GEORGIA: RISE AND SHINE

onathan Bastable got to know Georgia when it was a sleepy Soviet republic. Returning for the first time since independence, he finds it in feisty form, with a new, bright-eyed, savvy style. Photographs by Tom Parker

In the highlands of Kazbegi, mornings are the best time of day. The Russian poet Boris Pasternak, who loved the Caucasus, compared this rocky part of Georgia to a 'great rumpled bed'. And it is quite a thing to wake up at cock's crow and, from the comfort of your own rumpled bed, to look out across the valley to the lonely Church of the Trinity on the nearest peak. The distant chapel has the distinctively Georgian spire: an inverted cone, like the upturned tip of a brand-new crayon. The adjacent bell tower has the same pointed lid on it, and together they look like salt and pepper pots placed on a flowing green tablecloth.

The Caucasian uplands are craggier, more flinty than the Alps or Pyrenees. Their pikes and ridges are as sharp and dangerous as the blade of a shashka - the 'long knife' wielded by the Circassian tribesmen who once populated this country. The mountains are so tightly packed they seem to be jostling for space. The taller ones stand at the back, like children in a class photo - and, like some schoolchildren, they often have their heads in the clouds. Ah, but when those clouds part and the summit of Mount Kazbek appears, you know why this part of the world so captivates visitors, and why Georgians insist that their homeland is a God-given corner of paradise. Kazbek at dawn is a superb sight: a soaring white crest that (it has been said) resembles a cardinal's hat. When the risen sun shines directly on its snowy east face, the mountain blazes like a searchlight, and is almost too bright to look at.