Zazalo

This weekend I hiked from Ude to Zazalo Tower with a Brit, a Turk, and two Georgians. Here my friend Halice is taking in the countryside.

Nothing like a little permafrost on recently tilled earth.

The Georgian-Turkish border. There is three km of no-man's-land between Georgia and Turkey.

A Catholic Church. When the Ottoman Empire ruled Samtskhe, French missionaries traveled here and converted some locals. One of my fellow Georgian traveler's grandfather helped build this church.

A guard tower on the border across from the old tower.

Zazalo tower was built in the 12-13th centuries to protect Samtskhe from the Seljuq Turks. Locals say fish guts were thrown from the tower at invading Ottomans, but the tower was captured when an Ottoman soldier noticed a pile of fish guts next to what turned out to be the tower's secret entrance.

Lunch with a view

The town of Zazalo

The trail to the tower was little more than flat land next to a water pipe.