Hi y’all. I’m writing this the day after publishing that last post. We’re kind of taking a day off today, so it’s a good time to catch up to the present. We’re in Mestia, and will go on to Batumi tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain for the next four days, so maybe catching up will be easy, while spending a lot of time inside our airbnb apartment.
So, this one’s about Kazbegi, technically what they call a municipality in Georgia. The town itself is called Stepantsminda. It’s a popular mountain destination north of Tbilisi, famous for its mountainous terrain, skiing in the winter, hiking trails ad as an access point to Russia, a few kilometers to the north. Many big trucks go through there, mostly bringing products from Russia. They aren’t too obnoxious. This isn’t like a major US/Mexico border crossing.
Visitors here generally chill out. The big thing to do is walk a few kilometers up to the Gergeti Trinity Church to the west.
Snow-capped Mt. Kazbegi is 5054 meters. On the top of the nearer hill, on the left, is Gergeti Trinity Church.
That picture was taken from the lane a block above our airbnb place.
Our airbnb in Kazbegi
View from our front porch in Kazbegi. Chechnya is on the other side of that ridge.
Mostly, we just walked around and looked at the buildings and the different views. You can see the flat stones used for construction on the building to the right above. Here are a couple more.
Old style building still in use in Kazbegi
Old style commercial building still in use in Kazbegi
A lot of times, it looks like the buildings are abandoned, and often they are, then you see modern window and door frames, people inside, curtains, etc.
Like many visitors, we went up to the church. Not too bad. Takes about an hour and a half.
That’s me, about two-thirds of the way up to the church.
Uphill to Gergeti Trinity Church? No problem for Myung. She’s a friggin’ mountain goat. Queue “Zorba the Greek”
Gergeti Trinity Church, in the mountain west of Kazbegi
Gergeti Trinity Church
Mestia is even nicer, so I’ll spare you more photos from Kazbegi.
When we came to Georgia, we didn’t have much of a plan. When we traveled before, it was open-ended, basically living on the road. We’re here for a little over a month, so it’s not living on the road, but it’s not if-it’s-Tuesday-this-must-be-Belgium either. Kind of a hybrid. We feel like we should “do” something every day, but aren’t compulsive about it. Like, today is one of those days. It’s a pretty easy life. One thing I did right was retire early and hit the road. I wouldn’t want to do it alone anymore, though. Sharing the experience is important. You need witnesses. At least Myung knows.
That’s part of the reason I wrote these posts.
I’ll blog again from Batumi in a couple of days. Until then…