It was March 3rd, Mother's day in Georgia, and school was cancelled. Our school secretary Julia suggested that we go on an expedition to Koghori (pronounced Ko-jo-ri) for a picnic; Julia is a hoot and so of course we said "yes! Yes yes yes!" without really looking at a map or anything. Kara baked some gingerbread cookies before we left and I looked unsuccessfully for the place on a map. When we finally met up at noon, I was hungry already and had no idea where we were going...but Zooom! off went Julia in her Mazda, with us and two other carloads of people in tow (John and Julie Zaiser, John Kern, the usual suspects...), leading us on a bit of a goose chase out of the Tbilisi valley and along roads, then dirt tracks, then across muddy cowfields...until we saw a great tooth of a peak rising in front of us--an old lava pipe or I'm a duck. We dismounted and hiked up while a few Georgian Men (Salome's husband among them) cooked shashlik at the picnic/supra table...Koghori was the site of a great battle where a few young Georgian men in 1920 were utterly defeated by Soviet hosts, leading to the creation of the Georgian SSR. There's a monument and a dream tree...and a really cool mountaintop castle ruin. SCROLL DOWN for the video.
Julia climbing up:
John, ya can't get thar from here:
John and Kara don't look down:
Kara is in the middle of this photo, a loooooong way down:
Julia's father was a famous mountaineer and a surgeon. I know for a fact that she was a surgeon; it appears that she's not bad on the climb either...
John looking up at what Julia had just climbed. "No way man!"
biiig cliff.
Kara contemplating a climb.
Julie, Lala, Julie, John, Eli
5214 The supra: some kick but barbque...
And the video:
John looking up at what Julia had just climbed. "No way man!"
And the video:
No comments:
Post a Comment