Deep in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia is a town called Bochorna. The highest continuously inhabited settlement in Europe, it has an altitude of 7,694 feet—or six Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other—and a population of one.
But to get there, to that man, and to that town, you need to ford rushing rivers, skid down white-knuckle hairpins, ward off gorilla-sized sheepdogs, and swerve around landslides that are disturbingly fresh. Patience and prayer are on no packing list, but they’re travel essentials for this trip.