eat.  There was bread (baked in the wood stove's oven), khachapuri, a similar meat-filled bread traditional to Svaneti, eggplant salad, tomatoes and cucumbers, a meat and tomato dish along with cheese made by the grandmother!  There was also a sweet honey cake and sweet biscuits with no less than four different jams.   Our room is small, two beds more akin to hammocks in an uninsulated room.  Fortunately we have heavy blankets and comforters and a space heater that will be more psychological help than anything else.  The sky was very clear so we know that it will be cold this evening.   Audu - yes in Svani (accent on the au) We spent a long night on very bad beds.  Marty, when on her back couldn't touch the backs of her knees to the mattress.  The base of the bed was an strange metal spring that had long given up it's supportive properties.  

Tsala, grandmother for the guesthouse!

This is where Tsala does all of her cooking.  On the right is her oven, right is firebox.  On top the Svans version of ghomi which is beyond description....crispy top and bottom, light in the middle with the same great flavor of cheese and corn.

Friday, 7 Oct

We have changed our bedroom and consequently have a different style of bed, which gave us support but was as hard as the floor. After breakfast, which also included pasta with home made suluguni, we headed for the glacier on Mt. Shkhara (5058m).  Gio said it was 8k one way and Tsala (mother of the guesthouse owner) said it was 9k.  We started our trek at 09:40 and returned around 16:00.  The first 3/4 was an easy flat on a relatively smooth walking surface, although we were gradually gaining in elevation. It is a beautiful trek along the Enguri river valley and gradually rises to the glacier the source of the river.

Gio, our young guide, takes a break enroute to the glacier. 

Marty in front of the glacier, fresh snow in hand for a little moisture

Along the way we saw hay stacks on the slopes of the surrounding hills.  The men cut the hay using a scythe and then hand rake and pile it into stacks.  The amazing thing is the steepness at which they are working which is difficult to judge, but might have been 30%, steeper than most ski trails!  We saw men with ox teams and sledges bringing the hay back to the village.  We also saw the hay coming back on big lumbering trucks loaded to the max with workers actually riding on the front of the truck (standing on the front bumper).   The stacks of hay are moved from high on the hills mostly by hand, being pulled to a lower elevation where the men on horseback can then pull them closer to the "road" where they can be loaded onto the trucks.

The last part of our trek was climbing and scrambling over rocks of all sizes; debris left as the glacier has receded over the years.  David asked Gio how long he had been taking people on the trek to the glacier and he said four years.  Then we asked if he could see a difference in size of the glacier over those four years, and he responded that he could.  So global warming is not selective in where it affects human populations.  In this pristine part of the Georgian countryside the effects are certainly visible, if not felt.   This part was hard for Marty, who doesn't have good balance and is much more tentative hiking on those surfaces because of her fear of falling (with artificial hips one just doesn't want to fall!).  We did make it to the glacier and then discovered that one of David's trusty LLBean hiking boots had decided to give up it's sole; it was only attached from the ball of the foot forward and could be heard flapping as he walked!  David managed to bind it in place with a cord from one of our backpacks and gingerly hiked back to the guesthouse with the sole tied up into place.  (Note: the second shoe had the same fate one day later.) We spent some time up close and personal with the glacier, however, not on it or touching it.  As we sat and admired it, chunks fell down and a large rock tumbled from the leading edge down the glacier's face.  Ever respectful of this element of nature, one should look but not touch.

Ah, David's shoe that failed!

Saturday 

After breakfast we headed up the hill to the church of St Lamaria to see the frescos.  It was another very clear crisp morning.  After seeing the church we waited for Levon at the bridge and began our way back to Mestia.

Ruined towers in Adishi, Marty in center. 

Several of the abondoned homes in Adishi.  Some were very lovely homes!

We took a side trip to Adishi, a village one of the Israelis had recommended to us.  The road to Adeshi was smooth in some places and then just plain tooth rattling as we went over the rocks washed down the side of the mountain.  This village now is mostly deserted -there are now eight families where once there were at least 30 or more, based on the number and size of the houses.  We saw at least a dozen towers, but only a handful are anywhere near complete.  It is sad that such a pristine location would have have seen such as loss of population, but it is also easy to understand.  Much snow falls in the mountains and we are sure that the villages way up in these valleys are almost completely isolated part of the winter and spring. Villagers in Ushguli, cannot grow much of their own food needs; they basically grow potatoes and not much more.  They probably could grow other crops but either have not tried or are not interested.  They have lots of small very hairy pigs, cows, some sheep and goats and chickens.  Milk is used for cheese and yogurt which each household makes nearly daily.  In the next few weeks most families will need to make a lengthy trip to Zugdidi for supplies which will last the winter such as sugar, flours, coffee, tea, and the things they would otherwise run out of.  We did notice apple and plum trees in Adeshi so their climate is slightly more conducive for farming and growing things. A small school in Ushguli serves the village's younger students and even participates in the government's English teacher project.  Medical care is another issue. They do not have ample electricity, however, more is coming as we passed many areas along the road from Mestia where they have placed footings for electrical towers.  We passed survey crews for future locations doing the initial work to determine these locations.  

Ushguli is still primitive in many ways.  Most families use outhouses while the guests in the guesthouses get flush toilets and hot showers.  This primitiveness also works in our favor being folks who want to see these villages in their raw state, unspoiled by paved roads and Internet cafes.  It may be years before dramatic change is seen in Ushguli, but we fear it will gradually come.  In the meantime, the mountains will undo most road work unless a considerable amount of money is spent to tame spring runoffs and avalanches.  And, it will be the road that brings the incentive for change as more tourists would come.  As a World Heritage site, maybe there will be some protection from overdevelopment (hotels, restaurants, and a landing strip).  And in the best of all worlds, the trekkers will continue to come and support the community through a more gentle manner. Side note:  The Svans have their own language which is similar to both Russian and Georgian in a few ways.  Communication was done more with our tidbits of Russian mixed with Georgian and sometimes sign language!  

This may be our last post before we return to Maine so don't take our silence as not wanting to communicate.  As with any trip, one needs to digest and process all that they have seen, done, and felt.