High in the Caucasus Mountains, a wild landscape of glacier-capped peaks, forested valleys and villages huddled around medieval stone towers has been locked away for centuries.
But Georgia’s Upper Svaneti region — one of the highest and most remote settlements in Europe — is finally opening up to the outside world.
Home to only 14,000 people, Upper Svaneti is a relic of Georgia’s ancient culture, a living museum where the locals speak a language that broke off from Georgian 3,000 years ago.
PHOTO: AFP
Getting to the regional capital, Mestia, a village of 2,500 located 1,500m above sea level, involves a harrowing half-day drive along a rough road that winds around steep cliffs.
In a bid to attract tourists and develop the region’s economy, Georgia’s government has launched a major program to improve transport links to Svaneti, spending millions of dollars to refurbish roads and this summer announcing plans for a new airport in Mestia.
By the end of the year, Mestia Governor Gocha Chelidze said, getting to Svaneti would involve nothing more than a short flight or smooth drive up the mountain.
“I’ve been around the world and I have never seen a place like Svaneti,” Chelidze said. “It is a unique place, with beautiful nature and a rich heritage. We want the rest of the world to be able to see this.”
Less than 40 years ago, there was not even the bumpy road leading to Upper Svaneti — only mountain trails that were often closed in the winter. The region was so isolated that cultural and religious treasures were brought here for safekeeping during the many invasions Georgia has suffered over the centuries.
Some of those treasures, including a thick leather-bound Bible dating from 897, remain in the local museum.
Svaneti’s isolation bred a defiant mountain culture and throughout its history the region often enjoyed semi-independent status.
It was also riven by internal feuding, which sparked the building of its trademark defensive stone towers, some of which date from as early as the 9th century. More than 250 of the towers remain and the region has been designated a UN World Heritage Site.
During the chaos in Georgia that followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Svaneti became a haven for criminals, rife with banditry and kidnappings.
After coming to power in 2004, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent government forces to the region and reasserted control.
The government is spending 70 million Georgian lari (US$38 million) this year alone to help develop the region’s transport and tourism infrastructure, Chelidze said.
On the outskirts of Mestia, workers are building a new runway and airport that are expected to be ready by Dec. 1. Regular flights are being planned from Georgian cities including the capital, Tbilisi.
Renovation work on the road into Svaneti is also set for completion this year. Parts have already been covered in solid concrete blocks and teams of workers dot the route, hammering into the mountainsides with jackhammers.
Chelidze said the government’s efforts were aimed at improving conditions in what is one of Georgia’s poorest regions.
“This is bringing jobs and opportunities to the people here,” he said.
However, some residents in Mestia said the government was imposing top-down changes without consulting the local community and using companies and workers from outside the region for infrastructure projects.
“It’s good for Svaneti to develop, but a lot of the things they are doing are wrong,” said Temur Nakani, a 61-year-old pensioner in Mestia.
“They’re hurting farmers by taking away their land and local people are not being employed, the companies are bringing in workers from outside Svaneti.”
“No one asked us if this is what we wanted,” he said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion