Day 7

Up and out by 9:30am, our first stop today was Uplistsikhe and its cave dwellings. The main occupation was from 4th C. BC – 4th C. AD but people were inhabiting the site from 10th century B.C.  It was an actual town with homes, wine presses, pagan temples, etc. It was extremely windy and tremendous fun to scramble around the boulders exploring.

Next we headed back to Gori to visit the Stalin Museum (Gori was his birthplace).  It was built just behind his childhood home (now covered like a temple), it is a shrine from the 1950’s, glorifying Stalin with copies of propaganda, newspapers, photographs detailing how wonderful he was.

Only tourists visit the museum. Georgians won’t come as suffered so much in the last 100+ years from Russian aggression and domination. Every family lost at least one member (unless very old and grew up supporting). They only recently added a small alcove under the stairs documenting such loss and the hardship under Soviet rule.

After a lunch featuring traditional Georgian meatballs and mashed potatoes we headed east, then north along the Military Highway towards the northern border. 

After 1h30m we stopped at the Ananuri Church Complex and bathroom break, lol. Built between the 15th – 18th centuries, there’s a long inscription on the larger of the 2 churches in part saying endearingly: “we tried our best to build you a beautiful church but we are just humble tradesmen”.

The highway is the only land border crossing open into Russia and is therefore extremely busy with lorries and traffic.  It also contains a narrow, serpentine climb up past a ski resort to the top of the Jvari Pass at 2400m, then winds down again.  Because of this dangerous road they are building a 9k tunnel, a massive project which not only added to the volume of trucks on the road, they’ve set up multiple gravel factories in the river bed for miles before the site.

Near the top we stopped at the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument.  Built in 1983 while still under Russian rule, it’s actually an attractive mosaic of the folklore, history and achievements of the two countries.  The wind was howling and it was bitterly cold so it was a quick photo stop only.

Down the far side we continued on to our destination Stepantsminda, the last town before the Russian border, just 12k away. Tomorrow we’re doing a little hike to a church set in the mountains above the town and we have a dumpling making lesson!