ABSTRACT
I n March of 2004 a conversation in the café at Prospero’s Books would bear unexpected fruit some two years later. “What do you think of the Khada Gorge?” an English expat had asked. The confession that I’d never heard of it brought on an astonished response. “The original route
of the Georgian Military Highway; a superb walk through a valley with 50 towers, just one and a half hours’ drive from Tbilisi . . .” Certainly it seemed strange that I, a keen walker, didn’t know this historic valley right next to Gudauri, the Caucasus’s primary skiing resort. But then I discovered, neither did most other expats and many Georgian friends.
