New York Times: “Music and Ancient History in the Caucasus”

Recently, the New York Times has published a travel blog by Celestine Bohlen who visited Georgia as she thought it would be an adventure worthy of a college graduation present for her 22-year-old daughter.

The pair’s journey lasted for 10 days and mainly covered southern Georgia and the Turkish border "in search of the long-lost kingdom of Tao”.

In her blog, Bohlen describes the remnants of ancient Georgian culture that were once disputed by the Byzantines, the Mongols, the Persians, the Seljuk Turks, the Ottomans and the Russians.

The author says that inside Georgia, all the churches they visited had been restored and returned to the Georgian Orthodox church since 1991, when the country won independence from the Soviet Union. In Turkey, most of the Christian churches were in ruins, their vaulted ceilings now rubble, with battered carvings and faint traces of once-colorful frescoes left on the walls.

"Ruined or restored, these churches have maintained a haunting serenity through centuries of neglect and destruction”, the author says.

• Read the full article here: www. nytimes.com.