"Is South Ossetia messy? The people there don't love to fight at every turn, I heard that they are very indifferent. "When I was getting ready to enter South Ossetia, I asked my guide, Rankar.
She replied to me very seriously: "No, no, no, South Ossetia is a very beautiful and simple place, and people know that the outside world is worried because of the chaos in Ossetia for many years, so they will entertain guests with the best food, hoping to change those stereotypes through the experience of the witnesses." ”
From North Austria to South Austria is the Dalar Gorge, where there is ossetian only animal and plant sanctuary, covering a total area of about 30 hectares, In 1958 Soviet botanists accidentally found thousands of bison, antelopes, wild boars and other highland wild animals here, and then reported to the Soviet Union to establish a protected area. However, years of fighting in Ossetia led to the survival of the reserve, and it was not until 1998 that the reserve was officially established by North Austria and sent military police to protect the only remaining more than 200 Caucasian bison and other protected animals.
Unfortunately, we did not see these precious protected animals that day, but were amazed by the highland wildflowers, especially on the way to the Kazbek Pass, which are full of wildflowers, according to the guide, a considerable part of these wildflowers can be used in medicine, and are also one of the favorite dyeing pigments of the locals.
There were two options that night, either to stay in a hotel in the middle of the canyon, with hot water and a shop and a movie theater, or to live in the Armenian village on the hill, which has no hot water and unstable electricity, but the history of the village is quite interesting. If, geographically speaking, Armenia and Ossetia do not border each other, why is there an Armenian village on the mountain?
This matter began in the 16th century when Iran and the Ottoman partition of Armenia, there was a huge religious and cultural conflict of Armenians were expelled on a large scale, some of them lived in seclusion in the Caucasus Mountains, until the 19th century after the eastern Armenia was incorporated into Tsarist Russia, gradually moved back to their hometown, except for a mountain village in Ossetia due to traffic and information blockage, has been staying here to live.
When I asked her if she had ever thought of returning to Armenia, the old man said happily while kneading the dough: I was born at the foot of the Kazbek Mountains, and my impression of Armenia only stayed in the description of my parents, although life in the mountains is inconvenient, but you can also grow your own food and vegetables, and then return to Armenia without relatives, it is estimated that it will be more lonely.
Thankfully, after the defeat of Georgia in 2008, the situation in South Austria was relatively stable, and North Austrian merchants brought a lot of cheap Russian goods (compensatory prices), making the cost of living in mountain villages very low, coupled with the increasing influx of tourists, the elderly received and cared for tourists and had a considerable income surplus.
Under the guidance of the old man, we walked for 2 hours to find another Georgian village in the northern foothills, saying that it was a village, in fact, only one couple lived here, and the only income was sheep herding.
The old man sheared the sheep while speaking in not fluent Russian: In 2004, there were more than 200 villagers here, every year there were merchants from the mountains who came to buy wool, and no one came after the hostage incident broke out, plus in 2008, the Russian and Georgian armies confronted each other for 5 days, and the two sides dropped dozens of bombs and flew away, and the panicked Georgians did not even want to flee for their lives, only their husband and wife stayed.
After walking around the village, except for the crumbling houses and ruins, there were no wires or water pipes, and it was hard to imagine how the old man had persisted until now. The driver went into the house to see the reason for loading water, and when he came out, he reminded me not to go in, because there was wool stored under the house, so the smell in the house was very bad.
Why not go? The old man said with tears in his eyes that their son and daughter-in-law were killed in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and after the war, neither country admitted that it was their own mistake, and the desperate old man could only stay here and retreat.
On the way back, we also passed at least 10 uninhabited villages, and when I couldn't help but sigh and say" "If there is no war, this should be a livable place", Rankar replied with a bitter smile: "South Austria has a reputation as a place of longevity, almost every village and town has centenarians, but after years of war, the average local life expectancy is as low as less than 50 years old, until 2018 to recover to 70 years old."
The next stop is Shani Mountain, a snow-capped mountain at the junction of Georgia/South Austria and Ingushetia, which, although meaning iceberg in indigenous languages, has not had glaciers for many years. There was originally a small village of more than 100 villagers at the foot of Shani Mountain, but in 2008 a mountain war broke out here by the Russian-Georgian army, and the two sides alternated several times before the truce.
The village of Shani, which is full of no man's land and barren mountains, has no practical military significance, and the two armies are actually fighting for the ruins of a church at the foot of Shani Mountain, which is said to be the first Orthodox church in Ossetia, not only Russia and Georgia claim ownership, but even Armenia has been recorded as early as a hundred years ago. What is even more nonsensical is that Indians thousands of miles away have also come to join in the fun, on the grounds that the Hindu "Shani God" was born on this mountain, so they have proposed an "enclave" for off-site jurisdiction.
Leaving the village of Shani and continuing along the Kazbek Mountains for about 15 km to Reach Spanzminda, according to the existing administrative divisions of Georgia, Stapanzminda is under the jurisdiction of the city of Kazbegi and is one of the easternmost towns in Georgia, with a population of about 1,300 people in 2014.
But in fact, Spanzminda already has a population of more than 5,000, of which more than half are North Ossetians and Ingushetia, and Georgians account for only about 10%. Why are there so many North Austrian and Ingushetia immigrants? Because it is blessed with a unique climate and soil.
From Rancar's book Archaeology of Ossetia, I found a more credible explanation: about 25 million years ago (tertiary), southern Europe and Western Asia had multiple plate collisions and volcanic eruptions, the Caucasus Mountains formed a folded mountain system during this period, and Spanzminda happened to be at the lowest lava powder deposit.
Simply put, volcanic magma erodes into powder and accumulates in the valley little by little, and the vegetation decays over the years to form a black soil rich in minerals and nutrients, while the meltwater of the snowy mountains converges into a river and flows through, coupled with sufficient sunshine and continental climate, etc., so that the local crop yield is of high quality, and the famous Caucasus plateau grapes and plateau jasmine, camellias, etc., are among the representatives.
Not only that, the local area is also rich in gold, copper, coal and other mineral resources, there was a gold rush in 1950-1960, gold prospectors as long as they squatted on the riverside simple screening can be a large number of finished gold (commonly known as dog head gold), until the Soviet Union set up a protected area did not prohibit gold panning.
The Strampenda Geological Museum houses a large bag of gold seized from a gold prospector, who is said to have collected more than 20 kilograms in just one month. Seeing this dangling bag of gold, I turned to look at Rankar, only to be glared at by her: If you want to leave South Ossetia alive, you better not be distracted, because the local people have reached an environmental consensus to resolutely resist mining, even Georgia and Russia.
I might not be surprised if Rankar were talking about developed countries in Europe, but she was talking about South Ossetia, where the per capita monthly income is less than 20,000 rubles, and the locals have such a firm sense of environmental protection, which can not help but make people sigh: "It is rare"!
Of course, this income level does not mean that the living standards of the South Austrians are very low, after visiting the two markets of vegetables and fruits and dried goods, I finally came to the conclusion that 20,000 rubles can also live a well-off life, such as a kilogram of tomatoes 15 rubles, most of the greens 10-25 rubles, a lamb cake enough for 2 people to eat as long as 35 rubles, a kilogram of chicken legs 55 rubles, even the dried leg of lamb does not exceed 200 rubles.
In order to more thoroughly verify the price of South Austria, we specially chose a Georgian restaurant and ordered the most expensive hard dish: lamb scones of 500 rubles.
Seeing that we were still talking when we ordered this dish, the waiter immediately explained enthusiastically: the production process of lamb scones is very cumbersome, lamb blanched water to remove blood foam and add a large number of herbs and spices to slow simmer, until the soup is thick and then put into the dough cake together with chili peppers and carrots and other side dishes, double-sided charcoal roasting for at least 50 minutes to be served, due to the production time is too long, the restaurant will only pre-make two parts a day, the specific tastes are sour and spicy and cheese and so on.
The other choice is the South Austrian restaurant, featuring pork bacon, bacon and air-dried lamb, the staple food is only coarse noodle steamed buns, fried thin noodles and baked coarse noodle crust, Rancal, the driver and I each choose each, so there is a rare scene of three kinds of meat and three staple foods, even the restaurant owner does not believe it and asks twice: Do you really want so much?
It turns out that we are all too young, because a 700 rouble of meat and staple food should not be so large, and the result is that the three people look at each other after serving it: 2100 roubles is equivalent to 200 yuan, which is enough for a family of three to eat for half a month if it is sliced according to the recipe of Chinese.
With three kinds of meat that we couldn't eat, we decided to rush to the frozen valley, only to find fog in the middle of the road, the caucasus weather was really changing rapidly, the visibility was as low as 5 meters away and the license plate number could not be seen, and the three people waited for 4 hours before returning to the mountain.
When he was about to arrive in Spanzminda, Rankar said with some regret: there is a church called "the closest church to God" in the Frozen Valley, that is, Pushkin's "Monastery on the Kazbek Mountain", and it is said that when the Ottomans invaded Georgia, the Orthodox Christians transferred a large number of scriptures and "holy relics" to the Caucasus Mountains and built more than a dozen churches for storage. Before the 21st century, it was thought that Pushkin wrote about the Holy Trinity Church on The Kazbek Mountains, but in 2002 it was confirmed to be the Frozen Valley Church at an altitude of 4,100 meters, nearly twice as tall as the One in Kazbek.
Because the frozen valley fog could not go, we stayed in Stepantz Minda for one more day, just saw a farmhouse brewing wine, amazingly, the top wine in South Austria actually added alpine walnuts, this process is not to say that I heard about it for the first time, even the indigenous drivers of North Austria are also seeing it for the first time.
The hostess saw me licking my face and generously invited me to drink a glass of freshly squeezed grape juice, and then explained: The diet of people who have been living in the Caucasus for a long time is not balanced, especially the lack of unsaturated fatty acids, and the eating habit of eating meat is also prone to arteriosclerosis and other symptoms.
When we returned to the hotel, the little sister at the front desk said that there was a South Olympic dance rehearsal in the afternoon, so that we had time to go and see it.
The so-called dance, in fact, is the traditional equestrianism of South Ossetia, because in recent years herders are more willing to graze cattle and sheep of higher economic value, so that Ossetian equestrianism is almost lost, in order to preserve this tradition, the north and south ossetia united dozens of dancers to rehearse a dance sitcom, it is said to be the only sitcom in the world that integrates plateau, real scene, equestrianism and dance.
The last stop is Alma Lake, the largest plateau lake in the Caucasus, where the guide Rankar arranges to stay one night in the village of Samad, and the nearly eighty-year-old Shwessa patriarch heard that Chinese tourists had arrived, and immediately went to slaughter a goat and stewed it in an iron pot for the morning, while Grandma waited for us with noodles and baked goat milk cakes in the morning.
Very different from the legendary Ossetian bravery and good fighting, almost everywhere we passed on this trip was smiling, even in a remote mountain village like Samad, where there is no village in front of the village and no shop behind, the locals are just as enthusiastic and generous. When the chips were staggered, the Sesavi patriarch lamented that Ossetia belonged to the "notorious" type, and that years of war had led to the same neglect of the north and south of Ossetia, and some even regarded them as flood beasts.
Therefore, when the Ossetians meet outsiders, they will greet the guests with the best food and the happiest smile, hoping to improve people's stereotypes through the witnesses.
At the dinner table, I did not say anything comforting, and the next day there was a heavy rain, and the patriarch came to persuade us not to go, because the mountain road was slippery and prone to accidents. I nodded my head and showed the patriarch a few photos taken by my mobile phone, and before leaving, I took the patriarch's hand and said: Sooner or later, the beauty of Ossetia will be discovered by the world, and as long as we keep the peace-loving faith in our hearts, we will surely see a better future.
(Documentary travel is not easy, I hope to get your recognition and attention)