Wildlife defense organizations estimate 30 to 50 brown bears are held captive in poor conditions throughout Georgia. While a handful live a bit more comfortably in an enclosure at the Tbilisi zoo, most of the shaggy, toothy omnivores are on display in small cages near restaurants, gas stations and parks.
Each year in the Georgian highland village of Adishi, the dead are invited home for a week-long family reunion. It is a time for celebration, but also for contemplation.
In the remote mountain villages of Georgia’s northwest region of Svaneti, 84-year-old Bauchi Qaldani of Adishi is universally regarded as a wise man. And Qaldani, a village elder now in his fifth decade as a mediator and matchmaker, is still ready to dispense his wisdom whenever called upon. "I was born for others," he says.
Georgian Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died on Feb. 12, 2010, after crashing into a steel beam during a practice run on a luge track at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Once the pampered pets of regional strongman Aslan Abashidze, the ostriches had their fate rewritten in May 2004 when Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ousted Abashidze from power in the Black Sea region of Achara. With Abashidze’s stables - both political and animal - cleaned out, his 25 ostriches needed a new home.
The six African ostriches at a farm south of Tbilisi may not know it, but they are, in fact, a long-necked part of Georgia’s colorful political history.
Once known as a nobleman’s sport, falconry in today’s Georgia lives on mostly among the poor. In Achara, also known as Ajara, it is a hobby that can trace its origin back some 2,000 years. Still, these days it is an endangered tradition.
The Stalin Museum in Gori, the birthplace of the former Soviet leader, features his personal railway car and the shack in which he was born. While a significant number of Georgians now blame Stalin's legacy for the country's present-day woes, there are still plenty who venerate him as well with their own personal museum and photos in their homes.
Roughly 65 years ago, Osman, a 90-year-old Meskhetian Turk, lost his home in Georgia to Stalin’s dictat. Now, after a lifetime in Central Asia, Osman, along with hundreds of other Meskhetian Turks, is trying to come home again.
For centuries, farmers in Georgia's highlands have relied on a particular breed, the Caucasian Sheep Dog, to care for their herds. But as farm life gives way to cities and factories, the country's dog lovers are conflicted on how best to preserve the breed.
