Kabardino-Balkaria
John Godfrey, Yorkshire
Just 200 kilometres from that strife-torn republic of Chechnya is a tiny Garden of Eden with the bulky title of Kabardino-Balkaria. An autonomous republic within the Federation of Russia, Kabardino-Balkaria is sited in the Northern Caucasus. To the south, past the highest mountain in Europe, Mt Elbrus (18,510 ft), are Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan: each with its own troubles. Kabardino-Balkaria is, however, tranquillity, personifying its scenery if not its past when it was the centre of the Circassian Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries.
It is alleged that the Kabardinian people were on the side of the British during the nearby Crimean Wars. They remember the British ship, the Cutty Sark with affection. When they visit the UK as our guests, we always take them to Greenwich to see the famous ship.
Higher than Mont Blanc, you can "climb" right to the summit of Mount Elbrus by cable car, ski-lift and finally, button-lift. I witnessed eight year-olds skiing from the very top of Elbrus with aplomb. My client emulated those young children, and though he had many years of ski experience in the Alps and in Canada, he spoke breathtakingly of "a new experience". The funicula traverses vast canyons, matching those prefixed by the epithet "Grand" in America. How they managed to build such a carriage is bewildering until you remember that these were the people to put the first person in space and still the only nation to build launch and maintain a space station.
All such technology is forgotten, unless you choose to visit the Solar Research station on the mountainside. So discreet, you wouldn't know it existed unless you had been forewarned by Barasbi, vice-chancellor at the republic's Soros-funded university in its capital Nal'chik. His deputy has just become Vice-President of the republic!
During the winter, Elbrus was always popular with skiers from all over the Soviet Union. Soviet Winter Olympics participants were always to be found training here.
The ski lodges are reminiscent of those in the Tyrol. The Government "Guest Houses" are splendid and magnificent. Previously reserved for the nomenclatura they are now available for the travellers from the West. Opulent, they are! Inexpensive, certainly, but only if you know someone!
In February, you can thrill to the frozen Chegemsky Falls. Imagine Niagara, in volume but spread over ten times the space, suddenly freezing. The Balkars serve shash-lik (a form of barbecued kebab that tastes like heaven) and sell home-knitted angora garments that some one someday will make a killing with.
The hot spas are crowded with people, young and old alike. Even some children from Chernobyl can usually be found in the hot spas, having travelled many hundreds of miles from the Ukraine with the belief that somehow the minerals in the hot spas will cure them of the aftereffects of radiation poisoning.
Come the Spring. April 1st by statute! The snow has gone, except from the summit. The countryside is very green and fertile. Every tree is in blossom, anticipating the abundance of fruit of apples, pears, cherries, grapes and similar temperate produce.
The cold spas rival Bath and Buxton. The water is bottled and sold throughout the former Soviet Union.
There are of course the eponymous Blue Lakes where, during the summers of pre-perestroika, children would swim and play in canoes and paddle boats. Now they are quiet and paradises for wild birds. The children play in Cyprus and Majorca.
Talking of fauna, I have once before seen a Golden Eagle in flight, and that was in Scotland. Circling round the foothills of Elbrus, they seem to be in flocks. A wonderful sight. A Kabardinian exiled to the USA for more than forty years stood next to me and watched in wonder on his return to his home country.
During the summer you can see thousands of wild arabian horses roaming the countryside. At all times there are sheep, as mutton and lamb is almost a staple. It is cooked in every conceivable way. At street corners, you can buy shash-lik; at banquets, you may be lucky to be served a sheep that has been boiled whole; only the wool has been removed. The juice is served as a drink and is called "bouillon" accompanied by a firm but stodgy substrate called "pasta" but made from millet.
Both sets of people, the Kabardinians and Balkars, were moslem and bear typical names, but after seventy years of communism most are atheist, so don't expect to see the madrasses of places like Bokhara, Samercand and Khiva.
Fly to Moscow Sheremetyova, transship by taxi or hired car to Moscow Vanukova and fly on to Nal'chik, which is usually only accessible during the summer as it is so close to the mountains, or to the international airport, just within Russia, Minerale Voda (Mineral Waters) two hours drive away from Nal'chik. Some German skiers have discovered K-B in winter. A few Scandinavian tourists have discovered the lush of the countryside and the pleasant walking in the foothills in the summer.
Visitors' visas are essential and can only be obtained after receiving an invitation from an appropriate organisation in Kabardino-Balkaria. Standards at the ski lodges have not been maintained since Perestroika and Glasnost. They are no longer 3*. There is now an abundance of ski guides and mountain guides; expertise at a pittance.
Nal'chik, the capital, is a typical Russian city, mainly rebuilt during Stalin's time with presumably the same architect that remodelled cities throughout the Soviet Union. But the rest of this fairytale land more than makes up for it, if you can put up with the somewhat primitive roads in the essentially rural areas.
John Godfrey, Charles Godfrey Associates Limited. http://www.charlesgodfrey.co.ukPictures by Yevgeny Monin from The Heart of the Caucasus, published by AAA Corporation, Nalchik, 1997.