We had now entered Georgia! As we whizzed along the beautiful coastal road, our first impressions were of how different this was to Turkey – the road turned to potholes, the minarets turned into crosses, and suddenly everyone was wearing a lot less, and drinking a lot more beer!
Our first stop was outside Batumi. Harriet was desperate for a wee, and headed swiftly into the sea. This was her undoing. Despite a year and a half practising on Brighton Beach, the Black Sea pebbles were too much for her – she fell on her bottom several times, and as we prepared to leave, realised she had done something pretty bad to her knee.
And so we limped slowly into another city!
Having cycled through Italy, Albania and Central Athens we thought we had experienced driving as bad as it could be. However, coming into Batumi was still a shock to the system as we were met by uber aggressive, reckless and downright dangerous drivers – for the first time on our trip we genuinely thought we might die, and were almost knocked off several times. The damage to nearly every car we saw, with bumpers missing, dents and obvious repair jobs on one out of three cars, was testament to this atrocious driving.
Eventually we made it to our lovely hostel, where we had three bunk beds to ourselves! Batumi in general was a great place to be and reminded us of Brighton in its exuberance, relaxed nature and slightly tacky edges so we felt right at home.
We also promptly fell in love with Georgian cuisine which suited us down to the ground as it is very tasty, stodgy and incredibly cheap! We realised with delight that it was cheaper for us to eat out than to cook, and spent happy days drinking 50p beer and consuming khachapuri (bread boats filled with cheese, egg and butter – a calorie fest for the hungry cyclist!).
Our time here was both productive and decadent. We started our Azerbaijan visa process and ended the day drinking cocktails looking out to sea and watching dancing luminous fountains.
After four relaxing days, Harriet strapped up her knee and we struck out again into the Batumi traffic en route to the Adjara mountains and the next plus-2000m pass of the trip, the Goderdzi Pass. City sprawl quickly turned into a beautiful hillside road that closely followed the river into the mountains.
The traffic thinned and our main companions were the cows wandering in the road, and a hungry dog who joined us for lunch. We spent our first night camping in a beautiful spot by the river.
The next day we headed on to Khulo, the last town before the pass. The road became increasingly steep, a little warning of what was to come, and we were passed by several intrepid Mongol Rally participants in tiny micras and 2cvs. In Khulo we replenished ourselves with another amazingly hearty Georgian feast – Sinori (Pasta, egg and cheese fried in a pan… we are going to get fat!) Beyond Khulo the tarmac disintegrated and we were left with a rocky potholed track that would be our companion for the next two days.
We ended our day by struggling up 10 km of this before deciding to stop for the night, luckily just before a series of thunderstorms rolled across the sky. The next morning, we were forced to endure the unwanted advances of an intoxicated local who was determined that we spend 5 days in his house and who had worryingly just returned from driving trucks on the local construction site. After he had bruised Harriet’s arm in his enthusiasm, he finally got the message that we were leaving after Jonathan employed the ‘long eye contact’ approach, and we headed off up the hill.
Sweating up the increasingly steep road, we rested in a road side shelter and were joined by a fellow cycle tourer, Tomaz from Slovenia, who was on his way to Nepal. Together, we braved the final climb up to the pass, which consisted of a countless number of switchbacks up a track that now resembled a dry river bed. At lunchtime, we hit the summit (2025 m) and celebrated with 3 enormous khachapuri. These were of a different type with no egg but double the cheese!
The three of us cycled down together, crossing several streams in which we all managed to get soaked. Jonathan also took his first tumble of the trip, when a large rock impeded his progress. Finally, we hit tarmac again and, after the torture of 50km of unpaved track, the sensation of the smooth road was akin to getting in a warm bath. That night was spent camping by the river, where we cooked up the bike touring classic of pasta, tomato and tuna/cheese. We spent a wonderful evening with Tomaz – it was so nice to meet someone who had a similar approach to bike touring as ourselves.
The next morning, we headed off towards Alkhatskihe where our paths would diverge. However, our lovely smooth tarmac turned into a pebble strewn nightmare to which even parts of the mountain road paled in comparison. The bumping was so intense that Harriet developed a migraine that prevented her seeing out of one eye for several hours.
In Alkhatsikhe, we had lunch with Tomaz and then said our goodbyes. In such a short time it felt like our worldwidewobble had a third member, and we were both very sad to see Tomaz head off south while we went north. We cycled into the Lower Caucasus to the spa town of Borjomi, famous for its sulphurous mineral water. This we tried and found to be the temperature of urine and the taste of egg. We had a lovely walk by the river, although the famed woodland mineral pool was a little more crowded than we had anticipated.
From Borjomi, we headed towards Tbilisi on an intense two-day run which covered 180 km. On our way, we had several run-ins with herds of roadside cows and camped under a railway bridge (which may have been another dogging spot, as we were joined by several cars throughout the night), before entering Tbilisi on an 8-lane highway, where our Athens cycling with Lilian and friends proved invaluable. Following their example, we made ourselves into one slow moving vehicle, cycling side by side and occupying an entire lane.
Upon arrival in Tbilisi, we hurried to our hostel, dumped our bags and then zoomed to the train station, where Jonathan promptly hopped on a train all the way back to Batumi to collect our Azerbaijan visas, while Harriet loafed in the hostel awaiting his return.
Visas collected, we spent the weekend in Tbilisi, visiting the Museum of Soviet Occupation, exploring the Old Town, feasting on Georgia’s finest vegetarian food at Leila’s café and taking a cable car to visit ‘the mother of Georgia’, a buxom metallic Valkyrie watching over the city.
We also applied for our Chinese visas, and while waiting for these to arrive gave our bikes, if not our bodies, a rest by taking a bus into the Upper Caucasus mountains to spend a couple of days hiking around the village of Kazbegi. During our bumpy, sweaty ride up to the village, we met three other travellers – Emma from Holland, Johannes from Germany and Elmira from Kazakhstan – and spent a merry night with them, drinking a litre of ‘family chacha’, the local homebrew which is reputed to be between 50 and 70 %.
The Kazbegi region is famous for its hilltop church, flanked by the imposing snow-capped peak of Mount Kazbek. While mountaineers passed us heading for its icy summit, we were content to enjoy a picnic lunch on its beautiful lower slopes (still a fairly exhausting 7 hour round trip).
Harriet suffered another animal-induced affront when a bee got trapped in her sunglasses and stung her viciously twice on the eyelid.
From Kazbegi, we headed back to Tbilisi to collect our visas and bikes and head to the famed Khaketi wine region. Unfortunately, in order to gain access to the vine-covered slopes, we had to scale a 1600 metre pass, which nearly finished us off. In a state of collapse still several kilometres from the top, we were revived by some delicious honey generously provided by a local beekeeper. That night, exhausted but happy after a long downhill run through beautiful walnut and oak forests, we set up our camp in an old abandoned fort.
The next morning we tried a selection of Georgian wines in the Shumi vineyard; however our dehydrated states meant we left tipsy but with pounding headaches. Our final stop in Georgia was Lagodekhi, another beautiful region, characterised by wooded hills, where we did a trek up to the Black Grouse Waterfall and had a refreshing dip. Then it was on to the Azerbaijan border, where we were greeted by the slightly perturbing sign below!
