"...I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light..."
Fern Hill (fragm.), Dylan Thomas
Getting to the apple town... Well, it took us well over three hours to get to Mestia from Zugdidi by marshrutka. Additionally, it took about two hours for our folksy and taciturn marshrutka driver to depart at all... Never mind. On the sweeter side of the journey, during one of the stops, a fellow passenger, a quiet Georgian man bought some bonbons for all of us in the van...
Mestia is situated in a valley surrounded with picturesque slopes of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range. Somewhere about thousand metres above the borough, almost a two hours trek up (or quicker via alternative road by a SUV) there is a lea on the top of the Cross Peak with a clear panoramic view of eternally frozen Caucasian summits, including the most deadly one: Mount Ushba.
Mestia has been for centuries a cultural heart of Svaneti Region in Georgia. The land inhabited by Svan people, who speak unwritten Svan language. Some distinctive features of Svan culture are: their traditional poetry that has never been separated from melody, polyphonic folk music and healing lullabies called iavnana. Worth a recall are also artefacts of their material culture. Unique medieval-type villages and tower-houses of the Upper Svaneti region have been listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 1996.
It all sounds quite pastoral so far. However, guides' authors hint at the Svan territory that "an undertone of wildness hangs over these villages" (Nasmyth, 2010: 141) considering safety of your holidays. Well, "all inclusive" in an Eastern way, I would say.
For me, Svaneti is a definite must-visit place and if I ever come back there it would be spring bloom time. I would love to see all the uncountable Mestia apple trees covered with blossoms!
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| უშბა (Mt Ushba) 4700 მ |
Literature:
Kalandadze-Makharadze Nino, 2010, The Multipart Lyrical Cradle Song in Georgia,
Nasmyth Peter, 2006, Walking in the Caucasus. Georgia, London: Mta Publications
Thomas Dylan, 1946, Fern Hill (from "Deaths and Entrances")
UNESCO Website, The List, Upper Svaneti, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/709
