We drove north from Telavi to Akhmeta, a small town not too far from the Russian border and Chechnya. The municipality has three nature preserves, lots of history, one of the tallest Orthodox Churches in Georgia, monasteries, fortresses, museums and so on. Most people in the area are involved with the food or timber industries. The main areas of agriculture are winegrowing, animal husbandry, and sheep farming.

We, however, went to Akhmeta to visit a Chechnyan section of the village. One thing that can't be ignored in the Caucasus is how many ethnic people live in a state or political area different from their own ethnicity. But they do their best to maintain their own ethnicity and identities. That is the case with the people we met in Akhmeta. (On a side note, our Armenian guide said many Azerbaijanis and Armenians live in Iran, so when people are bombing Iran (in 2025), they are bombing many other ethnicities besides Iranians).

The first photo is driving through Akhmeta to get to our destination. In the second photo, the Community Center that we visited was on the right side, several land parcels up the road. On another side note, if you see the pipes along the road, with the tops usually painted yellow, those are their natural gas lines. For some reason, the law demands that their gas lines be above ground and not below ground.

My next photo will just be one I thought I would mention at some point. As the Caucasus are on the border between East and West, the toilets tended to fluctuate between the two. Most of the time, we found western style toilets, but it was not too unusual to find eastern style toilets. If you plan to visit this area, it helps to have good knees, legs, and quads. Otherwise, you might have some problems, like at this stop.

We visited their Community Center and had a talk by two Chechnyan women. Among other things, they told us that they take very good care of their elders. I liked that. They also said that they have their own local laws and codes and follow them, not Georgian laws. I'm not sure how that works out.

This particular group of women helps women and youth. They used to get USAID but they don't any longer. That's too bad as this group is also very near the Russian border. USAID helped the economic empowerment of women; women's involvement in the municipality; and integrating their youth into society. Below are our two speakers, with our guide in the center.

One of the community center projects is a ceramics workshop, so of course, we participated. We made soap dishes from clay. Some of it was already set up and we didn't stay around to bake them, but it was somewhat fun and interesting. We purchased ceramic products afterwards.

Our next project at the Community Center was 'pumpkin pie making', according to our guide. I would say that we were making pumpkin khachapuris, but what do I know. With their expert guidance, we made them, cooked them, and ate them. They were really delicious and were served with homemade non-alcoholic beer that was really tasty and excellent. It was a great mid-morning snack to finish our visit. I would also add that it did, in fact, taste a lot like pumpkin pie.