Kazbegi

It’s been an eventful week… I left my village for good, got a parasite, met Condoleezza Rice, and visited the most beautiful place in Georgia that I've seen so far, about 3 hours North of Tbilisi. Mount Kazbek's peak is about 14,600ft above sea level, and its only the 3rd highest mountain in Georgia and the 7th highest in the Caucasus Mountains.

The first couple hours of our hike were so foggy that we couldn’t see more than a few hundred feet in front of us. Here we are thinking that our day would be ruined.

But we just had to push through it! Here is the 14th century church, Sameba, silhouetted multiple times as we hiked up because I couldn't choose just one! Every time I turned around the view was different.

I don't understand these cows. If I had to basically crawl on all fours and hold onto grass while hiking up some of these slopes, how do these cows get up here?? And why? Is the grass up here more delicious than in the valley? And why do their owners just let them scale mountains like that, don’t they have any idea where they are? It makes me feel a little inadequate to be shown up by a cow.

The village at the bottom of the mountain was adorable, but I can't imagine what hell it would be in winter. This man was impressed that we knew Georgian and wanted his picture taken.

We also hiked about 10 km North to Darial Gorge which is on the border of Russia.