Trip to Shatili

As I wrote before, the trip to Svaneti didn’t work out. I backed out before going to the airport as I had to work the night before and after thinking about weather conditions and lack of flights to Svaneti during previous week, I decided not to bother going to the airport at all. In the end, it turned out that the flight was canceled due to poor weather conditions in Svaneti and the troops that were ready to leave decided to turn around and go to Kazbegi.

I went to Shatili instead. UNESCO declared Shatili as a World Heritage site some time ago and after visiting it, I have no objections to its declaration. We drove up in two SUVs, provided by two Indian guys who work at BP and were looking for company to go up to Shatili. Those BP SUVs turned out to be perfect for driving up mountainous roads which at times were really steep and at times were covered in mud or had a stream of water or a landslide crossing it. Turns out that driving over a landslide on a road that is about 10 inches from a cliff that plunged into freezing cold rapids is a tricky thing to do. The driver rode over the top part of the landslide which was above the road so in case it starts sliding again, which it did, the car would slide with it, but instead of plunging right into the white rapids, it would slide onto the actual road part. So that was scary. There were other obstacles as well, mainly in the form of cows.

Originally we planned to spend a night in Shatili, do a little hiking and drive back. Once we arrived in Shatili, it turned out that the village was really tiny and there was nowhere for a group of nine people to stay. We also did not bring enough provisions with us so our day in Shatili was marked with munching on bread with sausage and checking out the Chechen side of the mountains. We also poked around death houses and greeted the locals. I was a little disappointed as it would have been nice to spend the night, I am not sure if there was any electricity in Shatili, but it didn’t work out and everyone was hungry. Plus, we didn’t bring a tent so camping out wasn’t an option either.

I posted a number of pictures below; yes, I know the some of the descriptions are misspelled and grammatically incorrect. But posting these pictures is painfully slow and I was in a rush. I am sure you’ll enjoy them anyway.

By the way, here is an article about a trip to Svaneti published in the Messenger I mentioned before. As you see, flying there is difficult.