Kazbegi

From Yerevan, we caught the night train back to Tbilisi, which included a 2hr border check conveniently scheduled between 3-5am. We shared a cabin with a couple from Crimea who are Russian AND Ukrainian AND the husband has been drafted to the front if he ever goes home. Georgia is awash with people in this war limbo.

On early morning arrival in Tbilisi we immediately caught a marshutka north towards the Russian border, stopping along the way at the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument (erected in 1983, looking pretty awkward now). Our destination was Kazbegi, a hiking region made famous by the Gergeti Church visible way up on the hill. Chelsea hiked as far as the church, while Dan proceeded on to the glacier. There he fulfilled all of Chelsea’s worst nightmares by accidentally sliding 5m down snow-covered mountainside towards a rocky ravine. Fun!

This area is the Koishaur valley from the novel ‘A Hero For Our Time’ by Mikhail Lermontov, which we’ve both read while sipping wine beneath the very mountains described. The valley only gets 60 days of clear weather a year, and we were ridiculously lucky to be there for three of them, with clear views of the church and Mt Kazbek, the third highest mountain in Georgia.

After getting electric shocks off the bed springs in our Yerevan accommodation, it was lush to be in a comfortable bed with a view and firepit. We met a lovely French couple who happened to be our neighbours both here in Kazbegi AND back in Tbilisi. We shared much khachapuri and saperavi, and the next day the four of us went for a waterfall hike before driving back to Tbilisi along the Georgian Military Highway, one of the most scenic roads in the world. We are absolutely besotted with this country.Read more