VERSANT

And now the government is implementing a plan to turn this medieval mountain
zone into a tourist magnet.
Svaneti arguably has seen more change in the past few years than in the past
thousand. It’s not just the vans full of foreign backpackers discovering the region’s
pristine trekking routes. In 2012 the government installed power lines to light up even
the remotest villages. The road that links most villages of Upper Svaneti will soon
be paved all the way to Ushguli. Frenzied construction has transformed the sleepy
regional hub of Mestia into a faux Swiss resort town lined with clapboard chalets
and bookended by hyper modern government buildings and an airport terminal
out of The Jetsons. Meanwhile on the flanks of Mount Tetnuldi, directly across
the river from Jachvliani’s home in Cholashi, one of Georgia’s largest ski resorts is
beginning to take shape.
Perhaps it makes some kind of karmic sense that the mountains and stone towers
that kept outsiders at bay for all these centuries should now be enlisted to lure them
in. But will all this change save the isolated region — or doom it?
Bavchi Kaldani, the old family patriarch in Adishi, speaks in a hoarse whisper,
but his words — in the abrupt cadences of Svan — land with force: “If I stop, I’ll die.”
Even at age 86, with gnarled hands and a stooped back, Kaldani insists on carrying
on the hard labor of Svan village life: chopping wood with a heavy ax, scything grass
for his animals’ winter rations, and repairing his family’s stone tower.
“My family has lived here for
more than 1,200 years,” he
says. “How could I let my
village disappear?”
Photo © Corinne Thrash
It’s a measure of the precariousness of mountain life that Kaldani too was once
tempted to leave Svaneti. Raised in a machubi — a traditional stone dwelling for
extended families, livestock included — he remembers when Adishi bustled with 60
families, seven churches, and dozens of sacred artifacts. Clan leaders from across
Svaneti rode days on horseback to pray before the village’s leather bound Adishi
Gospels, dating from 897. Disaster always loomed, however, and Kaldani struggled to
stockpile enough for the bitter winters, which even today cut off Adishi from the rest
of Svaneti. Yet nothing prepared him for the deadly avalanches of 1987. He kept his
family safe in the base of their stone tower, but dozens of others died across Svaneti
that winter — and the exodus began.
As more Svan families emigrated to lowland Georgia, Adishi became a ghost town.
At one point only four families remained — Kaldani and his wife, the village librarian,
among them. Kaldani’s sons, who had also abandoned Adishi, persuaded their
parents to join them one winter on the arid plains. They lasted four months before
rushing back to Adishi. “My family has lived here for more than 1,200 years,” he says.
“How could I let my village disappear?”
Going about his chores in his traditional woolen cap, Kaldani embodies the
persistence of Svan culture — and the peril it faces. He is one of the few remaining
fully fluent speakers of Svan. He is also one of the last village mediators, who have
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