Dartlo -> Girevi – something forbidden, deserted and shortened

20. June 2023

 

 

During and after a delicious breakfast it rained. I went for a little walk in the rain. And around 11:00 am we set off – we had chosen a shorter route. First we went up through a beautiful flowering meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took the time to make some flowerphotos from closer:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then we soon reached Kvavlo. It has ruins, a pretty fortified tower, 4 houses that look as if they could still be inhabited, a sacred site in the middle and not a soul to be seen.

 

 

At first it was a bit bad with the large area of the shrine and the clear sign at the back right of the plate, forbidden for ladies. In some parts of Tusheti there is quite a strict separation of the sexes – for example, there are no mixed-sex flocks of sheep. I have read that, but I have not checked it.

 

 

 

Anyhow we didn’t get closer to sheep, but there were some cows:

 

 

 

Then we took another look at the sacred site and found a path that Nino and I were probably allowed to walk and that was great because we could see a lot more.

 

 

 

 

 

Happily we climbed and walked around taking pictures

 

 

 

There was also a horse to be seen

 

 

 

And then we went on, there was a river crossing where we met strange people with light shoes, which they didn’t take off at all, but preferred to walk around with wet shoes.

 

 

 

We continued along the mountain and soon reached our next destination: Danlo. There was no one there either, not even animals. But there were buildings with no-women signs and shrines and a site that looked like a cemetery or something and then some buildings were supposed to have ancient stones in the walls with petroglyphs on them. I looked and looked – but only found one. We also had a picnic lunch. Here are the pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somehow a strange place. And behind it there was another ruin to see, but we didn’t go up there.

 

 

Instead, we saw an assembly of trees and a fenced-in memorial stone for those who died in the Second World War:

 

 

 

And then we continued along a great path. As a path, it was my highlight. In general, the day had turned out to be more interesting and varied than I had expected. And I also thought: this is really incredibly green here! Good for sheep. And good for us was that the flock of sheep was too far down, the dogs didn’t make a sound.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had also not thought that the weather would clear up so steadily after all. For the many last kilometres on the road, which actually didn’t look so attractive, we had asked for a car to come. That way we didn’t have to rush so much during the day.

 

 

So a short but very nice day of hiking. And then dear Lela welcomed us to her guesthouse in Girevi and we were amazed to see 6 other guests there. As far as hikers were concerned, it was still quite empty.

 

 

It rained hard in the evening and during the night and the following day we had quite a demanding route ahead of us with a pass crossing. Would we be lucky with the weather again?