Hay hay hay, above Ushguli, August 2004 (bottom 2 shots: Mt. Ailama in background)It's a delightful feeling to move past the "hounoured male guest" phase and be allowed to participate in doing something useful. Besides, we were going to be more of a drain on resources than any had ancitipated, waiting for the roadwork.
A cow needs ten stacks of hay to get thrugh the winter. The family owns ten cows, therefore a hundred haystacks. Did I mention that the scythed grass was on the side of a mountain?
Most of us raked the dried grass together in a first step, while the more experienced piled it up into the stacks, a bent sapling trunk running through each one. I was finding it hard to keep my balance on the same horizontal line, but what came next took my breath away. Dato would grasp each sapling as a handle, and RUN straight down the mountain to the road far below, dragging the entire haystack behind him! This can only be summed up on video - still frames simply don't do it justice.
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