Magic!
How well you sleep when you’re tired! The night was cold, so I curled up and slept like I rarely do. I get up early to another hearty breakfast, made up of pretty much the same as the previous night’s dinner: homemade cheese, honey from their own bees, vegetables from their garden… but sadly, the only coffee drunk around here is instant. Oh well, I’m not going to complain about that… but I’d better have a tea.
The morning is cold, and the fog keeps the humidity quite high. On top of that, the first few kilometres are downhill, so today will be the first and only day I put on some warm clothes. I lose height quickly and gradually come out of the fog sitting on the mountaintops. The morning treats me to some wonderful views.
In no time I lose the 500 metres of height that cost me so much yesterday on this stretch from the main track up to Atabe. Back on the main track, this time I turn left to carry on towards Shatili. Just a 2,800-metre pass stands in my way. It’s going to be a hard day, but I’m sure the views will be worth it.
For now the sun is beating down and I’m starting to feel the heat, so I take off all the warm clothes I put on when I left Atabe, which protected me nicely from the fog for a while, and go back to my summer outfit, which will surely see me through the rest of the trip.
The track climbs the whole way. The gradient isn’t very steep and the surface is packed dirt, not too bad. It is very dusty, though, and every time a lorry overtakes me I’m wrapped in a cloud of whitish dust that leaves me unable to see a thing. And I wonder: where are all these lorries going? The track ends a little beyond Shatili, and as far as I know there’s no obvious destination for so many lorries. Most of them are dump trucks; they pass me empty and come back full of stones and earth. Roadworks, maybe?
The track is gentle in some places and steep in others, and always very dusty. Thanks to the altitude and such a clear day, the route is treating me to some great views. Still, I’m looking forward to reaching Shatili.
Shatili is a small historic village in Georgia, on the tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status. It sits on the northern side of the Caucasus, in the Khevsureti region, very close to the border with Chechnya. I’ll try to stay in a guesthouse in the middle of the fortress. It will no doubt be one of the most interesting places on the trip, and also the most remote (though not inaccessible). Getting there, whether by bike or by car, is a bit of a challenge.
On the way up I come across several machines working at different points along the route, clearing landslides and improving some sections with a bad surface or a steep gradient.
After a few hours I reach the top. Although I’m at almost 3,000 metres and can feel the difference in temperature, the breeze is so pleasant that I don’t even think about putting on warm clothes. Time to drop down into the valley for the last part of the route to Shatili.
It looked like a breakneck descent to the valley was coming, but nothing could be further from the truth. There were roadworks everywhere: widening the road, lengthening the track to ease a gradient, clearing a landslide… but they weren’t roadworks like the ones we’re used to. Most of the time you’d find the machines blocking the road, and a line of vehicles and people waiting for them to finish what they were doing so the road could reopen. Although there was little traffic, you’d still find a good handful of cars waiting for 15 or 20 minutes. And nobody seemed to get impatient: it is what it is! So the breakneck descent turned into a short descent followed by a stop, again and again.
After a good while I reached the valley, where I didn’t come across any more roadworks and could enjoy several kilometres of easy track in very beautiful surroundings.
The track runs downriver, switching banks every so often. There’s hardly any traffic; all you can hear is the murmur of the water and the birdsong.
And almost without noticing, round a bend, I come upon the wonderful sight of Shatili. A town from another age, deep in the Caucasus, preserved as it was centuries ago. I can’t believe that tonight I’m going to sleep in there, inside one of those houses.
There’s a lot to see and tell about Shatili. But I’ll leave that for tomorrow.