Sky Mountains: Lagodekhi, Kakheti
Once again the long trek, 600 km across Georgia to my wife's relatives in the east. Her brother in law had died recently, suddenly, and we needed to see how her sister and niece were doing.
The new car, first automatic transmission in my life of five vehicles so far, makes all driving a breeze compared to what it used to be with the constant gear-changing. Plus, it's warm, strong, fast and quiet, and quite new into the bargain. I could make the 12-hour journey in a day, but we broke it up with an overnight at friends' in Kutaisi anyway. That 12 hours, too, will decrease further and further as they continue to extend the new highway from Tbilisi to Batumi. Then Georgia will for the first time have a decent high-speed, high-volume main artery for its considerable cross-country transport. And then we'll all be in self-driving electric flyers anyway, right?
The bulk of the journey was uneventful, easy; pleasant. But this all changed, for the better not the worse, as we approached Gurjaani, near our destination of Lagodekhi. There are several villages one passes through before turning right and descending into Gurjaani, and the view on that high stretch dazzled me.
You can a glimpse of half a horizon of unbroken mountains between the houses and streets from your altitude as you go along, and I knew this. But I have never seen so strongly the effect which presented itself to me this time.
The clouds above and below that long mountain chain were exactly the same color. What was left? Just this 180 degrees of panorama, silently, massively floating on those clouds. I began to seek a clear enough vantage point from which to see, and photograph, the whole thing. This was frustrating, because we were still driving though the villages towards Gurjaani, and there wasn't a wide enough clear stretch. Patience, patience, that view isn't going anywhere soon...
We had to begin our descent into Gurjaani, and I despaired, but my wife, more experienced in the landscapes of her homeland, said that what I sought would appear, not from these heights but lower down, where we were headed anyway. I trusted her, and wasn't disappointed.
There... among the fields, openings appeared. I stopped the car, pulled out my camera already on its tripod, switched to the long lens, and began shooting.
26 overlapping frames later, I had my panorama's raw materials, from which the computer could produce one gigantic, very long and thin image, seamlessly tone-matched. I didn't hurry away, though, because I needed a bit of time to absorb this surreal view unencumbered by a camera, take it in; remember it instead of just sampling it electronically. It deserved that. You can see what I have so far here, as it doesn't fit well on a newspaper page: http://bit.ly/FloatGe
We saw our people, were taken into Lagodekhi Park for mushrooming and more photos, this time of vines on tree trunks and streams blurred to white by several-second exposures. The fungi are for me a taste which needed adulthood to appreciate, and I found them delicious, wondering what my younger fussy-eater self would have made of these wild versions of the tinned ones we knew.
The family seem alright, but we'll try to monitor things from afar, as there's not much more we can do aside from taking care of a few practical things like firewood and a washing machine. (The fridge can wait until it's hot again, next spring). The sheer luxury of being able to make this long journey by one's own transport instead of relying on public versions, hurrying or stopping wherever we choose, seeing anyone we need to, makes all the difference.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 1350 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svanetilong trek
Tony Hanmer