Kirsty told me that I could write this post as long as she was exempt from having to read it in its entirety or even look at it once it was published. This was a condition that she imposed on me.
This is a first, but she does have a valid reason for making such a statement, which is that we were ambushed and ultimately robbed by three local thugs (*) in the vicinity of this Dickensian-like structure.
(*) I’m aware that it’s an outdated term, but calling them “guys” or “blokes” would be overly charitable, and the words I’d really like to use aren’t exactly suitable for publication in a blog post, so I’ve decided to stick with the Dickensian motif.
The event took place in the summer of 2018, which is more than two years ago. Aside from the photos that I edited for the blog that described what took place to us, I haven’t had much of a desire to look at the majority of the photos that we took on that day.
However, as a result of the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, I found myself with a significant amount of time on my hands, and I made the decision to spend some of this spare time browsing through our extensive collection of photographs. In the first place, I wanted to remind myself of some of the incredible places we had visited over the years, but in addition to that, I was looking for images that needed to be processed and/or improved upon. Even before COVID-19 was a thing, I used to enjoy spending some of my spare time honing my skills on this software application, and I must say that Adobe Lightroom is one of my all-time favorite photo editing programs. I’ve had even more time to get to grips with this fantastic piece of equipment ever since our travel plans came to an abrupt halt in February 2019, when we were unable to go anywhere. In point of fact, I believe that the amount of time I’ve spent playing around with our photos in Lightroom is greater than the amount of time I’ve spent writing blogs and watching Netflix combined.
I’m sure that, as part of the procedure, I’ve unconsciously avoided the folder in which we keep our photographs of Tkvarcheli; however, after a number of COVID months had passed and there was no indication that any new travel was on the horizon, I reached the point where I was running out of images to develop, and so, as if holding my finger over the dreaded red button, I did a double click on the Tkvarcheli folder to look at what we had
What I found was a collection of atmospheric photographs that, after being processed in Lightroom, had the potential to look very impressive indeed. As the old proverb goes, “time is a great healer,” and as I was working on each of the photos, I began to think more about our actual exploration of this deteriorating power plant than the actual robbery that had taken place. Ultimately, I decided to focus on the exploration more than the theft itself.
The ruined power plant in Tkvarcheli is one of the most interesting urban explorations that we have carried out, in my opinion, and this is despite the fact that we have visited quite a few deserted locations on our travels. If the muggings were removed from the equation, I would say that it is one of the most interesting urban explorations that we have carried out. I included the word “think” because it is going to be difficult to differentiate between the two events, namely what we found in the factory and how quickly we were attacked afterward. For this reason, I included the word. When we look at the photographs, however, something about this once-thriving industrial site on the edge of Tkvarcheli has a sense of the apocalyptic about it that sets it apart from many of the other abandoned locations we have explored. Neither of us has really done this for a couple of years.
Where exactly is Tkvarcheli, and what exactly occurred in that region?
Abkhazia is a breakaway region in the Caucasus that is nestled between Russia to the north and east and Georgia to the south. Tkvarcheli is a small town that is located in the southeastern part of Abkhazia. The coal mining region was developed around the settlement in the middle of the 1930s, and its importance increased throughout World War II as it contributed to meeting the industrial requirements of the Soviet military in its fight against the Nazis. Tkvarcheli was given the status of a town in 1942, and after the war was over, many monumental buildings, the majority of which were designed in the style of architecture prevalent during the Stalinist Empire, were constructed with the help of German prisoners of war who were captured during the war. Even some of the architects and designers involved in the planning of the town were captured Germans, and they incorporated a subtle element of Gothic style into the blueprint for some of the buildings. This gave the town an overall Gothic aesthetic. Because it was the only significant settlement in Abkhazia that was not located on the Black Sea coast, Tkvarcheli became a desirable place to live not only for miners but also for people in other professions. Miners were not the only people who found Tkvarcheli to be an attractive place to live.
