Bazaleti Lake

Bazaleti is a small lake with an outsized place in Georgian memory. It is a shallow oval of water about a kilometre across, ringed by low wooded hills at 880 metres, forty minutes north of Mtskheta and a few kilometres off the Military Highway. Physically it is unremarkable. Culturally it is one of the best-known names in the country, and the reason is a poem.

In 1883 Ilia Chavchavadze published "The Lake of Bazaleti", built on a local legend: at the bottom lies a golden cradle holding a royal infant, waiting for the day Georgia becomes whole again. Chavchavadze was writing under Russian rule, and every Georgian reader understood what the cradle stood for. The poem is still taught in schools, which is why people who have never seen the lake know its name.

The water is fed by springs and rainfall rather than by any river, which is unusual, and the level barely shifts through the year. It is shallow, around seven metres at the deepest, so it warms quickly and by July it is genuinely comfortable to swim in — far more so than the cold reservoir at Zhinvali down the road. Carp and other fish are taken here, mostly by locals with long rods.

The shore is a mixed picture. The eastern side has a strip of hotels, cafés and a small beach with pedalos, busy at summer weekends and shuttered in winter. The western and southern shores are quiet: reeds, pasture and paths through the hills. Walking right round the lake takes about ninety minutes on rough ground.

Out of season the place is bleak — grey water, closed shutters, mud. Between June and September it is a good way to break the drive north: a swim, a plate of trout, and back on the highway within two hours.