MAGAZINE: The Caucasus Mountains, in the spirit of writer Lermontov. By Bill Donahue (washingtonpost.com)

(washingtonpost.com) By the time I reached the snowfield, four hours into the hike and roughly 11,000 feet up in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, it was raining, and a late afternoon fog was drifting in, soon to veil the rocky peaks. I kept climbing, kicking the toes of my sneakers into the remnant June snow for a foothold, scrabbling on my hands and knees over rocks in steep places. Near the top of the pass leading to Juta, the highest village of the Khevsureti people, I spied three hikers emerging out of the mist, shuffling downhill, exhausted. They were Slovakian. “We are lost,” one of them said. “Now we go down. We look for rest in the willage.”

They were lean and in their 20s, with enough common sense to have invested in stiff-soled, snow-suitable hiking boots. Which underscored how flimsy my own preparations had been. Did I really want to die in some half-baked scheme to conquer the Caucasus? I had started out that morning amid the winding dirt roads and the little stone houses of Georgia’s sparsely settled Khevsureti region; it was time to go back. So now I began slinking downhill behind the Slovaks, and in the endless creases of the valley below, I swear I heard a man snickering, his voice a gleeful mockery as it caromed off the rocks.

The Russian poet and novelist Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) had been there in the Georgian Caucasus before me. These mountains are the setting of his signature work, the 1840 novel “A Hero of Our Time,” and I had become convinced that Mikhail and I hated each other.

Lermontov was a short, bowlegged man, prematurely balding, with a bent back and a nasty temper. After his mother died young, he was raised in Moscow by his indulgent grandmother, a society dowager who permitted little Mishenka to rage on the servants and tear out her manicured shrubbery. He was annoying right up until his death. The day before, his friend was fraternizing with a young woman Lermontov fancied. Lermontov goaded him into a duel with guns. Lermontov lost. We can credit him with the dumbest death in literary history.

Or we can remember him by his eyes. They were captivating and coal black and set in dark sockets. They were plaintive and sad. When you look at old oil paintings, it’s impossible to forget that this dyspeptic brat was also a sensitive Romantic artist. His eyes saw things. They saw beauty, even as Lermontov himself was consumed by a haughty nihilism. Most critically, they saw the Caucasus Mountains straddling Russia and Georgia, more than 900 miles from the salons of Moscow.

When Lermontov was 3 and suffering from rheumatic fevers, his grandmother packed him, along with his French tutor and German governess, into a horse-drawn wagon and set out for the curative airs of the mountains. Lermontov returned at ages 5 and 10, and again when he was in his 20s and an officer in Czar Nicholas I’s army. Russia was occupying Georgia then, engaged in a century-long campaign to conquer the Caucasus’s peoples: the Chechens and Ossetians, and the largest group, the Circassians. Lermontov spent a pivotal year fighting and gathering material for his novel.

“Hero” is a slim, ironically titled autobiographical tale that follows Pechorin, a young Army officer, as he womanizes his way up the Georgia Military Highway, northeast from the capital, Tbilisi, and over the Caucasus into what is today Russian Chechnya. It is filled with grandiose riffs. Lermontov writes, “The dark-blue mountain tops, furrowed with wrinkles, covered with layers of snow, were silhouetted against the pale horizon.”One Georgian damsel comes off as “beautiful: tall, slender, with black eyes which resembled that of a mountain gazelle.”

After Vladimir Nabokov rendered the definitive English-language translation of “Hero” with his son, Dmitri, in 1958, he said Lermontov’s language “is the tool of an energetic, incredibly gifted, bitterly honest, but definitely inexperienced young man.”

Lermontov had almost zero compassion. For him, Caucasians were noxious when they weren’t being exotic. “What wretched people,” his alter ego Pechorin remarks.

“An extremely foolish people,” adds a fellow officer, “incapable of any education.”

I was there in Georgia in part to see what Lermontov had vainly overlooked. But I was also there in homage, for I loved the thrill in Lermontov’s voice. I wanted to know this brilliant young man who tossed away all his talent but still looms large in the Caucasus, remembered by all, reviled by some, and as important to his region as, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne is to Americans. To this day, most Georgian and Russian schoolchildren read Lermontov.

I got down out of the snow, eventually. The slope grew gentler and the sky cleared as I began descending toward the village of Roscha, following goat paths through the clover. The valley grew wider, until it was about a half-mile across — a huge, stunning expanse of rocky green land set against the patchy snow in the distance. After an hour, I saw a few grazing cows.

The first house in Roscha was a crude bed-and-breakfast with a woodshed in the back yard and a cowshed affixed with a TV satellite dish. As I lay in my room there, resting, I could hear a man grunting in labor on the grass just below me. I went outside and found a large, muscle-bound athlete throwing 50-pound rocks. — so they thudded softly on the spongy turf.

Zviadi Gogochuri competes for Georgia’s national judo squad in the 90-kilogram weight class. He was oblivious to me, ensconced next in some exercise that involved pulling on a thick rubber chord. A kid stood nearby, spectating in rapt admiration. “He is training,” Uturga Tsiklauri, 16, said in careful English. “He comes to the mountains for the fresh air. It is important.”

Uturga lives at the bed-and-breakfast with his parents. His father was away overnight, so his mother entrusted him with all the manly duties — such as turning on the hot-water heater so I could take a shower out in one shed. His manner was watchful and serious. He knew things. When he took food scraps out to the chickens, he did so with a solemn reverence. And as we dined — the judoist, Uturga and I — Uturga worked his angles, ensuring that when I got a taxi out the next morning, he and his mother would ride along for free.

The cab arrived at 7:30. The road toward the next town, Korsha, was more of a path, cut into a steep mountainside and scattered with basketball-size boulders. We descended at seven miles an hour. At one point Uturga saw a stray rooster bobbing along through some scrub grass near a wooden drop-off. He leaped out and began chasing the bird into the woods, throwing smalls rocks at it. His mother leaped out, and (why not?) I, too, joined in the chase. By now the bird was scurrying at top speed, squawking in terror. I had an elevated vantage point, with the rooster running right before me. But Uturga, holding his arm up, stopped me. Then he trailed the rooster until it was cornered in the nook of a cliff. He grabbed it by its feet, then carried it upside down, wings flapping, back to the cab. We resumed rolling, now with a live, useful farm animal on board. In the back seat, Uturga’s mother laughed with pride and delight.

“Giji,” I said to the driver, drawing on my scant Georgian skills. “Crazy.”

The driver laughed, too, then pointed his finger to his head and said: “No. Smart.”

About half the size of Rhode Island and separated from Chechnya only by the Caucasus Mountains, the Khevsureti region is just 50 miles outside Tbilisi, but the route there is steep. The place has always felt remote, and its people — nature-worshiping Christians descended from the last crusaders of Europe — are fiercely independent. As late as 1915, Khevsureti men wore chain mail armor when they galloped their horses into Tbilisi.

Today, slender medieval stone watchtowers still dot the hillsides, bearing tiny slit windows, and in the ghost town of Shatili, on the Chechen border, there’s an ancient stone fortress.

The old Khevsureti is crumbling, though, challenged by Georgia’s mounting prosperity and urbanization, and the Khevsureti people boast few cultural preservationists. I was there in Korsha to stay with one of them — a visual artist named Shota Arabuli, who runs the Korsha Guesthouse.

One of my fellow guests, Otari Laliashvili, 62, is a painter and a night guard at a museum outside Tbilisi. A bald chain smoker with a wry, playful laugh, he has extensively studied Georgian history, honing a worldview that is at once hypernationalist and slightly surreal. “Georgians,” he told me, “were the first humans. Before the Tower of Babel, everyone spoke Georgian.” Laliashvili had read all of Lermontov, and his take was decisive: “Lermontov was an unhappy genius-idiot. He knew nothing about the Caucasus.”

Laliashvili had arrived with three friends and a five-liter decanter of red wine purchased at a gas station. As we sat in the airy dining room, we sampled that vintage and homed in on the Circassian war. Over 100 years, the Russians killed roughly 400,000 Circassians, and in 1864, Czar Alexander II formally expelled 500,000 more. Today, Islamic leaders in Chechnya still do not accept Russian authority.

“Lermontov was writing history from the perspective of an occupier,” Laliashvili told me. The novelist’s greatest error, Laliashvili felt, was his failure to lionize a Circassian ruler named Shamil, a guerrilla leader who defeated the Russians in several battles as he spent 25 years trying, unsuccessfully, to unite the disparate tribes of the Caucasus in battle. “Shamil was the true hero of the Circassian war,” Laliashvili said. “Shamil fought for his land, for his own earth. He had a reason to fight, and he told the Russians, ‘Your country is huge. I can ride my horse around my whole kingdom in a day. Why do you need it?’ ”

We replenished our wine glasses, and in time Laliashvili revised his take on the war. The true hero, he declared, was not Shamil, but his deputy, Boysangur, who upbraided Shamil when the warlord at last surrendered, in 1859. According to Laliashvili, Boysangur said: “Don’t give up. You are Shamil. Remember you said we should fight to the end?” Boysangur kept fighting. “It didn’t matter that he had only one arm, one leg and one eye,” Laliashvili said. “He fought until the Russians caught him and hanged him.”

By the end of the evening, we had finished the bottle.

The next morning, Laliashvili woke late and looked somewhat rumpled as shambled to the bathroom. “If you don’t drink, why live?” he said to me with a groggy smirk. “That is the philosophy of your friend Lermontov, and I have been sacrificing myself at his altar.”

Later in the day I settled down with my Lermontov books. There are few quiet moments in the works of Mikhail Lermontov. Reading him, you feel as if you are up in the middle of the night with insomnia — in some spare hotel room, perhaps, watching a super-dramatic old movie on a black-and-white TV, with the contrast dial notched up to 10. His epic poem, “The Demon,” stars an outcast soul who sadly flies over the sinful world, only to launch an ill-fated romance with a Georgian princess. Another long poem, “The Novice,” is about a young monk who flees his monastery (and organized religion) and contemplates dying “between the abrupt and dark rocks.” The poem begins with an epigraph paraphrasing the Bible’s First Book of Samuel: “I have barely tasted the honey; And I must die.”

“Hero’s” wanton antics can be hard to take, but there are passages that sing with enchantment. “All these snows burned with a ruddy glow,” Lermontov writes, “so merrily, so brightly, that it made one wonder why one should not stay here forever.” The Russian dramatist Nikolai Gogol said of one chapter, “No one among us has yet written a prose so perfect, so beautiful, so full of flavor.”

But I, myself, was taken most by a letter Lermontov wrote in 1837: “As I careered up and down the mountains in Georgia, I abandoned the cart and took to horseback; I’ve climbed the snowy mountain of the Cross to the very top, which isn’t altogether easy; from it, one can see half of Georgia as though it were on a saucer. … For me the mountain air is balm; the blues go to the devil, the heart thumps, the breast breathes high.”

By “the Cross,” Lermontov meant Mount Kazbek, a 16,512-foot peak that forms the border with Russia, looming over the Georgian village of Stepantsminda. I boarded a bus headed there the next afternoon. En route, we came upon a green hillside where throngs of people toiled up a narrow path, many wearing heavy crucifix necklaces as they towed bleating sheep on ropes. I deduced that things would not work out well for the sheep at the top.

I began climbing. Beside me were young families carrying children, and old women barefoot and bent over walking sticks. Finally, using hand signals to query my fellow travelers, I ascertained that we were all on a pilgrimage. It was Lomisoba, an ancient pagan feast updated 15 centuries ago after Christianity came to Georgia. We were climbing to the Lomisa Monastery to slaughter farm animals and pray at the stone shrine of Georgia’s patron, Saint George.

Lermontov had skipped this one, I’m pretty sure — it was beneath him to mingle with the hoi polloi — but I loved the sight of the crowds before me, moving now through a steep, shadowed meadow spotted with wildflowers. I loved that, even on this holy mission, they had weighted their backpacks with chacha, a grape-based moonshine.

It was dusk. The monastery sits on a knoll at 7,500 feet, and it took most people three hours to hike there. I didn’t have any food, never mind a tent for the inevitable night out in the chill. But I’d built up a certain trust in Georgians by now. Somehow I knew I’d find spirit and warmth up at the top.

There must have been 1,000 people there — a constellation of small groups scattered amid a jumble of giant boulders and grassy ravines. Campfires glimmered, and hundreds of believers waited for hours to light devotional candles before icons of George.

Mostly, though, the top was a party — and, for me, a primer on the delights and perils of chacha. Every time I opened my mouth, pilgrims swarmed around me with bottles of homemade chacha. A typical conversation, translated from Georgian and hand signals, went roughly like this:

Pilgrim: Drink! Drink!

Me: But I have already had four shots of chacha.

Pilgrim: But it is the national drink of Georg-ee-ah! You must take one more shot, for Georg-ee-ah!

Me: I, uh —

Pilgrim: Just one more, for Georg-ee-ah! For the friendship of nations!

A serious, bearded man, a frame maker who shared bread and cheese and olives with me, sold tiny framed portraits of Saint George bearing a broad sword and a gilt Byzantine halo. Some university students, English speakers, hailed me with Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” as they strummed guitars by their campfire. I heard a long medley of patriotic folk songs as we perched there on rocks in the smoky darkness, and I remember thinking that, even now, 170-odd years after Lermontov’s death, Georgia is still overwhelmed by Russian imperialism. The two countries fought a war in 2008, over a tiny Caucasian territory, South Ossetia. Georgia got crushed, and the sting lingers. After each folk song, the woman sitting beside me synopsized the lyrics the same way: “Finally,” she said, “it is about Georgia.”

I learned the refrain to one song, kind of, but then things got blurry, and I got very tired of being asked to drink chacha. At about 1:30, I located a declivity in a remote meadow and, hiding inside it, drifted into a merciful sleep. Then I was rousted. “Drink!” commanded the man hovering above me with a bottle. “Drink!”

Finally, at 2:45, I began weaving back down the mountain. It was quiet, and in the pitch black hundreds more pilgrims were climbing to the top, intent on making the morning Mass. They scarcely spoke. I heard the hard rasp of their lungs and the slight patter of their feet on the soil.

I would never attempt Mount Kazbek after my vigorous worshiping at Lermontov’s altar. But when I reached the highway at dawn, I stuck out my thumb and caught a ride north, toward Stepantsminda, with a beefy Russian in a sports car. Russian techno music blared over the stereo, so loud the vehicle vibrated. I strapped on my seat belt. We swooped along through small towns, past churches and little stores and patches of snow. I watched the sun rise into the blue sky over the lofty crags of the Caucasus. I was on an adventure way up in the mountains, and at least part of me forgot how bratty and mean and difficult Mikhail Lermontov had been. For a moment, I wished that he were sitting right there beside me, savoring the thin mountain air.

Bill Donahue is a writer living in Portland, Ore.

Georgian highlights

What to do

The 17th-century Orbeliani Baths, in Tbilisi, offer communal sulfur pools beneath domed bathhouse roofs in a blue-tiled palace.

The Gergeti Trinity Church is a 14th-century stone church that sits on a hilltop in the shadows of snowcapped Mount Kazbek. Hike or drive there from the picturesque village of Stepantsminda.

Lomisoba is a holy celebration and a wild party. On a Wednesday near the summer solstice, thousands of people hike uphill from the village of Arakhveti to Lomisa ridge, to pray to Georgia’s patron, Saint George, and spend the night drinking homemade spirits before they greet the sunrise with a Mass.

Where to stay

Korsha Guesthouse. Two hours north of Tbilisi, this rustic six-room lodge features a stone replica of a Khevsureti tower and sprawling gardens with sculptures of animals carved out of sticks. 011-995-599-74-11-99 or e-mail korshaltd@gmail.com.

Where to eat

Rooms Hotel. Set in Stepantsminda, with a breathtaking view of Mount Kazbek, the restaurant here offers gourmet dining in an exquisitely renovated Soviet-era resort. 011-995-322-71-00-99.

— Bill Donahue

REISE UND ABENTEUER: Geheimtipp in Georgien - Der Berg des Prometheus. Von Stephanie Geiger (nzz.ch)

Schöner Bericht und Foto von Stephanie Geiger hier >>>

(nzz.ch) Der Grosse Kaukasus hat alles zu bieten, was sich Bergsteiger wünschen: einsame Täler, hohe Berge und Touren, die eine echte Herausforderung sind. Trotzdem ist die Gegend bis heute nicht über den Status «Geheimtipp» hinausgekommen.

«Auf einen Berg steigen, und noch dazu auf den Kasbek?» Luisa findet das so abwegig, dass sie unsere Frage noch einmal wiederholt. Luisa, 68 Jahre alt, eine kleine rundliche Frau, graue Haare, blaue Schürze, ist unsere Gastgeberin in Stepanzminda. Das golden schimmernde Kaffeeservice in der Vitrine, ein Teppich an der Wand, eine alte Speisezimmergarnitur, das alles trägt dazu bei, dass sich schnell zu Hause fühlt, wer hier übernachtet. Und wer aus dem Fenster schaut, hat einen phantastischen Blick auf den dritthöchsten Gipfel Georgiens. «Der Kasbek ist ein wunderschöner Berg», sagt Luisa. Doch ihr Herz und die Lunge würden eine Besteigung nicht mehr zulassen.

Viel unberührte Natur

Aber auch früher ist Luisa nie auf die Idee gekommen, auf den Kasbek oder einen anderen Berg zu steigen. Bergsteigen ist an den Südhängen des Grossen Kaukasus längst nicht so verbreitet wie in den Alpen. Dabei hat der Grosse Kaukasus alles zu bieten, was sich Bergsteiger von einem Gebirge wünschen: einsame Täler, hohe Berge und neben gemütlichen Wanderungen auch Touren, die eine echte Herausforderung sind. Schon früh war die Region deshalb auch Ziel von Bergsteigern aus dem Alpenraum. Der deutsche Geograf, Alpinist und Forschungsreisende Gottfried Merzbacher reiste 1891 in den Kaukasus, bestieg den Elbrus und kam auch am Kasbek vorbei. 1903 fuhr eine österreichische Expedition nach Georgien. Die Tiroler bestiegen dort einen 3860 Meter hohen namenlosen Berg, der heute noch als «Tsentsi Tau» im Register des Alpine Club of London zu finden ist, benannt nach Cenzi von Ficker, einer Teilnehmerin der Expedition. Doch nicht nur das: Für ihren Mut bei einer schwierigen Rettung bekam die Innsbruckerin vom Fürsten von Swanetien die Uschba (4737 Meter), einen formschönen Berg mit Doppelgipfel, formell geschenkt.

Über den Status «Geheimtipp» scheint der Grosse Kaukasus aber in Europa in den vergangenen hundert Jahren nicht hinausgekommen zu sein. Als einer der Seven Summits dominiert der Elbrus (5642 Meter) das Bergsteigen in der Region. Die anderen Berge werden meist nur von Bergsteigern aus dem ehemaligen Ostblock in Angriff genommen. Auch hat das georgische Tourismusministerium erst im vergangenen Jahr begonnen, bewusst den naturorientierten Tourismus im Südkaukasus zu vermarkten. Die landschaftliche Vielfalt, das milde Klima und die unberührte Natur sollen Bergsteiger und Wandergruppen locken.

Wir sind mit Otari Jafaridze unterwegs. Mit dem Bergsteigen begonnen hat der Dreissigjährige während des Studiums. Der Kaukasus ist seine Spielwiese. Einmal ist er auch darüber hinausgekommen, bestieg den Khan Tengri (7010 Meter) im Tien Shan in Turkestan. Jetzt ist Otari aber überwiegend mit Trekkinggruppen unterwegs, oder er führt Bergsteiger auf den Kasbek.

Uns bringt Otari zuerst an den Fuss des Tschauchi-Massivs. Die Wolken hängen tief an diesem Augusttag, an dem Otari mit uns von Tbilissi aus auf der Georgischen Heerstrasse vorbei am Heliskiing-Resort Gudauri und über den Kreuzpass Richtung Norden fährt. Kurz vor Stepanzminda verlassen wir die Hauptroute nach Osten. Auf den ersten Kilometern ist die Strasse noch geteert. Zu verdanken ist das dem georgischen Patriarchen. Er kommt aus dem kleinen Ort Sno. Doch hinter Sno verstehen wir, weshalb Otari ein Geländefahrzeug hat. Durch Schlaglöcher, einen reissenden Gebirgsbach und eine holprige, vom Regen ausgewaschene Bergstrasse fahren wir hinauf nach Djuta.

Djuta ist ein kleines Bergdorf. Es soll das am zweithöchsten gelegene Dorf Europas sein, wenn man den Südkaukasus noch zu Europa zählt. Wie so viele abgelegene Dörfer ist auch Djuta vom Aussterben bedroht. Die Jungen gehen weg, weil sie in der Einöde keine Arbeit finden. In seiner bescheidenen Ärmlichkeit ist Djuta aber eine zauberhafte Idylle: vom Regen aufgeweichte Wege; eine alte Frau, die vor ihrem einstöckigen Häuschen in der Sonne sitzt; ein Kaukasischer Hirtenhund, der mit seiner Grösse und dem lauten Gebell fast so furchteinflössend ist wie der Bär, vor dem er seine Herde schützen soll.

Und doch gibt es auch für Djuta ein Fünkchen Hoffnung. Anano, eine junge Frau Ende zwanzig, hat in dieser Einöde, eine Viertelstunde Fussweg oberhalb des Dorfes, eine Hütte gebaut, um Touristen und Einheimischen in der Einsamkeit des Kaukasus Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten zu bieten. Otari hat uns dorthin gebracht, damit wir uns an die Höhe des Kasbek gewöhnen.

Mehr als nur ein Berg

Als wir am nächsten Tag zum Muchadze (3240 Meter) aufbrechen, regnet es in Strömen. Der Weg führt uns durch ein breites Tal am Basislager der Tschauchi-Kletterer vorbei. Doch an diesem frühen Morgen ist das Zeltlager wie ausgestorben. Die einen seien in der Wand, vom Regen überrascht, die anderen noch tief in ihren Schlafsäcken verkrochen, erzählen uns zwei junge Frauen. Das Tschauchi-Massiv ist das berühmteste Klettergebiet im Ostkaukasus, eine Mischung aus Drei Zinnen und Tofana di Rozes, auch deshalb kaukasische Dolomiten genannt. Von den mächtigen Wänden des Tschauchi, die uns am Vortag noch in Staunen versetzt hatten, sehen wir nichts. Sie verstecken sich hinter dichten Regenwolken.

Wir setzen unseren Weg dennoch fort, hinauf zum Gipfel des Muchadze. Die Rhododendren sind schon verblüht. Nur einzelne farbige Blätter lassen erahnen, welches Blütenmeer wir vor wenigen Wochen hier hätten antreffen können. Mit der Höhe mischen sich immer mehr Schneeflocken unter den Regen. Ein eisiger Wind pfeift über den Grat. Wir sind froh, als wir auf dem höchsten Punkt stehen. Dass wir bei diesem fürchterlichen Wetter hinaufgewandert sind, lässt sich einzig mit der Höhenanpassung begründen. Keine Chance auf Wetterbesserung und wieder keine Chance, den Kasbek zu sehen.

Erst am übernächsten Morgen, bei Luisa, geben die Wolken den Blick frei auf unser eigentliches Ziel. Luisa hat uns ein Zimmer gegeben, in dem wir schon vom Bett aus den Kasbek sehen können: die sonnenbeschienenen, strahlend weissen Flanken, die Grashänge weiter unten und auf einer Anhöhe oberhalb von Stepanzminda das Kloster Gergeti. Jetzt verstehen wir, dass der Kasbek nicht einfach nur ein Berg, sondern eine Art Nationalheiligtum ist. Er ist von Mythen umrankt, die bis zu den alten Griechen zurückreichen: Prometheus soll zur Strafe dafür, dass er gegen den Willen des Zeus den Menschen das Feuer gebracht hatte, an den Kasbek gebracht und dort angekettet worden sein. Jeden Tag kam ein Adler, um von seiner Leber zu fressen. Erst Herakles sollte Prometheus viele Jahrhunderte später erlösen, indem er den Adler tötete.

Göttliche Mächte haben Prometheus an den Kasbek gebracht. Wir fahren die ersten Höhenmeter mit Otaris Geländewagen zum Kloster Gergeti hinauf. Von dort führt unser Weg über Moränen und dann einen der Kasbek-Gletscher. Unser erstes Ziel: die Bethlemi-Hütte (3653 Meter), einstmals eine meteorologische Station, benannt nach einem Kloster in der Nähe. Das massige Bauwerk, etwa fünfzig Meter lang, ragt auf der Moräne wie ein mächtiger Dampfer in das Wolkenmeer. Doch die Bethlemi-Hütte ist keine Hütte mit Alpenstandard. Sie ist eine windgeschützte Unterkunft, nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Schmelzwasser tropft uns in der Eingangshalle, einem dunklen schwarzen Loch, auf den Kopf. In den wenigen notdürftig hergerichteten Zimmern gibt es Pritschen, zweistöckig, mit einem abwaschbaren braunen Bezug und etwas Schaumstoff darunter. Nicht einladend, aber praktisch.

Die Politik bleibt im Tal

Weil die Hütte nur begrenzt Schlafplätze hat, campieren die meisten Bergsteiger in Zelten. Schwer beladen schleppen sie ihre Ausrüstung den Berg hinauf. Bequemer ist der Weg, wenn man das Gepäck auf den Rücken von Pferden lädt, die man unten in Stepanzminda mieten kann. Nur runter muss man den schweren Rucksack dann selbst tragen.

Ein buntes Völkchen findet auf der Bethlemi-Hütte zusammen. Die Georgier kennen sich meist. Viele von ihnen gehören zu den Stammgästen. Von den wenigen Georgiern, die auf Berge steigen, kommen alle immer wieder an den Kasbek. Politische Reibereien werden im Tal gelassen. Die Russen, gegen die Georgien vor wenigen Jahren Krieg geführt hat, werden geduldet. Genauso wie die Bergsteiger aus den ehemaligen sowjetischen Bruderländern. Westeuropäer sind hier Exoten und werden vielleicht deshalb auch besonders freundlich empfangen.

Am nächsten Morgen stehen wir früh auf. Otari hat schon eine halbe Stunde vorher begonnen, Wasser zu kochen. Noch in der Dunkelheit marschieren wir los, an steilen Hängen vorbei, von denen immer wieder unberechenbar Steine gross wie Medizinbälle donnern. Erst kurz vor dem Hochlager, wo einige ihre Zelte aufgeschlagen haben, stossen wir auf den Gletscher, auf dem wir dann über einen steilen Aufschwung zum Gipfel hinaufsteigen. Elbrus (5642 Meter), Dychtau (5204 Meter), Koschtantau (5152 Meter) Uschba (4737 Meter), rattert Otari die Namen der Berge herunter, die wir von dort oben sehen können. Und er zählt Gipfel auf, von denen wir noch nie gehört haben. Im Kaukasus gibt es ganz offensichtlich noch viel zu entdecken.

Gut zu wissen

Anbieter: Der Anbieter Top Mountain Tours (www.top-mountain-tours.de) hat in diesem Sommer zwei zehntägige Reisen mit Ziel Kasbek im Angebot. Eine achttägige Kasbek-Besteigung kann bei Diamir (www.diamir.de) gebucht werden. Vor Ort unterstützt die deutschsprachige Agentur Georgia-Insight Reisende bei der Planung einer Kasbek-Besteigung (www.georgia-insight.eu) 

Literatur: Marlies Kriegenherd: Georgien. Erschienen in der Reihe Reise-Know-how, 3., neu bearbeitete und komplett aktualisierte Auflage für 2013/2014, 29.90 Franken.

TRAVEL: The Rooms Hotel in Kazbegi, Georgia (yatzer.com)

(yatzer.com) published in: Travel By Tina Komninou, 24 October 2012 

photos © Irakli Bluishvili 

There are certain idyllic locations around the world that simply remain as an ideal of a dream to visit in person and see these wonders up close. However, the beauty of architecture & design is that they sometimes make the visit closer to reality with the creation of one more reason to entice you to realize your dream. One such realization is the Rooms Hotel located in the magical Caucasus Mountains in Kazbegi, Georgia.

The complete creation of this hotel was achieved by Georgian Designers Nata Janberidze & Keti Toloraia. Founders of their company Rooms in 2003 which specialize in Interior and Product Design, they took the decision to mark their identity with this spectacular addition to their brand.  This year the hotel opened its doors and put the Caucasus Mountains on the map for a completely new audience. 

Looking at this former soviet Tourist Center’s building exterior structure and cladding, it is obvious that it has been designed based on the surrounding environment. If you observe the exterior from a distance, at a particular angle, you read the mountaintops as the building’s roof design. The façade is decorated with wood & metal partitions dividing the rooms and balconies while creating vertical and horizontal lines, which give the entire building a simple, geometric look. The exact same concept is perceived in the tones and the shapes of the structure. These features both organically compliment the great outdoors and we can dare say that this building adds to the beauty of the landscape. The presence of the specific wood finish on such a green environment is breathtakingly dynamic and inviting. The effect of a mountain lodge in a mod structure is perceived with great success.

Indoors, the portrayal of this ideology was of equal importance. The use of natural materials in the interior retains the 'mountain hotel' style environment, providing maximum comfort where guests feel the complete leisure and relaxation of the surroundings.  Large open spaces decorated with lounging sofas, armchairs, bookshelves, carpets and mountain accessories while taking advantage of the great views by the large glazing’s, is all that you need for a recipe of success.  The sole materials used are wood, steel & brick retaining a continuity and simplicity throughout the interior and giving focus to detailing as opposed to finishes. A design philosophy which you know that we strongly believe in.

Simply put, the Rooms Hotel is not just a destination, it is a successful determination.

sources: Rooms Hotel