Abkhazia

Going home

The border crossing between Russia and Abkhazia, the only way out of the country for Abkhazi citizens (their border with Georgia is open only to Mingrelians).
Abkhazi walk to russia pulling their trailers with goods, and in the same way they export their most valued production: mandarin oranges.

Unofficial bus station, Sokhum

Sokhum welcomes the traveller with its open air bus station.

The seaside

Sokhum's new buildings

The first edifices to be rebuilt after the 1992 war are the government ones. Their well cared appearance is in open contrast with the dilapidated state of the city.

I have a very special place I buy my meat from

Yes, you can purchase meat from a trailer parked in one of Sukhum's roads.
From the number of customers awaiting their turn, it's probably a very well disguised delicatessen shop.

Eyes through the window

Trolleybuses guarantee mobility in Sokhum, and are one of the most interesting places to be in to witness humanity there.

There! Did you see it?!

As usual, children are the only ones having a good time during the travel on the trolleybus.

Customers are few

Not many in need of information on the train schedule in Sokhum's train station...

Traffic is the issue in Gal

The empty roads of Gal, a town at the border with Georgia surviving (and sometimes thriving) on commerce with that country.

A curious juxtaposition

Soviet inspirational paintings celebrating professions, science and peace still survive, and contrast with the wrecked building it sits on, in Gal.

Gal's train station

All that remains of Gal's train station after the 1992 war.

Ruins in Gal

Standing memories

One of the many charred trees still standing after the war, amidst a wild but luxuriant nature.

Remains of those who fled

South of Abkhazia, near the georgian border.
After the 1992 war, ethnic georgians fled en masse the country.
Abkhazi slowly rebuilt their lives and their homes, while those houses belonging to georgians are left in a stat of abandon and decay, and no one is allowed to restore them.
They can only be torn down completely and rebuilt.
They dot the Abkhaz landscape like ancient ruins, a slowly disappearing testimony of the tragedy of the civil war.

Deserted, barren, Chenrobyl style

Ochamchire, a city of 20.000 dwellers before the war, is now reduced to just one fourth of its previous population.
It sits by the sea in an astounding location, most of the buildings that were buing built along the coastline still there, "frozen" after the war.
An abandoned ferris wheel towers over the trees and buildings.

Emptiness

Ochamchire's seafront, facing the wonderful Black Sea.
Empty, in disarray, still practically a ghost city 20 years after the war.

Ruins of war

Yet another house destroyed by the 1992 war, on the way to the old tea plantation between Mokvi and Kochara.

Abkhazian jungle

Vegetation along secondary roads grows luxuriant and wild, at times resambling jungles.

Rushing through memories

Outside the school that was part of a collective tea plantation.
Few people live there, but the sense of abandonment, and loneliness, pervades everything.

Friendship

A cow caring for itself behing a gate.
On top, the word "Friendship". A very curious choice, considering that Abkhazia was torn apart by a bloody civil war, and that probably even behind this gate Abkhazi and Georgians worked together and in peace up until the very eruption of the conflict. The word, and a lonely cow, is all that remains.

The last surviving tea plantation

This woman cares and guards the last surviving tea plantation of what was once a huge communist award winning tea production facility. After the 1992 war, production was abandoned, and the tea plants have either died or turned wild.