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Places of Loneliness - Part 1
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Part 1 of 2
Long stories are best told from the beginning...
During my research for my trip to the Caucasus, I came across a book called "Bread and
Ashes" by Tony Anderson, an Englishman who had walked from Omalo to Kazbegi, 2 small
villages in the High Caucasus (I highly recommend it - its a fantastic read).
I suggested an idea to Mike: how about we reverse his route and walk from Kazbegi to Omalo?
Its 90km as the crow flies and crosses four 2500m+ mountain passes.
He agreed and on the 16th of August we left Tbilisi laden with 8 days worth of food (12 at a stretch), a stove, a tent, our wet weather gear and a sturdy rope (just in case).
Tbilisi had been laid back, drinking beer and enjoying the good food. There was some
excitement though when Martin, a Brit we'd been hanging out with, was robbed at gunpoint.
Thankfully he was unhurt and it turned into a bit of an international incident when the
British embassy got involved.
We headed north from Tbilisi on the Georgian Military Highway. This was built by the
Russians in the 1800s to link the Georgian capital and Vladikavkas, the capital of the
Russian province of North Ossetia. In between lay the Caucasus and their mountain tribes who were struggling against Russian colonial rule.
Its an incredible road, rising quickly into huge mountains, skirting the side of sheer
valleys dotted with snow desperately clinging to its flanks despite the broiling summer sun.
Soviet ski resorts showed signs of renovation, probably pushed by the new president,
Saakashvili's, gaze towards Europe.
In 3 hours we arrived in Kazbegi (1797m), the largest town in Khevi province and the last point before the Russian border, several more kilometers north at the Daryal Gates.
The villages sits in the shadow of Mount Kazbeg, the highest peak in Georgia. Its snow
covered dome has inspired writers for centuries including Lermontov and Pushkin, both of
whom travelled through this region.
We spent the afternoon walking up to a monastery on the slopes of the mountain (and puffing and sweating enough to be grateful that the next day's walk was predominantly flat), searching for kerosine for our stove and drinking local wine with a French journalist, Claude, who Mike knew from Armenia and was in town writing an article.
Hazy with wine we turned in and the morning greeted us with a clear blue sky, just peaking over the edge of the sheer black wall of rock which guarded the eastern edge of the village.
The mother of Vano, a local guy who had turned his house into a homstay, decided to feed us up, knowing we were going into the mountains for several days.
She piled our plates with macaroni and fried potatoes. After we turned down vodka for
breakfast she pulled out a huge container of butter. She said something to me in Russian and held our her hand. I reached into the pile of cutlery at my elbow and handed her a butter knife.
"Niet!" she said as she tossed it aside.
Again her hand was held out. I handed her a bigger knife.
"Niet!" she said again.
This time she reached past me, grabbed a huge ladle of a spoon and landed a big lump of
butter onto my macaroni.
"Ahh, spasiba?" I said, offering an uncertain thanks in Russian.
She then proceeded to dish out another plate of macaroni. This she covered with sugar.
"Vkusno," I said. It meant tasty in Russian (this is my limit in Russian - "thanks" and
"mmm, tasty").
"Mike, this is the strangest tasting food I've ever tried," I said through a mouthful of
sweetened, buttery pasta.
"They must have really long winters here to get this experimental," he replied.
I guess thats the price of being a mountain man. Cuisine takes a back seat to raw
sustenance.
We polished off the rest of the meal (knowing that we would be eating pasta and soup for the forseeable future) and hobbled into town, holding our distended hobbit-like bellies.
Our route started by leaving Kazbegi south along the highway for a kilometer or 2, then
turning due east along the base of the Sno valley. This valley eventually led up to the
3056m Roshka pass and into Khevsureti, the province containing one of our major stopping
points, the historical village of Shatili (1395m).
The best map we'd been able to get hold of was a 1:500,000 in Tbilisi. Its pretty much
useless except for gaining a general direction between towns.
We were a bit nervous about this so our first stop was in the village of Sno, at the first OSCE base we were to come across on our journey.
OSCE stands for Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (http://www.osce.org/georgia). Their work is varied but one of their main mandates in
Georgia is the monitoring of the Russian border. They have several dozen international
monitors spread out along the border with North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Daghestan (all republics in the Russian Federation).
Since our route shadowed the border of all 4 republics, we were expecting to bump into the OSCE monitors more than once.
The base at Sno turned out to be the HQ for the current region. We talked to Vassil, a
Bulgarian and George, a Hungarian, about our route. They told us it was safe to pass through their region at least and provided us with some good on the ground information to help us with our next few days walk.
We continued along the steep sided green valley, along a rough 4WD track leading up to the last settlement in the valley, Djuta (2200m).
The hot summer sun beat down on us as we passed through small villages whose occupants were taking refuge in the shade of trees and houses. Shoulders aching, I wondered how the hell we were going to carry our packs (weighing in around 17-18kg) up mountains when we struggling on flat ground!
As afternoon lengthened, the road began to climb to the village of Djuta. The cool glacial run off water spouting from springs on the edge of the track kept us going and knackered we stumbled through Djuta and camped 100m from town.
"Can we camp there?" Mike asked an old man in Russian.
"Yes, of course. You will have a very peaceful sleep there."
"Is it safe?"
"Yes, of course. I live here," he said pointing to a low brick building with a thatched roof interspersed with rusty corrugated sheeting.
We'd survived day one. We'd walked 19kms and were in the mountains. All around the hills
reached up like black fingers, stretching towards the heavens. The village had a very Swiss feel, topped with tall pointed rooves and nestled in the nooks of the valley wall. In the fields opposite the village stood piled hay bales, all carefully cut with scythes and raked up as food for the oncoming winter.
It was very pastoral and peaceful. The stream rushed past us, excited by the melting
mountain snow, and we fell into a satisfied slumber.
Our first morning waking on the road was full of excitement and trepidation. We knew we had our first pass of the journey to cross that day and Mike cooked a hearty meal of oats and sultanas to power us through.
Unfortunately, he'd developed some blisters on his feet the day before (old boots which were not fully re-broken in). They didn't seem too bad though, so we patched them up with some blister plasters I'd bought from Boots and got moving.
It wasn't long before we passed a Georgian Border Guard (GBG) post. A fat man with a Makarov pistol tucked into his track suit trousers waved us over to say hello, then rapidly lost interest and we continued on.
Our next encounter was a OCSE Prominent Observation Point (POP) watching a pass leading to Russia.
We talked to some of the monitors there and found out some more information where to go and how to recognise the path up to the pass.
One monitor, an Englishman named Nick, pulled us aside as we readied to leave.
"Be aware, guys, that there are wolves here. We've seen them at night on the thermal
imaging. Also be aware that some of the farmers are hunting the wolves. So, if you see some guys in camo firing machine guns, they're probably shooting at the wolves, not you, so don't freak out."
Noting the warning we carried on down the river. We crossed at a snow bridge (A snow bridge is a large chunk of snow crossing a river which runs under it. Its underneath will slowly melt, adding to the river until it collapses and washes away) and headed east up a side valley.
The valley climbed towards a high bowl of rock and ice, leaving us breathless and struggling in the midday heat.
We reached the beginning of the path over the pass and waded across a bitterly cold river to begin the climb. After fuelling up on tuna, bread and a snickers bar we began.
I set pace as I'm the slowest uphill, and we slowly twisted along the switchbacks leading up the valley side. Above us loomed black, jagged fangs of broken rock while our view encompassed the white topped mountains forming almost impenetrably lines of nature between Europe and Asia.
After an hour of trudging uphill we spied the cairn marking the 3056m pass.
A man in shorts and a puffer jacket stood beside it.
He shouted out something in Georgian. We didn't understand.
Mike replied in Russian. He didn't understand.
"Do you speak English?" he said in an European accent.
I dropped my sweat covered pack and shook the hand of the random German. I hadn't expected seeing anyone up here, let alone another tourist.
He turned out to be with another German and some of his Georgian wife's family.
We chatted, letting the sun blazing above dry our shirts.
Below us lay Khevsureti and nestled between two rivers curving down from the mountain range we had just topped, sat the village of Roshka (2050m).
Full of spirit from our day's victory, we descended into the valley. After a tough couple of hours walk, Mike's blisters had not reacted well to the 20kms we had covered, so we stopped short of Roshka by about 1 km. It was no loss as we learned the next day that Roshka was about 4 houses and a barn.
Our camp was set amongst some huge boulders next to the river. It was a picturesque spot and we set about cooking dinner.
Foolishly, I had left the door of our tent open and when I went to retrieve a book, I
noticed a large black spider with a nobbled backend hiding on the ground.
I don't mind spiders but I do tend to avoid having anything to do with large black ones when someone who used to keep garden spiders as pets (Mike) is around to deal with it.
He borrowed a pencil as a coaxer and went into to deal with it.
"Oh shit, shit, shit!!! Give me the toilet paper!! Oh shit, shit, shit!"
"Whats going on!?!?"
The nobbled end of the spider turned out to be her unborn children. She had chosen my new tent as her spawning ground. Mike's attempt to coax her out had lead her to expel dozens of little spiders into the tent. Then she tried to attack him.
In paroxysms of rage and disgust, he crushed mother and evil spawn into goo. In malicious vengance I took the mucky globs of toilet paper and burned them. Completely out of spite.
With the excitement over and the tent door closed (we had realised the whole campsite was teeming with spiders and now noticed several crawling on us and near us), we settled down for the evening.
There was little to do but to sit back with wet socks on, smoke a cigar and drink brandy, talking of the women we'd lost and never had, of the mountains and of the herculean effort we'd given that day in climbing the Roshka pass.
I didn't have any spider nightmares that night but Mike did get bitten on the hand in his sleep. Luckily it wasn't poisonous and in a few days the welt had disappeared.
Day 3 was hot. Very hot. We also didn't realise that to continue east we had to descend all the way down into a ravine and then climb back out again.
On the way we found some good sticks to use as walking sticks. We'd also had several books warn us about the Caucasian sheepdogs, a particularly fierce and huge breed of dog used in the mountains. Our new sturdy cudgels would come in handy in case we were attacked.
We spent several hours on a morale sapping to-and-fro down a track, losing all the altitude we'd gained the day before, knowing full well that we had to climb it again as soon as we got to the bottom.
It was a thoroughly horrible walk and by 2pm we reached the tiny village of Gudani. We'd
walked a pathetic 8km and were aching, hobbling and generally overheating.
It was a unanimous decision to stop. We camped in a field near the village and aired out our aching feet.
Soon several of the local villagers drifted across. Bored, they sat down and talked to us (lucky for Mike speaking Russian - otherwise the conversation would be very boring).
Everyone seems to wear army camo hear and one or two of the guys looked quite intimidating.
They were welcoming enough once we got past the initial hard exterior. One older guy,
probably a senior figure in the village, warmed to Mike and they chatted for a while in
Russian.
"Many tourists come through here to Shatili by foot," he said.
"True?"
"Yes."
"How many in the last year," said Mike.
"Well... it was mainly in the Soviet times." That's 15 years ago. "One man from Holland has come through on his bicycle since then."
We guessed an Australian had as well as the local guys kept mentioning Australia. We could think of no other reason why.
The man also described the Datvi-Jvari Pass (Bear Cross Pass - 2676m) which we wanted to
cross the next day.
"The road goes like this." He drew switchbacks climbing a hill side.
"But you go like this." He then drew a straight line intersecting the switchbacks.
We gave each other a grimace and let him continue.
The early finish for the day turned into a good rest. Mike fixed up some of his blisters
which were causing problems. His feet were looking like they contained more electrical tape than skin (we'd ran out of strapping tape the day before).
We started early from Gudani under a cloudy sky. Two weather systems were fighting each
other and I hoped that the rain would hold off until we had crossed the pass.
We were in much better condition that the day before. Our bodies were slowly adapting to
carrying packs and the weight was slowly lessening as our food supplies were eaten.
In Khakmati, a small village nearby, we passed our first Georgian defensive tower.
The northern tribes often built large watch towers out of the abundant slate around the
mountains. From these perches, often clinging to the side of daunting ridges, they could
track any Ingush or Chechen raiders and try and defend their settlements.
Within 2 hours we were at the bottom of the pass. We ate a small snack and headed up the
direct line that the man in Gudani had suggested. Supposedly it cut the road from 8km to the top down to 3km. Its was worth trying in order to cut 5km of going back and forth.
The pass was brutal but exhilirating. The incline grew steeper and steeper and exhausted we kept going out of sheer stubborness.
We finally saw the last stretch of road above us. We slogged up a steep 30m run off gully which ended with a 3m stretch of near vertical mud. Somehow Mike scrambled up it and hung his staff down to help me climb up it.
A few minutes later we were sitting on the other side of the pass. The weather had moved
west and once again blazing sunshine shone down on us. We'd completed pass number 2 of 4.
From the pass we walked down into Khevsureti proper.
The main valley was a beautiful scar in the landscape, falling south to north, barren except for small thatches of forest and thick mountain grass. Glacial runoff had carved deep wounds into the valley walls and fed small springs which in turn fed the main river running north towards Chechnya.
We were aiming for the village of Kistani. On our map it was shown as the only other
settlement in the valley save for Shatili which defended the mouth of the valley, just a few kilometers short of the Chechen border.
We passed the odd crumbling stone building next to the river. There were no signs of life
save for the shadow of a women at the edge of a window.
After a few hours of nothing, several huge towers stretched up from a high ridge line
guarding a valley to our left. They looked out to the cold north, a small village nestled behind their view.
Thinking it was Kistani we broke off the main road and made our way up to it, passing a
small stone shrine holding a tarnished metal bell.
A small herd of cattle loitered on the edge of a stream. The only sound was the odd low moan from a disgruntled cow.
Three low stone buildings sat facing the stream.
"Gamargabat!!!" we cried out as we stepped across the stream. The traditional Georgian
greeting didn't seem to be having any luck.
"Gamargabat! Hello!"
Outside one of the houses sat another stone shrine holding a bell. Around the houses the
thick shrub of the valley floor had closed in, slowly regaining its natural territory.
"Its looks like no one has been here for a while," I said. At my feet lay the starched white skull of a goat, its horns curling back menacingly.
We were well aware that the religion here was a mix of pagan and Christian beliefs. Animal sacrifice over sacred shrines was something still very much practiced here.
There was cattle but no one seemed to have been here for months.
"This is spooking me out."
"Me too," said Mike.
"Do you still want to camp here?"
"Not really."
The air was so still that it almost drew us towards the bells in the village. The silence almost begged to be broken.
I began to have crazy visions of waking some strange power which had control over the
village if we rang one of the bells. The heat, tiredness and mystical feel of the land had eaten at my reason and I feared waking banshees or witches or worse.
"Lets get out of here."
We followed the stream out of town and took to the road, not looking back at the strange
silent place behind us.
Later in Shatili we discovered that the bells were related to the local funerary customs. I doubt we would've raised the dead but it wouldn't have been good form to have rung them.
We descended further in a high-sided gorge, the black rock crumbling away into the maw of the river which was whipped into a white tipped frenzy as it drew us forward.
Night seemed to close in quickly as the heights above hid the failing sun. Feeling the
evening cold hunting us we chose a rock scattered flood plain to camp. A few 4WD cars
passed, reminding us we were not lost in another world, but the eeriness of the day
threatened as at all times.
We named the camp "No-man's Valley" and built a large fire to keep away the wolves and the ghosts.
The morning was clear and it only took 2 hours to close the final 9km to Shatili (we'd
covered 31kms the day before including the pass in 9 hours of walking).
We surly mechanic at the OSCE base helped us to find a place to stay in the one street of Soviet flats which made up Shatili.
Old Shatili was made up by a labyrinthe cluster of old towers which made up a citadel which defended the Khevsurs from raiders from the north. The gangplanks running from tower to tower gave the place a strange feel, reminescent of Morocco crossed with Tuscany.
The Soviets moved the occupants to some new flats nearby in order to restore the old town.
According to Mike, who has seen more than a few of these relocations, the new Shatili isn't too bad as Soviet places go. They are tastefully designed like Swiss chalets and have water and power.
The lady at the house we were staying at fed us up in true mountain man style. Loads of
potatoes, butter, bread, cheese and more cheese and more cheese. We took to it like rabid wolves, trying to replenish our bodies from the 5 days of tough walking we'd completed.
We visited the OSCE base in Shatili and funnily discovered that Mike knew one of the
Austrian monitor, Kurt's, cousins in small-town Austria somewhere. It was a fortunate
coincidence. We also met a Polish monitor named Czeslaw and an Azeri named Zeymal.
We asked more questions about the safety of our proposed route and any other useful info.
They helpfully topped up our supply of kerosine for our stove and we also checked out how New Zealand (for me) and Canada (for Mike) were doing in the Olympics.
The next day was our rest day. It consisted of sitting around, eating, reading and letting our feet heal (Mike's blisters were starting to come right).
Around midday the OSCE helicopter, a big lumbering Russian military MI-8, arrived to rotate the Shatili POP crew. Czeslaw was one of them and we told him to expect us in the next few days as we had to pass it on the way to Omalo. I huddled under the blowback of the chopper and pretended I was in Tour of Duty while I took photos madly.
The morning of the seventh day meant we had to get moving. We woke early and our lady
prepared us a huge breakfast of kachapuri. She also topped up our food supplies with some break and salty goat's cheese (there were no shops in the village).
Before us lay the Atsunta pass, the highest in Georgia at 3431m. We knew it was the most
difficult part of the trek but we were pretty confident after what we had already achieved.
We had more than a little brag in our step and we rated ourselves as true mountain men.
As we set off on the road that led to Chechnya, we had little idea of the madness that lay ahead..
ps: The drawback of writing these posts on the road is the difficulty of verifying some of the distances, heights and names of areas we visited. Please excuse me if I've made any errors on the height and name of passes and distances between villages. I wholly blame our crappy 1:500,000 map.
Also the transliteration of Georgian names vary. For example, Djuta can also be spelt as
Duta and Dzuta. You will commonly see any of these 3 spellings on different maps and signs.
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