Where Few Land Rovers Dare To Tread

Kingsley and his team recently reached the border of Iran after traversing southern and east Africa, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. Ross Holgate, who heads up logistics, says it has been an incredible adventure and a world-first for the All-New Land Rover Discoverys, which haven’t missed a beat. Kingsley tells the story.

- Kingsley Holgate

Crossing the Bosporus Strait that connects Europe to Asia in the mysterious metropolis of Istanbul is a highpoint for our six-member South African team, as are Turkey’s iconic Unesco World Heritage Sites of Ephesus, Troy, Pergamon, Pamukkale, Cappadocia and the World War I battlefields of Gallipoli.

Following the mountainous Black Sea coastline, we set ourselves a new objective: to reach the highest permanently inhabited settlements in Europe, which lie in the northern Caucus mountains of Georgia, before the first winter snows close the challenging mountain passes.

It’s bloody freezing! Minus 80C but we have a jolly night out in the mountain town of Mesta, with homemade cheese, bread, soup and ‘khinkali’ (dumplings), traditional Georgian song, dance, local wine and vodka.

High-spirited, tough and friendly mountain people tell us we’ll get through in our Landies to upper Svaneti and the high Caucasus villages but they warn us that it’ll be tough going over the 4×4-only Zigara Pass that will take us to the base of Mount Shkhara, the highest mountain in Georgia, close to the Russian border.

We’re Africans and the closest we’ve ever come to these conditions is in the Maluti mountains of Lesotho or the highlands of Ethiopia. The high-altitude villages of Ushguli, with their ancient stone-built watch towers nestled below the grand snow-capped mountains, are something out of a medieval fairytale and another Unesco World Heritage Site for the expedition.

But as we were warned, the journey through mud, snow and ice is extremely difficult. Still, it certainly proves the capabilities of the Landies and what a great adventure it is, from sea level on the Black Sea to the highest places in Georgia and slipping and sliding ‘over the top’, our tough Cooper tyres making short work of the mud, snow and rocky 4×4 conditions.