GEORGIA:
The border crossing is quick, simple and unremarkable. A woman tries to jump me in the queue. Oh no you don’t. She gets my tactical elbow. I’ve been to Mongolia missus. Don’t think you can get past me that easily.
Rolling into a slightly crenulated dry and winter-grotted landscape finally we arrive at the outskirts of Tbilisi.
Reassembling my bike I roll into the heaving city. It’s busy dirty and smelly. It’s like being in London at rush hour.
I spend the next nine days (so far) hiding in a hostel room doing nothing but reading and nursing my green rubber snot-filled nostrils and throat back to normality eating approximately twenty satsumas a day. Pretty much hibernating, surfacing only for the toilet and go out to stretch my legs and replenish satsuma stocks it finally dawns on me that I don’t want to ride my bike back to Europe now.
Needing to look after myself, I am keenly aware that riding west anywhere now is going to be cold and horrible. I bury myself in reading and calling friends back home in order to avoid thinking about whatever it is that I am supposed to do now. I don’t know.
All things have their time. I have been on the road for nearly a year. I’ve had a number of weeks spent in hostels deliberately doing nothing to give myself breaks when I feel I need them, but now somehow I feel like I’ve unexpectedly had the rug pulled from under my feet. I had anticipated needing to do the ‘ What Next?’ decision-making process somewhere in the middle of Europe.
But gradually, I realise now, things have been winding down. All my floating community of cyclists have either gone to warmer countries or gone home. The weather in Uzbekistan looked like it was going leave me hypothermic or dead in a desert. Three weeks hanging around; at the Kazak border, in Aktau and on the Mercury. Continued exhausting cold and a frozen mud-encrusted bike. Nasty dog attacks in quick succession. Without noticing, I’ve become ground down. I have hit the dreaded novelty plateau. I’m feeling increasingly like I’ve seen it at before, like I’ve had enough. And on top of that, I have a historical tendency to not handle Christmas well.
I’m old enough fortunately to recognise that something has finished. The temptation is to get into a big drama with myself over this, but really, what can that achieve?
Instead, I will keep my head down, treat myself comfortably, and listen for what themes bubble up of their own accord in my mind and that will tell me what to do next I hope. All my life I have mentally chased my future trying to figure it out. It’s about as exhausting and futile as a dog chasing round in circles snapping at its own tail.
With some rest and plenty of satsumas and reading nice books, some notions have started to percolate between it all. My hostel is 2.30 a night, the cheapest paying place I have ever stayed, outside India. I can stay in Georgia for a year so there’s clearly no time pressure.
I’m comfortable, and I think I may have the sproutings of a plan…
Richard Terry 