Overnight at gray-haired Kazbek

I don’t even know why this night made such an impression on me. Either because it was my first night in the mountains under the open sky, or the euphoria from visiting a new country affected, or because the plans began to come true, and yet we successfully crawled here in our car despite the terrifying local skepticism.

My companions have long been peacefully sniffing in their tents, I was all sitting on the slope, and next to it was the red eye of my “Canon”, set for manual exposure. At such moments, suddenly there is an extra 15-20 minutes between the shutter clicks to think about something, what was not enough time on the road, or to scroll through the memory of the entire chronology of this busy day ...

8:30

We left Vladikavkaz. We drove Upper Lars and stood in line at the Georgian border.

11:00

We drove into the village of Stepantsminda. We are in Georgia! This is my 25 country.

There is nothing special to walk and watch here - some cafes, shops, and guesthouses.

Locals live in the mountains. The whole economy is built on tourists: some go to Kazbek, others - uphill, to the church.

The city has a huge number of identical Mitsubishi Delica. “Delics” are the same “Pajers”, but can accommodate 8 people. From each take ~ 20 bucks for "back and forth and wait upstairs." This option doesn’t drive us - we have a ton of things and tents with us.

We need nosebleed at 2170 m (the church is visible on the mountain in the upper right corner) on our Outlander. There is a rocky serpentine, which is washed away by streams every spring. This is at hand for the locals - the worse the road, the less daredevils get there in their cars and the more they use the services of Delica Taxi.

In the parking lot, several taxi drivers attack us at once. When they find out that we are going to drive in our car, they grab our head: "Wai, sousem crazy sasla!" One even offered to put his “Delica” against mine, that we would not call in and return. They refused. But in vain.

We leave from the square towards the church. We drive 50 meters - the police with flashing lights are catching up from behind. In the style of the American cop - a uniform cap, a hand on the thigh, a head turned 90 degrees - an officer comes out of the jeep and, without looking at me, says: “Gaspadyn Aleksay, your passenger didn’t jump the ramen ...”. It is useless to justify oneself - they specially stand there and catch tourists. They certainly won’t be left behind - this is their bread. We wrote out a receipt for 40 lari (1000 rubles), which we paid later in Tbilisi (this needs to be done, otherwise problems may arise at the border, they have a fine base, checked).

After 30 meters, the local mafia taxi blocks the path and practically does not let go upward, surrounding the car. I had to say that we do not need a church and we are going to rest in a guesthouse.

That’s all, it was their last outpost, nobody will impose their services anymore, uh ...

15:20

Finally got out of the village. He is also a skinner. The returning “Delicas” are constantly coming towards us. Parting with them in stone bags of buildings is not always easy. There is a slight nervous tension in the car after all these horror stories of taxi drivers. But we are confidently going upstairs, lost a couple of times in the maze of streets.

15:40

We climbed up, despite the fact that the road was actually not easy. Deep potholes from spring streams, sharp and large stones, a rather steep climb, an overloaded machine - in a couple of places I had to smell the scorching clutch.
In the afternoon on the mountain is full of people. Some climb on foot, some on horses, some on the "delics", some on their jeeps.

16:30

As soon as we put up the tents, it was raining with hail. But these are mountains - the weather changes every minute.

17:30

The rain ended, climbed out of their tents and cars. We decided to look around a bit and take a walk to the church. The road to the mountain is half the trouble. A real off-road adventure awaits offroad lovers here:

The feeling of the place is indescribable! They say that Kazbek rarely opens completely to the eye and only to good people.

Under the mountain stretches the village of Stepantsminda. It’s an hour's walk away.

The Holy Trinity Church (Gergetis Tsminda Sameba) was built here on the site of an ancient pagan temple in the XIV century. They say that a pagan idol, a silver ram, is hidden from the eyes to this day.

Inside the temple is ascetic and simple. There is no decoration and gilding: there are no frescoes, no plaster, the walls are made of stone blocks. It’s dark inside - from electricity there is only an external illumination in the form of a powerful spotlight. Inside is a thick iron door with metal rings.

You can’t take pictures inside. We are limited to photos inside the bell tower.

18:20

We’re not alone back in the camp. Having posed a little, the dog goes back to the church. It became completely deserted on the mountain.

19:30

Waited! From behind the back over Kazbek, a ray of the Sun broke through and lazily dragged along the top of the opposite ridge.

A bewitching sight! Sergey spotted a Buddha sitting at the very top of the ridge. Will you find? :)

After 15 minutes, the lights went out, dusk slowly descended onto the amphitheater.

21:30

When normal people go to bed after a hard day, photographers take equipment and look for a convenient point for shooting. As darkness fell, the sky suddenly cleared, revealing billions of stars in a matter of minutes. The wind completely died down, giving us the opportunity to hear the whisper of gray-haired Kazbek.

Perhaps the stars go best with the mountains. This way your insignificance and dimensions are felt more strongly, which in mathematical terms can be “neglected”.

A grain of sand, an atom, a quark - who else are you on this scale?

And your life is a flash of a meteor in the starry sky. The only difference is how bright she was and whether she left a mark on someone else's photograph.

00:15

Perhaps enough for today. There is 5 hours left until dawn - you need to sleep a bit in front of a long road and again get up for beautiful shots.

5:00

The alarm clock pulls out of a coma. He looked out of the tent - rain and hopeless dullness. No luck ... We sleep another 15 minutes.

5:30

I looked out of the tent - gray ... But something tells me that I need to crawl out ...

Kazbek is on fire! I grab a tripod, almost barefoot running on the wet grass and clay to the spot observed since the evening. I’m laying out, I have time to take a series of shots. I caught it!

5:50

After 10 minutes, a dense white coverlet fell down the mountain. These are mountains.

7:00

We unload all the things in the rain, change the punctured wheel to a "spare tire", fold up again and descend along the muddy road to Stepantsminda. Successfully and without adventure. The village is just waking up ...