Exploring Tusheti

A breakfast of champions completed, extra pancakes stuffed into plastic bags and some worried double checks from Nazy that I’d be ready for the next five days of self-sufficiency in the wild; it was time to meet my noble steed.

At around 10:30am Albie, my guide (who spoke no English), rocked up and showed me to my horse. His name was Kazbeg and I guess he was dark brown? Honestly, if you’re here to read about horse specs then you’re in the wrong place. The most I know about horses is that you measure their height in hands, which is almost as nonsensical as measuring distance in Sheppeys (the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque). You would have to stack 1029 Tushetian mountain horses in a particularly unstable tower to reach 1 Sheppey in height, something I reckon the locals would have strong feelings about.

Day 1 – Salted Arse

Anyway, where was I? We set off after packing the saddlebags and headed up the river. Albie was on a call for a while and I was thinking this might be a slow five days without anyone to speak to, but then Abdullah rocked up on his horse. Turns out they were friends and I’m sure Albie wasn’t particularly excited about spending five days in the mountains alone with me either, so Abdullah was along for the ride. This turned out to be a blessing because Abdullah’s English ability, while still not good, was much better than Albie’s.

At the end of the wide river valley, we joined forest tracks which became smaller and smaller trails. At one point we passed a huge pile of guts/organs by the side of the trail buzzing with flies. When I pointed it out I was casually told that it was what remained of a bear (that had been shot from a nearby tree platform). After a few hours we stopped with some shepherds for lunch on the trail. It was the perfect spot to have a break because there was an almost magical-looking spring flowing from the roots of an old, gnarled, mossy tree. The spring water was crystal clear and tasted pure and fresh. While we all drank from the same metal cup that had been left beside the spring, we tucked into a veritable feast. I had been told to bring all my own food, but as I would come to realise Abdullah and Albie had packed very little else other than food. They had chicken, bread, tomatoes, cucumber and cheese and I didn’t have the willpower to refuse. As I squatted there, one of the shepherds began telling stories to everyone in Chechen, with hand movements at first and then his whole body. His voice rose and fell with the story and this all made our little coven in the woods quite the spectacle to behold.

After some sketchy river crossings through fast flowing water, we emerged out of the woods and crossed a few meadows. Turning around I could see how far we had climbed up from the endless forested slopes below. We turned into a deep valley and then climbed steeply along a narrow trail to our camping spot for the night. Surrounded by huge sheepdogs and some semi-wild horses we put up our tents and snacked on some salted and marinated sheep’s arse (which was just pure fat). After polishing that off we went off to a central promontory above the valley where they knew the owner of the farmstead.

There were huge views of the valley and beyond to the hazy lowlands of Kakheti (where I had stayed in Telavi). And as the sun and clouds changed so did the landscape. A hazy orange glow was beginning to obscure the lowlands, while shadow and light duelled on the hills. When I returned to the camp, passing through the bare swathe of mountainside that is used to house sheep, I got myself some food. With the remaining light of the day, I wrote in my journal, considered the logistics of a mountain poo without a trowel or toilet paper and watched a goat and its new-born kid trot along in front of our camp.

Day 2 – One of the Boys

It turns out that horses, much like foxes, love to scream horribly in the night. Some of the noises they were making were akin to Tawfiq’s camel’s final moments in Jordan last year. I was up with the sunrise anyway and watched the various banks of clouds roll over us. Whistles and shouts of a shepherd pierced the thick vapour, travelling from far below. When Abdullah and Albie woke up, it was time for multiple cups of tea and a big breakfast with the boys, there was no rush to get moving.

My least favourite part of every day was when they sorted out the horses in the morning. I would be stood around feeling as useless as Anne Frank’s drumkit and wishing I knew something about all the bloody straps that horses get kitted out with. But, on this day, Abdullah thought to include me in the conversation, he shouted over that today there would be a much higher chance of seeing bears. Good to know mate, cheers.

The day started with a river crossing in a rocky canyon then we climbed for hours, having a couple of breaks in the middle of the clouds. The drops to the side of the trail were murderous and the path was either horribly narrow, a bunch of rocky outcrops (not ideal for horse’s hooves) or shaley scree slopes. When the clouds did break through, the views below us were out of this world. The mountain slopes splayed out like fans between the ridges and ever deepening valleys housed raging rivers looked like nothing but quiet streaks of white among the green. When the clouds returned, they wallowed in depressions and regenerated in the valleys.

After a few hours in the saddle, we came to an especially steep climb on loose scree and rock (it felt like it was around 40 degrees incline, although I didn’t have my clinometer with me, sorry), Albie and Abdullah threw themselves and their horses at the hill and so I just followed, clinging on for dear life. At the top, I got an enthusiastic thumbs up from Albie which was the most interaction I had had with him outside of meal times thus far. It had already become apparent to me that these guys weren’t my guides, I was just chilling with some Chechen lads out in the Caucasus mountains. Which is obviously everyone’s dream.

After a big patch of snow, we all got off the horses. Albie and Abdullah were staring intently across the valley. They had somehow spotted two mountain goats on the other side and Abdullah wanted to go and hunt them. So, he got out his Czech-made rifle/machine gun (I’m not American, I know about as much about guns as I do about horses) and then silently crept off while Albie acted as his spotter on the other end of the walkie talkie. I sat happily in the sunshine, munching on almonds watching the insane cloudscape play over the mountains. The scene hardly looked real, it was just a showcase of perfection in terms of scale, colour and light. Without a shot being fired, Abdullah returned, a little gutted that there would be no goat BBQ that night and then we got going again.

Our camp for the night was truly stunning. It looked over the source of Georgia’s largest river, the Alzani, and the mountains surrounding it were monumental. We ate, chatted and watched as the clear day turned to a hazy night. All the while Abdullah stayed glued to his binoculars, in my mind he was the Chechen Bill Oddie, although he was a little more menacing than his English counterpart.

Day 3 – Outwitted by some Fish

After the long wait for the lads to get up, we had the usual extended breakfast where I enjoyed listening to them speak Chechen. The language was like nothing I had heard before, almost sounding tonal like Vietnamese while mixed with the sounds of Arabic and Greenlandic. It turns out that Chechen, is part of a unique set of little spoken languages from the Caucasus. Spanish and Latvian, or English and Pashto sound so vastly different from each other, yet they belong to the same language family (Indo-European languages – which includes all of Europe and much of Persia/India except for Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish). Chechen belongs to the Northeast Caucasian language family which surprisingly doesn’t have the largest geographical spread, staying mainly in the Russian republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. So these languages have almost nothing in common with other languages outside of the Caucasus, thus the language is incredibly difficult to learn for us. This is in part thanks to its frankly ridiculous number of vowel and consonant sounds which explains why despite my best efforts I couldn’t manage to say ‘let’s go’ accurately after five days of trying.

We started the day with a long descent to the river all on foot. First on mountain tracks and then onto wooded trails with tall flowers. At the river I was hoping I would hop on Kazbeg, Albie on Lurja and Abdullah on Orion, and we would ride onwards but no. We had to power up the steep loose stone tracks, swatting drooping vegetation from our faces, while keeping our horses in tow. In the early morning, this may have been alright but by the late morning the sun had gone nuclear, and I was sweating horribly. It wasn’t too long though until we mounted up and our noble steeds took us up the huge mountainside. I was shocked at the power and speed with which they hauled us and our bags up through the wildflower meadows. They panted and nodded onwards, crushing a path through the 7ft high tangle of unhampered growth.

We stopped in a meadow on the mountainside that was abuzz with insects rushing between yellow blooms. The horses ate and I watched the lads studying the neighbouring mountains with the patient eyes of hunters (that morning they had spotted 14 mountain goats, but they had been cruelly out of reach, now they were even more keen to get one).

At the top the flowers ended, we passed over a gravelly summit, and slowly, the next mountainscape began to reveal itself. First, were the high peaks streaked with snow, that marked the border with Chechnya. But then came the new valleys, rivers and peaks for us to explore. We got off our horses and headed for the verdant chain of hills, tumbling into the braided stream below. Tripping and sliding a few times on the fine, loose rock of the narrow track, we struggled to keep our eyes downward while the lush valley opened up to us like a more lush relative of the Wakhan Valley in Tajikistan. At the river we thankfully remounted and took off, crossing the many unwoven threads of the stream, with Kazbeg happily picking up a little speed for the final stretch.

Our camp for the night was a rangers hut that tourists could use if they made it out to this more remote valley. There were two small rooms of bare wooden bunk beds and outside was a long, covered picnic table. The setting was gorgeous but unfortunately the gargantuan horseflies that had been attacking us and our horses all day had followed us and swarmed around the gaff with their smaller, less vicious cousins.

After some scran, including some cheese that Abdullah’s mum had made, the lads wanted to fish the river that ran 50m from the hut. Abdullah had already got his roll of net out and soon he had appropriated some fence posts from around the hut. They tied these together and proceeded to the river. They attempted scooping the net upriver which looked like hard work and no fish were caught. Albie, being 33, seemed fairly content scooping away but the 22-year-old Abdullah was irritated at the lack of success, so got out of the river, jumped on his horse and rode away at speed towards the setting sun. He returned with a fishing rod, that I assume he hid on a previous crossing of the mountains and got ready for more totally illegal fishing.

His lack of patience with fishing continued, standing in one place for a minute at a time before moving upstream. Tired of watching, I went back to my chosen area of riverbank and read my book. Every now and again I would look up from the pages to watch the breeze shaking flowers and long grasses into tilted wiggles and the river gurgling and splashing along in front of me. As the midges began to appear, I went back to the picnic table with Albie and Abdullah who had given up on fishing long before. Abdullah was methodically crunching his way through a huge bag of sunflower seeds, and it was driving me insane. Sunflower seeds are the worst snack. Fact. Let me break this down for you. The most important point to consider when choosing a snack is taste and sunflower seeds don’t even taste nice… or bad… in fact they taste of nothing. Then comes the ridiculous faff of splitting the husk from the seed with your teeth, eating the tasteless morsel to then spit out the papery husk. This point combines two of my most hated things: spitting and admin. Why am I required to do bloody admin to eat something, just de-husk it for me? Finally, sunflower seeds are so incredibly popular worldwide, and I think the sole reason for this oddity of human behaviour is that they are satisfying to de-husk and spit out. Everyone is eating these tasteless substitutions for nuts only for the mouthfeel and not even considering the sensory horror show everyone around you has to witness. It’s unmannerly and selfish, have some respect.

Day 4 – Committing a Fly Genocide

In the morning, I revelled in the lack of flies and the chilly stillness before the sun found its way above the ridges. We started the day going down the valley which soon narrowed and forced us into the fast flowing and deep river. These many river crossings were some of the sketchiest things we’d done all trip. Below the murky turquoise torrent were huge rocks and unseen dips. Albie went ahead and Kazbeg, being best friends with his horse, dutifully followed. However, in one area Kazbeg took a wrong step and plunged us into the river, the water going over my ankles while I sat on his back. Stumbles were common and the river threw surprises our way at every meander, but we made it through, having a few moments to really appreciate the silvery path of the water cutting its serpentine path through the green flanks of the mountains. We came across our first farmsteads after a few hours and at one of them, sheep began pouring off the mountainside from their pen to the riverbanks creating a lot of dust and an incredible spectacle.

After this we began climbing to the small trails at higher elevation that would follow the river’s snaking course from on high. The trail was extremely narrow and full of rocky sections that required steady hooves and the occasional jump up onto uneven, rocky outcrops. The only instructions I had been given for this horse trip had been how to say stop and go, there had been no instruction for jumping. Either way, I just leaned into my new career as a horseman. James Slater – equestrian athlete. From this high trail we could see the bare jagged mountains of Dagestan still topped with snow. We stopped for water in a meadow where a group of calves were grazing happily, while Albie spotted a bear on the opposite side of the valley without his binoculars.

We walked the horses all the way down to the valley floor, stopping for Abdullah to hide his gun in the forest and taking care to keep Kazbeg behind me (he often tried to walk alongside me and stood on my feet). We joined a 4×4 track and followed it through the tall trees to the “road” which was also just a 4×4 track from which I saw my first Tusheti villages. They seemed to sprout straight from the mountains, their giant towers golden brown and set against the blue sky.

Our camp for the night was a large meadow in the valley, under the watchful gaze of the towers. Its long swaying grasses moved with the intermittently strong breeze. Two birch trees grew together, offering us shade to eat our late lunch. We cleared off anything and everything Albie and Abdullah had left because the next day they could resupply for the return journey. As we sat there, the sounds of insects chirping was incessant and reminded me how this experience wasn’t really possible in England anymore. Sat in a swaying meadow, like three of Tolkien’s hobbits, surrounded by natural beauty. A thriving biodiverse ecosystem. In comparison, England is in a decline to silence.

In stark contrast to my feelings on biodiversity, I spent the rest of the evening in my tent murdering the local fly population. Humans aren’t without contradictions.

Day 5 – There’s Bare Bears Out Here

On my final day, we thankfully got going fairly quickly, starting our journey around 8am. The valley in the early morning sunlight was truly paradisical. I sat there and couldn’t think of a place whose smells, sights and sounds brought me so much peace. The river was blue, meandering and perfect in the deep gorge to our left. Its gravel lobes, popping up as islands in the river’s course, were strewn with oddly shaped, almost sculptural, driftwood pieces. The terraced mountains were so green but also shadowy in the low-angled light and the pine forests were pumping out their fragrance into the crisp air. These huge trees, with their dark canopies, harboured eagles playing among the trunks and boughs. As we rode, a village sat high above us and its tower struck an impressive silhouette against the sun. As we grew closer the outline of the village sat like a castle on a rounded promontory.

We made our way up to the edge of the village and from then the day became a little monotonous. We followed the gravel road for kilometres, walking for much of it to save the horses’ energy for the fast ride back to Pankisi. Some of the views were amazing, we crossed paths with a meadow viper and a big bear footprint, but I was just ready to get to Omalo and eat.

Omalo was visible from miles away due to its strategic position atop a hill in the meeting point of valleys and as we rode into it, I was surprised how nice it was. I knew that it was the central point for tourists visiting Tusheti, and yet in Old Omalo the towers watched over small village life too. Locals chatted in the main square while their children kicked footballs around between the stone houses. As I sat in the sunshine of the guesthouse garden, sipping a Turkish coffee and trying to savour the fluffy pancakes that were brought out with it, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had made it, I hadn’t been washed downstream, fallen from one of the many dodgy trails or been eaten by a bear. Life was good and after a fond farewell to my Chechen buds, I was once again on my own.

Exploring Tusheti

Day 1 – Longing for a sticky toffee pud

After one day of antisocial recovery and casual wandering around Omalo, I headed off to explore the smaller villages. The first destination was Dartlo and after a short uphill walk through sticky pines, followed by a long descent on an easy gravel road, which cruised through the untamed growth of deciduous trees, I was in Dartlo. The walk only took a couple of hours but it meant that I had plenty of time to appreciate the beauty of this ancient village.

From the other side of the river, the ancient towers climbed up the edge of a river gorge, looking over dark stone houses and the green valley to either side. Once I was in the village, I left the few other tourists on the main track and ventured into the tiny alleyways. Even ‘alleyways’ might suggest a little too much development, these were tiny grassy tracks between intricate walls of stone. Weather beaten wooden balconies hung over me and added an ornate flair to the solid stoicism of the towers. Above Dartlo was a lone tower and I decided that this village alone wasn’t enough of an adventure, so I set off to it.

It turned out to be a village called Kravlo, and by the time I reached it I was drenched in sweat. I sat by the large tower and took in the view. The amazingly tall edifice was held together by supports but it was still incredibly impressive and contrasted to the many derelict buildings behind the tower. Kravlo itself seemed like a ghost town. That was until you looked a little closer, in amongst the tumbledown walls was the occasional door or intact roof suggesting a community clinging to their ruinous home.

Leaving my quiet perch of contemplation, I stumbled my way back down the loose shale and into a meadow that was full to bursting with fat grasshoppers. From there I watched waterfalls rage and scour their way down to Dartlo, while pools of light appeared on the forested faces opposite me, scanning across the terrain like searchlights before fading away to nothing.

For dinner that night, I sat down to the same old stuff. I was really reaching the end of my tether with Caucasian food. Tomato, cucumber and salty cheese is acceptable for a while but every day? Every single day for six weeks? Please Georgia, I know you can do better. I was craving variety, meat, stodge, spices, FLAVOUR. I would be returning to Tbilisi after Tusheti, and the anticipation of heading to a Yemeni restaurant for the unbeatable combination of meat and rice was already occupying my waking hours. Secondly, why doesn’t Georgia do pudding? Where are your syrupy snacks, your pastries, your cakes or stewed fruits? Forcing me to eat Oreos as a replacement for a dessert is tantamount to abuse.

Day 2 – Smiles and Socks

Breakfast was just as disappointing as the dinner, but I tried not to dwell on it or hurl the stale bread across the room, instead I got ready quickly and set off towards the next village. With the river running noisily to my left, its blue grey colour disturbed by the thunderous white rapids, I swept along the valley to the village of Chesho, glimpsing the high snowcapped mountains of Chechnya appearing behind the green mountains to my right. From Chesho the views got even better, the road meandered with the river, the pine forests seemed to climb ever more vertically up the slopes and ahead of me a ridge displayed four towers that rose from its crest as though they had always been part of the fabric of the mountain.

Rounding a corner, the valley narrowed and the dark towers of Parsma rose on either side of the river looking imposing, like a scene of an ambush. The main village of Parsma stood apart from these towers though, requiring a steep climb to the top of a nearby conical hill. But I kept going, reaching Grevi, the end of the road and my village for the night. I rocked up to my guesthouse only to find that despite my reservation on Booking.com there was no room for me. With the help of a Brit from Devon who spoke fluent Georgian, a lady offered to find me another guesthouse for the same price and then I followed her 20 metres down the road to my new place. Once I had arrived, I had no complaints. The old lady that ran it was very smiley and she brought me tea, biscuits, apples and chocolates when I had seen my room (she was straight into my good books).

Much like in Dartlo, I wasn’t content just to sit around, so I set off to see if I could get to Hegho fortress up the valley. It sat high above the confluence of two mountain rivers, dark and imperious on the lush green spine of the mountain. To get there I would have to cross the river, but it quickly became apparent that there was no chance of me getting across the ferocious flow. Instead, I climbed up the slope beside me, wanting a better view of the wide valley the river had carved out and the fortress that had watched its rasping progress for centuries. As I sat and watched, surrounded by the fragrant purple flowers of wild thyme, the clouds moved quickly, changing the lighting of the scene rapidly, bringing contrast, definition and obscurity to the vast scene.

When I got back it was soon dinner time and my prayers had been answered. I sat down for dinner with the old lady’s grandson, Luca, and we tucked into a huge meal of soup, the classic Caucasian trio of tomatoes, cucumber and cheese, roast aubergine slices folded over garlic puree and the star of the show, a huge beef stew served with roast potatoes from the garden. The stew had a tomato base, the beef was incredibly tender and most amazingly of all, there were herbs and spices. I had been given the greatest gift of all… flavour! This was all served with white wine and a glass of cognac. I ate and ate revelling in this rare moment of culinary prowess. While I stuffed myself, I chatted away to Luca whose English was very impressive and he was very pleasantly chatty (even if he did go into extraordinary detail on the plot of an anime show that has been running for 25 years). It could’ve been worse; he could’ve talked about watermelons for hours on end…

At the end of dinner, the old lady could be found happily breaking down sheep’s wool into smaller pieces that were strewn over the floor. I found out that this was for her to make socks on her cute little antique sewing machine. Such a happy lady. If I wasn’t so poor, I would’ve bought a pair of her socks.

The plan for the next day was to hitchhike to Omalo. I asked the lady if it was possible (with the help of Luca’s translation) and she said it would be very unlikely, maybe only from Dartlo. To make matters worse, a driver/taxi would cost me around 100 quid. That was that. An early morning alarm was set and my bag was packed because I would rather walk the 30km back to Omalo again, including the 10km of non-stop uphill, than part with £100. Only last night (as I write this), I walked 2 hours back from the pub at 22:30 rather than pay 30 quid for a taxi. My miserly ways know no bounds.

So, I woke up and got on the road early. And within two minutes I was picked up. The reason? I had made a point of being friendly to the British guy in the other guesthouse and luckily he was driving back to Tbilisi (past Omalo) at the very time I was leaving. I made eye contact, stuck out my thumb and with an expectant arch of the eyebrow I was in.

A quick mention

It would be remiss of me not to mention my trip to Vardzia before I returned to Armenia for my flight home. This cave monastery (still lived in by five monks) is in the south of the country and over the course of a few hours I explored the 900-year-old tunnels and caves of the nine tiered, 500m long monastery complex. It wasn’t made for a 6’3” man, which made for some difficulties in the tunnels, but I had a great time. The child-like excitement I got from scurrying around Petra once again appeared as I became determined to get myself into every wine cellar, meeting hall and bedroom.

Final thoughts

My decision to visit Tusheti was one grown from my need for something like the Armenian sense of isolation and adventure. The most popular part of the Georgian Caucasus is the trek from Mestia to Ushguli which has huge, dramatic snow-capped peaks, but crucially a lot more tourists. So, I decided on the villages of Tusheti instead. They can only be reached by one unsealed road liable to collapse after rain (which I travelled along after an impressive but slightly foreboding stormy night of lightning, thunder and torrential rain) and during the deep winter snows the whole area becomes cut off forcing all but a few families leave for towns at lower elevations. Carving a path through the mountains and arriving by horse to these remote communities, that still nestle below the towers that have protected them for centuries, felt very appropriate. We were just three lads in the back and beyond, eating sheep’s arse, brewing tea and trying to have a wild mountain goat BBQ. It was as simple as that.