elite. down in the black sea coast of russia the city of sochi is busy preparing for the twenty fourteen winter olympic games construction is booming transport infrastructure is being completely revamped and disabled on such points of being installed across town. but aside from being russia's second lympics city sochi is also one of the country's most popular tourist destinations people flock here for the long hot summer as the spacious beaches on the warm seas busk if you're looking for more than just a top it's also an area filled with some amazing natural highlights.

so i've been spending a lot of so i'm in the city but up in the mountains there's the caucasus reserve which is literally the size of finland so i've met up with one very experienced. and when you are off on a bench. it's fair to say that if you're driving up here then you're in for a bumpy ride so you might be lucky and find some time ago but mostly it's just to try it on drugs fortunately alexei's wonderfully named was it is up to the toughest . most muddled look like much of this is spin spin on this the seconds and. we're going up and down to crash the blasts. is still going. to be also much for. trying. you know it's.

just a couple of days in the caucuses reserve had time for the mountains the biosphere here is filled with unique flora and fauna some of the best hiking trails in the country. but getting to them wasn't going to be easy especially as there are plenty of places that even the wozzeck can't go. james take this one place it'll be my bike. i'm on the blue one. to get into the forest we need to cross the nearby river but a long road paul's like these you need to be careful where you're putting the wheels. on the. problems of. the excesses of everything you have.

to hold. and once we were up and rolling it was time to head across the water. a bit. we're going to boy boy. this is. alex a work says the head of a conservation and knows almost everyone based in the caucuses national reserve he gets to go home most nights but they're all forest rangers that live here with their families three hundred sixty five days a year and their little enclave was on a stop. the rangers are here to police the reserve and keep it as unspoilt as possible and even though it's still late summer they're already preparing for the winter to the area comes a total of fifty four thousand take to us that means we got a lot to do considering that the group is very small the season is almost over shall we help out of course sure. help is always welcome.

it was great to eat some real food after a long ride and lending a hand in the field seem like the least we could do. take quite a lot of upkeep this place and that includes several hungry horses so the more hay we collect now. ship enough to really see the more through with. right how much i can balance my fork could. i'm sure a couple of hours we've gathered a mini mountain and ranger alexander took us off to collect all reward we still had a fair way to go and i was pleased to have someone else doing the hard work. ok in the stirrups. so i'm on butch here. which i guess means that alex is on sunday. and i'm hoping that should make going up the hills

a little easier anyway oh boy. was all going to have got his rather spirited mount under control we rode off into the forest. got the calm one here the pass here can be a little treacherous and i was glad to have alexander leading the way down to the water's edge. we managed to cross over but with the pathway getting narrower alexander was forced to turn back with the horses and alexei and i were on foot again but not for long. we're way past the museum to river spring the whole point but the water here is still fairly blowing so alex and i going to need something quite sturdy we're going to go down in one piece and i think. that mission do the trick nicely.

they're the ones i'm. wrong to use one of the most popular summer schools up here in the mountains and various companies offer trips down the river and extra crew to make up the numbers well it certainly helps with the public. but it wasn't exactly white water as you can probably tell because of the fact that i'm still dry but we've made it way down here and now. we get to tackle the cliffs themselves. i was expecting in. the reserve and apparently one does exist you just have to climb up to it.

but i'm worried about is that this is supposed to be the easy. grabbing a helmet and harness from the group at the bottom of the cliff but prepared for the ascent. of the couple of close before this is particularly steep. most has got me through everything so. put my faith and i can. put off first attempts didn't exactly inspire. it's. done this before me a bit of trouble and what needs.

are you coming your way here. let's see how far we will get up. it seems to do this well you have to have incredibly strong finger it's as it's impossible often to create the rope with the whole hand otherwise it can be a very painstaking process but also some long breaks and the old cut and bruise we made it to the polls above. well we've made it to the top. broken and it bloodied. feeling sore. my shoulders are going to say but. i don't know if. i.

finally we have mountains all around us and a clear road ahead and alexei and i could start our trek into the middle of the reserve we still had a long climb in front of us but at least it wasn't vertical this time. the trails just stumps it's even absent it thankfully it's been really tough so far it's the specific. because i think it's all going to be worth it. this trail has only been created in the last few years and it's made the tough journey up into the reserve considerably easier meaning more people have a chance to. enjoy it but there's still plenty of work going on up here to make the area more welcoming for tourists. something like a four hour hike into the mountains followed immediately by some construction work

but as kindly guiding me up to three the least i can do is do my bit for the national parks. moving is done using ecologically friendly material and the team up here are busy creating two new houses for those visitors who prefer not to sleep out in the elements but for now it's a case that if you want a decent kid you bring your own tent. she's going to try to get her out quickly before the weather changes. fortunately we've brought a modern tent with us and it was only a few minutes before everything was staked out and ready to go. home sweet.

time. it wasn't exactly going to be haute cuisine but as long as it was hot and there was plenty of it it was fine by me. here take this you can warm up with some tea. i recommend drinking it with some honey from our local bees because it's naturally effective. in the meantime i was enjoying a brew with a good dollop of honey and it's a bit of a local specialty here. the reserve is full of beautiful flowers like these and that means millions of be great caucasian mountain bees to be precise makers of the tastiest honey. in the region. miller has been

a beekeeper in this beautiful spot for more than twenty five years and has dozens of hives in her back garden and the residents are incredibly well behaved. that's the first time i've ever seen anybody open a hive and not use smoke. and told me that the bees were quite friendly and it. seems to be the case. the bees are perfectly adapted for the mountain flowers and supposedly have the longest tongues of all honeybees. all of them serving her majesty the queen. breeds the queen specially and uses them to start new hives here and across the region. the highly prolific and it doesn't take the workers long to produce a honeycomb like this just don't expect them to give it up easily.

now we're going to share it with be. with sugar and energy the honey was a great start but i was ready for my main course at. the chicken. with amazed there are many wild animals out here and. we could even see bears today for lucky. they might come to our tent even. because there aren't any berries out there so. hunt for food because their hibernation is over now. thank you so let's not leave any empty cans i. don't want to meet any hungry bears here. take precautions.

let's add some meat. when you camping there's always room for more calories and who can resist chicken from a can i'm so hungry i read that one moment's everything's going to taste good. and after just four or five minutes on the boil it was time to dig in. the james kundra ball over. this is porridge or soup or i don't know what exactly to call it it doesn't matter. we just need to eat it up with food we eat out here needs to be filling with lots of calories so you have plenty of energy you never go that. open seat to go. wrong and some for me. so how is it. surprising that anything about eight out of.

it was completely exhausted and with darkness closing in i was ready to crawl into my sleeping bag and just hope that alexei didn't small too much. if you. believe.

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with another long day ahead in the caucasus reserve aleksei was keen to get going shortly after sunrise and i sleepily wondered down to a nearby street. malling. very misty mountain day. and told me to try and wake up. and that. will certainly do to all. who. laps him a decent cup of tea of course and around here it has to be some of the local brew.

one thing that the russians and the british certainly share is a great love of tea and here in the sub tropical south the lucky russians actually have the climate that they can grow themselves this is the tea plantation and it would be hard to believe but it's the biggest in the country it's been here since the late one nine hundred forty s. but the whole operation was restored and modernized back in two thousand and six the plants themselves are extremely robust and able to survive winter temperatures which can drop below freezing but they have to be harvested carefully and one man who knows all about that demon who's worked in the tea business all his life. with this not. just the tips that the one we make green tea from these leaves why don't you try some of the best and very healthy the healthiest and tastiest part of what we're going to try. of course one rule of it's a little bit better because of the talent thing and. i think i prefer mine in

a cup. becoming an expert tea pick it takes time and experience but they're always looking for new recruits. each plant has to be harvested up to eleven times a season and they certainly entity jewel. they give us come out of one of these issues in your absolutely so you can see why you need these sort of clothes but. when you think about holding each one of these sacks weighs around forty kilos and they're delivered daily to the new processing plant. is part of all the load from the fields and we can see how it's turned into the sea. might seem works only automated production line and that's a two man job. plus the book but if.

they hear they go to the steamer the temperature is ninety degrees you. get in after that they're cooled by this ventilator. then they're weeded out of. it but then they're dumb to go into a roller which whips them. what they teach on the tealeaves then subject it to easing with. on the results look a bit like this. the process to use send to the packing factory and it's ready for the show. that is the team making process from start to finish now all that remains is for me to sample the goods myself.

and i have to say that drinking mountain tea in the mountains takes particularly good and enjoys to alex and i packed a. and set off again ready to make our way right into the center of the reserve. james check this place out. it's very interesting because it is here about the russians german troops operating in the mountains was the truck that was during world war two otherwise known in this country is the great patriotic war. the germans were aiming to break through to the black sea and seize its oil deposits there. fighting in the mountains was a tough job considering the local terrain around us. that but there weren't any tourist routes back them. and nearby was some considerably older landmarks. or the you or these stone structures might well date back a thousand years people began breeding livestock here in the tenth century shepherds

use these structures as shelters if these twelve ruins are anything to go by a dozen shepherds would stay here at a time while their animals grazed up in the mountains. as we moved forward into the mists we passed on the travellers making their way towards camp and they told us we were close to an oasis. you can swim here. you're. thinking about having a swim. every weather was better go ahead. it's not cold. this is the round lake it's fed by six surrounding springs and it's clear waters team with wildlife that you know this lake formed as a result of glaciers making depressions in the ground it's likely to be hundreds of

thousands or even millions of years old. and just beyond its banks there's a view that's worth all the effort it takes to get here. so i said i want to see the most beautiful part to the mountains and i think it's definitely counts it might have taken on with the bay of walking on a pretty uncomfortable night and finally made it right at the heart of the course. is it been an amazing journey but i wasn't relishing the thought of lugging my pack down the mountain on foot but one of sorties a limb. development's was about to come to my rescue. to the well

obviously you know. if i had a civilized way of getting down it's about the best thing. in the last twenty. and. i said goodbye to alexei and prepared to head down back to the city of sochi but before i did i thought i deserved a little or no the only thing that i want to do now is steal away my aches and pains in the banya or the bath house and it's probably one of the most russian thing you can do. or in this case is it. l.o.l. i mean it's the british band yeah that's right can i come in thank you very much. jay jay jay z. that's what i was thinking am i going to see pictures of the queen on the wall the old cricket bat here in there so what's british about the british. while leaving

only very. quietly to do with the fact that it's like a british tradition to get. them in one place like. james looking has lived and worked in russia for more than fifteen years and he's turned his banja into one of the area's most popular sports but it's not always been easy to retreat didn't work because people will include russia they want to come on holiday to. you know barbecue especially so their idea of sharing teaching and walking in the mountains you know very. well but in the end we built the body in the banya worked and it all went from there. and as i went away to get changed the first room was heated up well wait and see what the temperature inside the banya pushes one hundred degrees celsius more than two hundred foreign oil it's the process is all about getting rid of the body's

impurities stiffening the system and having the man told me and hold it. and it'll be saying that's a chemical. the whole experience is very intense and feels more like a tribal ritual than a sponsor but if you find yourself getting into light headed there's a sure way to wake you up again. mind body and soul. spitzer was less fun. it's. fortunately the pain is temporary and they have an extremely original recovery

method just. this release of. the k. so being covered with honey beaten with sticks and then boiled in a large pots might not be traditionally british but some things never change so they wanted something. that they are. told so it's. actually cd i bring back from england every time i travel the. winds. of course change you know. what could be more. humid a cold or enjoy. it

was an eccentric but wonderfully relaxing end to my trip into the reserve the scenery out here is incredible and a stark contrast to the bustling city a short distance below it is another side of so that no one should miss. the forest terrace the. ex hostages let us into their lives after the tragedy. still gives try to cross out the past. because their future.

surviving terrorism ten years on r.g.p. .