Autumn in Tbilisi (From Hereford Times)

Autumn in Tbilisi

4:36pm Friday 8th October 2010

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Autumn has come early and in a rush catching everyone by surprise. Last year there was no rain in October, but this year torrential cloudbursts and a halving of the temperature in a few days have altered the atmosphere. Gone are the six inch heels with inch platform soles and in are coats, umbrellas and designer plastic wellies. The uneven roads and pavements need even more careful negotiating to avoid the spray from cars while not treading in deep puddles. I should be up in the hills, but heavy snow over a month early is blocking the passes. It is thought to be only temporary and in a few days I will be able to depart with my erstwhile host to his mountain retreat where he has some horses for me to see.

I have been in Abasha in the west where I was shown some of the equitation disciplines used for training the cavalry before mechanisation. They include Tsenburi, literally horse ball, a type of Polo Cross, which has been played for hundreds of years as part of sword handling on horseback. The handle of the racket is the same length as a sword. Also Issindi, a game of chase with a javelin, Jiriti, acrobatics on horseback and Khabaki, throwing a javelin at a ball on a tall pole while cantering past. The horsemen were very hospitable, as was the local government minister, though my interview with him did not go well because my young interpreter got tongue-tied in front of such an august figure.

Outside Tbilisi the results of the end of Communist rule and the subsequent civil wars and lack of finance can be seen. Along the roadsides on the edge of towns on the plains huge factories lie idle, their glassless windows like hollow eyes in the dull grey of the mass-concrete walls. In places nature is slowly taking over with weeds and grasses spreading over the acres of crumbling concrete roadways and shrubs sprouting from the tops of the walls of roofless buildings. This post industrial wilderness gives way to wooded hills with steep gorges and houses clinging to steep hillsides. These forested uplands still have bears, wolves and wild boar, all of which though hunted are respected. A farmer told me that wolves were the great cleaners of the forests; clearing up any dead animals and only attacking sick livestock and as long they stay away from the village they will not be shot, but if they come in they are.

Over the next weeks I hope to get some spectacular views of the changing colours as the rain is replaced by the autumn sun

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