Juta Villages

Wednesday day 2 no internet

After a very mediocre breakfast in Gudari we drove north climbing towards Mount Kazbegi, the summit was clear and from the road we had a great view of Georgia’s third highest peak. Our destination this morning was Gergeti Church of the Holy Trinity. Our off road ascent felt laborious and although the scenery was quite spectacular I was very tired, I hadn’t expected the altitude to have that effect, we were probably at around 6000 feet in old money. We quickly revived and appreciated the 13th century frescos depicting the Holy Trinity, incredible blues which apparently were original.
The short and very steep ascent down was not pleasant and I’m not sure that poles helped. Anyway we all made it safely and were ready for lunch at a café in Gergeti village – an array of Georgian dishes which we washed down with cherry juice.
One of the best walks in Georgia was this afternoon’s gentle trek, part of thethe Juta-Chaukhi trail. We walked through derelict villages, herds of gentle cows, abandoned fortresses and an active monastery and nunnery with friendly dogs. Not far from South Ossetia the area is policed, and entering South Ossetia is forbidden to residents of Georgia.
Returning to our hotel in Gudauri via the New Silk Road, a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by China, we drove past a 5 kilometre caravan of cargo trucks. The drivers, mainly from Armenia, Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Goergia wait for days, sometimes weeks to cross the border into Russia.
The internet is back on, apparently the high winds caused an outage across the whole valley.