Click map to see detailed route
4 September Georgian Military Highway
To the Russian Border
Night was spent in a local house where they fed us with bread, goat cheese, deep fried bony fish and meatballs in rich tomato sauce. We got up early and sped towards the Russian border. Just north of Kazbegi, we entered the Darial Gorge. This stretch of the GMH is a treacherous 15km winding road along the steep slopes of the High Caucasus and occasionally we passed lonely graves of earlier travellers. The Terek River (or Tergi) flowed swiftly in the ravine below, northwards across the border, where it enters North Ossetian, Ingush and then Chechen territory and its once beautiful but now devastated capital Grozny, where Russian soldiers are still fighting their eternal battle against the freedom-loving Chechens. Tsarist Russia took a few decades to crush Shamil’s Chechens. How long will Putin’s Russia take ?
In the afternoon, we returned to Tbilisi but my heart was lost somewhere
in those snowcapped mountains on the Russian border.
5 September David Gareji
One feet in Georgia and one feet
in Azerbaijan: Monastery search in the desert