Hiking in Kazbegi

We got up at a fairly reasonable time for our first full day in Kazbegi and had some delicious breakfast at our guest-house. Nazi's home cooking was awesome! We had really fluffy omelettes and there was lots of bread and cheese available. We also got to try Nazi's famous home-made apple jam which was very tasty. I put sugar on my omelette as I thought it tasted like eggy bread and I always put sugar on that. Everyone thought I was crazy but then what's new? We made some big sandwiches to take hiking with us for lunch and then emerged out into the fresh mountain air. 

It was cloudy but still quite sunny when we left the homestay to climb up the steep slope to the Gergeti Sameba (Trinity) Church. We hoped to also hike along the ridge line to the glacier beyond the church but, inevitably, the weather soon changed for the worse. Our short walk around the village the previous day had shown us how unfit we were (especially at that altitude where the air felt so thin) so we decided to take it easy on ourselves and take the longer but more gradual path up to the church. We walked through some woods past an interesting little cemetery with unusual headstones  that were life sized carved sculptures of the departed's head. By the time we got to the cemetery it had started raining. 

Our intended destination for the day, the Gergeti Sameba church, perched on top of the mountains above Kazbegi.

Along the Georgian Military Highway to Kazbegi

Every Georgian we'd met so far on our travels had told us that we had to visit Kazbegi because it was the "most beautiful place in Georgia" and had very "healthy air". The original name for this tiny town was Stepantsminda but it was renamed Kazbegi in 1925 during Soviet rule after the famous Georgian writer Alexander Kazbegi who was born there. In 2006, the town officially reverted to its original name but pretty much everybody we met still referred to it as Kazbegi including the marshrutka drivers who drove visitors up there. 

Kazbegi is a small town up in the mountains of northern Georgia near the border with Russia. It's located about 1700m above sea level in the Greater Caucasus mountains and is very small with a population of less than 2000. It's scenic location makes it a popular destination for hikers and mountaineering enthusiasts and I'd already seen plenty of beautiful photos of the place long before I even arrived in Georgia so I was very excited about going there armed with my camera. 

Kazbegi town nestled among the Caucasus mountains with its most famous landmark the Gergeti Trinity Church perched on the ridge above it.