Hitchhiking in the Caucasus

Looking back at what happened in the two last decades... Hitchhiking on the roads of Abkhazia, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Georgia, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, the author explored the relation issues between the Caucasian nations, their lifestyles and cultures. A series of travel essays is dedicated to the friendship that is harder than Damascus steel and that is more powerful than politics.

I dislike fortune-tellers and prophets. Before departure, I was lucky enough not to meet any Nostradamus crossing my way, and thus I stayed pleasantly unaware what awaited me in future. I was also lucky to be inherently immune to the "mystic" meaning of the number 13. On that very date of August 2014, the wheel of my journey started to spin.

I made up my mind to go to the Caucasus by hitchhiking. The first leg from Kursk to Voronezh is not much to describe as it didn't require much effort – my friends took me there by car. Instead, when I was on the Borisoglebsk highway, to which I had to hike with a serious backpack quite a bit, I gave a second thought to what I was doing there and what I was hoping for. This happens each time before you get your first pick-up. However, what had worked out for me two years ago on a trip to Baikal did its magic for me this time – a white car stopped after I raised my thumb-up.

A Wiseman from Urupinsk

Pasha, a dog breeder, was going back home to his community after a trip to a town where he had replenished his veterinary drug storage for his numerous tailed friends. I didn't know whether he wanted to make up for his short ten kilometres lift or, rather, was very kind, but he was doing his best to be helpful: invited me for lunch, asked around intercity truck drivers to take me with them. It has to be noted that the man was undoubtedly a criminal in the past and a strong believer now, which was quite typical for ex-prisoners who wanted to mend their ways. As many other people I eventually met, after visual estimation of my backpack, Pasha took me for a martyr and strongly recommended to pray Our Father while hitchhiking. He gave me a string of beads at that. "Not only you will go, but you will fly to your destination!" I had no slightest intention to keep the God's domain busy with such trifles, but nevertheless I appreciated the move and took the beads.

After such a blessing it would have been a sin to doubt the success of my undertaking, so it was not long until the second car pulled over. Ironically enough, Eugene Globin was returning from Kursk Rubber Plant with several rolls of rubber for some Urupinsk farm. Who never heard a couple of jokes about the good old town of Urupinsk? But very little people know that such a town really exists in Volgograd region. The town, a capital of an eponymous district, is situated hundreds of kilometres from large cities, and is so lost on the map that it has long become a symbol of the Russian backwoods. Eugene stated that fact with obvious dignity. A hard-working man, who did not see much of his family due to almost never-ending trips, he had ample time to think over a lot of things while on the road. Now he also mused leaving absolutely no grounds for the anecdotal glory of Urupinsk natives as being shallow and uneducated people. I hardly had time to write after him like some true folk-story collector. "My Granny rode a horse but was afraid of cars," he recollected aptly. 'My Mom drove a car but was afraid of flying, and my daughter flies often but is afraid of horses!' That monologue had never ceased to be instructive for good two hours until the educated local of Urupinsk had to turn off the Volgograd highway toward, as I knew now, the kingdom of wisdom and discretion.

Otherwise, a 32-year old don Juan Arseniy, right away from Moscow, plunged me into another reality – a glitter of the capital where his rich female acquaintances threw millions away when buying unneeded clothes and jewellery, where they rode Porches with personal drivers and where they used to bring servants from Africa just for fun. Where could the fitter from Volgograd meet those? In a beer bar where he watched a soccer match. However, a luxurious but pointless small world of those people did not appeal to Arseniy. Having told that away, the eager talker gave it some long thought about where to pitch a tent and, finally, pulled over near a sign with big letters "Volgograd".

Poor Nastya

The city had not fully recovered from the last year's terrorist's attacks. I did not look for encounters with those who were involved, but I met an observer of the events – Kate, a student. And also, when taking my bags to a railway luggage room, I passed the place of the explosion, where fresh red carnations lay near a memorial board, and later I found myself in Kachintseva Street where terrorists blew up a trolleybus.

Of course, it would have been a miss not to visit Mamayev Hill War Memorial, Gerhardt Mill, Pavlov's house and Museum-Panorama The Battle of Stalingrad. I spent the whole day visiting Volgograd's main sights. A very hot 40-degree day, it was. One of days when people sought respite from heat under air conditioners and water. Not far from the "dancing bridge" that had been rocked by wind to an amplitude of almost one meter in 2010, there was a very unusual beach. One part of the beach was fenced and a visitor had to pay a fee to get there, while the other part had No Swimming signs. But the both parts were overcrowded!

The city with one million population stretched along the Volga river for over 70 kilometres. A trip from the centre to the suburban Krasnoarmeiskiy district of Volgograd ended only in the late evening, and the trip included a ride on the famous underground tram and a city shuttle. Near a colossal 57-meter Lenin monument that hovered over sluice gate #1 of the Volga-Don canal, I met a family. Alexander with his 5-year-old daughter and his father was coming home from a birthday party. Little Nastya was tired and her eyes were heavy, but she readily followed the adults when they took the responsibility to take the stray traveller to a backwater beach by any means. And it was a several-block walk. Didn't I protest looking at the kid? I did protest!

Heroes of Our Time

I spent a quarter of an hour on a not so busy, not to say almost deserted, highway, when I heard an encouraging voice behind my back, "Hop in!" A long-haul truck was briefly parked some 30 meters ahead of me, and the driver walked quite a bit toward me to give me a shout. A minute later, the driver was brushing away some boxes and other things from the seats to free some space for me.

He wore a sailor's striped vest and black glasses that missed one ear piece. He had a tattoo of a parachute and a bat on the right shoulder... The conversation started about hunting, of which Valentin was a big fan, and then settled down on a root reason of such a hunting drive – a contract service in the Special Operations Force (Spetsnaz) of Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) that was said to be the most trained division of the Russian Military Forces. My hunch proved true – he was a vet of combat operations awarded with an Order of Courage, an exclusive man nearby, a man with stamina and rich past. "My non-disclosure obligation expired two years ago," he said, when our truck passed by another poster warning about possible robbery on the road.

He was 19 when he was enlisted in the army. In a bootcamp near Krasnodar, he was offered a service contract. "Selection of people for GRU is very serious, so is training – men learn to use any weapon, fight with anything available even with a tightly rolled newspaper. They are trained in non-contact warfare; they can employ mines, siege buildings and convoys, read tracks." Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, visited his military unit during drills.

"We simulated a seizure of a convoy of trucks," he remembered. Meanwhile, our truck was passing a field of burning grass, and a fire vehicle with a siren on was going fast in the opposite direction. "A road to a gorge was mined but our guys put a little bit too much explosive, and as a result, an UAZ off-roader that ran into the landmine jumped out off the ground to a height of good two meters. As a chief of the crew, I had to report personally about the outcome of the operation, and Mr. Putin awarded commendations to all the crew members." After that, he had real battles – finishing off of bandit groups in the North Caucasus and the war in Georgia... We dwelt longer on the latter.

"Our group had manoeuvres in Abkhazia, but on the 8th of August in 2008 we were in Tskhinvali," Valentin said. "It was clear that something bad was coming. Several days prior to the attack, the Georgians living in South Ossetia had been warned about something and they had hastily left the town. Peaceful population was attacked, and Georgian tanks first entered nearby villages and then Tskhinvali. I witnessed how one of the tanks fired at a white "seven" (a LADA car) with a family of Ossetians and two small kids inside who were trying to flee. This episode was described by a military journalist from Kyiv who himself nearly died under fire. But those whom he took for militia men capturing the killers were our peace-makers."

"We were greatly disturbed by a sniper who put down several conscripts when they ignorantly smoked or switched on their mobiles in the night," continued the driver. "We asked for lamps and batteries from truck drivers, made a kind of twinkle lights and were switching them on and off in sequence to deceive the shooting sniper. When he lost control and fired three times straight from a same place, we captured him."

What surprised Valentin most was that peaceful Georgians who didn't quit South Ossetia were helping Russian servicemen, were offering them dry meat, their best wine and home brewed beer... But this time, he was taking commercial beer from Volzhskiy town to a bike festival in Anapa, however, I had to get off earlier.

Not for combat merits but also, as Valentin, deserving to be called heroes of our time people live in the country town of Kotelnikovo. A talented, known throughout Volgograd region, musician, Anatoly Buylin by name, studied in Kursk where I met him eight years ago. His life was not simple, and it started in far-away Tashkent. He was born with a very serious ailment, which converted all his further life into struggle for survival. The illness progressed, ate him from inside, Anatoly ceased to recognize his relatives... It was music that saved him at the critical moment. Elena, his mother, sacrificed her personal life and a good job to give her son a chance to become like everybody else. They moved from town to town, and kept alternating doctors with music teachers, of which only a few agreed to tutor a disabled man. That's what everybody saw in him. Elena Sedova, being a teacher herself, understood that all too well, but that made her dedicate her to the son with even bigger self-denial. And now, seeing this guy, who was a leader of three non-professional music bands and played six musical instruments, and whose rehearsals drew crowds of listeners, one could never guess what he and his loved ones went through. Only songs he wrote bore a rare sadness...

The Man in a Case

The residents of Kotelnikovo, the town that is modest in all respects, can undoubtedly boast of one thing – Tsimlyansk Reservoir, an artificial lake with large ports, frequent calms and numerous seagulls on wide sand beaches. The Reservoir is 38 kilometres wide and as many as 180 kilometres long. But the locals complain, instead: what's the use of it if there's no job? Each tries to find his own way of making a living. Sergei, who took me with his family to the water conservation zone, was just back from Vladivostok where he had worked at a defence company.

In the sun-scorched steppe, whose solitude the random elm trees and Tatarian maples were not able to stir, I saw a lonely sign that read "Volgodonsk 66". Ignoring the question "Why?" for the time being, I turned from the main highway and got in a Lada moving in the same direction. Ivan, a former militiaman, was upset about events in Ukraine. He had relatives in Kyiv with whom he practically lost communication. When he learned that my itinerary included Chechnya, he smiled. His 11 cousins lived there because many years ago one Chechen had stolen Ivan's aunt, a Russian, as a bride, nevertheless, they were happy now. We pass a nuclear station and several huge workshops of Atommash, the Russia's largest manufacturer of products for nuclear power.

When domes are installed on new churches in Kursk region, as in many other regions, then there is a high probability that they were cast in Volgodonsk. No other signs of prominence were seen in the town. A skinny man with watery eyes waited for a bus next to me. "Why do you travel without money?" he asked with a reproach. "One should have a craft to make one's living. What's the point of going anywhere?" Then he went on to conclude that nothing worth seeing could be found in our country, and that people could do me harm. He would perfectly go for the man in a case, an infamous Chekhov's character: one joy remained for him was to grow old slowly and peacefully die of boredom.

Just before the dark, a van with road-making workers picked me up. The workers spent the whole day spreading asphalt. Now they cheerfully recollected an unprecedented scorcher: 40 degrees in the air and 80 from hot mixture on the road. While babbling away about new construction know-hows, Sergei fiddled an empty bottle in his hand for some time, and then...threw it through the window. A minute before that he had said that one of his responsibility had been to collect litter from the shoulders of the road. "At least we will have something to do," he readily explained.

The other tired workers were drowsing after shots of hurriedly diluted alcohol. One of them suddenly woke up and nearly startled me in the half-dark of the van by saying, "Bro, be careful when staying in a tent overnight – Kalmykia steppes have wolves...even two-legged ones." And he fell asleep again.

On the Mystifying Russian Soul

Sometimes it takes quite long to get a lift; so, it was that morning. One thing cheers you when this happens that drivers somewhat respond with gestures trying to explain why they cannot give you a ride. A purple Niva stopped, what a joy. A family couple inside is a sure sign to be taken onboard. They said they were heading for Mokriy Gorshun. "Ok, at least there," I responded, though however hard I then tried to locate that settlement on a map I couldn't find it. They mumbled something incoherent and took off. And only Ivan on a water truck, who had made three trips to a nearby village on my eyes before, pulled over on the fourth one to offer me a lift.

More often and often I encountered residents of Dagestan. My attitude towards representatives of this mountainous republic was good a priori. When in the army, I served under command of two officers from Dagestan, one of whom made me his assistant. Captain Mutalliyev and Senior Lieutenant Iskhakov had been held up as an example of people whose concept of military honour hadn't been frozen out by the severity of the Extreme North.

On our way to Elista, the Kalmykia's capital, my new acquaintances, Imyn, a shepherd, and his friend Ibrahim, an entrepreneur, were passionately telling me about complications of the ethnic diversity in Dagestan: 36 ethnicities lived there, and each had own traditions and language. Imyn belonged to the Avar ethnicity, Ibrahim was a Dargin. Their dialects were so different that an only option to understand each other was the Russian language. They convinced me that Dagestan was too spectacular to miss out a visit. But they also had to admit that lately it had been a more troublesome place due to propagation of Wahhabism, a religious and political movement aggressive towards even traditional Islam Muslims.

In Elista's main Buddhist temple Khurule Altn Sume, for the second time on that day I came across with Oliver from Germany near a golden statue of Buddha. He was travelling around Russia with his friend. They were attracted by the exotics of the Kalmykia capital – parks, dragon sculptures and cult structures of unusual shapes. Even an ultimate cynic would be held up on the central square by a peaceful scene of children delightfully spinning the prayer drum that responded with jingling bells, and of carefree youth sitting with guitars at a lotus-shaped fountain, and of solemn old men playing chess nearby.

When I managed to get out of the city, it was dark, but worst of all, a drizzling rain started. A wet hitchhiker is an extremely unlucky creature. However, I was fortunate enough to get a lift: Pashtet ("Pate", a common nickname for Pavel), Sanya (a diminutive of Alexander), Vovchik (a common nickname for Vladimir) and Stariy ("Old-timer") turned out to be "cool guys", which was clear the instant I got in their Lada. They were a team of workers who finished their sidewalk tile paving job in Elista and now went home to Stavropol where they had a small production facility. When Sanya heard of Kursk, he became upset. He had sad memories related with this word, namely with nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine "Kursk". After navy placement, he was assigned to submarine "Begemot" in 1999, on which he was responsible for the reactor, whereas his friend was sent for service on the submarine that sank on 12 August 2000.

It was for the first time that a driver invited me to stay overnight. When at home, Vovchik immediately turned into Vladimir, a model family man, a kind husband and the father of three beauties. Whatever amenities existed for a travelling man, they all were offered, and any attempt to mitigate their cares had the opposite effect on Vladimir and his wife Elena. In our time of pandemic suspiciousness, they let a stranger stay overnight in their house near small kids, and where there were things to steal... The same applies to all drivers who give free lifts to random people.

A Hello from Stavropol

Turkoman Rasul, who had worked as a physical education teacher in a village school for seven years, was heading for Stavropol on business. He showed me his favourite city sights on the fly and dropped me off downtown. And that nasty rain again. A guy with a camera, obviously, not local and seemingly from abroad, walked around a board of honourable citizens. Was he the yesterday's visitor from Germany? The glasses were similar but this one was taller. He, in his turn, as I found out later, thought that I was from Germany or from some other European country because a backpacker, so common abroad, did not match his image of a Russian man. He caught me up near a Lenin monument and invited me for a cup of tea in a cafe.

39-year old Todd Prince turned out to be a well-known American photographer and journalist who worked in Moscow for over a decade. Initially, he worked in the editors office of The Russia Journal, an English-language magazine about Russia, and then he worked in Bloomberg, an international media company. Once he was invited to Russian President Vladimir Putin's and Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's reception. Prince's list of vis-a-vis and phone interviews with public and political leaders was quite long. He talked to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, Head of Severstal Corporation Alexei Mordashov and even the President of Skolkovo Foundation Viktor Vekselberg. But the most remarkable one for the New-Yorker, whose adolescence fell on the years of the Cold War, was an interview with the last General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev. It happened in 2006, 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"I asked Mikhail about an interview, he came to the editors office," remembered the journalist. "He has always been and still remains an emblematic personality for me. Our generation remembers Gorbachev from news, from his meeting with Ronald Reagan in 1985, from talks in my school. During August Coup in 1991, I was preparing a lesson about the history of Cold War when I heard about what was going on in Moscow from my father. In those days he, just as many Americans did, was glued to TV news. And now the man who ruled one of the world's most powerful empires sat in a chair next to me explaining its demise. I asked him what he would have changed had he an opportunity to live through it once again...

When we went out we continued to talk about various things. For instance, about his granddaughter who studied in the department of journalism. That part of our conversation was off the record. Before boarding a car, Mikhail thought deeply for a moment and said in a low voice something akin to "thank goodness we did not spill blood for otherwise it would have been a night-mare." But he said that as if to himself, oblivious of my presence. That episode of the interview seemed the moment of truth to me. As many other leaders, Gorbachev must have made mistakes for which he is blamed by many. But I think that over a generation Russians will re-assess his management 'cause the crisis was almost inevitable then."

When we met, Todd was involved in a photo project about Russia's citizens. Over slightly a year, he collected more than 500 portraits: from a Solovki monk to a Yamal reindeer breeder. He was kindled by an idea to visit Kursk which he did not fail to do when I was back there.

...I heard the voice of the main city stadium's commentator fading away – Stavropol's Dynamo defeated a soccer team from Astrakhan 1-0. The neat-looking elderly were settling for healthy pre-bed walks in city parks and where stretching their bodies from trees. At Heroes Square, red-haired schoolgirls were watching the sun setting on the hazy horizon. The time came for me to say good-bye to American Todd and local student Artem, with both of whom I had shared company throughout the day. A city is recalled by people who live there.

How Happiness and War smell

Alexei from Stavropol bore a resemblance of a hero-knight of a folk legend. He was stout, kind and saturated with Russianness to the core. All his straight-forward and yet contentious nature called for justice and order. Worried about what was going on in Novorossiya, he spoke briskly and, it seemed, he did not exaggerate his readiness to scoot to Donbass to stop the bloodshed. He had known how to handle guns when he was commissioned to Chechnya in the early 2000 before demobbing from the army. He had also been a truck driver then, loaded not with stationary but covered with bullet proof vests all around, driving on beaten roads. Not long ago, Alexei received an order to transport a load to Grozny. His wife asked him to take her too. She hailed from there but had to flee with her family in 1993. They found their bereaved house: the gates still had traces of submachine gun bursts...

"Watch out!" my another driver shouted from the window of his old ZIL truck to repair workers on a bridge. Once the merry fellow from Dagestan also carried hay to a stud farm in Armavir and dropped several haystacks in a river. Albert had a farm of his own somewhere nearby, which had not been that easy to start up, but he managed to succeed in the agricultural business.

Armavir, a city in Krasnodar Krai, is the Russia's most "Armenian" city where every tenth citizen is a native of the South Caucasus. Services were held for them in their native language at the apostolic church as it had been one hundred and fifty years ago. They could also attend Sunday School where the Armenians study their own language and national culture. There was much public service advertising on the streets of Armavir: promotion of universal human values, glorification of Armavir doctors, veterans, teachers and factory workers. Bus stops dappled with slogans: "Kindness fits everyone, let us be kind!" And the entrance of a maternity hospital was decorated with a large-letter poster "Happiness is born here."

But to stop a fuel truck was an impossible mission even for a completely happy person. A passenger of a truck with a hazardous load should have a special permit, so I did not raise my hand. When a MAZ tank truck pulled over, I was sure that I hadn't been the reason for that, however the driver waved me from the cabin.

Alexander unloaded his fuel at some destination and now was returning to a fuel base in Labinsk after which he was going to Maykop, the capital of Adygea. He made hundreds of such trips in the last decade. He was refused a job within in speciality of the history teacher due to a note in his military service record that he had participated in finishing off of rebel groups in Chechen Republic. He got in a military drafting that was meant to make up for personnel losses of about two hundred soldiers and officers of the 131st Maykop brigade as a result of their attack on Grozny in the new year night of 1994-1995.

Though one writer said that war had an unwomanly face, Alexander's experience ended up in a recollection of a regiment's paramedic officer. His service mates almost worshipped her. The widow of a killed officer, she joined the army to raise her kid. One day, the helicopter, on board of which she looked after the injured, was taken down. Alexander was securing a helicopter crash site and found a hand of the everybody's beloved lady... "You know the smell when a decayed tooth is drilled?" he asked. "This is the smell of war. Dirt, sweat, bugs and fire smoke... War is dreadful."

A Run-away Horse She will Master...

Maykop, where there were Cheremushki and Gorky Park just like in Moscow, wouldn't impress you in a big way, but would be thrilling for industrial tourism followers. A hydroelectric power plant built in 1950 on the Belaya River could be seen and heard from far off distance. In summertime it attracted crowds of children and teenagers who dived from a man-made waterfall.

I stayed until the evening because of the Cathedral Mosque that once was gifted to the Adygeis by a rich sheikh from the Arab Emirates. Shumaf, a custodian of the Islamic holy place, was so kind that he suggested my staying there overnight. According to the same endless warm-hearted sympathy from strangers, next day I was "hidden" in a health resort located on the shore of the Black Sea. Neither vacationers, nor receptionists on duty turned me in no matter how great their fear to receive telling-off from their bosses was.

My childhood's dream to visit the USSR's resoundly known child centre "Orlyonok" came true in a most unexpected way. Olga, a native of Kursk, who had worked in the camp as a leader for a long time, organized an excursion across the huge territory of the centre. She "gifted" (no other word used there) legends about a blue crab, a ladder of love, and a gnome's house – the children who came here from every part of the country adored these stories. Meanwhile, Peruvian band "Kenaska" performed on the central square of Lazorevsky.

Sochi Olympic Park was flooded with electric cars, and construction of tracks for Formula 1 racing was fully under way. New Lastochka ("Swallow") trains that had been launched immediately before the XXII Olympic Winter Games were almost continuously bringing more and more crowds of carefree tourists. There were quite a lot of vacationers even in Krasnaya Polyana, no matter how expensive it was.

Passing through a boundary checkpoint between Russia's Adler and Abkhazia's Psou did not take much time. My first driver happened to be a woman, which had never happened before. Gayana and her 6-year old daughter were returning from Russia where they bought medicine for their acquaintance, an old woman, because prices for pharmaceutical drugs, as well as for food, were higher in Abkhazia. The woman said she had been single for a long time, therefore she learned to do everything on her own – to drive a car, to use a disc grinder and to do all male household tasks. "It only remained to get to a welding machine," she joked. Such a woman would definitely master a run-away horse...

“Against Whom are We Fighting?”

Lyosik from Gagra, a driver of a share taxi, locally referred to as Marshrutka, asked me to take back my 20 roubles, completely relevant in this case, when he learnt that nobody had charged me before. Russian roubles are in circulation here, and most Abkhazians have Russian citizenship that they took in time of replacement of Soviet passports, but still this is not Russia. Abkhazia is an independent state. However, its right for the sovereignty is denied by the most countries in the world and, first of all, by Georgia. After the massacre of 1992-1993, the Georgia-Abkhazia war that had been criminally cruel from both warring sides, the Soviet Union's favourite "paradise" resort degraded. Nowadays, tourists were numerous again, and it was only them, wine and tangerines that provided a living for this proud people. What was a secret here? The sea from the Abkhazia's coast seemed turquoise, indeed.

I passed by Lake Riza with its waterfalls, caves and Stalin's summerhouse in the company of Mitya from Kaluga and Artem from Saint Petersburg, who travelled with his children to see fascinating landscapes of Abkhazia. Mitya's family got used to moving from one place to another, but his sister distinguished herself most of all. After graduating from Moscow State University where she majored in geophysics, Eugenia Rylova launched out for a journey around the world in the late August of 2013. She published reports on her 237-day travel on the website towel42.org.

A silver Audi overshot me by a half of a kilometre, then returned. Pavel, a fancy-looking retired man, wearing shiny shoes and a fedora stylishly sloped to his brows, was hurrying to Sukhumi. Having crossed himself on passing of New Athos Monastery, he resumed a story of his grandson, who did compulsory military service in the Armed Forces of Abkhazia. The Republic's army is comparatively small – the personnel number hardly exceeds two thousand people, but in the country, whose existence directly depends on its combat readiness, each man under 55 is a potential fighter. That is why the Army Command mainly relies on reservists, for whom they hold yearly reservist trainings. "If you want peace, prepare for war," Pavel summed up. "But worst of all, each bullet that is shot in direction of Georgia may hit a brother."

The native of Abkhazia did not only mean spiritual bonds of his peoples with Georgians, a fact which is often denied, but rather blood relationships. His ancestors are Russians, Georgians, and Abkhazians. Cross marriages before separation of the republics were very common, therefore people that were not strangers to one another, ended up on different sides of barricades. And if his assumption that one third of Abkhazian and Georgian families had been formed by cross marriages was true then the scale of the drama was colossal.

The closer we approached the capital of Abkhazia the more reminders of the recent war could be seen: bereaved buildings, war memorials with names of the killed, impacts of bullets on shabby walls. The core of a burnt-down 12-floor Government House, still intact after the city combats of September 1993, towered over the Sukhumi's main square near an empty pedestal where a Lenin's monument once used to be.

A Decisive "Nickel" and an Encounter with a Magician

Officers from Abkhazia's Ministry of Internal Affairs advised me not to wait for a pass to Svanetia, therefore my original plan to get to Karachaevo-Cherkessia through the Klukhor mountain pass had to be postponed till the better days. I had to use the same road to come back to Russia. It was the 1st of September, young Abkhazians, returning from assembly celebrations, scattered in cafes along an esplanade. At that time, a strange thing happened to me.

Of course, it was about that 5-rouble coin that I saved when Gosha, a native of Sukhumi, insisted to pay my fee for me in a trolleybus. He said something like "you're a guest and don't mention it." As a result, in two hours I ended up at the same bus stop in front of the station, waiting for a trolleybus No.1. Just as previously, I came out in front of a supermarket and made way along the same street, and started thumbing on a familiar shadowy spot. Now, that no one stopped me from giving the “nickel” away, everything should have gone as planned. But then...

A taxi stopped. I said: no, thanks. Driver: "Get in, I'll give you a lift to New Athos!" And he took off a taxi light box from the roof. He turned out to be amicable and easy-going, therefore soon enough we found ourselves going back to Sukhumi. Who'd refuse from an offer to stay overnight at a local's house? His wife, warned beforehand and already busy with kitchen work, opened a jar of home-made tangerine juice. The owner of the house planned to show me something new, unnoticed before, and to take me to Adler the next day. Comfortably, I kept on going with Arthur while he was doing his errands. But one time he outraged his wife by something, had a harsh talk over the phone, and upset no less than me, dropped me off at a nearest stop. It was the finger of fate – the "nickel" still was in my pocket.

I passed a zigzag section of the Sukhumi road, referred to as "mother-in-law's tongue", three times. Though drivers were different, each one of them didn't fail to ask me why it had been named so. The third time I had to guess: "because it is long?" They smiled good-humoured smiles, they all must have had their own "mother-in-law's tongues" at homes.

Oddities did not yet finish that first autumn day. In the town of Gagra, upon which the evening was falling down, I was stopped by a bearded man in glasses. Having a bucket full of pears at his feet, he was heatedly explaining something to a couple, who looked obviously tired of this. From what I heard it was absolutely clear that the conversation and its starter were something to behold. Almost inviting myself along, I ended up in the house of a parapsychologist and a psychoenergetic Vladimir, who introduced himself as Russian Magician...

Extraterrestrial and Common Rescuers

Vladimir, the magician, lived on the ground floor of a bearing-wall house. Prior to asking me to enter his bachelor's dwelling, he performed a number of unfathomable procedures on the threshold: shook his legs, made me do the same, and drew invisible figures in the air, as if "closing" something there. The owner of a one-bedroom flat did not exaggerate when said that I would have to sleep in the corridor. The place was a terrible mess: it was a tricky task for two to walk abreast in a narrow passage between heaps of furniture, pyramids of broken TV sets and books. The apartment did not see any repairs for good 20 years, and there was no door in the bathroom. To complete the picture, fire wood was stacked for wintertime near a cast-iron stove, and the interior was plunged in semi-darkness caused by tanned windows.

Let us not be strict judges of Vladimir Petrovich's mess – he had been above mundane things for quite a long time. He wouldn't have stirred a finger for himself, but helped others. And it was not about food and an overnight accommodation that he kindly offered – those were, again, too mundane things for him. This citizen of Gagra saw his mission in the mental influence on top-ruling state officers, in prevention of military conflicts and world collapse in general. He sent three "Addresses to the Nation" to the Moscow Kremlin, in which he invoked for apprehension of the modern condition of Russia and the country's further development ways. His followers posted the letters in the Web.

Vladimir did not eat richly what was demonstrated by his empty refrigerator, but, as in youth, he still was into mountain-climbing which strengthened his spirit. The magician's cramped flat had a good deal of spots with special "vibes". I was warned about a taboo to trespass those. It was very hard to observe all the rules in the house, but at least I succeeded not to splash water in a sink.

I left Abkhazia, new encounters followed. "Nowhere to sleep? Knock on the fire department's door, they will let you in!" It was more common to hear such a statement about a church, but a fireman from Tuapse's oil terminal was confident in his peers. The rescuer invited me for lunch. Then he took his wife to a maternity hospital, at the same time giving me a lift to a highway.

For some people it was written in the stars to come into the world in Tuapse, however, Dmitry, my next driver, called himself a child of Komsomol construction sites. His parents met in 1969 during laying of the foundation stone of Kamsky car factory, and then, when their son was a bit older, relocated to Eastern Siberia to enthusiastically participate in the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline. During the Sochi Olympics, Dmitry worked as a tractor driver on a bob-sleigh track. He was coming back from there. Russian sportsmen were arriving to Krasnaya Polyana to start training sessions.

With Russia Forever

"Get in," an impressive Armenian with fiery eyes helped me climb the cabin of a city flatbed truck. "I am into travelling too, but by air!" Vardan lived in Cherkessk. From there he makes flights on his motorised hang glider to the Black Sea and to different towns. The range of his flights is 600 kilometres. The pilot "hooked" on ultra light aviation several years ago, and couldn't imagine his life without sky now. And Elena, an accountant, with whom I took a ride from Stavropol's Nevinnomyssk to Essentuki, had another passion that was Japanese cars. She ran her first Nissan from Vladivostok, a distance of 10,000 km. Now she was running in a Toyota, and bought a Honda for her daughter Anna, who was following us.

Essentuki, a health resort in the Caucasus, had been a popular destination for tourists for two hundred years due to a special composition of mineral water that was said to cure many diseases. Apart from healing springs, Semashko mud baths were also in demand. Having scared diseases away with a couple of glasses of mineral water from the famous well, I was ready to hit the "Lermontov's" road to Pyatigorsk, along which I could reach the spot of his duel. How dearly Caucasians loved this Russian poet! My friend, Mohammed from Ingushetia, who had an austere face, mellowed when he cited Lermontov's verses by heart. One native of Dagestan called him a peak that was higher than Elbrus and Kazbek, and one Georgian friend called him the friend of Georgia for ages.

Minvody with a population of 80,000 had an international airport. Galina, whom I met in the street, just arrived straight from Tel Aviv. The woman hadn't been here for 15 years, I hadn't been here even longer – never. However, this omission turned out to be not really regrettable. Next morning, Igor, a Nakhimov's navy officer, a first lieutenant of Baltic Fleet, took me back to Pyatigorsk.

A memorial arch that reads "With Russia Forever" towers over the highway entrance to Nalchik. The arch was installed in 2007 to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the merger of Kabarda. In front of a musical theatre in the town centre, there is a monument to Maria Temryukovna, the second wife of Ivan the Terrible. The marriage strengthened the union of then separate states. In the meantime, 29-year old Zamir, a Balkarian, who had brought me here, made one more trip to Minvody. He, a driver at a clothing factory, was going to return defective fabrics to a supplier. In the evening, he was going to the vicinities of the Mt. Elbrus and didn't mind to have me as his company again.

We passed by a checkpoint where an armoured vehicle and armed soldiers were present. Anti-terrorist operations had been held in Baksan and Elbrus districts recently. The combatants of Islamic underground resistance were lurking in Tyrnyauz tungsten-molybdenum plant, a derelict mine, and in the outskirts of the miners' town. Other than that, Tyrnyauz was a quaint place. Cows grazed on the main street among high-rise buildings. We visited Zamir's parents. The family held the old in reverence. They prepared local style wheat-porridge johnny cakes.

Having told me a legend about Almasty Big-foot, living in Kabardino-Balkaria, Zamir returned to more real but no less interesting things – the lights of a settlement called Neutrino were seen to the right. Scientists from the Baksan neutrino laboratory lived there. They study the Sun, nuclei of galaxies and other objects of the Universe with a help of a gallium-germanium telescope that was placed at a depth of 3,500 meters underground. The entrance to the underground station was nearby.

Tomorrow Was...Winter

It was already cold to spend a night in a tent near the foot of Elbrus. Luckily, Zamir had friends at a mountain climbers' lodge. In the morning, a colourful poster-proclamation caught my eye: "While you are young and strong, have a date with mountain peaks." No choices left, I went. I rented climbing gear, bought canned food, visited EMERCOM for debriefing, left some unneeded luggage in a house of a kind old woman, and started climbing from Azau meadow. I ignored an aerial airlift because the mountain climbing should be honest! It was a miss from my side, just like with respect to all other things during my two day stay in the snows of Elbrus, but it was late to retreat.

Any adventure, interesting and not very, begins from a road fork. This time the selected road turned out to be wrong and ended in a bulldozer that had ploughed it before. Darkness fell. But the sky stayed clear and the snow was evenly lit by the moon. I saw a shimmering light ahead and my crampons firmly gripped into slippery snow crust, guarding me from falling into crevasses.

Somewhere around one o'clock in the night, I knocked on a door, for the moment not realizing where it led. Three futuristic modules with round windows turned out to be a mountain lodge. It was located at a level of 4,000 meters, higher than Bochka station. Low season, therefore there were no lodgers. Sherapi, a guard, let me in a cylinder-shaped room that was a kitchen and a dining-room at the same time. He made me a cup of hot coffee, then another one. He ridiculed my sleeping bag, and then produced a warmer one. He told me to "finish off" foodstuff, of which there was plenty on the table, then he showed me a sofa for sleeping and went to another adjacent compartment.

I continued climbing with the first light of the dawn. It is possible to acclimatise and be fit for long hiking under normal conditions, but the physical loads in the mountains did not compare with it. After several hours of the ascend, walking 10-20 steps felt like I had anchors tied to my feet. A bunch of climbers from Europe were disorderly crawling together with me. Pastukhova Rocks were already behind, only one man stayed at a height of 5,000 meters - me. But the western, highest, peak of Elbrus was 5,642 meters high.

As was usual here, the weather suddenly changed, a blizzard started. I saw a derelict snow groomer sitting on an inclined traverse. I checked the cabin – it was open. There was snow inside. I got in and tried to sleep in a sleeping bag to build up new strength and to wait out the snow storm. However, the weather did not improve two hours later. I climbed more 50 meters, the visibility became worse. The red flags, marking off the trail, one by one vanished in a snow whirlpool: the nearest ahead first, then the one behind...

A "Refugee" In Mozdok

The snow blizzard relented for a short time, giving me an opportunity to turn back. I cast a farewell look at the snow groomer: it was cold, but at least it provided some shelter. I started my descend trying to keep my eyes on the reference points. My plan was to reach at least the upper lodge where people were. A strong wind kept blowing the snow into my face, and one gust almost knocked me down. I must have spent much time there because my outfit was covered with ice. As soon as I realized this, I saw the lights that penetrated through the night and the blizzard. Karina, a female mountain climber, opened a door of one of the cabins. She made 140 ascents of Elbrus. She boiled a kettle and let me stay till morning.

One day later I was on my way to the town of Prokhladny. The highway passed through Zayukovo village along, probably, the longest in the Caucasus Kirov street that stretched for 15 kilometres. The driver, Murat, a 27-year-old citizen of Tyrnyauz, had a family of wife and two sons. He had...stolen his wife. One Chechen told me that this practice was seriously frowned upon in their republic by promoting a concept that it was done by men whom women wouldn't marry of their own free will. But even in Chechnya, where a penalty of one million roubles was introduced for the misdemeanour, young women were sometimes kidnapped. The same referred to the rest of the Caucasus where people were still inclined to highland customs.

However, the kidnapping often has a ceremonial character and a bride, as a famous Leonid Gaidai's movie goes, "has a dream to be kidnapped." Murat had known his future wife for 3.5 years until his friends pulled the bride-kidnapping. He also participated in this ceremony more than once. The bridegroom was not aware of that – he didn't have the heart to do it, so his friends helped him.

Valentina, driving a small lorry, did not look like she would have let steal herself. She was heading for North-Ossetian Mozdok to buy fruits for her marketplace. The prices were acceptable there, indeed. It was interesting that among other things there was a kiosk selling de-packaged military rations: military biscuits at a price of three roubles per pack, meals with meat for 20 roubles, canned cabbage and sour cabbage soups (borsch and shchi, respectively) for ten roubles. Mozdok that is located some 15 kilometres away from Chechnya, the most troublesome republic of the North Caucasus in the past, is called a "camouflage" town. Military people are a significant part of it, a large aerodrome is also located there.

Peace officers checked my documents out in the street which ended up in a "cop's" canteen. Policemen brothers Arsen and Alan along with their colleagues kept me calling a refugee from Ukraine, no matter how hard I tried to tell them I was not. I would have probably kept on going for a refugee hadn't they allowed me to leave my backpack in one of shops.

There was a checkpoint at the city exit behind the bridge over the Terek river. Security officials pulled up my passport on their computer and, apparently, content by results, volunteered to stop a car for me for a ride to the city of Grozny. The road was not a main one, so Region 95 mainly consisted of villages. We were lucky with a vehicle moving in the same direction only after the sunset.

Ruslan and Mohamed were going almost to the city, to a nearest Cossack village. They were coming back from Stavropol where they had a medical examination. They said the medical treatment in their republic was weak. On our way, they showed oil fields, almost deserted now.

Military men let me set up my tent between a checkpoint and Grozny. They also let me do it on the other side of the road, – incoming vehicles were checked by Russian guys. I stayed with the Chechens. Ayub helped me with charging devices, Isa sliced some bread, Salambek brew porridge, and Bekkhan produced a can of home-made adjika sauce.

A City-Garden Where Ruins Used to Be

Grozny is a phenomenon in the Caucasus. This piece of land had seen so much in the last 20 years... When Republic of Ichkeria was self-proclaimed, then a lengthy civil war started. It was a clash of political forces in Grozny, but the thing was that simple men fought: Russians with Chechens and Chechens between each other. I met many participants of those events from different sides – all were good, kind guys, regardless of a nationality, with same dreams about peace. They were ordered to shoot and they did. They recollected the time as a nightmare, tried to forget it because it was a personal drama for most. Why then?

The destroyed Grozny was reconstructed to become a city-garden, one of the most beautiful places in the Caucasus. The largest in Europe mosque, sky scrapers, new residential buildings, wide streets and richly-illuminated squares grew in several years where ruins had been... Grozny is Russia, but it is Chechnya as a part of Russia, which is not the same. Chechens are Russian citizens and they remain themselves. It should be so in the multinational state that is a home for almost 200 nationalities.

The real danger in Chechnya was a possibility to be overfed. Olekhan from Pervomayskaya village, who brought me to Grozny, first of all drove me to a cafe with national cuisine. Not accepting my objections, not to mention money, he ordered chepalgash (johny cakes with cottage cheese) and a dozen more tasties. Olekhan drove a water truck. He sprinkled lawns around Ramzan Kadyrov's residency, thus he saw the Chechen leader in person.

Portraits of Kadyrov Jr., his father and Vladimir Putin could be seen here, there and everywhere, whereas one 40-storey building had a running marquee of grateful words "Grozny is the best city. Ramzan, thank you for Grozny!" Had I not seen all those manifestations, I would have understood anyway how much the leader of the Republic had been respected for the order he made there. His just, though tough, methods of management have been almost legendary. Word has it that the businessmen of Ramzan's circle and the Chechen businessmen from other countries have become accustomed to regular contributions to the restoration of Chechen infrastructure. Kadyrov might tell off an unknown woman for wearing a short skirt out on the street, and he might take away a cottage or an expensive car from a negligent official and then give it away to a poor old woman.

The city buildings were decorated with patriotic slogans. The central Putin Avenue gradually segued into Akhmat Kadyrov Avenue, the first President of the republic. Not far from the Heart of Chechnya Mosque there was Archangel Michael Orthodox Church, where I was allowed to stay overnight. The security was rather strict there: the entrance was guarded by policemen on a mission from the Ural region in bullet-proof vests and with assault rifles. However, hegumen Father Gregory approved my staying.

"White-faced" tourists in Grozny were still rare: residents of Grozny were very friendly, struck conversations and shook hands; two school girls asked me to make a picture with them, and even local TV folks from a radio-television company Vaynakh were already there. During my two-day stay there, I visited a national museum designed as Medieval watchtowers, a library, memorials dedicated to anti-terrorism fighters and participants of the Great Patriotic War, Khadzhi-Akhmat Kadyrov museum, and a city food market, among other things. The market was open daily until late. Supermarkets were scarce, they were not favoured by the locals.

Bound by the Caucasian hospitality

Zurab, taking construction bricks on a truck to Urus-Martan, was far from politics. He was happy as long as he had a job. In 1994, when the first military campaign began in Chechnya, he was only 13. His family had been evacuated from Grozny to one of temporary camps in Ingushetia and one year later, when they came back, he didn't recognize the home city. Zurab was not too prone to talk much, which was not the case with my next driver.

Hussein had an opinion of his own about everything. I met such an erudite Chechen for the first time. He worked in the medical industry and made big plans on how to improve the life in the republic. First of all, he tried to upgrade the equipment in all hospitals. When the rain started to drizzle, Hussein couldn't leave me alone on a highway and stated matter-of-factly that we were going to visit his cousins in a village in Achkhoi-Martan district.

I heard an Azan call from a country mosque to remind Muslims of prayer time. Bulat, a 23-year old software specialist, excused, took a mat and left for an adjacent room to do namaz. An old clay house with low ceilings and an oven inside was decorated with a Meссa carpet from Saudi Arabia. This house was their shelter from shells during the war.

The oldest of the brothers, Rashid, was not particularly good at Russian, but he made it a rule to practice the language more. Rashid participated in the construction of a school and some other buildings in the centre of Grozny. His wife and a small daughter were away at the parents', so the owner took care of guests himself, prepared beds and served a table. We stayed up late that night having a good time talking about Chechen traditions. Conservative views ruled in their house. For example, it was forbidden to drink, smoke or, the more so, curse in presence of the older and women. They loved everything related to the Soviet Union era. Rashid, a Soviet pioneer in the past, remembered with warmth that he had had a tough time to learn how to knot the pioneer's tie.

In the morning, the new friends took me for a tour around the village to show me the special places of their childhood. If somebody would ask me what I did in Chechnya? My reply would be "I sneaked apples from a kolkhoz garden." Hussein corrected me – a "people's garden", and also tore an appealing apple off a branch.

"Hospitality is the light that attracts people like moths. A hospitable home will never be empty and the owner will never be lonely" – a poster near Ingushetia's town Magas read. This referred not only to Ingushetia, but also to all the Caucasian peoples. They were grown up with a concept that those who visited their lands with good intentions should have felt as the most wanted friends.

Walking in Nazran in the evening, I found myself near a lake and had a chat with brothers Aslan and Magomed, fishing there. They were decisively against my spending the night in my tent. When we came to their house, guarded by three watchdogs, a pleasant fuss started immediately. Their mother Irina rushed to the kitchen to prepare for us something to eat... Again, I was bound by the Caucasian hospitality, for three days now!

Beslan, 10 Years After...

Arbi, a 24-year old Ingush, a fireman from Ingushetia’s capital Magas, gave me a lift on the Baku highway and invited for lunch. He lives with his mother Radimkhan in a settlement of the Prigorodny district which belongs to North Ossetia. The largest part of Maysky settlement population were Ingushes, the internal refugees, who had lost their homes during the Ossetia-Ingush conflict of 1992.

The mass deportation of Ingushes by Stalin in the 1940s and the ensuing uncalled-for changes of administrative boundaries became the reason of the bloodshed several decades later. The long-standing territorial dispute has not been resolved until now. Radimkhan had her own widow's way of looking at what had happened after the demise of the Soviet Union, and she had worn mourning ever since.

"My husband was a builder," she remembered with tears in her eyes. “In the early 1980s, after graduation, we were sent together to a collective farm near Kursk, then we married and returned to Ingushetia. He had never been at war before, but that horrible autumn, when the clash of arms occurred, he voluntarily joined a self-defence troop to defend us. He was killed afterwards. I managed to flee together with kids. We had to leave our household in Chermen village.”

...Driver Akhmet stopped a truck loaded with ducklings near a fork to Beslan and gave me directions how to find the School No.1. Only in this North-Ossetian town, the academic year starts on the 5th of September, not on the 1st because the Knowledge Day was declared the day of Mourning. Ten years ago, the First Bell turned out to be the last for 186 pupils of the School No.1. The bloodbath also took lives of their relatives who came for the celebration ceremony and representatives of special forces who freed the hostages captured by terrorists. The death toll was 334.

The whole country shared the grief of Beslanians. Whereas we less often remembered the events, in this town with a population of 30,000, the pain had been fresh. Too many people were personally affected by the tragedy. I avoided to talk to passers-by, especially to women, but once when I was buying bread in a kiosk, I caught a sad glance. Grey, almost white hairs stuck out from the shopwoman's cap, but at a closer look, she, probably, was less than forty. She figured why I was there, and started talking: "On the 1st of September I sent kids to the school ceremony, the elder son has never come back... They say that the time heals, but it does not." The locals needed other people to come here to remember the bitter lesson.

That very school was on Cominterna street, almost in front of her kiosk, and a new one Number One, named after Spetznaz Heroes, the soldiers who shielded the Beslanians during the freeing of hostages was built nearby. This woman, as well as the other mothers who lost their kids in that terrorist attack, was vexed that the new school built instead the old one, had been assigned the same number. And the banner hanging above the entrance seemed even more irrelevant "If you want to be the first, join School Number One."

Beslan Children Temple was under construction on the old school's territory, and a stele with the victims' names was erected not long ago. The dust of victims rested in the town cemetery in the so-called Angel Town. The gym where hostages had been kept and then burnt down during the siege was covered with a protective envelope. A cross was installed in the middle of the hall, candles on. Fresh flowers were inserted in the floor holes created by exploded bombs. The walls were covered with pictures of children all around. People brought stuffed toys, candies, pictures, icons and open water bottles – the girls and the boys had been kept without giving them water for almost three days. Though an Exit sign was hung above the doorway to what once was a passage from the gym to the main building, there had been no exit for anyone then.

The rest of the school was fenced off by a tape due to the hazardous state of buildings. Very little had changed inside for the last decade. Only memorial boards appeared among remnants of school things, and the walls with traces of bullets were covered with words of condolences from people of different cities and countries.

At Sixes and Sevens

I felt like talking out what I had seen. For example, I wondered what the residents of Nazran, who lived 23 kilometres away from Beslan, felt about that. I met young policemen at Soglasiya ("Accordance") Square, and later met unemployed guys, who were doing exercises on a pull-up bar. They didn't justify the militants who had gone so far as to capture a school, but looked at their actions under a different angle, trying to understand the roots of the cruelty. Such a talk could have taken place only in Nazran and maybe in a couple of other towns in the Caucasus.

Those guys spent all their lives in a reality too far from the reality of most Russians. On the one hand, terrorist attacks in their 100,000-population city were commonplace, though terrible it might sound. At the same time, the local law enforcement authorities had an overwhelmingly bad reputation. For instance, Khamzat once was a field investigator. But even he, whose father was killed by militants and who seemingly had all grounds to combat them, quit the law enforcement. All these conditions, very similar to those of Dagestan, aggravated by the social insecurity of the both republics, pushed their coevals to extremists' underground, or "the woods", as they referred to it locally.

However, I didn't touch the topic with my new friends, and we switched to Ingushetia sightseeing. The ancestral towers: it was worth coming to these lands for everybody just to see those. Stone giants, up to 30 meters in height, blended with huge rocks upon which they had been built in the X-XVII centuries as if they grew from them... The ancient tower clusters were the pride of the people. Each true Ingush would be able to find a tower from which his clan came. Brothers Aslan and Magomed easily found theirs, the Shadyzhevs', in mountain village Lyalakh. Mohammed, a son of a high-rank military chief, and Mohammed-Sali, who accompanied us, also found where their ancestors had lived. We gathered some fire wood and, as was common among the highlanders, set an encampment on the bank of a rough river and roasted some meat. When another encampment organized dances to the Caucasian melodies somewhere nearby, our Magomed was the first to get inside the circle...

The Stalin Who Lives in a Barn

I left Vladikavkaz for Georgia and reached the border zone by the evening. A check point in Verkhny Lars was to be opened only at six in the morning. Bashir, a driver, arranged with his friend that he would take me with him. The Russian border always was the most difficult to cross because a pedestrian crossing was prohibited.

At the dawn, a long queue of vehicles already lined up before the checkpoint. Irakly's Gazel was in the very beginning just because he had reserved a place in the queue the evening before. A Georgian border guard asked me about my visit purpose for form's sake, stamped my passport and let me go. And that's it.

The consequences of a land slide in Darial Gorge had been still present: the natural disaster had occurred here three weeks ago. In May 2014, the same section of the Georgian Military Road was blocked thus cutting the transport communication between our countries for almost one month.

Stepantsminda was a settlement at the foot of Mount Kazbek. Gergeti Church, built in the XIV century and later anthemed by poet Pushkin in a piece of poetry "Kazbek Monastery", towered right above the settlement at a height of over two thousand meters. It took no less than one hour to reach it on foot. The sky, scowling from the early morning, opened to pour a heavy waterfall-like rain and thunder. I was soaking wet all through when I got to massive forged doors.

Semi-darkness reigned in the church, candles lit. Weak daylight sun's rays fell upon ancient wall-paintings and time-seasoned icon frames. Draughts penetrated through cracks, chilling my wet clothes. Fortunately for me, a monk, wearing a black robe, brought a bundle of wood and kindled a fire in a small stove, letting me warm up and wait out the bad weather.

I spent my first night in Georgia not in the tent. Bakur Badrievitch, a former militiaman, invited me to be his guest at home. However, he was famous in his neighbourhood not for his past. When I was coming back from nearby Sno Fortress, looking for a house where I’ve left my backpack, it was enough to instruct the driver: "its host stores a Stalin monument in his barn."

In past, the Leader monument had graced a square in front of a district executive committee. When the monument had been dismantled 25 years ago, Bakur took it for preservation. He was offered good money for it, but he refused. The passion for Stalin at this home was demonstrated by Stalin's complete works both in Russian and Georgian, read through and through by the owner of the library. And also by the fact that each of eight rooms contains a figurine or a portrait of Joseph Stalin. Me and my big mouth! I mentioned a cult of personality in the presence of a die-hard Stalinist...

A City from a Legend

After the war of 2008 in South Ossetia, many Russians formed almost the same perception of Georgia, as of the whole North Caucasus. A rather negative one, that was. And again, as I could learn from hands-on experience, the opinion was wrong. Remaining contradictions between our countries, if any, pertained to politicians, not to simple-hearted people. Locals were ready to hug me just for coming here.

For fairness' sake, it must be said that Georgia installed a visa-free regime for Russians back in 2012, which had never been done from our side. Georgians couldn't obtain either a tourist or a working visa. Only a visit to close relatives qualifies for the basis to obtain a visa to enter Russia.

It had not been long until a next vehicle stopped. "Gamarjoba! Hello!" I repeated in two languages. A rare thing – neither the driver, nor young workers, carrying water tanks in the trunk of a pickup truck, spoke Russian. Nonetheless, they understood that I needed to go straight: somebody patted me friendly on my shoulder and helped me up.

A silver Mercedes stopped near a turn to Kobi village. Pata, a customs officer, swiftly drove through the lava galleries of the Krestovy Pass. We went up along a most beautiful road one can imagine to a sightseeing platform above the valley of the Belaya Aragvi River. A diorama erected here symbolized the solidarity of the Russian and Georgian peoples. From Gudaury ski resort, nested at a breathtaking height, a road started spiralling down. Once this descent had impressed Alexandre Dumas. These places were also noted by poets Pushkin and Lermontov both of whom wrote a lot about the Caucasus.

The stone strongholds of Ananury, a mediaeval castle, towered over the Zhinvali Reservoir, an artificial body of water that made the landscape look like Norwegian fiords. The Reservoir supplied water to Tbilisi. Starting from the XVI century, the castle served as the main outpost for Aragvi Eristavi, the rulers of this region. Here I parted with Pata. David and Giga, employees of a distribution company, gave me a ride to the Dam of the Zhinvali Hydroelectric Power Plant. Then, Mirab, a builder, took me to a small city called Mtskheta.

By population, it was not a city, rather a town, which didn't prevent it from being an iconic place for each Georgian and for Christians at large. In Mtskheta, the ancient capital of Georgia, there were two UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These sites were Jvari Monastery (6th century) and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (11th century), where, the legend had it, the Holy Robe was kept in the foundation. The majestic Svetitskhoveli, soaring fifty meters up in the sky, impressed anyway with its colossal architecture in the same way it had done 1000 years ago. A historical novel by Konstantin Gamsahurdiya "Hand of the Great Master" said: when the 19-year long construction finished, they cut the hand of the architect so that he could not create a similar masterpiece.

It rained in the night. I had a plastic film for such occasions, so I covered the tent with it. But at the dawn I discovered that the tent soaked through and was camped... at the edge of a cemetery. But I did not need to worry with the guards I had – two dogs had followed me since the previous day. They also continued to be my company during a 9-km hike to Shio-Mgvime Monastery. The hike was unplanned because for successful hitchhiking I needed at least one passing vehicle which had never happened on that country road in several hours. Somebody in the heavens took pity on me in the end of my way – a car raised dust on a serpentine road.

A stumpy man was driving the car. Georgy was one of the coaches of the national youth baseball team. He was one of the first Georgians to go in for this sport in 1987, the Soviet Union era then. He visited USA with his team several times, but the game had not done well in Georgia. They held training sessions in a boiler house of one of Tbilisi sport clubs, and they practised on free fields on the outskirts of the town because there was no special site for the game. Georgy was taking two female Muscovites to the Monastery. Together we returned to Mtskheta.

Where You Will Come, We Don't Know

There was both a motor road and a footpath to Jvari Monastery, though the footpath was not in demand. The warden of a chapel and a water spring on a steep slope looked very bored. Sergo, a painter artist from Tbilisi, would voluntarily come the sacred spring to take care of it several times a week. He beckoned me not to leave and produced a bottle of home-made brandy from a stash. I drank a little not to offend him by refusing. He kept asking about Russia, smacking his lips and sighing, citing by heart Lermontov's poem Mtsiry – the poem described his favourite holy place Jvari. Sergo was ready to call it a day so we drove to Tbilisi together.

I quickly found an accommodation in the capital at a price of only 10 Lari per day. The hostel was a best option for a traveller who did not need much. It was not a hotel in the general sense, but nonetheless it attracted off-the-beaten-track backpackers from around the world. A special place with double-bunk beds, shared bathrooms, ongoing adventure stories and carefree laughter, the place where communication was both relevant and inevitable, the place to make friends. That evening gathering in the lobby included seasoned and newbie travellers from Europe, Asia and America.

While a Chinese, wearing a well-worn jacket, was explaining something about his teaching practices to Belgian mountain climbers, new guests arrived. Young female Japanese Aki, travelling alone in the Middle East, just returned from Iran. Alex, a chubby owner of the hostel, also hailed from Iran. She was stirring soup in a big bowl, the dinner for all the visitors. 32-year old Ehamnes from Sweden was trying hard to remember the names of all 75 countries where he had been. He managed to visit Murmansk and Lake Baikal in Russia. The "Russian" soul was also intrinsic with Mayson from California who used to engross himself in books by Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. The American had travelled in Turkey with Ilya, a software specialist from Obninsk. They had gathered lavender on a farm for food and accommodation.

Ilya was always on the run but not for new places, he had had enough of that. He was in constant search of a new profession, of his own self in life. Notably, he had done this in his own peculiar way, which he demonstrated to me the next morning. We went for a walk in Tbilisi, equally unknown to both of us.

We came across some ubiquitous grey building. It turned out to be a technical university. A security guard, having taken us for students, did not stop us, so we proceeded: we visited classrooms, professors' rooms, talked to professors... There was a thrill about such unpredictability, so I also started to experiment so when we parted.

I randomly selected Tbilisi's Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Cinema University. Opening random doors, as Ilya had instructed me, I met Lari Gorgaslidze, who worked there. The woman took keys and asked me to follow her to a basement room where she had organized a museum two years ago. Over a 30-year period, she had collected more than 1,500 motion-picture films, pictures, personal things of Georgian actors and other exhibits related to cinema.

Old Tbilisi Town

The central avenue Rustaveli was planted with sycamores, the trees with thick stems and wide crowns. After browsing a collection of the National Picture Gallery and visiting the Botanic Garden, I went up to Pantheon on Mount Mtatsminda. Alexandre Griboyedov, the writer, and his wife Nino, Ekaterina Jugashvili, the mother of Joseph Stalin, and a number of prominent Georgian people of science and art were buried in the necropolis.

The sightseeing platform on the top could be reached by a cable way and hiking trails. I saw the whole of Tbilisi as if on a map from an observation wheel to which I had been admitted free of charge as a guest from Russia. Some city to remember. On the one hand, there were modern buildings, fancy skyscrapers of glass, an unusual pedestrian bridge over the Kura River.

But the Old Tbilisi, where stone pavements met squares with ancient churches, was more remarkable. The deeper I walked the narrower streets became. The branches of fig and persimmon trees touched the tiled roofs of crowded houses, and green grapevine wove around metal stairs. Children on bicycles chased one another, Georgian women in casual home clothes hung laundry, cats sat on fences, and dogs exchanged barks back and forth.

Abanotubani, a bathing quarter of Old Tbilisi Town, grew on natural sulphurous springs. Pushkin and many other famous people had been happy to bathe here. I couldn't afford paying for a separate bath, once visited by Alexandre Dumas, so I joined a common section at a price of three Lari per hour.

On my way to Dunadze Theatre for which I had already had a pass, I stopped by a flea market - a small realm of Soviet-era artefacts near the Dry Bridge. A play was staged in Georgian, so an attendant told the story briefly in Russian in the beginning of the show. Some phrases of actors could be understood without translation. For example, the greeting "Gamarjoba!"

May Not He Touch a Drop of Chacha

Tbilisi was such a crossroads that from it one could go to any region of Georgia. I turned to the East. September was said to be the best time to visit Kakhetia. In the grape region with wines galore, the harvest time approached. Alex, carrying fire wood to his native village, overtook few trucks loaded to tops with appetizing grapes. The farther we were from the capital the vaster the green fields became. Herds of cows peacefully grazed on smooth hills with lonely trees.

The driver, no matter how hard he tried, could not communicate with me in any of the dialects known to me. In this manner, we proceeded deeper in the countryside. The highway we were on degraded into a rural road where horse-drawn transport prevailed. Later, it turned out to be quite a challenge to get out of there. Gurdjaani village was the last settlement that remotely assumed civilization. There stood a monument to the hero of the Soldier's Father movie. Georgy Makharashvili, the actor who played the lead role in the movie, hailed from here.

Finally, when a little-out-of-the-world place couldn't be any more out of the world, we arrived. Alex went to call his neighbour. His friend, Georgy by name, did not have any problems with Russian. He used to study in Russia, moreover, in Kursk, the city where I came from. He had even met my fellow writer Igor Zabelin, a criminal reporter. But Georgy had known him by sports because both of them were in for judo. Overjoyed, the guy was going to have a feast with chacha (pomace brandy), and did not want to hear about something with less alcohol, wine for one. Therefore, we parted amicably and sober.

I couldn't hitchhike a car for a long time. Finally, a black off-road car nearly passed me, then stopped and reversed. The driver of the car was a church officer. Father Salathiel and nuns travelling with him were interested whether the Russian youth had hardened in sins, whether they believed in God? I reassured them that they hadn't and that they believed. Satisfied, they presented me a souvenir from the Diveevo Monastery of Nizhny Novgorod.

Sighnaghi, a small town situated in a foothill and surrounded by a long castle wall with 28 watchtowers, overlooked the Alazani Valley. The population of the town was only 2,000. Sighnaghi has recently undergone a fundamental "face-lifting" for tourists: narrow streets and squares were paved, facades of buildings were painted, and roofs were covered with bright tiles. In addition, Civil Registry Office was made open 24 hours, and all long procedures were simplified: couples could get married or divorced instantly on arrival. Now they had some blend of South-Italian classicism with American-like democracy, but in a Georgian fashion. Europeans felt themselves at home. I got to this place with the owner of one of guest houses of which there were plenty. Gella took a fellow-passenger to stay awake at the wheel.

In the morning, I walked two kilometres to reach Bodbe Monastery. Relics of St. Nino, the female evangelist of Georgians, were shrined in the Monastery at Bodbe. Her grave had a Christian cross with arms bent down – a symbol widely used in the country. As the legend had it, Nino's cross had transformed into such a shape because she had wreathed it out of grapevine.

Neon Poverty

Local shops did not offer much Georgian produce. They sold commodities mainly from Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. However, home-made matsoni (a fermented milk product similar to yogurt) could be found anywhere. Locals lived off agriculture. Vasily, who gave me a lift to Mizraani community, was taking corn to a neighbouring town.

The hero of the song sung by Alla Pugacheva "Million of Red Roses", who according to the song "sold his house, sold pictures and home, and bought a whole sea of flowers" had a real prototype. It had been Georgian self-taught artist Niko Pirosmani who had died in the shadow and poverty almost one hundred years ago. Nikolay Pirosmanishvili, that was his real name, was born here in a small village not very far from the Azerbaijan border. A house-museum was organized in his honour in Mizraani. A sculpture of Pirosmani riding a deer, his favourite personage, was installed at the entrance. All the locals from young to old ones knew the story of an undivided love of the poor artist for a French actress Margarita. "He kissed footprints of his beloved lady and was prepared to do the most unthinkable things," told me a girl, whom I met on the street, dreamily. "And once all the flowers of Tiflis (the old name of Tbilisi) were thrown at her feet. Roses, lilacs, acacias, peonies, lilies, poppies – it had taken several carts to bring the flowers – were laid down on the ground by Niko's people in front of the hotel where Margarita stayed. Upon seeing this, she came out and gave Niko Pirosmani a hearty kiss for the first and last time ever. Her tour finished and she left for good."

I saw no reason to stay longer either. In two hours, I was already walking in another town Lagodekhi. The Georgian countryside had a lot of futuristic police precincts made of glass and neon lights, sphere-shaped visit centres and other bold designs. But poverty caught my eyes more often: simple clothes, Soviet-era vehicles, a bit shabby houses...

I had a sit-down on a bench with old men – they gave me a shout to join when I was passing by. Grisha, a retired man, and Koko, an agronomist, freely exposed their vexation over the authorities. No wonder when your pension was 150 Lari. "Why we need America," they discussed between one another, "It's way too far, but Russia is close, here." They were better off during the times of the USSR, but young Georgians didn't know that life already. The most politically conscious of them considered the joining of NATO as a possibility to re-gain control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These only partially recognized states declared the independence from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Toward the evening, when I was hitchhiking down a crossroads, one Georgian woman offered me a stay overnight in her house if I would fail to get a ride. I did not try much, did not raise my hand before each vehicle, and, when it was already dark, found her address. Anna had been a music teacher in a kindergarten with a ridiculous salary of 120 Lari for 28 years. Utility bills took a half of the salary. Her husband, a fireman, earned 360 Lari a month. To send their sons to a university was a dream they had never thought to come true since the cost of study was incomparable with their modest income. 20-year Georgy told at the dinner how he had done his compulsory military service in internal troops near the border with Abkhazia. For the younger brother Livan, the experience to wear military boots still lay ahead, but for now he worked as a wood-chopper. Many their friends and acquaintances left for Turkey, Greece and Italy, where jobs could be found.

A Man in Clouds

A flock of sheep, driven by a sun-tanned shepherd in a fur hat and an old jacket, blocked the way for our car. Senior lieutenant Timur, wearing "civil" clothes that day, waited patiently. He was involved in a security service of an oil pipeline: "black" gold was continuously transited from Azerbaijan to Europe.

We arrived to Kvareli. All interesting parts of this little town were concentrated around the central square: a fortress, John the Baptist Temple (XII century), a Chachavadze Dukes' house-museum. The town had interesting barbershops – they were organized in kiosks similar to the shoe-repair ones. I never saw anything like that either in Georgia or in other countries.

One of the oldest Georgian wineries was at a walking distance. The entrance was free. I descended from a bottling workshop to a wine cellar. An employee from the winery showed me how future wine fermented in the large earthenware jars that were buried in the ground. He let me stir the juice.

Azerbaijanis Ivas and Latif, rambling around Kakhetia in search of best honey, moved bottles aside to free some seat for me. All the way down to Gremi they joked, laughed and finally invited me to visit Baku. Gremi Citadel was what had survived from once flourishing town of the same name five centuries ago.

I covered the remaining route to Telavi with Kartlos Kardanishvili. The 40-year old Georgian carried frozen khinkali produce of a Tbilisi factory in his truck-refrigerator. When young, he was in for soccer, had played in Telavi united team "Kakheti" until the age of 20. Georgy Demetradze, the later famous forward of Russian "Alania" and Kyiv's "Dynamo", kicked the ball about with him.

Dusk fell, Kartlos invited me to be his guest. He introduced me to his wife and kids, his brother-artist Markhas who was busy transferring a picture to granite. We spent the night in their sister Tamara's house. She was single and a religious believer. While she was playing "Million of Red Roses" on an out-of-tune piano, we smelt smoke coming from the kitchen: kababi (Georgian style lula kebab) slightly burnt. The table feast continued until four in the morning, but I couldn't remember that far in time – Kakheti wine proved stronger than me.

In the morning we went to see Dido, the yesterday's feast mate, at his job. This man had been baking bread in one of bakeries, numerous all around Georgia, for 12 years. He added some fire wood to a stove and glued a portion of puri, a type of Georgian bread, to its walls. The composition of dough for the bread was simple, it contained only water, salt, and flour. But once you tried a hot crispy Johnny-cake you fell in love with this bread forever.

After this, Kartlos took me out of the town to show his favourite cathedral. He had known Alaverdi Cathedral since childhood. He placed three candles and went out to the parish yard to call his friend. I hesitated whether I should have gone to Tusheti in the end of September. The thing was, Omalo village, the place where Georgy Danelia's Soviet-time movie "Mimino" had been shot, was high in mountains. If snow fell earlier than usual then it would have meant to get stuck there for winter. I made up my mind to take a risk.

The road to Omalo was a scary thrill – 4.5 hours of a continuous ascend above an abyss under the conditions when falling ice-cold streams washed out the serpentine road under the wheels. Shepherds driving cattle to low lands moved in the opposite direction. A drift to Kakhetia usually took them three days during which time they spent nights in specially-installed tented shelters. Soon the remaining residents were going to leave the highland villages, and only a few people would stay to keep an eye on houses.

The driver of a Japanese off-road car (no one should try to drive there without a 4WD) made a halt at an altitude of 3000 meters. He poured himself a small shot of chacha – here they drank for courage, because it was difficult to imagine a more extreme road. He talked about something and the clouds were hanging on the background.

It was much colder in Omalo than down. It gave me shivers to think about spending the night in the tent, so I decided to knock on the first house's door and asked about an accommodation for the night. The owners were glad to accept a guest. Dzeb tried hard to speak Russian and it was apparently so difficult for him that his brother Irakliy gave way to a Russian chanson: "D'you know what northern winds we have..." A guitar appeared, and I played three simple chords of the song. The Georgian hospitality had only one "but" – the inevitable jar with wine was truly bottomless...

Chito-Grito

Dusk was covering the sleeping village, a lonely shepherd was driving sheep to pasture. The rock with ancient watchtowers of Upper Omalo soared up among ravines. The sun coloured them purple first thing in the morning. The houses, built of slate stone, widely spaced patches with planted potatoes and silence... the silence was such here that the steps resounded dully in cold air. A detached location without electricity and other civilization's amenities, where highlanders made home cheese in an old fashion and churned butters, baked bread, rode horses and used kerosene lamps. However, there were a couple of hotels equipped with gasoline generators and solar batteries for tourists.

Since the weather was deteriorating, thus increasing a risk for me to stay here until the next spring, I decided not to postpone my departure. Luckily, the British who were going back to Kakhetia on a rented cross-country vehicle, did not mind my joining them. Nicole was a designer of clothes in London, and her so-traveller Olia was a 36-year old professor of anthropology in University of Oxford. When a senior student in Cambridge, he had worked part time as a tutor. He had special memories about one of his students.

"Each time I visited the mansion of oligarch Berezovsky I felt uneasy," remembered Olia. "Boris and his young wife were constantly surrounded by body guards, and the couple seemed so almighty and authoritative! But his 14-year old son Artem, for whom I tutored 20 lessons on the history of UK and the English language, was, unlike his parents, simple-hearted. The teenager did not pride himself on the wealth. Otherwise, when an unneeded expensive thing appeared at home, he would show indifference to luxury."

Telavi and Omalo villages boasted of several sites that were familiar to the Soviet-era audience after the movie "Mimino". They included the airport, where helicopter pilot Valiko worked, Batonis Cixe Fortress and an 800-year old sycamore tree, one of the oldest in the Caucasus, featured in background scenes. The British listened to the cinema story of those sites out of politeness, but, naturally, it did not trigger any nostalgia in them. But when Gabriel, a young engineer, with whom I then travelled to Tbilisi, switched on the car radio we heard that same movie soundtrack about a birdie called Chito-Grito. The performer of the song Vakhtang Kikabidze for Georgians had always been like a national hero, no less than Frunzik Mkrtchan in neighbouring Armenia.

Priest-Theomachist

Joseph Jugashvili, aka Stalin, aka Koba, Father of Nations and simply Leader indigenously was a Georgian. Majority of his compatriots held him in respect on the verge of a fanatical cult. A degree of people's love in town Gori, his small motherland, was as high as possible. Stalin Avenue, the main street, led to a large Gothic-style palace. It was a museum that had been built in the 50s of the last century. The museum exhibited his personal belongings, clothes, Stalin's young verses, furniture from studies, letters and family pictures, paintings, busts, his death mask, gifts from top officials of different countries. An English-speaking excursion included a tour around the house where Joseph was born and spent his first four years, a tour along the armoured railway car that the then leader of the USSR used to travel to Yalta and Tehran conferences.

Some monuments were dismantled in the town, but three monuments had survived – one stayed near the entrance to the museum, another one was left in a park, and the one that symbolized him at an age of 20 rested in the shadows of spruces near University of Gori. It remained to find the seminary where the future generalissimo and theomachist had studied. Aznur, the custodian, showed me the corridors of the stone building. When a service in the local temple finished, a group of seminary students swarmed out and surrounded us. Despite the fact that the young Jugashvili had never graduated from their seminary, they still respected the memory of the unfulfilled priest.

Some ten kilometres away from Gori I saw an unusual vehicle on big wheels with a transformer roof, a "motor house". The owner sat solemnly with a woman sipping wine at a table near the caravan. He invited me to join. The Swiss, Paul and Monica, an engineer and a school principal in the past, respectively, had already spent nine years touring the countries of the former USSR. They sat with their backs to Uplistsikhe, an ancient cave town built on a high rocky bank of the Kura River. But the couple did not hurry to explore the town, they never hurried at all, they just enjoyed the life.

There stretched several settlements with similar yellow buildings along the highway. The houses were constructed shortly after the Georgian-Ossetian military conflict of 2008. The ensuing refugees were settled there. Policeman Ganga now lived in one of them. He explained how it had been arranged inside: two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a bathroom, an entrance way, water supply and a satellite dish. Because the structure was erected as a building set in a hurry, defects appeared. Actually, I met Ganga due to his going to buy construction materials in the town of Khashuri.

The place was within a stone's throw of Borjomi. The latter town became a world-famous resort thanks to mineral water produced since 1890. The Borjomi brand had been the most popular one in the USSR. Here, Borjomi sprang directly out of the ground. A cold and a hot spring are located near the very first bottling factory on the park territory, whereas the baths of the Romanovs, the Russian Emperors, could be found in the heart of the forest.

Looking at The West...

Oil trucks with Iranian licence plates carrying fuel oil from Azerbaijan were rushing along the Kutaisi highway. Local women in Surami and other nearby villages were selling traditional sweet bread zlato along the highway. They did not seem to care about a heavy rain, and I, in my turn, was happy to find a dry and warm accommodation in Kutaisi. That hostel was a joke, by all means. First, it was unusually clean. And the other thing, Leila, the owner, went too far in her list of forbidden things. A question from her in the morning, "Why do you take a shower? It is raining outside..." was baffling but there was some logic to it.

The water level if the Rioni River rose due to rains, the city's hydro plant hardly withstood powerful streams of water. However, the storm did not disturb my plans. I put on a raincoat and bent my steps toward the main sightseeings, including UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery. I saw a strange cemetery near Gelati. Portraits of the deceased on the tombstones turned out to be oil paintings, not photos.

One day after, I met Lado, a 36-year old novice of the Monastery. He usually served weekends there, the other days he drove around Imeretia, distributing dentist's merchandise. He tried many professions: a maths teacher in a school according to his background; a restaurant manager, a financial inspector in a bank, and a barman by occasion, not to mention seven years in Germany, where he worked as a cleaner, a dish washer and a cook. In any case, today he completely went for a guide because while doing his business he managed to tell me something about history now and then, which he knew well. We stopped by a church in the town of Sinaki first, where, Alexiy Shushaniya, a well-known orthodox anchoret was buried. Then we had a tour around Megreli Dadiani palace in Zugdidi. It was almost Abkhazian border already.

It was natural that towns and communities changed on my route so quickly: one could cross Georgia from the west to the east in one night only. However, these 500 kilometres contained so much: ancient churches and fortresses, tiny villages and large modern cities, rivers, lakes, valleys, mountains...

Now I arrived to Poti, a port city on the Black Sea coast. Timothy and his sister Tamara drove me there. Their father, who was drowsing next to me in a BMW, had lived in Poti before he entered Murmansk nautical school. When we stopped by an old lighthouse, he recollected stories of his grandmother who had used to help a lighthouse-keeper. The tower was higher than a 9-storey building and she had to clean a flash lantern.

Zviad, a truck driver, cursed both Georgian and Russian politicians for not being able to reach an agreement. Now in Georgian, now in Russian, but wholeheartedly for sure. Then he summed up without any accent: "Russia and Georgia are friends!" Upon this, we said goodbye to each other on the outskirts of Batumi. There I managed to hire a room for two nights.

The city featured singing fountains and various objects d'art on the sea-front, a 200-meter tall skyscraper of Batumi Technical University with an attached observation wheel, a DNA-design rotating tower with Georgian alphabet... The downtown with ongoing developments of casinos and hotels of world-famous brands was lit with myriads of lights thus justifying an unofficial name of Georgian Las-Vegas.

It was so unreachable for a poor old woman selling flowers out of need near fishermen in the harbour. Rimma had lived in Batumi since 1949. She also contributed to the better looks of her city – she planted trees in the main boulevard. However fantastic the surroundings were, the faded eyes of the old woman reflected more truth...

In the Wake of Spitak Earthquake

After spending a month in the Middle East, I was planning to travel to Armenia. It was impossible to get there directly from Turkey because the border was locked down, and Iran required a visa. A transit through now beloved Georgia was the only option for me. When I returned to the Georgian town of Vale I felt as if I were home.

A silver Mercedes pulled over. The driver helped me with my backpack asking casually if I was the same Alexey who had been at the Turkish border. I replied positively. On my way from the border checkpoint, I was riding together with Georgian Soso, the father of my new driver Manuel. 23-year old Manuel worked at a hydro plant not far from Vardziya, an ancient cave monastery site. Manuel asked his bosses to accommodate me in a camp for workers because it was too cold to stay in a tent in the late October.

Almost all the population of the border town of Akhalaki were citizens of Armenian descent. Even the street names were bilingual. But the people here were as hospitable as in any other location of Georgia. When Samvel, a casual acquaintance, who in his day studied in a Russian school, heard about Russia, he was so excited that he was ready not only to take me to the checkpoint but also proposed to have my teeth attended to free of charge because he was a dentist.

Armenia. Gyumri, former Leninakan. On December 7, 1988, this second largest town in the country suffered the heaviest destruction caused by the terrible Spitak earthquake. The death-toll of the earthquake was 25 thousand people, over a million people were left homeless. Excavator operator Koryun, with whom I came here, remembered the tragedy all too well though he had been a kid then. "Block houses, factories and schools they all were reduced to ruins," recollected the man. "Our house belonged in Bayandur settlement some 20 kilometres away from Spitak, therefore it survived the earthquake. When the disaster struck I was in a kindergarten. The stairway flights collapsed after the very first shock... It was a miracle that I survived. My father returned from a business trip and picked me earlier than usual."

We said goodbye to each other on the main square near a sombre black tuff cathedral. It suffered not as much as nearby Church of the Holy Saviour, the latter still under renovation. The memorial square with a fountain was behind it. The monument dedicated to the earthquake victims included the onion domes that had fallen from the church. Then again, a lot of things reminded about those events. Throughout the city, one could see temporary constructions, simple huts and metal trailers where people who were on the affordable housing waiting list lived. I was said that there were several hundreds of those.

Mikhail, a resident of Yerevan, dumped cement for the new buildings in Gyumri and turned his old Kamaz truck back to the capital. "My dad used to carry bread on his truck to the destroyed Spitak and Leninakan," he said reaching for the car radio. "Two weeks after the earthquake he took me with him on a trip. When I saw what happened to once prosperous streets and how selflessly rescuers worked, my tears rolled down... I was only 10 then..." Having heard his favourite song, Mikhail turned the music up, smiled thoughtfully and started tapping a rhythm on the wheel with his hands.

The First Snow Was Falling Down...

Buses and metro in Yerevan cost only 100 Drams. Saving money on transportation, I was able to watch the main sights of the "pink" city, Yerevan's nickname acquired for volcanic rocks of the same hue used during the construction. I enhanced the standard tourist's set of visits to Matenadaran museum of ancient manuscripts, Ararat brandy distillery and the 1915 Armenian genocide memorial complex with a trip to Youth Theatre. The History Museum of Armenia and the National Gallery of Armenia were especially noteworthy. They occupy seven floors in a building situated in Republic Square.

Ararat, an extinct volcano on the territory of Turkey now, but usually clearly seen from Armenia, had not appeared at its finest for me. In clear weather, the volcano was best watched from Khor Virap Monastery near Yerevan. The monastery hosted the dungeon where Gregory the Preacher who had baptised Armenia in 301 had been kept for 15 years. Although, today I could discern only watchtowers and a couple of moving points, apparently, Turks in a hurry for namaz because a call for prayer from a rural mosque was heard.

I was cautioned about the villages of Armash and Eraskh lying on the Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan borderline. "Sometimes they shoot from their side, they killed one civil resident not long ago," Vakhtan and Arthur, my co-travellers to Stepanakert, waved vaguely toward the mountains Protection fortifications stretched for almost one kilometre – the earth mounds had been built a couple of years ago to defend passing transport from a sniper's "hunt". The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh in 1991 had claimed the lives of 20,000 people. The Karabakh war was the first and the cruelest interethnic conflict on the post-Soviet area. Though the active phase of the conflict ended in 1994, peace had been something too remote in the South Caucasus.

The highway was as empty as the sceneries in the window: villages became less frequent and red rocks quickly advanced on seemingly endless valleys. In some places, women sold indigenous Areni grape wine in Coca-Cola bottles. The preference to the red-label bottles was not accidental because it such a package Iranian long-haul truckers could traffic alcohol forbidden in their country passing it off as a popular sparkling drink. My coevals Kar, Andronik, Akop and Bevr drove to buy the aromatic beverage from Yerevan. When we parted in the town of Yeghegnadzor, they gave me one bottle. But before that, we had stopped by Noravank monastery since the Armenian youth were mostly believers.

After spending the night in an unusual place, in a local recreation centre, I thumbed a ride on a Zhiguli car to Jermuk. It was a spa resort similar to Russian Essentuki and Georgian Borjomi. They also bottled mineral water of the same name here, Hike Markosyan was heading there to participate in construction of a hotel. Now the authorities were trying to return the Soviet-era popularity to the resort.

Large snowflakes were falling down thus forming snow mush on the ground. The last point, the visitation of which in case of a trip to Azerbaijan could be justified as cultural selflessness, was Karahunj, also called Zorats Karer, an ancient astronomical observation site. Alik and Gevorg were driving their marriage delivery service truck to Sisian, a town nearest to the site. Actually, I could walk from there. A megalithic complex consisting of numerous large upright stones with round holes was commonly compared with England's Stonehenge... Now my way was toward Karabakh.

The Caucasian Hiroshima

There was a document checkpoint at the entrance to the unrecognised republic. Arsen, a military man from Karabakh's town Shushi, came out to a border guard, giving me a signal to stay in the car and not to move. The captain told something about me or, rather, did not mention me at all because two days later it turned out to have been a positive harm. A fifty kilometres spiral road wrapped in a strong fog was a way to Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh.

At midnight I was at a gas station where I made friends with the local employees. We ate Zhingialov Khats, local flatbread with 12 herbs. Armenian Gaggik told us how after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the 1991 his family left their household and fled from Azerbaijan. The guys made a bed for me out of sacks with wheat and installed a heater thus organizing a lodge for me for two nights.

"We Are Our Mountains" monument to centenarians of the region towered on a hill. The monument was the main signature sight of Artsakh that was another name for Karabakh. In the winter of 1991-1992, Stepanakert suffered severe destruction due to shell attacks and bombardments. Now the city was almost reconstructed: squares and parks decorated with sculptures burst into vegetation, a drama theatre and a museum opened. But one could spot constant combat readiness behind any instance of peaceful life: in school lessons about civil defence and special courses in the institute, in abundance of camouflage in the streets, even in an attentive look of a passer-by, who, perhaps, could be that military service man in civil clothes. Even the destinations of ordinary cars going inland were military units.

Some 30 kilometres away from Stepanakert, I saw a scenery reminiscent of an apocalypse film set – a huge ghost city. The once prosperous 50,000 population Azerbaijani town of Agdam, famous across the USSR for its port wine, became the Caucasian Hiroshima, a monument to the Karabakh war. That stroll along the dead streets was slightly creepy, but I had to see it with my own eyes. The ruins of rich pre-revolutionary mansions and Soviet-time structures were overgrown by thistle and feral pomegranate. A former theatre, a mosque, a recreation centre, a school, war-time trenches and ditches, hundreds of meters of barbed wire and rusted metal mesh, dust, boulders... The ruins stretched as far as I could see, up to the horizon.

That was not to say that absolutely nobody was there. For example, sheepherdsmen lived in huts on the outskirts of the town. Several blocks away from me, somebody picked up scrap metal and looted the deserted town for building materials. And finally, the destroyed town hosted a military base and its eastern borderline coincided with the front line with all distinctive consequences: mine fields, defence fortifications and anti-tank ditches. The latter fact became known to me after an unexpected appearance of a gunman. While he was approaching, I turned my back and replaced a memory card in my camera just in case – the Karabakh MFA prohibited foreigners not only to make pictures but even to stay in Agdam. The soldier warned me that armoured manoeuvres were to begin soon. They were going to close the road...

An Island of Tsarist Russia

The worn-down roads through the Agdam's ruins were used mainly by the military. A military UAZ vehicle raised dust on a bumpy road next to an almost intact mosque. I did not try to stop it out of fear of potential hard questions. But the brakes squealed and a head in a peaked cap popped up from the window: "if you need to go Stepanakert or Shushi, we'll be there by night." It was not late yet. First of all, the two contract servicemen had to deliver mail to different military units scattered some good 100 kilometres from one another.

Not missing a single pothole, a single bump, we drove through Fizuli and Gadrut towns, Sarushen village and other communities of Karabakh. And again, I saw signs of the war through seemingly peaceful life: debris, derelict households, stillness, Azerbaijani lights on the other side of the front line. The sergeant blamed neither his people nor neighbours for that interethnic conflict.

It was time to return to Armenia. I couldn't miss the turn to Alidzor village. A 6-kilometre long cable way was stretched from the village to Tatevsky Monastery. I couldn't help using it. I had to come back on my foot because these places were almost deserted in this time of year, moreover, it was snowing. To my luck, locals Araik and Armen were coming home from a hunt for boar. The former was an officer with the National Security Service, an analogue of the Russian FSB. The latter was the Head of Juvenile Delinquency Department of MIA from the town of Razdan. Armen asked me to be his guest, kindled a stove and boiled a kettle. No wonder, it was a real winter outside! His spouse Aspram cooked thick pancakes out of local traditional wheat flour pokhindz (wheat grains are roasted before grinding), while their daughter Mary played piano.

A milky fog was hanging over Sevan Lake, and vehicles were almost creeping on the highway, afraid of slippery surfaces. The road from Yerevan also took two times longer for Marten, the statistics department manager of the Central Bank. Our roads went different ways at a fork near the monument to the characters of Mimino movie in Dilijan town. According to the script, driver Rubik Khachikyan was from this town.

There were several Russian villages in vicinity. It was quite unusual to come across with such Russian names as Lermontovo and Fioletovo among Armenian names like Margaovit and Antarashen. Two largest in the country Molokan communities settled down here. They were formed by descendants from Tsarist Russia exiled to Transcaucasian region by Catherine II. The car I stopped in Dilijan was heading for Fioletovo. Service technicians Arthur and Ashot from the town of Sevan wanted to buy the sauerkraut the Molokans were famous for. The "cabbage season" meant busy days for Molokan population who chopped, salted, fermented and delivered sauerkraut in barrels throughout Armenia. No less popular was their local produce of cheese, milk and cottage cheese.

The ways of Fioletovo residents were peculiar: men had beards, women hid their plaits under kerchiefs. All the people here wore very simple clothes. They followed the New Testament but did not believe in icons and did not cross themselves. Instead of a church, they have a simple house where they gather on Sundays. They did not drink alcohol, nor did they eat pork. They fasted strictly, and they even did not feed cattle during Lent. They should abstain from modern gadgets such as TV sets and telephones, nonetheless, many had them. Cross marriages were prohibited therefore Molokans still retained Russian appearance features. Their language was old style Russian: nichavo (nought), nadys' (yestereve), lepota (splendor), to name a few. It was hardly possible to find such an ethnographic sanctuary in my motherland.

Got Off Cheaply

Spitak was in the earthquake focus on the 7th of December in 1988, and was almost obliterated from the earth. A new generation had grown up since the time, as they say, the generation that could smile. Though it was impossible to forget about the tragedy. Every Spitak resident now and then ascended the cemetery hill to get to the tin metal church in the end. A lot of things in Spitak proper also reminded about the event even so many years after. There were spots with destroyed buildings two blocks away from the rebuilt centre. Also there were whole settlements of temporary housings called by countries which sponsored them: Italian, German, Estonian...

The ruins of the sugar plant where only brick chimney stayed intact were not far. Before the earthquake, Spitak had been an industrial centre of national standing. A similar picture could be seen at the entrance to nearby Vanadzor – there were a number of closed factories too. To support children and the old, working-age population was forced to migrate to Russia in search of jobs.

I hoped to get to Tbilisi by night, but friendly Armenia would not let me go so soon. Andronik, the chief of a bakery in the town of Alaverdi, wanted me to meet his family. Their household was in a highland village where they lived off a small bee yard and a pear and peach garden. Nulin, Granny Tamara and 24-year old Narek welcomed me in such a way that I felt at home. Such was the Caucasus.

Chances to cross the Azerbaijani border with Armenian stamps were low, but why not try? Georgia helped me again. I already had six Georgian entrance and exit stamps from different checkpoints. The climate as we went had changed significantly in several hours: the temperature rose up to +17 whereas in Armenia the temperature had been negative. I had a new unexpected encounter on route Tbilisi-Gardabani-Rustavi: I met Georgian Khvichi, who could spoke five languages, champion of Europe in mixed martial arts. When hitchhiking, you never knew who would be your travel-mate.

I did end up in interrogation at the Azerbaijani border. An inspector's facial expression changed when he saw Armenian stamps. He called his chief. One paper decided all. It was a formal cover letter from my university stating in five languages that I participated in Peoples' Friendship Expedition. One month ago it had saved me from deportation from the Turkish-Syrian border when I was held in a police department under suspicion that I had been a mujahed of Islamic state.

Two souvenir magnets from Armenia found by searching border guards were confiscated as something illegal and dangerous, but finally they let me enter Azerbaijan. The day was something to behold: woke up in Armenia, drove through Georgia, and, having "broken through" the border, checked in for the night in Azerbaijani Gyandzha.

Seeing Azerbaijan from A Trunk Compartment

Gyandzha was the second largest city of Azerbaijan after Baku. Strolling down narrow streets, I walked into an impressive park with a triumphal arch, remnants of a citadel, a XVI century sauna, a house made of bottles, churches and mosques. When the conflict about Nagorno-Karabakh started, there had occurred Armenian bushing in the city. It was not that simple to measure the current degree of friendliness or unfriendliness between the two nations, but I never met a single Azerbaijani who would say something derogative about Armenians. 30-year old Fuat, with whom we drove to the town of Yevlakh, had Armenian friends. The simple-hearted guy left differences to politicians.

There was a 200-meter multi-coloured mosaic consisting of stalls with pomegranates, persimmons, tangerines, and queen apples. It would be good to pass this section so that drivers wouldn't take me for a merchant, but the true vendors, apparently bored, found fun in stopping me and giving away fruits to me. One by one. And I couldn't refuse not wanting to offend them. When it seemed that all the pomegranates of Azerbaijan had been given away to me, and I had no room left to put them, I decided to quit the place and hitch-hike right there.

A hatchback stopped and reversed. The car was full – five people together with the driver. "Where shall I sit?" I wondered. Shyryn smiled mysteriously and opened the trunk compartment. Inside...there was a sixth gentleman with a moustache. I sat down and snuggled myself with my backpack. It was still 200 kilometres till Baku. It is awkward to say but I saw one third of Azerbaijan from the trunk of Mercedes!

When, alone again, going down the metro after extensive bus tours around Baku, and it seemed unreal to meet a familiar face in a great city, somebody hailed me. Bakyr, one of the passengers from that overcrowded car, arrived here with his friend for a seasonal olive harvesting job. They rented a room on Zaur Kerimova street and named me a mere two-Manat price for a lodgement there. Just in time, because it was getting late.

Quite a few years ago, the old part of Baku, namely the vicinity of the legendary Maiden's Tower, was a setting for "Istanbul" scenes of Leonid Gaidai's comedy The Diamond Arm. Also, this port city on the shore of Caspian Sea played a role of Buenos-Aires in movie Amphibian Man. The modern architecture with abundant glass skyscrapers, headed by Flame Towers, made the capital look like Dubai, whereas sandstone-coated khrushchevki (five-storey blocks of flats) with built-on mansard roofs, and streets flooded with cabs could take you away to an imaginary corner of Old London Town. What the somewhat irrelevant squatter development, occurring now and then, reminded me of was difficult to say but that was what modern Baku looked like.

Azerbaijan was enticing with its natural marvels. The country boasts the world's largest number of mud volcanoes. Loktaban was one of the biggest active volcanoes. Its last eruption was in 2012. I had to use the road to it going through an oil field in a settlement of the same name. Obviously, they were not prepared for guests there, and the people at the entrance threatened me with potential problems with police if they would notice me near oil rigs. But I took my chances for the sake of Mars-like landscapes. Moreover, there was a burning mountain called Yanar Dag in Mehemmedi village to the north from Baku. A natural gas fire had been blazing continuously on a hillside for thousands of years. That was my last stop before my way back to Russia.

"For long memories from Dagestan citizens" – a book with such words from my new friends now sits at my home to remind me of unforgettable days I spent in Derbent, Makhachkala and Kizlyar... Each encounter I had during this long journey has been dear to me in its own way. The main thing what mattered was a human being. No difference whether it was an Ossetian, an Abkhazian, a Georgian, an Ingush or an Armenian. Studying the bitter lessons learnt from the first post-Soviet decades, when centuries-long friendship was tested under the fire of interethnic conflicts, we will find that they teach us to have same old "fraternal heart", as the highlanders love to say. Fine folks are those Caucasians.