The steep footpath soon showed up and brought me to an abandoned orchard of hulking Mulberry trees from where I proceeded to the village spring of delicious water superior to that back by the long-liver Plane.
Then I walked the thirty-meter-long street of two or three houses lost under the crashing overgrowth of blackberry bushes. The cobblestoned street cut abruptly replaced by a barely discernible trail tilting down the slope which faced the Karmir-Bazaar valley.
(… the village of Skhtorashen was deserted before the Karabakh war, that’s why the houses were not burned down and though barred by blackberry still keep their rotten roofs up.
The village, like many others, got killed by the dimwit decision of the Soviet Leadership on the Resettlement of Population from High Mountainous Areas to lower places. The USSR, over its seventies by that time, was sinking into senile dotage because political systems tend to follow the life circle of man, their creator.
Servile authorities of the then Mountainous Karabakh Autonomous Region, along with the like polities in other Caucasian regions obeyed loose-brain Big Brother’s injunction and finished off more than one village.
I mean, with all due respect to septuagenarians I’d rather skip entering their venerable funny club… )
On the way down the slope, like an incurable bolshie, I made two more attempts at finding at least a minor shortcut, yet both deviations were blocked by deep gorges and sheer cliffs, so the highway met me exactly where I left it two days before, near “The Old Plane Diner”.
(… gently is a docile kid led ahead by fate, while stubborn brats are dragged along gripped at their forelock to unavoidably get to their destination… )
After several turns in the smooth serpentine, the highway took a beeline to the pass out from the outspread valley of Karmir-Bazaar.
Up the tilted roadside I trudged along through the repulsive yet somehow fetching stench of the sun-thawed asphalt. Panting, sweating, plodding ahead, I had to move the haversack straps to different positions over my shoulders more and more often, ridiculously often, but all the same at any place after a few steps they dug into the flesh anew and hurt to the very bone. The salt of sweat ate into the eyes that ceased their joyous frisking around to catch a beautiful view or 2, the dull weary gaze crawled along the coarse asphalt under the worn army boots stomping my shadow, which began to gradually grow longer. And yet, at times my eyes took the liberty of casting wishful glances uphill seeking some shady tree nearby the highway, though I knew perfectly well there was not a single such one all the way up to the pass top.