Festival at Lagurka Shrine, Svaneti

Lagurka, nested on the Southern Rim of Inguri Canyon, is the holiest shrine of Upper Svaneti. Ostensibly an Eastern Orthodox church compound in the name of Sts. Qirike and Iulita, the patron saints of the Gorge (as the Upper Svanetia is also known), it hosts the very pagan all-Svan festival on these Saints' day on July 29th. Guns and arak galore, it is an exciting but thoroughly dangerous day for a Westerner to visit. Keep in mind that Svaneti is too high in the mountains for the famed Georgian grapevine to grow. Therefore, the Svan arak is made out of potatoes and barley. It is a low-potency, high-headache once-distilled spirit. To make the intoxication a notch higher (and the hangover a lot worse), they traditionally infuse the booze with tobacco leaves. July 1981