"The Wild West" Chan_hc’s photos around Mestia, Armenia

A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Mestia, Armenia by TravelPod blogger Chan_hc titled "The Wild West" Chan_hc’s travel blog entry: "Note: I know, I know. I am awfully behind...today is Sept 6 and I am in Bangkok but my blog is still stuck in Georgia, Aug 18...but what can I say? I am doing my best. The Upper Svaneti region in the NW corner of Georgia is remote, mountainous and wild. This area is so wild and remote that they have their own language, and until a few years ago, foreigners traveled in this region had to brave the risk of being robbed or kidnapped. In the old time (merely 1 or 2 hundred years ago), protection from government was non-exist so each family needed to have a defense tower to protect themselves against bandits, rival clans and what not. In the rest of the country one village may have one defense tower, but over here each family has one. So in each small village there is cluster of more than 10 towers, looking from afar they remind me of chimneys in an old fashion factory complex. Of course they are not used for defense anymore now, but they still are very valuable to the locals, because they are one of the major tourist attractions (the other one is its wild mountains) here, and UNESCO has assigned some villages here World Heritage Sites just because of them. We spent 3 days in Mestia, a small city that actually is a group of several villages, 4 hours away from where the train stopped, over some typical mountain roads. We found a ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 1m 10s Date Found: Sun, Feb 27 2011 5:32 AM Category: Travel Date Produced: Sat, Feb 26 2011 6:27 PM View Count: 0