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Research Team
Relive the day's action and insights with daily journal entries, digital photos, audio reports and more. Select one of the teams below to visit their latest entry.

Field Team
Follow Pat O'Hara's search for the perfect moment in the national parks of the Eastern Caucasus. Eleanor O'Hanlon reports, with photos by Russell Sparkman.

RESEARCH TEAM
Georgia veteran Peter Nasmyth returns to guide us into the history and heritage of the region. Denise Rocco captures it all in digital images.

April 29:
In Ancient Groves

April 28:
Batumi and Beyond

April 26:
Fly Tusheti Air

April 25:
An Image of Eden

April 24:
The Road of Friendship

April 22:
Patriarch of the Forest

April 21:
Monastery in the Desert

April 20:
Vashlovani Reserve

April 19:
The Living Pillar

April 18:
Preparing for the Journey

April 17:
Georgian Table

April 12:
Tbilisi Overview

Email Teams in Georgia
 
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Previous Dispatch

We spend the night at 2200 meters, overlooking a vast, empty valley. At midnight a thunderstorm breaks right outside my window – loading and discharging not above, but directly opposite the curtains in the pitch blackness.

I began to understand how locals can fill the rocky hulks with human moods and forms. The road's highest mountain, Mt. Kazbek, is said to be inhabited by a man chained to its flanks, Amirani. This is curiously similar to that other myth of the mountain, Prometheus, chained to a mountainside for stealing fire from the gods – the symbol of consciousness for humanity.

At 7 a.m. our consciousness is stirred by a thin grey dawn and silver moon. The mountains look back with that terrible impassiveness, suddenly concealing many thoughts and feelings. What will they do next?

We stop at the road's summit, Jvari Pass (2395 meters, 7860 feet). We look nervously at the melting avalanches, abandoned gas pipes bent like paperclips, roadside graves, ruined vehicles left in the snow. I remark how the Soviets once renamed the highway 'The Road of Friendship.' Soso laughs, 'Friendship…where?'

Next Dispatch
 

Old Photograph from the Alpine Museum
 
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