Tour leader Jude Holliday recently led our recce group tour to the North Caucasus. Below Jude reflects on a true adventure involving picnics in the heart of the mountains, Jeremy Corbyn making front page news, and the discovery of a boulder blocking the road mere kilometres from the next hotel...
The Black Sea was a smooth, still, grey colour that perfectly matched the sky. We gazed at it from our train which hugged the coastline as we travelled north from Sochi – southern Russia’s Riviera – and were rewarded with the sight of dolphins swimming close to the shore. An auspicious start to a tour, we thought.
We left the train and travelled up to Mazmai, a small village of tiny wooden cottages, stunningly beautiful wooded hills and raging waterfalls. Rain and mist swirled in the air, but the temperature was pleasant. We ate warming stews, experienced a Banny Venik (Russian Bath) and plunged into the icy river. Invigorating to say the least.
Piling into beefy four-wheel drive vehicles, we headed off into the North Ossetian mountains. The rain held off while we had our picnic; we drank a glass of delicious Ossetian wine and thanked the pagan gods for smiling upon us. We continued our journey along the mountain pass tracks, passing abandoned fortresses and mesmerised by the swathes of wildflowers which carpeted every inch of the land.
The ground became more difficult to traverse given the rains that had preceded our visit; our drivers skillfully negotiated their way over an area where the land had slid away recently and over two angry waterfalls. Our drivers loved every minute of it! As did we!
As our true North Causasus travel adventure continued, we climbed higher, the day was drawing in and more rain loomed. The hotel was about seven kilometres away. What could stop us now? Well, a boulder would do it. We all scrambled from our vehicles and gazed at a recently fallen rock that only dynamite would shift; we had every conceivable tool in the vehicles – wrenches, pulleys, spades, pickaxes, jacks... but no TNT. The gods it seemed had decided to play a trick on us.
Retracing our footsteps (back over the waterfalls, the landslide) we arrived by another route at our night's lodging. Two hours later than scheduled, but everyone agreed that given the scenery, the flora, the imposing historical buildings, fresh air and picnic, not to mention the narrow escape with a giant rock, it had been the best day so far.
We decided to visit the gods once more. This time, a magical walk where dappled sunlight (yes, the sun shone on us) played on lush ferns, prolific mosses and lichens. Glacial waters flowed in the ravine below us and the air was scented with a profusion of wild azaleas. The trail led us to Rekom Shrine, a place for pan-Ossetian worship.
The belief system Adyghe Habze takes its name from the Circassian epic of the same name, originally orally transmitted. Although historically Islamised over 350 years ago, the period of the Soviet Union contributed to a severe weakening of Islam in the area, and especially among the Adyghe-Circassians who live here. With the fall of the Soviet regime, the revival of Habzism as a Neo-Pagan phenomenon was supported by Adyghe intellectuals as part of a rise in national and cultural identity in the 1990s and more recently as a thwarting force against Wahhabism and Islamic fundamentalism.
In complete contrast our next stop was for a photograph of Stalin, painted on a rock on an isolated mountain road (he and Lenin have been recurrent themes so far), followed by a stop in a tin-mining town for a glass of fresh lemon juice in a workers’ canteen. It also gave us a chance to catch up on world news; the Communist Party have a notice board in the town where they display the daily newspaper. Jeremy Corbyn was front page news; ‘The Nightmare of Theresa May’ declared the headlines of Soviet Russia, above an article asking ‘Has Trump Harmed Justice?’
Despite the rain that has been intermittent and heavy, our spirits have been far from dampened in our first week in the North Caucasus; the Adyghe Circassian and Ossetian people have been fascinated by our presence and hospitable to the extreme. Every day in the North Caucasus has brought new adventures, new sights, new friends and given us much food for thought – as well as delicious cuisines.
