Over the past few years Chris has dragged his family around Eastern Europe for their summer holidays to catch the last glimpses of traditional life held in aspic from the old communist rule. With his daughters, India and Iona, ready to leave the beach behind and embrace real adventures without a bucket and spade the family set off to travel around Romania and Bulgaria on horseback.

With the Carpathians and Balkans under their belt, their next destination would be the Caucasus mountains in Georgia. What Chris wasn’t ready for was the way of life they were going to experience and the remoteness of the Tusheti region on the Dagestan and Chechen borders. His talk will attempt to capture the magic they encountered during the summer of 2008 just weeks before Russia invaded South Ossetia in Georgia when the family had to flee the capital, Tbilisi, and head for Yerevan in Armenia.

Traversing a path across an old landslip on horseback

Ridge and mountain views

The village bell