David Gareja Monastery

The next morning I get my breakfast served as arranged at 9 o'clock in the kitchen of the house. To my joy the breakfast is super delicious. Beside bread, cheese, jam etc. I get a kind of cooked green cabbage served, in which an egg was fried in a hollow. Simply delicious!

Afterwards I start my trip to the David Gareja Monastery. Fortunately, the weather is also good and the sky is bright blue. 

The road to Udabno was quite bad yesterday, but the way to the monastery is practically just a dirt road, with a few tar spots every now and then and lots of deep potholes.

David Gareja Monastery from the 6th century is the oldest monastery in Georgia. It lies directly on the border to Azerbaijan.
The oldest eremitic chambers were carved into two rock faces facing each other. Later the wedge-shaped expanse was fortified and developed into the inner courtyard of the monastery. Water was collected by an ingenious cistern system and the shady location made it possible to keep animals and cultivate crops to a modest extent, which made it possible to survive in this inhospitable landscape.

On the other side of the mountain range there are further caves, which also belong to the David Gareja monastery complex. More than 70 caves, over 100 graves, wells and storage rooms were excavated into the rock.
Since the complex is located in part exactly on the demarcation line between Georgia and Azerbaijan, there has been a constant dispute about this area for years. Only a short time after my visit there, there was probably an incident at the border, so that this area is now closed for tourists.

So I was very lucky to be able to enjoy the breathtaking view over this completely surreal landscape. With this amazing view, one really has the feeling to stand on another planet.