They say the Caucasus Mountains is the Switzerland of Eastern Europe. I’ve also heard “poor man’s Switzerland”. Switzerland about 200 years ago, I think.
The town of Mestia is in the Svaneti region of northern Georgia. The 80,000 Svan people are a sub-group of Georgian people, and about 30,000 speak their own language similar to Old Georgian. My point is that it feels very different around there. You first notice it when listening to chatter in the street. The next thing I think I notice is they come off as a little gruff. Not this guy, though. We bummed a ride from him and he was very nice.
No matter. If you want to go somewhere within Georgia with a different feel, you can get that different feeling here.
A large part of Svaneti’s prosperity, such as it is, comes from tourism. Mestia, with a population of about 10,000, feels almost like a tourist ghetto. Guesthouses, bars and nice restaurants everywhere. I don’t mind. I’ve given up trying to meaningfully penetrate foreign cultures. I just eat the food, interact casually sometimes (like with that guy above), and take in the visuals.
Do not disparage the visuals here. This is as lovely a place you will ever see. It’s why they get the comparison with Switzerland. It’s why the tourists come.
Most intercity travel here is by 18 passenger commuter vans, mostly Mercedes Benz Sprinters, called marshrutkas. We took the marshrutka from Kutaisi to Mestia, the principal town in Svaneti. Since it is a popular vacation and destination, there were plenty of airbnb options. We picked a cabin a couple of hundred meters away from the town center, by the river. You never really know what you’re going to get with airbnb until you get there, but we guessed right again.
We stayed in one of the six cabins near the river in Mestia. You hear the river at night, not the town sounds.
View from our porch of a little church across the river.
Autumn colors
Autumn colors
I’m just throwing in this next photo. This is the entrance gate to the group of six cabins where our cabin was. Cows roam around all over Georgian towns, sort of like in India. Nobody pays them much mind. Sometimes they are bad boys and girls. We caught this one pilfering a bag of dough, it looked like, from the bed of this pick up truck. The owner chased it off, but obviously the dough was ruined with cow slobber.
Overlooking Mestia
Mestia
The distinguishing feature of Svaneti is these towers. Most of them were built from the 9th to the 12 centuries, though some were built as recently as the 18th century. Some are still in use. They served a defensive purpose, not so much against raiders, but to protect families from each other. Until about a hundred years ago, blood revenge was a custom. Like the legendary Hatfield and McCoy feud in America, there was violence between families whereby if/when a dispute resulted in a killing, the aggrieved family would go after the offending family. These structured provided protection as well as serving as living quarters and storage. When the Bolsheviks took over in 1921, they put a stop to that.
Svaneti tower
We went into one in Ushguli. It’s hard to imagine functioning in these cramped quarters, with successive ladders going up usually four or five floors.
Me, climbing down a ladder in a Svaneti tower.
View from the “window” of a Svaneti tower.
This area is a trekkers wonderland. All we did was hike up to a glacier near Mestia. Nice walk. Not so long that we got gassed.
Foot bridge over the river at the beginning of the walk to the glacier,
Footbridge over the river at the beginning of the trail to the glacier.
Small glacier near Mestia
Another popular thing the tourists do is go to Ushguli, a village about an hour from Mestia. It must have been incredibly poor back in the day. Now, we tourists walk all around the place, taking photos, having a coffee, a beer, a glass of famous Georgian wine, or staying the night.
Ushguli. The road to here is pretty rough, but some of it nearer to Mestia is paved.
Ushguli
Ushguli
Ushguli
As you can imagine, we probably have a hundred photos. I’m about to call it quits on this post. I wanted to include this picture of traditional Georgian bread. We’ve been eating a ton of it. Tasty and only about 50 US cents.
Myung looks like The Masked Singer here behind this bread.
We’ve been eating good restaurant food a lot, even though we get airbnb’s with kitchens.
Dinner in Mestia
Okay, that’s finally it.
I’m writing this in Batumi, where we went after Mestia. It’s on the Black Sea coast, 13 km from the Turkish border. I’ll write about it when I can. I don’t know when that will be. From here, we decided to go over the border to Trabzon, Turkey. From the travel literature, it looks interesting. I’ll let you know. If we are busy there, I may not feel like blogging. It’s actually pretty time-consuming to edit and upload photos.
So, until then, be well, all of you.