Xinaliq

Reached by one road. Its people speak Khinalug, and nobody else does.

Xinaliq sits high in the Greater Caucasus, its houses stacked up the slope so that one roof is the next one's yard. It is among the highest continuously inhabited settlements in the region, and for most of its history the only way in was on foot or horseback. The road came recently and it is still the only one.

The language is the thing that stops people short. Khinalug is not a dialect of anything. It is its own branch, spoken here and essentially nowhere else on earth, by a community small enough to fit in a large hall.