After following the Georgian Military Highway to the Russian border, my Italian interpreter and I felt like stretching our legs a little after so much driving. I stopped at a crude dirt track leading up into the mountains of the Caucasus and we decided to hike up the road to see where it went.

On the way up, we came across several men working on this truck… They were friendly, but given the language barrier, we were unable to communicate effectively with each other. They were definitely surprised to see us though:

As we discovered after several more minutes of walking, the road led to the small village of Tsdo. In the picture below you can see the entire village:

I immediately liked the village. It felt very “authentic” for lack of a better description:

The man in the picture above lives in this home:

Given the severity of the winters here, I was curious as to how many months this beekeeper was able to keep his bees out:

The home below is where the beekeeper pictured above lives. And as it turns out, he is the owner of the second vehicle in the village (the first being the truck in the opening picture). We discovered that everyone else gets to the village by hitchhiking to the bottom of the hill and then hiking up as we did:

The villagers grow vegetables for themselves in small plots such as the one in the foreground… In the background is the border with Chechnya:

Not such a bad view to have if you are toiling away out in the garden as she was:

This cemetery was just outside of Tsdo… Look at the view – there are worse places to be buried:

It was fun to visit this little town on the Georgian frontier. The people were friendly and the setting was beautiful. You never know what you’re going to find when you set off down an unknown road…