For the last few days i am in one of the many places through which the crossroads of hisory have passed. The Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) campus is situated in the mountains of the northern Caucasus, in a part of the Russian Federation known as the Karachay-Cirkassian Republic. And a thousand years ago, this place was the rich thriving nation of Alania, the land of the Alans. Alan being the local form of the word aryan. This place has seen an imaginable amount of flux, throughout history. Alania was on the ancient Silk route. At this time of the year, in the mountains the green is interspaced with yellow, brown and red. How amazed an Indian or Chinese merchant must have been, a thousand summers ago, when they stepped in the valley, on their way to Byzantium. The Silk Route made this place rich, and wealth brought problems with it. There were civil wars, invasions by the Huns and later the Mongols. The ravaged nation could not rise up after the Mongols faded, as change had come in climate and civilization. Drought in central Asia changed the route through which silk and pepper passed into Europe. And now there were ships.
Still generations survived rather contentedly in these pristine valleys. Legend has it that everyone lives more than hundred years in these mountains. But in the middle of the nineteenth century came Tsarist Russia and brought war and mass exodus of Circassians, although the Karachay were spared. A century later though under Stalin's orders there were mass deportations to the north, ethnic tensions between the Christians and Muslims were ignited. Oh the same 'divide and rule' policy that we Indians are so painfully aware of. USSR is gone, the wheel of time has taken care of it like other proud empires. But the mountains are still abalze. Wars happened in Abkhazia to the west, Chechnia to the east, and Georgia to the south. But i guess the people here have learned long ago, like in India, that somehow life goes on, and there is always beauty to be found, not on the highways but in the bylanes of life.
