Bread and Ashes: A Walk Through the Mountains of Georgia
SynopsisPlot
Tony Anderson set out in the summer of 1998 to walk through Georgia. He wanted particularly to visit the Georgian mountain tribes - Tush, Khevsurs, Ratchuelians, and Svans - to discover if they shared a common mountain culture, and to test the old idea of the Caucasus as an impenetrable barrier from sea to sea. From Azerbaijan to Svaneti, Anderson found communities where the old customs and beliefs still triumphantly survive, despite years of Communist oppression and the terrible uncertainties since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Story
About this book
In the summer of 1998 Tony Anderson set out to walk across the mountains of Georgia, moving from the border with Azerbaijan westward to Svaneti. He wanted to reach the highland communities of the Tush, Khevsurs, Ratchuelians and Svans, and to see whether these separate groups shared elements of a single mountain culture. His route ran through high valleys where paths and passes matter more than roads.
The walk also tested an old geographic idea: that the Caucasus range formed an unbroken wall between the Black Sea and the Caspian, sealing one side from the other. Anderson found instead communities where older customs and local beliefs continued through decades of Soviet rule and through the instability that followed the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Alongside the 1998 trek, Anderson returns to earlier visits and to Georgia's recent politics, including the move to independence and the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The account moves between close observation of daily life in small settlements and wider questions about how mountain terrain shapes borders and loyalties. Tusheti lies in the east, Svaneti in the far west, weeks apart on foot.
