These aren’t the pretty pics, it was a rubbish few days. Brighter days to follow.
I wish I could’ve got into this place…
Very Burtynsky…
Think I brought the brooding mountain spirits out by accident. It was a cracking Scrabble start though!
Oh yes….I’ll remember this journey for a long time. At least it was only 8 hours.
Ushugli – well worth the effort!
Furry pigs! At least they were happy.
More warming landscapes.
Ok they’re not wolves – but they almost could be. Orrr maybe they’re a bit mixed, I might just believe it anyway.
Well, I think morale might have been a little low last time I wrote. Well it got worse. So to Svaneti…the only bit of the Caucasus mountain strip that IS accessible this time of year. Svaneti ain’t no short straw though – it’s still tres high, remote and delivers on the architecture front. So, as you can see you’re nobody without a Svan tower – or rather you’re more likely to be history without a tower. This bunch are quite hardcore, being the year round mountain folk they are. And judging by the gob smacking frequency of cop shops there’s obviously plenty of trouble and strife that’s gone on round these parts. Every half-horse town has one!
Climbing up the Caucasus, wow that landscape looks different and feels old. Now I did enjoy that bit. The fight for survival oozing out of every animal mineral and vegetable. On a cloudy day it all feels rather malevolent – it’s big on ambiance this neck of the woods.
So Ushguli at t’top was a wash out. The supposed prettiest town in Georgia – and obviously, more importantly the highest village in Europe was hidden under a lovely veil of sleety snowy rain. And the journey to get there was so much fun. Right there and then on the Russian border in that weather it felt like the most inhospitable place on earth. But I guess things can deteriorate that bit more just a few km down the road when you hit an over excitable South Ossetia….
