The Wooden Sleighs of Caucasus

by Lejla Harbaš (Slovenia)

I didn't expect to find Georgia

Trekking among almost medieval villages of the beautiful Svaneti region in Georgia teaches you that the future is reaching even the remotest parts of Caucasus. “Do you serve coffee-to-go here?” was a question asked by a middle-aged woman with a camera hanging around her neck, clearly in a hurry to get her coffee in a plastic-paper cup. This question was applied to a simple Georgian man living in the second highest inhabited village of Georgia, Ushguli. He had a wooden stall in his backyard, selling all homemade teas, honey, spirits, extraordinary beautiful hand-carved wooden souvenirs and of course some tea, juice or coffee to drink while sitting on wooden benches he made. You could tell he was a master in wood carving. But regarding that woman, he did not understand anything she said but coffee. After insisting for some time, the woman and her husband realized that there is no other way but to sit down and enjoy that coffee there. The truth is, this question was out of place. She was standing in the backyard of a house that could easily resemble those from some centuries ago. They are built completely out of stone and are cold to sleep in at night. Cattle, sheep and many stray dogs fill the narrow streets between the houses. And you can imagine how muddy and full of cow chips those streets are. This was no place for new white sports shoes or a coffee-to-go. Meanwhile, the sun was slowly going down and my boyfriend and I were gazing at the snow-covered peaks of Caucasus. Surrounded by a valley of green hills and distant glacier river sounds we admired the beauty of this place. The only other sound you could also hear was our wood carving master, our host, neighing on all four while playing with his two little kids on the grass. The children were laughing from the bottom of their hearts. Their mother, on the other hand, served us a dinner of our lifetime. Vegetable soup, khachapuri – a typical Georgian bread filled with cheese, and tomato-cucumber salad covered with walnuts. This was all we needed after a long day of hiking. We were feeling so grateful to have decided to come to Georgia and trek for four days from Mestia to Ushguli. That 57 km of the route taught us so much. About us, people, and about life. But hearing the coffee-to-go question spiraled me back to a few days before when we approached Zhabeshi. Walking beside the river among the grazing cows we already saw the village from the distance. Happy to be reaching it soon we hurried to jump from one stone to the other, trying to avoid water streams coming from the hills. Very soon we saw a Georgian father and son walking beside a bull that was dragging a wooden sleigh. Almost like the one Santa Clause has. A beautiful one. But those sleighs were not full of gifts. They were piled with a mountain of garbage and plastic soon to be disposed into the glacier river. A reality check I naively didn't expect to find. And it struck me... All those beautiful and almost untouched places on Earth bring us, the travelers, a glimpse of the past life, but to the locals, we are bringing the future. One cannot come without the other. And even though we both, the locals and the travelers, hope for the same thing - a better life, there is something more in the power of the traveler… It is RESPONSIBILITY. Responsibility-to-go.