Kazbegi

Because I’ve managed to see Georgia East to West to South…I decided it was finally time for me to see the North. There aren’t many safe places to see up north…especially since Svaneti jumped on the bandwagon of separatist states last week. But Kazbegi is one of the last remaining bastions of safe tourism, and it was definitely worth visiting. Besides, everyone in the US kept calling and telling me that Russian troops were invading, so I thought I’d go and check out the border…ya’ know…see for myself…just kidding mom!

We went to the Marshrutka (minibus) station at 8 in the morning, munched on some khatchapuri, and were on our way by 9 AM—an almost ungodly hour of the morning here in Georgia. My travel companions were: Paul, Dana, Jacques-Olivier (random French guy), Dato Papuashvili (Georgian who grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico of all places), and Dato’s dad.

The road there is an old Russian military road that gets progressively smaller and more pothole ridden the farther north it gets. The entire way there was so misty that we could hardly see out our windows, so I impressed everyone in the Marshrutka with my ability to sleep despite the fact that my head was banging against the window due to our minibus quite literally falling into cavernous potholes.

We got to Kazbegi after 4 hours and immediately hired a driver to take us up the mountain to a church. Along the way we passed many foreigners making the hike by foot. Thankgoodness I wasn’t with anyone insisting on being so athletic!

At the top of the mountain was a church. The monks were very nice, but they did insist that Dana and I wrap blue burlap skirts around our split tails.

The scenery was so beautiful, I can hardly describe it. To quote my bestfriend Lindsey after I sent her the pictures, “Kazbegi looks like a place where magical creatures live and talk amongst themselves.” And I think she is right.

After our trip up the mountain, we went back to the village and ate some traditional khinkali (those dumplings I was telling you about) and khatchapuri. Every single region has its own traditional khatchapuri and this one was particularly good. Not as good as the khatchapuri in Adjara which consists of a raw egg and cheese in the middle; but still, this khatchapuri was damn tasty.

On the way back to Tbilisi, our Marshrutka driver stopped at various places to allow us to take pictures. Unfortunately this meant he made up for lost time by scuttling around mountain passes at warp speed. I was half convinced I was going to die by way of Marshrutka launching off into thin air…but the driver was surprisingly adept at keeping the minibus along the cliffs edges even at 100 mph. It’s funny…mostly my family keeps calling me concerned about the political situation here in Georgia, but I’m not lying when I tell them that the invading Russian army isn’t the big concern! The driving in this country is far more hazardous and immediate to my health!

But survive the rocket trip I did. I even got to see an awesome mineral glacier. I don’t know how to describe it, but the glacier wasn’t made of ice but compacted minerals. Less than half-an-inch of running water poured over the entire thing and created several water falls. This natural phenomenon was just one of the many weird things we saw. There are so many minerals in this region that the ground is often orange, red, yellow, white…it was all very colorful.

On the way home we came across a giant mosaic monument to the Soviet past in the middle of no where.

In the end, it only took us 3 hours to get home and we all immediately crawled into bed for a long nights rest. I’ve never quite seen anything quite so beautiful as Kazbegi…and I hear it’s the poor man’s Georgian mountains. Apparently the mountains in Svaneti and Abkhazia are supposed to be “impossibly beautiful”…much more so than at Kazbegi. I can’t imagine it but I sure wish those separatist bastards would calm down so I can go see it! He he! I’m starting to sound like a Georgian!

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