High Up in the Caucasus

Tusheti National Park, Georgia – View from the Keselo Fortress in Upper Omalo

Would you believe it? I’m still busy! Despite being booted out of the ITS Projects. (We’ve received the official taking over certificates for the 2 ITS2020 Projects where I was the Project Manager. That’s the reason why I’m not needed anymore, sob).

Anyway, life goes on. A school mid-term break for the kids is coming up next week… (Didn’t school just start like last month?!??) Dubai’s EXPO 2020 has opened and we’ve visited and taken some photos (which will stay in the phone for another year, or 2 before seeing the light of day. The light of this blog I mean. You’ll catch ‘em faster by checking Anu’s facebook). At home in Malaysia, some bad news has come up. Our dear ol’ aunt Helen, the happening aunt, has had a major surgery to remove her colon due to a growth of some kind that has blocked it. We hope it’s not cancerous, praying every day. Hope she’ll recover quickly.

And, it’s nearly half a month since I last posted. So, I’m gonna squeeze in another express photo post. On the same Tusheti National Park of Georgia (yeah, why not? The photos are all there, ready to post, sitting in drive, hehe). Here goes.


I love to go a wandering, along the mountain track… (What’s a mountain trip without a little bit of trekking? Come on boys, mommy’s far ahead. Mommy’s the fit one in our family, ahem)


Along a mountain track connecting Lower Omalo to Upper Omalo, Tusheti, Georgia


Mommy on a lookout – There ahead, the fortress!


Zemo (Upper) Omalo with the Keselo Fortress overlooking the village


Mommy on sacred ground – Yeah, it really is marked ‘Sacred Place’ on a signboard – no camping, or driving onto the grounds allowed. And no skimpy dresses (if I understand the sign correctly). The Tushetians have their own taboos and culture. One prominent one is that Pork (which is consumed all over Georgia) is taboo in Tusheti despite the Tushetians being Christians!


Let’s make our way to the fortress! The views are breath-taking…


Hey, careful! It’s a long way down!




Keselo Fortress from the back… Tusheti, Georgia




The kids made a friend. She’s a Swiss girl, about 7 years old, I think the name’s Rachel. We saw her all alone in the fortress. We thought she was local. Her parents were far below (see first picture above, resting below the tower). That’s the Swiss way of bringing up children I suppose, letting the kids roam around the mountains as they like (as Switzerland is full of mountains). We would’ve never let the kids out of our sight, especially at this place, with steep cliffs dropping into ravines full of God knows what… We only learnt later that she’s Swiss when we met her parents. They had driven all the way from Switzerland to Georgia, through Eastern Europe and Turkey. They’d driven as far as Kazakhstan on other trips (how I wish I had the means and time to do that…). This time they parked their car somewhere, travelled to Khevsureti (another remote hill community in Georgia), hired some horses with horsemen in Khevsureti, and travelled through the forests on horseback for a few days to reach Tusheti! That’s what I call an ADVENTURE!


Horses in Omalo, after a brief downpour. That was a nice day trip. OK, time to get back to our hotel!


After a night at the hotel, it’s time to get back down to civilization, bye-bye Omalo, bye Tusheti!


5 hours of mountain road, here we come! Baa baa white sheep, get out of the way! (On this particular day, fog shrouded most of the mountain road, south of the Abano Pass, much to the relief of Anu – she’s afraid of heights).

From here, we headed back to Telavi to collect our rented car and say hi and bye to our friends in the Telavi guesthouse. That’s my last post of our 2018 Caucasus trip! Bye Georgia, hope to meet you again soon! From Georgia, we would head to Baku, Azerbaijan to complete our trip of the Caucasus.

And before I go… HAPPY DURGA PUJA! HAPPY DUSSEHRA! This weekend will be a busy weekend!

The Most Treacherous Road of All?

The road to Tusheti, Georgia

An express post coming up. Project or no project, somehow, I have my hands full (which is a good sign in times like these).

On the home front, summer’s ended and school has resumed, with FULL attendance (yeah, no kidding). I guess the UAE’s just decided to screw COVID-19. Heck, almost everyone is vaccinated now, and new cases are less than 500 per day. (Fingers-crossed, I hope this downward trend will continue). It’s nearly 2 friggin years now of this blasted pandemic! Will we ever get back to normal?!?

Anyway, here’s a little something from our holidays when times were better. A continuation of our holidays in Georgia in 2018. (I’ve kept the photos ready just for busy times like these, hehe). Here goes.

These photos are of what a blogger called, the most treacherous road of all when we were planning our Georgia trip back in 2018. Now, it isn’t even featured in any of the Google searches for most treacherous roads. Besides, how do you measure treacherousness?? (If there’s such a word). But one road that features prominently in the most treacherous roads list, is a road which I’ve travelled through before – the Zoji La Pass Road in India that connects Ladakh to the Kashmir Valley. It was in ummm 2004 if I’m not mistaken, and I was with my brother Jason and friend Wai Yen. We were travelling from Leh in Ladakh, to Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir and boarded a public bus in Kargil. The entire Zoji La portion was traversed at night, and we didn’t see a thing, just that the dratted ride was super bumpy and I didn’t sleep a darn minute, except for the time when the bus stopped with many other vehicles and waited for ages in complete darkness in God knows where. Maybe the vehicles have to take turns to cross the pass, who knows?

Anyway, back to my post, here’re the pictures of our road trip to Tusheti, high up on the Caucasus mountains in Georgia. Enjoy!


About an hour in from the start of the road to Tusheti, near a roadside waterfall – still surrounded by forests – cool!


That's the car that took us up to Tusheti, a Mitsubishi Delica, the 4WD car of choice in Georgia – We hired a car from the guesthouse we booked in Tusheti to take us up there as our rented car’s insurance did not cover the road up to Tusheti. Besides, the blogs that I read while planning for the trip scared me so much (with fantastic stories about how treacherous the road is), that I decided not to take that risk with the family. Now thinking back, I could’ve driven up. It’s mainly rocks and boulders. The Gergeti Trinity Church Road (earlier post) felt tougher with wet slippery soil and steep inclines, and I overcame that with our Great Wall 4WD! We left our rented car in the friendly guesthouse at Telavi where we were staying before visiting Tusheti.


That’s the driver of our hired car. Nah, don’t remember his name, just remember that the children at the hotel called him Mama (meaning Dad in Georgian – yup, it’s the opposite. Mum is Deda). He happens to be the very owner of the hotel / guesthouse up in Tusheti!




The road to Tusheti (now with no more tree cover)




Looking back at the road we came from – nice, but it was a dizzying friggin ride. Anu didn’t wanna look down at all! (She has a fear of heights). And we were almost all down with motion sickness (told ya I should've driven)


We reached the pass (Abano Pass). It’s downhill from here onwards!


Crossing a melting glacier


No trees, but the slopes are covered with mountain flowers


Whew! Finally, our hotel – Guesthouse Javakhe, Lower Omalo, Tusheti – What’s that Chinese flag doing in a remote place like this?


Jayden at Guesthouse Javakhe, Lower Omalo, Tusheti, Georgia


Tusheti Protected Area (Tusheti National Park), Georgia - And here's a photo of little Jayden at Tusheti


There’re horses all over the place – the biggest building in this photo (middle slight right) is the Guesthouse Javakhe where we stayed

That’s it for the day folks!

Not as Easy as It Seems

Gergeti Trinity Church, at the foot of Mount Kazbek, near the village of Gergeti, Stepantsminda, Georgia

Summer is burning on. The gods must be angry – fires rage, floods inundate, disease ravages the world. Are these the end times? Errrr…. dunno! But what the heck, if the sky falls down, take it as a blanket. That’s what I used to say, when I was single and had no responsibilities. Now it’s a constant worry… when will the next Project come? Will I still have a job next month, next year??

Anyway, thank God, we’re still thriving even when we’re stuck in desert-land in friggin burning summer. How I wish we could (still) go for a holiday? But it’s only 3 weeks away to the start of the new school year, so, bye-bye holidays!

I’m back at holiday dreaming. Here’s a continuation of our trip to Georgia exactly 3 years ago, in 2018. By the way, my colleague just came back from a tour of Georgia commenting on what a good time they had there. …What nerves! That’s like rubbing salt into a wound. But let it pass, we have a higher calling, ahem – stopping the spread of COVID.

Back to our trip, here’s how we worked our way up to the Gergeti Trinity Church in Kazbegi (Stepantsminda).


Time to start our day. Anu at our guest house (Blue Caps) in the village of Gergeti. That’s the Gergeti Trinity Church, on top of the hill above Anu’s head in the photo. The church is visible all over Gergeti and Kazbegi. But how do we get there??? “Hello, ma’am, where is the road to that church there?”, I asked the landlady of the guesthouse pointing to the church. “Mmm-hmm”. “Can we go using this road?” pointing to the road in front. “Mmm-hmm”. Sounds like another cousin of Groot (the tree man from the Guardians of the Galaxy who can only speak 1 sentence). Oh well, “Madloba” (thank you). Oh, she’s better than Groot, she taught us this one Georgian word we learnt in our trip which is not a name of a food!


Oh, this looks like the way. The church is just there (top right)


There! A close up view. It’s a mighty cloudy day. Looks like we won’t be able to catch a sight of snow-capped Mt Kazbek after all. What a waste…


Uh-oh! No through road. Construction workers waving us to go back! Pointed us to go down…


Went back down all the way out of the village and took another road. Oh, this looks like it. Let’s go up… Oops, another no through road! – That’s yours truly with our trusty Great Wall 4WD (yeah, the Chinese car) which we rented from a local car hire shop near our guesthouse in Tbilisi. I hope it makes it (our Great Wall pickups in the Project I was on in the UAE, all had problems with the AC, but this one’s so far so good!). It’s an automatic transmission 4WD, not exactly my cup of tea. I’m more used to a manual transmission 4WD.

Here we go again, went back down the road, passed the river (Chkheri) and went further upstream.


Finally, WE MADE IT! Great Wall triumphs! Gergeti Trinity Church, Georgia – this road ain’t easy for the inexperienced – a steep road of wet soil and boulders – But I’m proud our Great Wall car made it. I saw many a Volvo and Audi SUV turn back down. Also, maybe, the countless times of yours truly driving up and down the wet and muddy hill roads of our Mizoram hill road project in the 2000’s paid off, haha! And mind you, those were on manual cars with no hand brakes. (None of the car hand brakes work in Mizoram, and nobody bothers. They just bloody well use the first gear and stick a stone under their wheels to park. The trick is when you start the car on a slope. You have to bloody well step on the brake and the accelerator at the same time with your right foot, while you control the clutch with your left – Interesting, ain’t it?)


That’s a view of the road we came up on (this was taken on our way down). Look at the wheels of that Volvo trying to climb a rock. I dunno whether he made it or not. The car of choice for the locals (and you wouldn’t believe it) – is the Mitsubishi Delica. They’re unbeatable in the hill roads of Georgia!






This is just amazing! Even if it’s cloudy – Gergeti Trinity Church, Stepantsminda, Georgia


Right behind us, if it’s a clear day, would be the snow-capped Mount Kazbek


A view of the town of Kazbegi (Stepantsminda) and the village of Gergeti from the Gergeti Trinity Church. I guess you can also hike up like these people in the photo, if you don’t wanna drive


Justin at the Gergeti Trinity Church, Stepantsminda, Georgia


Horse vs Mitsubishi Delica - who’d win? On our way down. There in front, is Kazbegi!

On the Georgian Military Road

An apiary (honey bee farm) on the Georgian Military Highway, south of Sioni village, near Stepantsminda. So sez Google Maps. (All the location names in this post are picked from Google Maps. If not for Google Maps, you think I’d know the names???)

It’s the summer break. School has ended, and UAE residents are heading out, in droves, to wherever they’re allowed to go, COVID or none. Georgia, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Russia, you name it. As for us, we (or more appropriately, the missus) have decided to be conscientious (to our suffering fellow humans in other parts of the world) and do our part to stop the spread of pesky COVID. Meaning we’d be taking a break from taking a break, sob, sob…

So, with our holiday plans down the drain, for another summer, here’s the next best thing… daydreaming about our past adventures… Here’s a continuation of our Georgia trip of 2018.

Continuing from where I stopped, from Shiomghvime we headed for the Georgian Military Road, going back past Mtskhetha. Our destination for the night was Stepantsminda (or Kazbegi as most people call it) at the northern end of the Military Road before it crosses into Russia. Here’s our trip in pictures.


Ananuri Fort – this was our first stop on the Military Road after we left Shiomghvime – Pictures in the internet shows the fort at a point where two rivers meet, like a wedge jutting out between two rivers. But when we visited, one side of the river was bone dry… What a let down


There, the bone dry side of Ananuri Fort – Heck, there’s a car, some cattle and even a shed there… Must have been dry for some time now…


Anu in carnival mood – on the banks of the Aragvi River, north of Buchaani village – there’s something like a watch tower on the hill across the river if you look closely, and some people picnicking


At a grocery shop at Kvesheti – to stock up on supplies (…and more importantly, to empty our bladders. Whew, what a relief. Thanks for the toilet, mate. Madloba)




The Aragvi River at Kvesheti village

Finally, Kazbegi – we reached at dusk. Amidst the increasing darkness, we could see the faint outline of a majestic snow-capped mountain to the left, Mount Kazbek (aka Mt Kazbegi). I figured we’d see it clearer the next morning. (Yeah, my foot, the next morning, the entire mountain was shrouded in clouds… We left without ever seeing Mount Kazbek in its actual glory)


A Georgian dinner at Stepantsminda / Kazbegi


The next day – Stepantsminda with the Gergeti Trinity Church on top of the hill. Behind the hillocks would be Mount Kazbegi, if it wasn’t for the clouds… Did we go up to the Gergeti Church? Of course we did, but that’s another adventure altogether which I’ll post another time, hehe


Bye-bye Kazbegi! – View of Stepantsminda from the south on the Military Road


On the Georgian Military Road – Looking north, just south of Sioni village. The little church on top of the hill on the right is the Sioni Basilica according to Google Maps


What a gorgeous valley! The Terek River valley, south of Sioni


A village on the other side of the Terek River. Google Maps labels it as Kaboni


And this is a photo of the famous Georgian ski resort, Gudauri – this is the Peace Monument, taken from the car. We passed Gudauri to and from Stepantsminda but did not stop both times

From here, we headed south back to Ananuri, and then took a left turn going east towards Tianeti, Akhmeta and finally Telavi. And that exciting story I’ve covered earlier – check out this old post. Ciao!