All from the visit earlier this October.
Top 3 - details from a carved wooden door.
Top: Sergo the Reaper
Several days now of no internet at home and in a significant part of Tbilisi, with rumours of an ISP having gone down. So I'm accessing it from a friend's house tonight. And a warm welcome to the first visitors to the blog from Jordan and Bangladesh, countries 91 and 92!
Okay, so we get this, right? Buffer zone gets abandoned by occupiers, people return to selective chaos - some houses targeted for bombing or burning, others next door untouched. Fruit ripening on the trees, few people daring to pick it with fears of active mines uppermost. I'm not going to speculate on whether it was Russians, or Ossetian or other mercenary groups primarily responsible. But the damage remains. There was lots of new building going on as well, as we drove towards Gori from the main highway - grids of hundreds of houses for refugees/IDPS who have nowhere to winter. The people returning to their ruined houses and as-yet untouched UXO (unexploded ordnance) are understandably upset at how long restoration of normality is taking and will take. But I have to say that I'm impressed, comparing the current situation to what I saw of refugees after the earlier civil wars (early 1990s) of Georgia from 1999 onwards. We must just continue with this momentum - foreign observers ensuring some accoutability will help with that, I think - until things are as normal as possible for as many people as possible once more. That's what it's about, the people.
A few further images from yesterday's jaunt to the horror scene: dash in, click click click, chat a bit with shell-shocked survivors and returned IDPs like good concerned visitors - but please, God, could it make a difference from our comfortable lives to their unbearable ones? At least, more than losing some sleep over what we've seen and heard and then "recovering" and getting on with normal life, could our little trip actually improve their lives, even a few of them? Otherwise, count me out next time.
I went with friends - an American and some Georgians - to Gori and north of it to the South Ossetian border today, through villages from which Russian troops had recently departed - the former buffer zone, in other words. Plenty of ruined houses, bombed- or burnt-out, and destroyed lives, in these villages.
Top three, from Dizi: Someone making k'ubdari (Svan meat pies) for the first time; and Svan ladies (Nodar's sister Tina, a widowed mother; her daughter and sisters-in-law)
Top: just outside Dizi, where once much of the marble for Moscow's magnificent Metro stations was mined
Back to the start of this 25th Svaneti visit - pictures out of order, but never mind.
More from yesterday's trip home. It was 12 hours from Ushguli to Mtskheta, near Tbilisi, with some rather bad roads soon after the start of the trip, and me out in front of the car on foot, guiding it. But spectacular scenery made up for all of that. More to come.
A few to whet the appetite - from my today's return trip from Ushguli all the way back to Tbilisi, via the rarer Lentekhi road, going up to 2600 m or so above sea level and closed by snow roughly half the year. The new digital camera performed like a star, and I couldn't have wished for better weather.
My 25th visit to Svaneti... and Someone's 1st.
