The Lord’s Fortress

I had been a little bit back and forth on whether to go to Uplistsikhe (which means the Lord’s Fortress), since on the face of it - an ancient cave town - it sounds very similar to Vardzia, so I wondered if it was worth the effort. Turns out it was my favourite place on the trip so far. While superficially similar to Vardzia indeed, the experience was quite different. The caves in Vardzia are hollowed out of the cliff face, so you reach them by mostly narrow paths on the edge of the cliff, rarely going deep into the cave system. In Uplistsikhe, by contrast, you essentially stand on top of the hill and clamber up and down to see individual caves. This was what made Uplistsikhe so much fun - we were really just scampering about on top of this cave town like a couple of kids. And while Uplistsikhe is a lot more accessible than Vardzia, and therefore busier, the open layout meant it didn’t feel crowded. 

Uplistsikhe contains structures dating from the Early Iron Age to the Late Middle Ages, although since we didn’t have any audio guide or other information, I couldn’t tell you which is which, with exception of the brick church in the middle, which was built in the 9th - 10th centuries. Arriving at the site is a surreal experience. One minute we were driving through green fields and streets hung with vines, then you turn a corner and suddenly you’re in a landscape that looks like something out of Westworld (or Utah, where I think it’s filmed). Suddenly it’s all bare rock formations, but once you’re actually up on the hill you get a vista of a lush green river valley that looks like a savanna. It really wasn’t hard to see why our ancestors would have chosen such a place to settle: shelter, defensibility, water access and presumably hunting opportunities back in the day. 

Arriving at Uplistsikhe, you suddenly go from this 

To this:

Some top notch site security

Some of the fancier caves had a bit of interior decoration going on 

A qvevri, the clay vessel used to make traditional Georgian wine. (Really traditional - the earliest found go back to the 6th millennium BC!)

I can just imagine gazing at this first thing in the morning and then leaping into action to hunt a deer or something

It was hella windy up there

Visions of Dali in this rock formation

Premium cave real estate

Tunnelling out








Disclaimer: this actually happened in Vardzia, but I forgot to put it in the blog, so I’ll put it in here. On the way out, a Russian mother and teenage daughter semi cut in line in front of us (that thing where you’re approaching from different directions, but instead of doing the polite ‘you first’, they just put on a burst of speed to make it there in front), and the teenage girl had a small wearable speaker strapped to her leg. That part is obnoxious enough, but the really weird part is that, of all things, she was rocking out to Love Potion no. 9...??? Thankfully we were leaving while they were arriving!