Dartlo

Dartlo is the image most people carry away from Tusheti, and the reason is obvious on arrival. The village is built in terraces on the left bank of the Pirikiti Alazani; stone houses stand one above another, every roof laid in flat slate, and square defensive towers rise between them.

The towers date from the 16th to 18th centuries and were built against Dagestani raiding parties who crossed the ridge each summer. The ground floor held livestock, the middle floor the family, the top floor was for watching and shooting. Several have been rebuilt over the past twenty years with international funding, using the original dry-stone technique rather than mortar, and the work is good enough that it takes a second look to tell old from new.

In the middle of the village stands the sabcheo, a half-circle of stone benches where the council of elders sat and settled disputes. It is not a reconstruction: the stones sit where they have sat for centuries.

Above Dartlo, an hour of steep climbing, is Kvavlo, an abandoned hamlet with one surviving tower and a view down the whole valley. If you have a single spare day in Dartlo, that is the walk to do.

The village lives only in summer. Families come up in June after the flocks and go back down to the plains in October — Tush shepherding still runs on that seasonal migration, with sheep walked hundreds of kilometres each way. In winter Dartlo is empty, snowed in and unreachable.

Beyond Dartlo the track continues up the gorge to Chesho, Parsma and Girevi, each smaller and emptier than the last, until the road stops short of the Chechen border. Walking or riding that stretch is the reason a good many people come to Tusheti in the first place.