Training in Georgia in 2015: My Private Special Forces-Inspired Experience

By Deepak Shukla · Historical account and source-led commentary · Updated 17 October 2026

In summer 2015 I spent ten days in Georgia on privately arranged military-style training. I was introduced to my trainer as a former Georgian special-forces sniper; I have not independently verified his service record. This was a personal undertaking, not an official Georgian course, British Army training or a special-forces qualification. The two original diaries tell the preparation and arrival story. This 2026 overview reads them together without inventing the missing days.

Why I went: wanting a taste of something unfamiliar

I was already exploring the 21 SAS Reserve application and wanted some experience of a military environment before going further. My instinct was to find a difficult challenge and prepare as hard as I could. In the first diary, that ambition leads me towards a private introduction through a friend rather than towards a formal course. I had endurance and fighting experience, but those experiences did not tell me what soldiering would ask of me. The distinction matters more to me now than the dramatic sound of the trip. Wanting a test and understanding the role behind that test are different things.

A private introduction, not a verified credential

A friend helped connect me with someone who could arrange the training. The original account describes Facebook contact followed by Skype conversations. I was public about my life, while I knew very little about the person I would be meeting. That imbalance is part of the story, not evidence that secrecy establishes expertise. My description of a former Georgian special-forces sniper comes from the introduction and what I understood then. I cannot turn that into an independently checked service history. I am not repeating names or further identifying details here, and the selected photographs show either no people or only me in specifically confirmed solo frames.

Ten days agreed, but not a ten-day diary

We settled on ten days while I would be staying in Tbilisi. The first article describes plans being discussed and preparations building towards a July 2015 departure. My confirmed recollection is that I undertook the ten-day experience. Those facts do not supply a complete daily timetable. The surviving two-part account is strongest on what happened before departure and on arrival. Its final teaser mentions later events, but a teaser is not a sufficiently detailed record to reconstruct exercises, exact locations or conversations. I would rather leave those gaps visible than write a polished adventure that my sources cannot support.

Reading felt like preparation

When faced with something I had never done, I turned to books. The original diary describes a US Army survival manual, a dense 623-page book and further reading over several weeks. Buying and reading those books gave me something concrete to do while the trip was still an idea. Looking back in that same diary, I questioned whether the material fitted someone at my stage. I needed a clearer understanding of the application pathway and a clearer explanation of what I was trying to prepare for. This is an account of what I read, not a recommendation to copy a military manual or practise its contents.

Kit lists and the limits of remote conversations

Alongside the reading, I assembled a kit list and exchanged messages as I bought equipment. I also wrote a short document about myself which I then believed would explain my readiness. The older account is frank about that confidence: a summary of endurance achievements was not the same as knowing what I needed to learn. We had never met, and the Skype conversations described in the diary had been brief. I could collect equipment and information without resolving that central uncertainty. I am keeping the useful narrative point here without republishing private chat screenshots, a shopping prescription or instructions for reproducing the training.

Reaching Tbilisi: the idea became an actual journey

Part 2 opens with my arrival in Tbilisi. I remember being concerned about travelling with military gear, but the diary says the journey itself had been smooth. A local contact met me and we went into the city for dinner. The first meeting with the trainer happened at the restaurant, rather than through another screen. That shift from planning at home to sitting at a table in another country is the centre of the arrival account. I do not need to add a dramatic landscape or an invented training scene to make it meaningful. The landscape photographs shown here belong to the wider trip archive, not to that meal.

Dinner, an apartment and an uncertain first night

The second diary describes dumplings, the end of the evening and travelling on to the apartment where I would stay. These are ordinary details around an extraordinary decision I had made for myself. They bring the account back to the practical reality of arriving somewhere unfamiliar: meeting someone for the first time, getting to the accommodation and thinking about what would happen next. The following day's orientation was still being discussed as a plan. I am preserving that distinction. A proposed next step in an arrival diary is not proof of an exercise completed the next morning, and it is not the missing record of all ten days.

What I expected, and where the preparation did not fit

My own retrospective comments in Part 1 identify a mismatch. I had approached the decision emotionally, through a personal network, without sufficiently clarifying the UK pathway I was preparing for. The account says the trainer did not have UK military experience and was more familiar with US preparation. Those are the limits of my historical account, not a judgment on an independently verified career. In that diary I recognised that preparation better matched to the British context would have made more sense. The lesson is not that a harsher private experience is automatically useful. It is that the purpose of preparation has to be understood before difficulty becomes a goal in itself.

Georgia was a separate chapter

This private trip sits apart from my British Army preparation in 2015–16. The Army photographs elsewhere on this site belong to that journey, not to this one — and neither experience made me anything more than an applicant who trained seriously and later chose to stop.

A fuller photographic archive, and what it cannot prove

The archive review now covers contact sheets of 74 photographs and two videos from a collection labelled 25 June–4 July 2015. Ten photographs without visible people have been individually checked at full available resolution and selected for the new photo diary. The earlier single valley panorama is reused. Album labels are not independently verified camera timestamps, and my preparation diary refers to July; the sources do not resolve every date. Kit, paths, valleys and wooded tracks provide context, not proof of exercises, a programme, an itinerary or anyone's military credentials. Six specific solo photographs now accompany those scenes: I have confirmed their sole subject is me, and the full frames have been checked for anyone else. That confirmation is mine rather than an independent identification. Other people-bearing or ambiguous frames and both videos remain withheld.

Privacy is part of an honest archive

I have chosen not to link readers to the raw shared material, because its contents could change and expose someone who should not appear here. Only the explicitly owner-attested solo candidates are eligible alongside the person-free scenes; each must be independently visually checked in full for any other or ambiguous person, including reflections. If anyone else could be present, the image is withheld, even if blurring were possible. Image metadata is removed. No trainer photograph is published or anonymised for this release. More imagery is not worth compromising the privacy of someone in the story.

Read the two original accounts beside this overview

Part 1, published on 4 December 2022, records the introductions, conversations, books, equipment and growing nerves. Part 2, published on 14 December 2022, records arrival, dinner, the first meeting and the first night. Both look back at 2015; they are not journals published during the ten days. Their original wording, images and publication dates remain intact. This overview was written in October 2026, from a greater distance. Together they tell the story honestly without pretending to be an official course description, a current recruitment guide or a complete record of every day.

My privately arranged training experience in Georgia, 2015

Georgia: ten days, a private photographic chapter

The chronology the sources support

Before departure · recalled in Part 1

25 June–4 July 2015 · album range

Summer 2015 · my recollection

Arrival · recalled in Part 2

December 2022 · publication

17 October 2026 · photographic retrospective