ABOUT
The Story Behind AMNIMAKEN
I am Oleg Gritskevich, a mountain guide, author and founder of AMNIMAKEN. I am Belarusian and have lived in Georgia with my family since 2010.
This project grew from many years of travel, observation, guiding, study and practice, and from a lasting curiosity about what happens around us and within us.
AT A GLANCE
- Based in
- Georgia
- Mountains
- 150+ private ski-touring and freeride trips since 2013, from the Caucasus to the Himalayas, including Himalayan expeditions in 2024 and 2025
- Guide training
- Avalanche safety, route planning, glacier travel and rescue; training with ACMG and RMGA instructors; aspirant guide exam (Kazakhstan). Former paramedic
- Business before
- 20 years in publishing. 7 years running a travel company in Belarus
- Business now
- Gudauri Travel LTD, founded in 2011: mountain tourism, hospitality and property management
- Books
- Three guidebooks to ski touring and freeride in Georgia (2017, 2023, 2024), published in the Still Wild Lines series
- Tsa Lung
- Certified teacher in the lineage of Tulku Lobsang Rinpoche
- Meditation
- Tergar Meditation Teacher Program with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche; teaching from August 2027
- Languages
- English, Russian, basic Georgian
Snowboarding to Nirvana
In 1997, while waiting for a flight at John F. Kennedy Airport, I came across a book called Snowboarding to Nirvana. My English at the time was only good enough to understand the title (fortunately). But that was enough. It sounded almost like a plan.
My interest in the East, yoga and different forms of self-exploration had begun much earlier (thanks to Sasha Khmelnitsky and his father). After this book, and partly after some other wonderful events and encounters, travel, mountains and inner exploration became recurring threads in my life. I left my work as a paramedic, learned to snowboard and began travelling widely, sometimes looking for meaning and at other times, perhaps, running away from it.
THE BEGINNING
I began practising yoga at thirteen,
long before the mountains and the practices
became my profession.
The Road to the Mountains
At the same time, I built a professional career spanning almost two decades in publishing and newspaper management, working at different times as a publisher, journalist, photographer, IT developer, bicycle mechanic and massage therapist. The roles changed, but the deeper thread remained, gradually shaping the choices that eventually brought me to the mountains and to a more deliberate spiritual practice.
On the way to who I am now, I took part in the AXA World Ride ’95, a round-the-world bicycle race, organised unusual sporting events in Belarus and worked on projects connected with travel and with realising people’s innate potential. One of them was Chernobyl – Hope ’96, a 26-day extreme bicycle race for people with disabilities.
After moving to Georgia, the mountains gradually became the centre of my professional life.
In 2011, I founded Gudauri Travel, a company working in mountain tourism, hospitality and property management. I later trained professionally as a mountain guide under mentors from the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG), partly so I would always have a good reason, and some company, to travel to the mountain regions that kept drawing me back.
I guided, created remote backcountry camps, explored new regions and developed ski-touring and freeride routes. Working with people from around the world also improved my English considerably. Eventually, more than twenty years after buying Snowboarding to Nirvana at JFK, I was finally able to read it. By then, however, I had accumulated enough experience of my own to think that perhaps I could write a book myself.
So I did.
Books & Still Wild Mountains
The guidebooks grew naturally from guiding and mountain exploration. A guidebook requires more than knowing a route: preparation, assessing and checking data on the ground, repeated observation, and a strong sense of responsibility towards the person who will later rely on that information.
That work became the Still Wild Lines guidebook series: no directions to Nirvana, only routes and practical information for independent freeriders and ski tourers.
My books, route development, mountain research and expedition projects now live at Still Wild Mountains. The books are also available on Amazon.
MOUNTAIN BACKGROUND
EXPERIENCE
I started snowboarding in 1999, and since 2004 I have spent 80 to 100 days in the mountains every winter.
TRAINING
From 2013 to 2019 I trained at the RMGA Mountain Guide School under the auspices of the ACMG.
TRIPS ORGANISED
More than 150 private ski-touring and freeride trips since 2013, from the Caucasus to the Himalayas. Five Himalayan expeditions: 2004, 2005, 2008, 2024 and 2025.
GRATITUDE
My instructors (Keith Reid, Marc Piché, Mark Bender, Mark Klassen, Reiner Taglinger) and my mentors Fedor Farberov, Grigory Mintsev and Sergey Fursov helped me understand the mountains more deeply and define the limits of acceptable risk.
GUIDEBOOKS
I am the author of three guidebooks to ski touring and freeride in the mountains of Georgia, published in 2017, 2023 and 2024.
APPROACH
I have a very practical reason to take risk seriously: I have a family waiting for me at home.
Eastward and Inward
Over the years, I have spent long periods travelling in Tibet, snowboarded in the Himalayas and visited many Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, India, China, Sri Lanka and Burma (Myanmar).
During long ski traverses and bicycle journeys, I began to notice that attention, usually fixed on the landscape, the route, the weather or the next destination, would sometimes turn inward by itself. There was a surprising amount to observe: thoughts, emotions, fear, expectation and awareness itself.
What began almost accidentally became a more deliberate and structured practice. Teachings received during my journeys to India and Tibet eventually led me to deeper study of meditation and Tibetan yogic practices with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Tulku Lobsang Rinpoche. I wanted not only to continue practising, but also to learn how to share these methods responsibly.
As my training deepened, meditation and the Tsa Lung breathing practice gradually became an integral part of my life and of some of my programs.
What began as separate interests gradually came together. Mountains, adventure sports, breathing practices and meditation were no longer separate parts of my life, but different ways of exploring its nature.
The idea of teaching and passing on the practices available to me came from a question my clients often asked at early breakfast during week-long ski tours: “Why do you get up at six in the morning, and what do you do?” After hearing my answer, many want to join the morning meditation. So now I am learning to pass on what has proved useful to me.
Frozen Water, Liquid Water. And Sometimes Concrete.
Snowboarding has been part of my life since the late 1990s.
Surfing arrived much later and opened a different relationship with the same basic idea: moving through space on a board. Snow has become familiar territory; the ocean is still a place of learning.
A mountain and an ocean wave demand different skills, but both ask for attention, timing, instant and precise reactions, and a willingness to work with forces vastly greater than our own: to move with them and become part of that power, or simply to stop and watch from the side. Somewhere between frozen and liquid water, meditation and breathing practice found their place too. And in the end, I love snowboarding, surfing and skating for a particular feeling of freedom.
AMNIMAKEN
The name AMNIMAKEN goes back to 2005 and a journey near Amnye Machen, a sacred mountain in eastern Tibet. Soon after returning from that journey, I received an invitation to Gmail: when Google first launched its email service, you could only sign up if someone invited you. At that moment the name of the mountain was on my mind, and, spelled as it was in my travel notes, it became my email address. Over the years it turned into my nickname. The mountain, the wind and the feeling stayed.
Today AMNIMAKEN brings together much of what has shaped my life: mountains, ocean, travel, books, meditation, breath and a great interest in life.
This is where I share all this and invite others to join future journeys: sometimes to ride together, sometimes to practise and explore new methods of self-knowledge.
NOT ON THE MAIN STREET
My cabins at Gudauri Woods cannot be seen from the road. There is no sign: you have to know they are there, or want very much to find them.
This site is made the same way. AMNIMAKEN is not an easy name to spell, to remember or to type into a search bar. When an old email nickname became the name of this project, I kept it as it was. I was not looking for a bright, convenient address that would bring in everyone searching for a mountain guide or a meditation course. And I make no advertising effort to draw anyone artificially to the programs I offer.
But I am not hiding either. The door is open; it is just not on the main street. I simply know that the people I am meant to meet in this life will find their way to me: to spend time together in the mountains or on the meditation cushion, to talk, or to share something with me.
GET IN TOUCH
If something here resonates, whether a journey, a place or an idea of your own, write to me.
I read every message myself and usually reply within a day or two.