GEORGIA 2
Arrive back in tbilisi airport to get picked up by the ever galant nathan who delivers me back to the city and the hostel i had stayed at previously. Again i havent booked, and lashi the guy running the place is pleasantly surprised to see me. Feels like coming home again. Nice.
I take a day to get myself the right way up again. I have two days to do nothing specific in. The first day i just sit in the park. Im knackered. Well i have just been almost solidly on the move for the last week. No wonder. Day two i purchase some super-hot chilli powder from one of the cities bountiful street-sellers, then a small plastic coke bottle full of ‘cha cha’ – georgias answer to potcheen. Distilled from grape skins left over from wine-making. Pokey stuff. The two are to be combined in order to make pepper spray. The next dog that fancies sinking its teeth into me will get a faceful.
My previous cyclist chums from my previous stay in tbilisi have all gone. The novelty of the city is starting to fade and i feel like i am starting to see its cracks. I cant help but notice how many people look really quite miserable. Groups of middle-aged men stand around on the pavement. What else is there to do? Elderly women wrapped in saggy grey woolens look for all the world like something out of a medieval Breugal painting, hoping to sell snacks or fruit. So many beggars here. Nearly all of them elderly. More beggars here than in India. Tbilisi has more broken seemingly bombed-out buildings than india too. Georgia is cheaper than india too. Certainly accomodation is half the price. I still love tbilisi… but it is time to go. And that is as it should be.
Come friday (the third day) i take a bus out to nathans place in sighnaghi 120kms east. The driver has the road skills of a swarm of drunken bees on anphetamine. Glad to get out at the end of it. So apparently the gods are not calling for me to hand in my resignation today. That’s nice.
A couple of days of saying hello to my bike again and soaking up the marvellous peaceful ambience of this hilltop village. Nathan my host, is off dealing with work (he has the enviable vocation of being a wine dealer and running a restaurant… pretty amazing for a chap so young… he is 26ish).
emptying everything off the bike, all the myriad bits of scrunched paper, assorted fluff, bike spares, extra clothing and all manner of detritus. out onto the floor for a pre-journey scrutiny. if I was to sit down somewhere in a separate place and think about what I actually really need to undertake a 6500 to 7000km bike journey, I certainly wouldn’t envisage all the random junk that currently passes for being necessary. even after one my regular ritual clear-outs, the bike gets slowly re-packed, still with loads of random tat. my friend Helen once called me ‘Random Tat Man’. twenty five years later I still am, though nothing like as bad as I used to be.
Sunday afternoon 5th march
Looking out over Sighnaghi a small village in Eastern Georgia, getting slowly ready for the last phase of cycling….6500 to 7000kms to Holland.
The longest journey starts but with a single pedal push.
Its peaceful here, I run a mild fantasy about working over the unmade garden here.
Monday 6th.
The view is blank. Everywhere is utterly fog-bound. I’m going nowhere. I stay and fiddle with maps. My projected route is 7312kms. Or 4544 miles. That’s without any detours. If I travel 35kms a day without any breaks I would get to Christines house in Utrecht by xxxxxxx. If I do 50kms a day, it would be xxxxxx.
The fog lifts by 2pm but I still feel inclined to move. Go to bed and watch ‘The Bunker’.
Tuesday 7th.
No fog. Computer royal mail parcel tracking says my dog dazer has been delivered. This is great as my previous plan had been to set off without it and return to sighnaghi by bus to collect it when it finally got delivered. That would have taken at least a day of farting about, so yesterday’s fog was definitely a blessing in disguise.
No excuses now… got to go!
Wed match 8th
Waking up this morning my tent in a copse sparten without any spring leaf buds yet. Dry grass between my toes and three green woodpeckers nearby. Yesterdays ride out of sighnaghi took meup and out over a hill ridge, down the main road mostly downhill (wheeeee!) And off road onto a dirt track into traffic-free peace and quiet. Despite the viciously thorny acacia trees, I might have been on The Ridgeway in Berkshire England.
Today was another slow slog upwards out of the floodplain I had slept on. Much colder too.. yesterday was like an English late summer. Today I am passing through what Nathan had told me would remind me of the highlands of scotland, and so it does; complete with chilly winds. I am my way to the David Gereti monastry which features cave cells dug into the sandstone; deifinitely worth the ride especially considering my own troglodytic persuasions. On yhe way I pass through udabno, a village perched in the middle of nowhere with no apparent sense of industry or purpose…many of the big houses are abandoned and strewn with hay and straw as they have become makeshift barns instead. If you ever wondered what suburbia might look like come the time it might be obliged to become post-oil and agricultural… udabno is it. Almost no shops but plenty of chickens and pigs roaming about. Many front gardens feature content cows munching on hay. Whether its ‘The Good Life’ is debatable. Visually it reminds me of those windowless half blown to bits ex-villages that the british ministry of defence liked to requisition during the second world war to use for military training purposes. Like much of Georgia, it suffers more than its fair share of brokenness.
I am noticing more and more just how subdued many Georgians seem to be. Life in Georgia seems to be tough from what I have seen so far.
At the monastry I meet two german architecture students from stuttgart. We have an interestig conversation about bio-architecture as I would lke to visit stuttgarts university to see a project that is happening there to build a multi-storey building solely from willow trees and other plants.
Having climbed up, the ride out and onwards is inevitably downwards and I cruise effortlessly in gentle decline across sparse moorland for about 25 miles. Lovely.
Whats not lovely has been the number of dogs that have wanted to chase me today. About twelve. Fortunately my nerve and my confidence so far remains intact; the dogs come gallopping towards me barking and snarling. I stop. They come to within twenty feet of me. I point the dog dazer at them. They stop. Some straight away, some not straight away. Mostly they get confused and back off. A couple persisted, but at least I have a first line of defence. The second being the pepper spray. Which I hope I never need to use. So far so okay.
Riding into Tbilisi, this is the fifth time I have entered the city. I must like the place.
Booking into my usual hostel, a smily hello to lashi the manager and his sidekick whose name I don’t know… some familiar tenants ofvthe hostel invite me in for a phillipino lunch of riceand pork… today I am dining with a phillipino, a columbian, and the two Georgians. A quick shower and clothes wash and I’m back out, down to the hummus bar where I will be hooking up with a gaggle of cyclists, most of whom have been sitting out winter in the city. The ‘bar’; a cafe really is run by two ex-israelis a couple, the husband of the pair was born in Tbilisi but his parents left to become kittubzim when he was small… a lovely evening, chatting with alice a very very English young lady and yogesh a cheeky Mumbai Indian, Violet a sparkly eyed malaysian woman who is heading the same way as me… but in three weeks time. I don’t think I want to wait in Tbilisi more; she wants a cycling companion. Maybe we will meet further along the way? Hmm. Three weeks is a huge gap. Its unlikely. David an Australian theoretical physicist also a round the world cyclist (Portugal to Sydney, completed) and a very sweet couple Elliot (English and his partner Mayuu (from Osaka).
Violet’s sparkling eyes stay with me all the way home right until I fall asleep…
The next morning I start late. Don’t leave the hostel til 10.30. To accentuate the gravitational pull of the city, my exit is a loooong slow 16km schlep in an immensely upward trajectory. I am only three days back in the saddle and my legs are complaining… I must have stopped a dozen times going up the hill; which is totally the right thing to do. Heading as I am towards the mountainous border country, I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of my day slogging upwards in bottomest gear. At least I actually have bottomest gear now; yesterday the chain was playing silly buggers and uphills were done in slightly the wrong gear. Probably partly why my legs are complaining today…
Apart taking a wrong turn for 5kms at the end of the day and retracing to where I was actually intending to be, one bonkers dog encounter later (bonkers dog; not me) I find myself in a beautiful super peaceful beech wood under an almost full moon. Critters scrunch about in the dead leaves and the ocassional owl hoots. These are the first beech trees I have seen in all my time away; I am starting to feel my first ripples of European nature.
I am relatively high up; snow shadows still lurk in tucked away places. Its a little bit cold, I am in my tent and having had my last remaining lobiani (basicly a baked bean pasty but much better) and an orange for my tea, I am now free to write and then sleep. Bit by bit I am finding my way back to Europe. I hope its still there when I get there.
March 11.
Morning begins with only the gentlest touch of snow pattering onto the tent roof. Lightly falling amongst the beeches I still manage a half hour sit. Clearly its going to be a ‘wear everything’ day. I opt to follow the road rather than the through-forest over-mountain bike route that maps.me had picked for me. For the rest of the day the mountain tops are lost in snow-heavy low cloud and with food supplys running low, going that way would have been rather grim.
More and more Georgia is a picture of post soviet/civil war decreptitude. In some villages at least half the houses seem either totally abandoned, windowless or blocked up with sheets of aluminium, semi- disintegrated or being used as haybarns. I think Georgia seems to be the poorest looking place I have ever been. And that includes India somehow.
I end up just past tsalka having clocked up an above average 59kms. By my ongoing statistical log, I will arrive at the Turkish border in twelve days, Istanbul by April 20th and Utrecht by August 2nd. What actually happens is another matter.
The following day, the mountain plateau of frozen lake and surrounding glimmering white mountains looks fabulous. My only drawback is that I am knackered. I get off and push the bike up a seemingly endless hill until I reach some pine plantation. I spend ages pondering whether to call it a short day. It dawns on me that if it takes that long to reach the decision then clearly I really do need to stop. Having decided, I cook spaghetti in honey and butter for early supper…
March 13th.
The next morning also happens to be my 49th birthday, called in by a multifarious dawn chorus that includes blackbirds. What a lovely start to my day.
I push further for 4kms then everything starts to get easier. On my left, the bizarre mountain weather struts its stuff, with an invisible front rolling back a wall of mountain-clinging low cloud making the entire area look as if it might the smoke of some vast faraway bushfire.
A lone ancient menhir stands forlornly next to a newly gouged railway cutting. It looks rather sad and pointless. Odd considering that menhirs are famous for being pointy.
From ninotsminda for the next 100kms ish comes the great payoff; a large amount of freewheeling on mostly steadily dropping tarmac… its amazing how a road can find its way through gullies, river gorges and negoiate if by magic between seemingly impassable walls of mountain. Halfway down I was supposed to take a detour to see a cliff face monastry in vardzia, but the wet dirt track seemed intent on taking up residence inside my mudguards and utterly locking my wheels solid. This bike really doesnt do mud. At all.
At Akhaltsikhe, again I find myself less than enthusiastic about what comes next; 50kms of relentless mountain climbing. And its starting to rain. And I feel knackered again.
I book into the guesthouse Lile and after the manager asks me of my proposed route he kindly informs me that the road is blocked by snow (something else my bike jams up in).
Bollocks.
My two available alternative routes take me either 20kms south over into Turkey and more mountains (not keen) on a route thats 100km longer or north up to Kutaisi. Which is 150kms longer…. double bollocks.
The upside is that I am guaranteed a solid non bike-gumming tarmac road and whats more, the first 100kms, according to my maps.me altitude profile, is gloriously and unerringly downwards.
Effectively, I will have ridden a massive mountainous dog-leg that will have taken me some 300kms longer than if I had just headed in a straight line from Tbilisi to KutaisA. But at least I will have got to seen what Georgia is famous for.
March 17th.
The ride out of akhasikhte northwest follows a winding river and although not quite 50 percent freewheeling at least I am able to peddle comfortably in toppish gear most of the time, thus minimising my required effort.
I find myself camped out near Riketi Tunnel; a name which suggests that riding through might not be such a smart idea. Fortunately theres an over the top bypass route that takes me up through stunningly peaceful snowy pine forest for a brief respite from the traffic.
Coming out the other side, I then enjoy a wonderful genuine freewheel most of the way into the fabulously named Zestaponi… the sun is shining and its actually warm for the first time for me in Georgia. From winter to spring in one day… lovely.
I stop at the edge of the town, eat lunch, dry my tent and enjoy the new warm sunshine and then having successfully zested my pony, I set off again.
The road out, after battling my way through a traffic jam caused by an acident, then immediately becomes ‘motorway’ (the Georgian variant of) which basically means lots of space for me to ride safely in and absolutely no pot holes whatsoever. To think that had been considering following a country lanes back route instead… pah!
The weather is being very well behaved and making rapid progress I camp near King David The Builder Kutaisi Airport. Camped between tall sandy coloured reeds and some woodland scrub; a taste of European woodland, of hazel, alder and old mans beard and brambles all coming into bud. Even the sight of green grass is something I haven’t seen since kyrgyzstan. Let me tell you, in case you are in any doubt: fresh green grass is a wonderful thing.
March 18th
Having made fast progress on a nice easy road one day, of course the next day is head winds and rain and being almost edged off the road by lorries ocassionally. At the end of the day I am just short of the Black Sea coast by 17kms and set up tent inside a semi collapsed soviet era warehouse that has moss and scrambly vines crawling all over it. A perfect Dr Who set.
The rain continues, but at least I get the chance for my clothes to drip dry ready for the next day.
The next day… yesterdays wind and rain knocked the stuffing out of me, and I aim for an easy day with plenty of rest breaks… and so it is that I manage a very good 90kms without feeling like I was trying. Not sure how…. I am on the coast! The weather is being decent; suns out, no wind. Through the capital city Batumi, where its populace seem even more gloomy than your average Georgian (who already seem predisposed to being gloomy anyway).
I pass a cycling couple on a tandem twice, neither time did they seem inclined to stop and chat… fair enough. Couples can be like that. Out the other side of Batumi I encounter a spanish cyclist and we have a nice long chat… so this is it (maybe) back in the arena of random cyclist encounters… just wait til I get on the danube…. when the summer weather comes, there’ll be millions of the buggers! Hooray!
Wanting to be presentable for the Turkish border guards, I book into a guest house and put all my clothes into a washing machine ready for the big crossing…
Richard Terry 