Day Five

Car and Feet

After breakfast today, we drove to see some area sights. Off the Military Highway, the roads are really rough, bridges might be missing parts, creeks might need to be crossed by the car, and single-lane mountain roads might have two-way traffic. We did turn around a couple of times to avoid the worst. We passed lots of cattle and some donkeys in the roads today. 

Our first stop was an Atlas Obscura site that Maria found: the Giant Heads of Sno.  An old man sculpts faces into large boulders, all by himself in a grassy field, out in the open. 

He is actually a trained artist, and taught for years in Tbilisi, before returning to his hometown, to start this project. He depicts poets, kings, and heros of Georgian history, and some religious figures, to preserve his country’s culture. His goal is to make 500 heads and have an open air museum of them. He has a half dozen or so now. In the Soviet days, the state sponsored his work, but he did it all by hand, so a face took a full summer. Now he gets no subsidy, but has power tools, so can carve a face in about a week. Behold the generator for his power tools. Hand built, too. 

He lives on site in a tiny hut.

This is a bottle he etched with Georgian calligraphy. We came away with it in a fair exchange. 

Interior of his hut.

He explained his work to us, though he knew no English; but with Russian exchanges with Maria, bits of German, and “lots of hands and feet” we got the gist. 

In typical eastern hospitality, he brought out his Schnapps, bread and cheese, and shared with his guests.

That was NOT Jäegermeister in the bottle. 

“Jesus,” he said, and pointed out the use of the stone’s qualities to add expressiveness to the face: here the red tones indicating the blood of Christ.

White veins in the rock indicate tears.

In Progress

From there we went to the village of Sno, home to 150 souls. It is known for its bottled water (which we were served in restaurants), and as the birthplace of the sitting Georgian Patriarch, who has a residence with a little church next to the village. And the village has a 16th c. tower and fortification ruin. 

Some of us found it necessary to go up and in. Others of us did not.

We walked through the village, and half its population found a reason to go outside then….

Then we went across the bridge and street to the Patriarch’s residence and church and gardens. A statue of the legendary king Vakhtang Gorgasali (also seen in the Soviet equestrian statue in Tbilisi) adorns the village entrance. This was a king from the mid-400’s to mid-500’s. Crowned at 15, he gathered troops to rescue  his kidnapped sister from the Alans. He fought with the Persians in India, and hand-to-hand combat with kings, and amassed great wealth. He discovered some warm springs while hunting, and founded the city of Tbilisi there - the name means Warm City. He got the Georgian church independent from the Greek Orthodox, and built churches, bridges, roads, and fortified cities. And then he fought the Persians to gain his country’s independence, dying in the process, but only after a 45 year reign. In all, quite the national hero.

Gate to Patriarch’s residence.

From there we went to see some waterfalls, or at least some did. One of us did not choose to cross a strange bridge of rock slab and metal plates on a wooden pole. I sat on a rock and did ink sketches of the landscape, and talked with some teen girls in head to toe black, visiting the area with their family from Saudi Arabia, who came to look, and asked for my Instagram contact (sorry, none) and offered me Arabic cookies. They spoke good English. 

The picture quality is poor, but it’s the only one I have to show the bridge. 

The others hiked up to see some lower and upper waterfalls and the remains of a fortification glued to a rocky cliff. 

That was the morning and midday excursion. We went back to the hotel before heading out again, so Part Two will follow.