TOWER OF POWER

FJ too diddy? We take the full size Land Cruiser on a full size adventure... to the Svan Towers in Georgia

-  OLLIE MARRIAGE

They are called Svan Towers. Stark stone towers built to keep warmth in and invaders out. Located high in the remote valleys of the Upper Caucasus mountain range they were meant to be the highlight, the destination of this story.

But things took a turn.

In several directions. Stalin got involved, so too did modern Russia. There was snow, there was mud, there were rockfalls and dogs and Kamaz trucks. And in amongst all this there was a Toyota Land Cruiser. Because if you're off exploring and have been foolish enough to get yourself into a sticky situation, you need a machine that can help get you unstuck. Which is an apt place to start. Trouble is, a diff lock wasn’t going to help here.

“Is that your car?” Yes, it is. “Nice, very nice. New Land Cruiser, yes?” Correct, a First Edition, hence the stripes. I’m ‘in discussion’ with an Abkhazia border guard. The Land Cruiser appears to be on the verge of helping us perform a fast extraction as talk had turned to its hybrid petrol engine, but then things get rather one sided. “Guys, guys, why you here? It’s not allowed.” The voice isn’t unfriendly, but the tone is unmistakable. We've ballsed up.

Welcome to Georgia. I'd only picked photographer Mark up from Tbilisi airport a few hours before. We'd then shot the breeze about this small, fiercely independent yet enormously welcoming country as we'd driven across it. Geopolitically, it’s always been in a bit of a pickle. Sandwiched between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to west and east, and hemmed in by the Upper and Lower Caucasuses to north and south, the spines of which form borders with Russia up top and Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan beneath, Georgia is a corridor country through which empires have swept. Over the centuries Mongols, Timurids, Persians, Umayyads, Ottomans and Russians have fought along its fertile central valley.