Mestia

Svaneti has been settled since antiquity — the Greek geographer Strabo describes the Soanes of these mountains, placing them roughly where the Svans live now — and Mestia grew as one of the main communities of Upper Svaneti, the valley of the upper Enguri. Its towers, most of them raised between roughly the ninth and twelfth centuries, belong to a building tradition found across the region: a tall stone shaft attached to a family house, used as a refuge against raiders, snow and the feuds that clan society produced.

The high valleys were hard to reach and harder to hold. Svaneti kept a large degree of independence through the medieval centuries, and its churches became a strongroom for Georgian religious art, receiving icons, crosses and manuscripts sent up from the lowlands when invasion threatened. Much of what survives is now gathered in the museum at Mestia. The princes of Upper Svaneti signed a treaty of protectorate with the Russian Empire in 1833; Russia abolished the principality's autonomy in 1857 and tightened its taxes in 1875, and an unsuccessful anti-Soviet uprising followed in 1921.

Soviet rule brought a road, a school, electricity and a district administration to Mestia, and avalanches in 1987 destroyed homes across the region and killed at least eighty people, many of them schoolchildren. After independence the region became poor and remote again. From about 2010 the Georgian government rebuilt the centre, restored towers, opened the airport and developed the ski areas at Hatsvali and Tetnuldi, and Mestia turned into the base for walking and skiing in the Caucasus that it is today.

Svaneti has its own language, Svan, a Kartvelian language distinct from Georgian that has kept features the other Kartvelian languages lost; Georgian serves as its written and literary language, UNESCO classes Svan as definitely endangered, and it is spoken at home in Mestia alongside Georgian. With it comes a distinct musical tradition, including what is often called the most archaic of Georgia's polyphonic singing, sung by men in tight harmonies at feasts, funerals and church festivals. Round felt hats, hand-woven cloth and carved wooden furniture belong to the same inheritance.

Religion here mixes Orthodox Christianity with much older practice. Villages keep their own chapels and their own feast days, families guard icons that have been in the community for generations, and and ceremonies such as Lamproba, when torches of birch or oak are lit in early February, carry older agricultural meaning beneath a Christian feast day. Kvirikoba on 28 July draws Svans from across the valleys to the church of Lagurka at Kala.

Svan society was organised around clans, with a long history of blood feud that the towers were built to survive, and reputations for independence and for hospitality that are both taken seriously. Mountaineering is a source of local pride — the climber Mikheil Khergiani, born here, was a seven-time Soviet national champion known as the Tiger of the Rocks, and Svan guides have long worked on Caucasus expeditions. Visitors are received warmly, but Svans dislike being treated as a spectacle.

About 2,000 people live in Mestia itself, with roughly 9,000 in the surrounding municipality, which covers a large area of high valleys and dozens of small villages. The population fell sharply in the late twentieth century as families moved to the lowlands, and many houses in outlying hamlets are used only in summer.

Tourism is now the main employer in the village: guesthouses, small hotels, restaurants, drivers, guides, ski staff and shops all depend on it, and a considerable share of households take in visitors. Around that sits the older economy of livestock, hay, potatoes and home cheese-making, with animals driven up to summer pastures and back down in autumn. Public sector jobs in the municipality, the school and the hospital matter too.

The year splits in two. In the walking and climbing months from June to October the square is busy with minibuses and rucksacks, and in the ski season from January the hotels fill again; the shoulder months are quiet, wet and slow. Winter can close the road down the gorge for a time, so households lay in supplies, and heating is mostly by wood. Continuing concerns are the state of the roads, the reliability of electricity and water, avalanche risk in the side valleys, and whether young people will stay rather than move to Tbilisi.

Svan cooking is mountain food: filling, cheese-heavy and built on what grows or grazes above 1,000 metres. The signature dish is kubdari, a leavened bread stuffed with chunks of lamb, kid or pork, onions and Georgian spices, and listed as part of Georgia's intangible cultural heritage in 2015. Chvishtari is a cornmeal flatbread with cheese worked through the dough and fried; petvraali is a bread filled with cheese and millet. Sulguni and fresh mountain cheeses turn up at almost every meal.

Svan salt, svanuri marili, is the region's best-known export: coarse salt ground with coriander, dill, blue fenugreek, marigold, garlic, cumin and red pepper, used on soups, salads, meat, potatoes and fish, and sold in bags at village stalls. Mountain honey, smoked and dried meats, matsoni yoghurt and pickled vegetables round out the winter store cupboard.

The national Georgian dishes are all here as well — khachapuri, khinkali, grilled meats, walnut sauces and aubergine rolls — usually in an Imeretian version brought up from the lowlands. Vines do not grow at this altitude, so tables lean on wine carried up from Imereti and Kakheti, on local spirits made from fruit such as elderberry and from honey, and on chacha, the clear pomace brandy, which in Svaneti is often home-distilled and served in small glasses with a toast.