Ushguli - Roads, Mountains, Towers and Fame.

Our next destination was a smaller town in the Svaneti region - Ushguli. Yes, that's the place the film, Dede, was located in (see our previous post). Part of the attraction here was the drive - a mountainous road only partly paved. John loves these driving challenges so we set off.

We hadn't gone far before saw a sign pointing to the village of Adishi. When we saw the polyphonic singing group in Mestia, they mentioned having just come from a fantastically beautiful village and it sounded like he said Adishi. It wasn't too far to Adishi so we took the turn.

As usual, we had to dodge cows on the road.

I love the variation in the wildflowers in different areas.

We don't know if Adishi was the place we had heard about, however it was on a major hiking trail so there were a few simple cafes and guest houses here. It was very authentic, very ramshackle and totally atmospheric.

I don't know how much longer some of these old towers will last.

Looking through the bell tower at the church. Each church in this area has a bell tower beside it.

Many old houses had slate rooves but some were made from shingles.

Sleds are used here in winter but we also saw some used now. They adapted them by putting wheels on the back. They're pulled by horses.

We continued our road trip and arrived at Ushguli unscathed despite the damaged and washed away roads at times. This is an eroded concrete road viewed from the side as we approached it around a bend. 

Keep left, John!

It was a great trip!

We found our hotel and were shown to our room. Oh no! Our bed had what I call tablecloth sheets - a weird seersucker material that's terrible to sleep on and far more suited to being used as tablecloths than sheets. On closer inspection I found that not only were the sheets too small to tuck under the mattress (a common thing in Georgia and one of my pet hates) but they were so small that they barely covered the top of the mattress. The bathroom was tiny - about 1.5 metres square. To fit in a shower they simply added a European shower head beside the toilet. 

What really drove us crazy though was the fact that the bed creaked and groaned every time we made the slightest move on it - and even when we just walked near it! We kept getting woken multiple times a night just because we rolled over. As I lay there in the dark one night I could hear the people in the rooms on either side of us having the same problem.

As much as we didn't like the room, the views from the hotel and from our room were spectacular - we looked straight at Shkhara Mountain. Stunning! 

We had a lot of fun in Ushguli. We wandered around the ancient cluster of villages. It was like walking through history.

As usual, we shared the paths with all sorts of farm animals. Very few animals seem to be fenced in.

Again, we saw a sled. It would get really snowy here in winter.

The lady at our hotel had told us that they had been very busy as there was a festival on that weekend. We saw a crowd gathered at the local church and checked it out. From what we learned, families meet at the church and there are endless hours of toasts to all sorts of things. It seemed weird to see everyone drinking in the church grounds but we all have different cultural beliefs. We heard later that a cow was slaughtered and the meat was divided up between the families. A week or so later, as we drove through another village, we again saw a crowd in the church grounds and a sheep was being cut up on site.

We got chatting to some tourists one day as we were wandering around. The guy in his 20's was Russian and he had participated in a demonstration against Putin and was jailed for 5 days. That was enough for him. As soon as he could, he left the country. He made his way to Georgia where he now lives and works. He seemed quite proud to have been jailed but was keen to not have it happen again.

We found another house museum which was very similar to the last one. You can see the 'beds' on top of the animal stalls better here.

At one stage we walked past a building and some kids called out hello to us from the balcony above us. While we talking to them in broken English, we noticed the name of the building - Mose Guest House and a picture of the boy from the Dede movie, whose name was Mose. 

As we were talking to the boys we noticed that one of them looked a lot like Mose from the movie. I was trying to calculate if this could be the boy - he looked about 4 in the movie which would make him about 9 now. It turned out we were right! Once we realised, we didn't talk to him about it as it must be hard for him to hang out with his mates and be the 'star' so to speak. Mose's the one on the left with the blue t-shirt.

After that we saw Mose quite a lot as he was one of the key people who rode a horse around the town a lot. He wasn't hard to see as he wore that same blue t-shirt every day. Horses are a common way to get around here. Again, the horses are in really good condition. They are left to roam free then brought in when needed, which is mostly when they're rented out for tourists to ride. Foals learn the ropes early as they simply follow mum on the rides. As the foals get older they don't always follow though. One night we were sitting at an outside bar and heard a horse neigh far on our left. A foal near our right called back. They neighed to and fro until mum came cantering up the road to find her foal at the end of a day's work taking tourists out. We thought it was so sweet until she fed the foal for about two seconds then raced over to a nearby stallion to get served! She had a big day......

It was quite interesting to see horses used as everyday transport around the town. People would ride their horses to the shop at our hotel to buy things and people like Mose and his mates would tear up and down the roads seeing who can go the fastest. None of the people here were stylish riders by any stretch of the imagination but the horses were willing and honest.

The main walk here is to the bottom of a glacier and this was our aim. We set off early and cheated by driving the first leg along the flat valley. The advantage of this is that we got to the tongue of the glacier first and had it all to ourselves. The dogs around here are enormous but just as super-friendly as everywhere else in Georgia. This one greeted me so enthusiastically that I had trouble standing upright! Some of these dogs have heads the size of bears. They really are huge.

The walk up the valley was beautiful.

The tongue of the glacier was brownish. A river ran out of the bottom of it but the water was that grey colour and was silty.

John somehow convinced me that we should climb around the side of the glacier. It was really rocky and if the rocks slipped we could have been sent over the edge of the glacier. I had visions of our kids being orphaned but we made it safely.

On the way back down the valley, surrounded by wildflowers.

As we came down, others started to come up the valley and soon they were arriving in droves. About 30 people rode up in a group on local horses. There must be a lot of coordination between locals because I'm sure that nobody owns 30 horses on their own.

One afternoon a big storm came through. Thunder boomed overhead and the rain bucketed down! It was amazing! A few hours later, the skies were clear again.

We met a young German couple who were travelling in a campervan for 12 months. They camped in a spectacular spot with great views of the mountains. Their English was wonderful and we had a fun night with them at an outdoor bar.

We did all this with very little sleep because just after we went to bed the night before at about 10.30pm a group of motorbike riders turned up. They needed to be fed and guess where the restaurant was - yep, it was under our room. This is after we specifically asked for a quiet room. It was the final straw really. We had booked the room for 4 nights but we abandoned any thought of staying that long. It was too late to leave the town after our walk though so we stayed the second night begrudgingly. The owner was shocked that we wanted to leave early but still charged us for the full 4 nights. 

We spent our last afternoon making last minute changes to our plans as we suddenly had two extra days to spend somewhere. One thing we wanted to do was to head out of Ushguli and drive over the Zagar Pass. This road was supposed to be even more challenging than the road we drove in on.

We had another crap sleep then woke before dawn and decided to leave. I was a bit hesitant to tackle this road without light but it began to lighten not long after we started and it turned into another spectacular drive. We wound our way down and down, past more stunning mountains and beautiful wildflowers. It was another really special drive!

Thanks for joining us on our journey!

Heather and John

Svaneti - Ancient Towers and Stunning Mountains

Hello again!

We finally turned off that long, truck-lined highway and headed towards our next destination - the Svaneti region. This region is similar to Tusheti in that it's a remote area dotted with ancient defensive towers. This area was so remote for so long though that invaders never occupied it. The towers were mostly used for defence against each other as fights between families were common in the past.

Today the road to Mestia. the main town, is paved all the way although it's still a bit tricky in places.

We arrived in Mestia and were amazed at how big it was. Apparently the government put money into developing infrastructure here. Mestia looked like a ski resort (which is what they're trying to turn it into) with its wooden buildings and chair lift. It was still quite a small town but it was full of tourists. 

We had trouble finding a place to stay here in advance so the guy from our hotel at Tbilisi booked us something. It was dearer than we would usually pay but we ended up at a brand new hotel with hardly anyone else there. We had our choice of rooms and it was really nice although it got quite hot. The English-speaking daughter of the family that owned it seemed to be our host and often she seemed to sit around waiting for us to return at the end of the day and she was there to prepare our breakfast in the morning.

We were in an older part of town and it was fun making our way home each night in the dark trying to avoid all the cow shit on the cobblestoned laneways plus the occasional pig. As always, the dogs were really friendly and would sometimes walk home with us.

The older part of town was amazing - ancient stone houses with carved wooden balconies overlooked narrow laneways. Animals wandered freely along the lanes. Cows were milked by hand each morning in several places near us.

We visited a museum inside an old house one day and learned how the extended families all lived in one room with the animals in winter. The carved arches in the photo below were where the animals were kept (they put their heads through the arches to eat) and the people slept above them to keep warm.

We then went into the nearby tower house. It was harder and scarier than I expected to climb the 5 levels to the top. The old wooden ladders were very rickety and steep.

Towers like this one that we climbed up are generally around 1,000 years old.

There were ancient towers all around us. They looked wonderful lit up at night with a crescent moon rising!

Most of the newer buildings in the town were in keeping with the style of the older ones but there was one horrendously modern, ugly building - it was the police station! Apparently there was an uproar when it was built so they modified it a bit but there were clearly no heritage considerations taken into account.

Despite its recent development, Mestia was lovely. We ate at great places like the barbeque place under shady trees which, according to John, had the best beer. We saw a gorgeous sunset over the mountains on our first night.

A river cut right through the town. Like so many rivers around here it was a grey colour and was strong and rough.

Like almost everywhere else in Georgia, cows just wandered freely all over the place. There was a big storm one night with amazing thunder that echoed around the mountains. We had to laugh when we saw this cow taking shelter in a new garage!

 

One of the local traditional foods is mashed potato with cheese. In fact everything seems to come with cheese! 

We saw posters for a movie that is set in nearby Ushguli. In 2017 the movie won awards at various film festivals so we went along to watch. We were directed downstairs to a rough room that was lined with carpet and set up with deck chairs. It smelled musty and was a strange place but it was fine. The movie was really quite interesting. It featured local actors from Ushguli, particularly a lady and her son, Mose (both his real name and his character's name). If you can find it online the movie's called Dede and is well worth a look if you're interested in Georgia and this area. (More on this in the next post).

We also saw posters for a traditional polyphonic singing group so we booked tickets to that. While we waited to go in, we noticed that lots of the other people that were waiting seemed to be locals which we thought was strange as we assumed this was a local singing group putting on shows for the tourists. How wrong we were! The group turned out to be from Tbilisi and were touring the area. There was obviously a local singing group that were thrilled about this tour and they turned up in force - kids and all. We thought the kids would get bored but, apart from a few whispers and bumps on the back of our seats, they were well-behaved.

The group was fantastic! One guy introduced the songs and he often explained things in English. There were traditional songs from many regions of Georgia. Some were beautiful, some were sad and some were weird, especially a back-and-forth yodelling one - see below. It was a great show.

But of course you know what we were really here for - the mountains!

We caught the chair lift and a cable car up a mountain one day. The ride was wonderful. We soared so peacefully above the pine forest with the views getting more and more spectacular as we went higher.

We walked from the top to a viewpoint at a phone repeater station. It was hot but lovely.

There were more amazing flowers!

There was a restaurant at the top of the cable car with spectacular 360 degree views but you had to put up with the crappy techno music.

We got a good view of Mestia on the way down. Even from this distance you can see things like a bright blue roof on a new building that shouldn't be allowed in such a historic town. That blue roof happened to be right next to our hotel.

Another walk started in the town and went up the hill behind us for a long way. We decided to drive up the hill to a certain spot and walk from there. Oh my goodness - the track was so rough! Again, I was on the lookout for places where the road was washed away and there were sudden edge drop-offs. John avoided the worst of the potholes and big rocks as best as he could. The 'road' was steep and just as we got to our destination the engine started to boil. We later checked the radiator water level and it was fine so it just must have been really hard work for the poor Jeep. This is another road we won't tell the rental guy about......

This is as far as the Jeep got but what a car park!

Anyway, the walk was good with more amazing views. 

Unfortunately, those big flies were horrendous again. We found this bull and we laughed about him being in the bull paddock as he was in thousands of acres but check out the flies! And each one of them bites!

It was a steep climb in places but the views were worth it.

Our destination was a small lake where horses and cattle came to drink.

And yes, there were more wildflowers!

Coming back down that rough road we had to pass vehicles a couple of times and it was really tricky but we made it. I was glad when we were back on level ground.

Our last walk was to a waterfall. The views just getting there were amazing!

These walking signs are everywhere in the walking areas. We drove the first part of this walk to knock a few kms off which was a good idea.

Just after we started we turned a bend in the track and saw the really strange sight of a cat being led on a lead on the walking track! The cat was afraid of us so the owners picked it up and - wait for it - carried it the entire rest of the way up the hill to the waterfall in a special cat backpack! I have no idea why.

The cool forest was lovely to walk in.

We met a Turkish walking tour group on this walk. One of the guys was an Aussie but he was very quiet. They were a lovely group.

On our way back towards Mestia I grabbed this pic of the towers of another village backed by the mountains.

There were many stunning villages and mountains in the area around Mestia.

John found an open space at our hotel and did some karate training using a walking pole as a bo (fighting stick).

We should hopefully have some more posts ready soon as we are having a bit of downtime at the moment.

See you soon!
Heather and John