Dancing on the hillside (Alexander Bainbridge/The Independent).

No, not that Georgia — the other Georgia. But our Georgians could probably do offerings of sacred beer as well.

“They do not have a personal knowledge like that,” explains Dato Akriani, one of the tiny number of people who have moved from the lowlands up to Pshavi, and who was initiated into the cult of Kopala 20 years ago. “They are the true inheritors and passers-on of the tradition, but they cannot explain it metaphysically