How To Trap A Horse In Minecraft

After trading cultural blows with a group of Americans all evening, from our tiny European minds being unable to comprehend the concept of what the hell a 'freedom burger' is, to delivering our edgiest Southern accents and yee-haws, we cosied into our beds, wiggling our toes like satisfied little hobbits.

Morning arrived to the clank of crockery and the unmistakable smell of Thomas's crusty socks, which he refused to wash in case they 'didn't dry out in time'. Our host in Zhabeshi was another frail but formidable lady named Dodo, and although old, she was very much not extinct. She'd orchestrated another buffet-style feast in the dining room, piling up plates of khachapuri, slices of cucumber, and cheese that squeaked when you bit into it.

With our stomachs stuffed and two breezy hammocks eyeing us up dangerously, we laced up our boots and loaded our legs up for another long ascent. A cheerful incline soon became sticky under heavy heat and over muddy switchbacks, but we reached level ground with relative ease. At the top, we chomped into chunks of watermelon like Olympians into gold medals (although Olympians probably have less juice dribbling down their chins tbf.)

Hopping between beverage-serving shacks, we met Swiss, Moroccans and Poles, before entering into prime frolic-ing territory. Wildflowers wobbled, vegetation was verdant, and cows occasionally paused their incessant chewing to give us a few thousand mile stares. And soon after some pointy bois punctured the horizon, we were back on the descent.

Patches of pine forest where the air was damp and mushroomy made way for a view down into a medieval village, wedged deep into the clammy walls of the valley's sweet cheeks. (Am I really sexualising hills now!?)

Adishi looked like a village that some 14th century peasant had tried to throw together in a thunderstorm, only to give up halfway through when they remembered they had a prize turnip boiling away in the cauldron. Cows sulked in the passageways, stray dogs sniffed at things that almost certainly shouldn't have been sniffed at, and through the missing wall of one crumbling house, we discovered horses bizarrely stuck in a basement, staring up at us with both the judgement and blank expression of creatures that had simply given up. The whole scene reminded me of the old 'dig a hole two blocks deep' trick in Minecraft to stop your animals from escaping, except this version had glitched (at least in Minecraft, the building physics still works.)

After forgetting to message our host about dinner (a rookie move in a village with no shops), our evening mission was to find some food and we set back out past dishevelled dwellings and forlorn foundations to Gunter's guesthouse, where we slurped some stew, got lively with some Aussies, and made it back before the village fell asleep (or fell apart, whichever came first.)Lue lisää