Monestaries in the Mountain

Davit Gareji-- on the border of Georgia and Azerbaijan, a monestary complex founded in the sixth century. Destroyed by Mongols in 1265; revived by Giorgi V (the brillliant) only to be sacked by Persian Shah Abbas, who executed over six thousand of the monks on Easter, 1615. Things were quiet for a while until the Red Army started using the area, which resembles Afghanistan in parts, as an artillery range--to the point where they aimed at the chapels. When the perestroika period began, protesters in Tbilisi demanded a stop to this vandalism; ironically only a few years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Georgian army was using the area for military exercises...but this time protesters actually camped out downrange until the army left.


The place has been inhabited for six millenia, since the bronze age; by the first millenium, iron-smelting humans had totally deforested the entire area, creating the desertified moonscape-like terrain (totally unlike the rest of Georgia) that you see in the pictures. Vipers abound. In the cave we stopped at for lunch, I found a scorpion under the first rock I flipped over. Asa was kept on a short leash.

On the drive out, we saw a sunflower farm, a small blue farm truck, and not much more--the silence was overwhelming.

The sandstone cliffs that hold the monestary complex are part of a giant sedimentary sandwich of rocks that have been uplifted and eroded into amazing canyons, mountains, and painted landscapes.


We entered the monestary, and then hiked above it.





It was hot. We brang water.

Asa was a champ and hiked most of the way up himself. We rewarded him with pears and cheese.

Monks built the caves by heating the sandstone with fire and then dashing cold water on it, cracking it and allowing it to be crumbled away. Every bucket of water had to be carried up 1000 meters to the top. Here's a view of Azerbaijan, to the south...Nothing like this in Vermont!