Gimry is the village where Imam Shamil was born in 1797, and the whole slope seems to know it. The imam was the leader of the Caucasian resistance to the Russian conquest, an Avar scholar and soldier who held the mountains of Dagestan and Chechnya for twenty-five years, from the 1830s until his surrender at Gunib in 1859. In Russia, he is remembered both as a formidable enemy and, later, as a man of unusual dignity, and in Dagestan he is a national hero. His birthplace clings to a steep hillside above the Avar Koysu River, a cluster of stone houses stacked in terraces, with narrow lanes and flat roofs, and a small memorial to him stands near the village.
Below you the land falls away in a series of deep valleys, ridges and reservoirs, and across the gap rise the dry, tawny mountains of central Dagestan, with villages perched on impossible ledges. The air is clear and warm, and the light at evening turns the slopes copper. A tunnel now runs through the ridge beneath Gimry, one of the longest road tunnels in Russia, at around four kilometres, and it replaced a precarious mountain road, making the area far more accessible than it was for the imam's enemies.
The people here are Avars, the largest of Dagestan's many nationalities, and their villages have traditions of stone building, woodcarving and metalwork. Untsukul, a few kilometres away, is renowned for its wooden objects inlaid with silver wire, a craft that has been handed down for centuries. Local food is simple and good: khinkal, flatbreads, lamb and sour cream, and fresh honey.
The ride in is a mountain road in the full sense. Bends are tight, gradients are steep, and the surface varies from good tarmac to broken patches, with rockfalls and sometimes livestock on the way. In summer, the heat in the lowlands is considerable, and the temperature drops as you climb, so wear layers. The best months are May, June and September. Heavy rain can bring landslides.
Shamilkala, about two and a half kilometres away, has shops, cafés and basic fuel, and larger supplies are in Buynaksk and Makhachkala. Fill up before you head deep into the mountains, since pumps in the villages are rare. Look across the valley and think of the imam looking back. It is the kind of view that explains a whole history.