Luck comes in many forms (From Hereford Times)

Lucky escape

1:41pm Friday 15th October 2010

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Good luck comes in different forms. Goga, the man who was supposed to be taking me up to Shatili, a remote hill village near the border with Chechnya telephoned the night before we were due to go, to say he had a family crisis and couldn’t go. Having missed the twice weekly bus to Shatili – it went the morning he rang me – I changed plans and went to Kazbegi on the Georgian Military Highway instead. The drive was spectacular, under a cloudless blue sky, wooded hills with trees of orange, yellow and green, gave way to steeper slopes with pines and then sheer mountainsides with patchy grass and bare scree. All the time the snow-capped peaks got closer as we wove up the twisting and at times rock-strewn road. The road over the pass became a potholed track with gullies and large stones forcing the driver to zigzag endlessly while avoiding the lorries and cars coming the opposite way. A couple of times he held his course so that we passed on the wrong side of the road.

Kazbegi is a centre for hiking, horse riding and a base for climbing Mount Kazbegi, which is well over 4000m. Perched above the town is the highest church in Georgia, the 14c Tsminda Sameba church. It has a special place in the Georgian hearts, in that the building of such a large church at 2170 metres symbolises the struggle to create and maintain their nation. From it I was able to see the narrow tracks along which they have horse races in summer. They are impromptu events, often organised by a family who want to remember a dead ancestor.

Most people stay in local guest houses rather the much more expensive hotels. The families are very welcoming and provide large breakfasts and evening meals. The main problem in the spring and autumn is the cold, the gas is turned on on 15 October and off on the 15 May. Besides that there is no heating, a lot of houses don’t have a fireplace, they wait for the gas, and magnificent high doors and ill-fitting windows do nothing th keep out the wind. To help fortify their visitors a bottle of wine or often Vodka is served with dinner. There are lots of toasts and the bottle has to be finished. After the meal homemade vodka is brought out.

As I said luck comes in many forms. My last night there it snowed in the pass, luckily not a lot, but on either side of the road the snow line had dropped by hundreds of feet. The pass to Shatili is over 400 metres higher and would certainly have been blocked a guide informed me, and quite likely will not be open again until the end of May next year! As it was we saw nothing of the pass because the cloud had come down and visibility was about ten metres, not an experience I particularly want to repeat when there are no barriers or fences to mark the side of the road with drops of hundreds of feet to the rocky river beds far below.

Tbilisi is pleasantly warm, despite the rain. Tomorrow I catch a bus to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, which I gather is a very different city with a strong Soviet influence.

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