Blog Archives

BALYOLU IS BACK – Walking the World’s Very First Honey Tasting Trekking Route


As the snow melts and the rain pours, I slosh around the Black Sea in my hiking boots in search of bees.

In search of bees…how many times have I finished a sentence with that phrase in the last three years. A Georgian man adorned in a bright and colorful ewok costume chases after me, whip in hand, while I pass through a traditional village in search of bees. I drive 8 hours over Azeri deserts brewing with mud volcanoes and cracked flowers, staring nauseously out the window, in search of bees. I fall to my knees before an ancient lake in Armenia, drinking holy water and silenced by its beauty, in search of bees. I float over flowing velvet green carpeted hill-sides in Eastern Turkey, the sounds of cowbells chorusing throughout the valley, in search of bees. I cry in a hospital, blowing my nose on sheep’s wool, wondering how so much could happen all for some great search for bees!

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Explorer’s Journal: High Prices and Honey Festivals Hint At Future For Macahel Biosphere


Phrase from Field: The 14′th Annual Macahel Honey Festival lacks its regular enthusiasm as bureaucracy, speeches, and road-blocking clouds close in on the rings of dancers, the lip smacking children, and the stacks of honey priced high, declaring a new kind of future for the ancient biosphere.

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Explorer’s Journal: Surviving Mountain Storms Trains You for Rising Above Corruption


 

Phrase from Field: Slouching against mountain wool-stuffed pillows, a man donning a track suit and perfectly trained British English recounts how a life of survival and fickle weather patterns in the yaylas has prepared him for survival in the cut-throat corruption of Batumi oil ports and the tyrannical nepotism of politics. Read the rest of this entry

Explorer’s Journal: A Marriage of Micro-Climates


Phrase from Field: Straddling snowy white lethally electric mountain clouds and semi-tropical green staircase hill-sides, beekeepers in Savsat savor the unique light colors and rich tangy flavors of their honeys, a true child of the dramatic marriage of regional micro-climates. Read the rest of this entry

Explorer’s Journal: In Search of Inventors in Savsat


Phrase from Field: We drop from dark-with-mist mountain meadows to warm-with-sun mountain festivals, from playful valley towns with biblical legends to thunderous valleys filled with queen rearing bee-boxes, we sit and wait for hours in a room-full of villagers for the muhtar (chief) to return and give us an interview. Read the rest of this entry

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