To the mountains, Kazbegi

After another day in Tbilisi, we headed toward the Russian border. Our destination was a mountain town with two names. Its original name is Stepantsminda, after the first monk who settled there. It's also called Kazbegi, for its first Russian ruler and his grandson, a famous writer. After independence, the town officially shed the name Kazbegi, but somehow it sticks around.

We were headed toward Kazbegi, also known as Stepantsminda, also known as you're almost in Russia now. Georgians do not like Russia. The man driving us to Kazbegi (I was getting used to having a private driver) did not speak much English, but he pointed out a pipeline near the highway and said, "Gazprom". He explained that the gas goes through to Armenia and Azerbaijan, but Georgia doesn't buy any gas from the Russians. "They are not good people," he said. He also pointed out some Middle Eastern tourists who had pulled over to take pictures of the river and to dip their toes in it. "Arab people," he said, "ooh water, ooh snow, wow!" Ten minutes later, we saw another group doing the same thing. It's funny what we find exotic - just as I would get excited for a camel in the desert, they were overjoyed with bodies of water. Our driver also pointed toward Chechnya, South Ossetia, Daghestan... all the small and disputed regions that make this a very complicated part of the world. There are so many identities, ethnicities, allies, enemies. Humans have lived in the Caucasus for thousands of years.  Do the divisions between people multiply the older their civilization becomes?

Ananuri fortress

Mountain pass on the way to Kazbegi

Kazbegi (altitude 1,740m or a little over a mile)

We arrived to find out that we were not actually staying in Kazbegi but in the village of Gergeti, on the other side of the river. As one of Georgia's top tourist destinations, Kazbegi has two hotels and several guest houses. A guest house is sort of a bed and breakfast, a room for rent in a private house. I had chosen Ketino's guest house mostly at random and as we arrived I thanked the internet for bringing her to us. Ketino was like my Georgian mom. She's not old enough to actually be my mom, but she kept calling me 'my lovely', telling me to eat more, and it didn't take long for her to ask when I'm having babies.  Ketino offered to show me how to cook Georgian food. An hour later I was sitting at a big kitchen table in a house in a Georgian mountain village and slicing tomatoes according to Ketino's specifications while her elderly mother sat across from me, squeezing spices into ground meat with her thick fingers. It was one of my happiest moments of the trip.

The other guests were Julia and Lisa from Moscow and an American named Wendy. Wendy works for the U.S. government and had just finished two months of interviewing Syrian refugees in Jordan. Over dinner, which included Ketino's home made cheese, home made wine, and home made everything else, she imparted some Ketino wisdom to all of us in her heavily accented English.

Ketino summed up her attitude toward Russia by saying, "I don't like Vladimir Putin, but I like these girls," she gestured toward the sweet and sunburned Julia and Lisa. "Have all the Georgians treated you good here?" she asked them. Julia nodded enthusiastically. Ketino talked about how she makes her wine, and about how each family has its own cherished recipe. "Wine makes relax. It's like part of your soul. When I drink my wine (this part she had to say in Russian because she couldn't quite find the words in English. Julia helped to translate.) it's like I am not even drinking, because it's already a part of me."

Dinner at Ketino's (there are more dishes coming)

Ketino's house