In the southern-most corner of Georgia, where the border meets Turkey and Armenia on the top of a large plateau, a river rushes madly northward after it collects the melting snows of northern Turkey, it then drains the lower Caucasus and upper Caucasus, it cuts through the Georgian plain into Azerbaijan, its force is harnessed and pacified, and finally deposits its calmed waters into the Caspian Sea.
This is the river Kura, named after Cyrus the Great of Persia, one of the great rivers of civilization, settled for over 7000 years, and source of life for thousands of generations.
In this corner of Georgia, a cave monastery city of orthodox monks overlooks the valley below. Castles and fortresses cling to the cliffs where tributaries join the great river, witnesses of tides of armies and invaders that flowed west and east. But the river flows on, over the abstract barriers of borders, and over the very real barriers of the dams built to exploit its energy.

 

In this corner only a handful of villages live by the river, sleepily looking at the infrequent cars and buses carrying the few tourists visiting Vardzia monastery. The rest of the time people tend to their gardens, make wine, and walk the cattle to the grazing fields on the sides of the cliffs. Over the millennia the river has carved through the landscape, digging the terrain, creating sharp cliffs on either side. These are bare but shine bright green in the setting sun; water flows down from every direction, spurting out of the ground, creating small streams which reinforce each other until they join the roaring river below.

 

We followed a muddy path which rose along one side of the cliff, constantly jumping over streams, our boots squelching at every step. We climbed a few hundred feet until we reached stretches of terraced meadows where the grass grew tall and thick. From our vantage point we could see the ruins of a castle dominating a cliff on the other side of the river, and the outline of the valley as it descended from the Turkish mountains in the south.
Cows grazed in the fields further up, and were soon called to descend, every herd following their leader’s bell.

 

We pitched the tent and spent the evening jumping over the stones and streams until we found a waterfall, water shooting literally out of the ground. As the sun settled, light and shade played with the landscape into thousands of gradients of green and blue.

We awoke early the next day and began our climb to the plateau above. We did not know what to expect, and there was no path. We had to find our way, looking for the softer inclines, and walking sideways to make the ascent easier on our legs. Full, heavy backpacks on our backs, and the rising sun hitting us hard on our heads.

 

The top was uncannily flat. A perfect flat table extending all the way to the horizon. And barren. No trees, just yellow dusty steppe and dry grass. A village was perched on the edge of the cliff, and as we walked through backyards and gardens we collapsed on a bench, legs turned to jelly, and our backs sticky with sweat. A family welcomed us in for some stale bread and hard salty cheese. The villagers were all ethnic Armenian, and looked much poorer than most of the other villages we had crossed so far. It lay at the end of a dust road, overlooking the plateau on one side, and the cliff on the other. It was holiday, the last day of school, and families were going towards the church dressed in their best clothes, waving and wondering what we were doing there, as children ran around asking for their pictures to be taken.

We left the village taking the dust road; our maps showed a lake and a city ten kilometres away. Around us silent fields, gushes of dust hitting us in the wind, and far in the distance the outline of mountains. The scenery was dramatically different from the green, lush valley we had left behind in the morning. The wet, rich atmosphere we had breathed by the river, had turned into a dry, arid landscape, reminiscent of central Asian steppes. A couple old, battered soviet cars carrying relatives to the village’s feast drove past us, lifting gushes of dust which we coughed away.

 

This is the Javakheti plateau, flat as a plain, but over 2000 metres above sea level. We finally accepted a ride, and spent the rest of the day hitch-hiking and driving across the vast plateau, passing by frozen alpine lakes fed by thousands of streams descending from the mountains. Next to the small winding road, a modern railway is under construction, funded by Turkey and the EU which will eventually connect by rail Baku and the rich gas-fields on the Caspian Sea with the West. In these vast, empty lands, away from the centres, the cities, and modernity, we could see the very visible lines we so often take for granted being laid down, track after track, and pipe after pipe, from the Caspian Sea across the Georgian valleys and plateaus, into Turkey and Anatolia, and finally onwards to Greece and Europe. This is where the imaginary lines of our borders take form, as the routes, tracks, and pipelines are drawn and built, crossing friendly countries, and carefully avoiding others (Russia and Armenia), in the game of international geo-politics played in the lobbies of luxury hotels, but whose consequences are seen in these remote lands where pipelines thrive, the modern, silent routes of our century’s invisible silk: gas.