As East as I go (day 81 - 86)
Day 81 - 86 (1st - 6th Nov)
7,595 miles
Ahlat - Tbilisi
I needed some 'normality' to get my head back into the adventure.
Aside from the delay to travelling and getting the miles done, or all the cleaning and sorting of kit and the need to rearrange the system of storage on the bike - those things are just practical tasks, you just chew through them until they're done - the thing that's hardest to fix is the mental knock of being derailed by a situation that could have gone so very wrong. I've struggled to articulate the impact of how it affects the rest of the trip, I think the best description I've come up with is that sometimes it feels like I'm surviving rather than travelling and exploring. Surviving needs a different approach, I get less from it because I'm not learning new things, I'm using experiences I already have and it uses more mental energy & stress, and for those reasons its not sustainable long term. I don't really consider wild camping and being in the middle of nowhere as 'surviving' as I really enjoy those moments - those are adventure. The harder stuff is being written off by a car, or needing to fix a terminal problem on the bike, or being 6ft from a hungry lethal weapon at 1am.
I had a deadline and a destination, both helped refocus what I was doing - I needed to meet Andrea in Tbilisi in a couple of days, then head to the mountains for a few days hiking. It was 660km and a border away, so the next morning I loaded the bike with the new set up of clothes and soft gifts in the spare dry-bag to prevent sharp items piercing it when compressed, then strapped it onto the pillion seat with my spare Rok Strap (but only had one spare as I killed one at the campsite in Oslo a million years ago). The dry bag with camping kit was strapped to the topbox rack and I'd half-emptied one of the panniers to give some flexible food/daily packing space trying to recreate the function I had in the topbox.
There are so many extinct volcanoes in this part of Turkiye creating a stunning background for the ride north in the sunshine but the altitude kept the temperature around 12°C, making it hard to stay warm at speed. I stopped for some food on the outskirts of town having not had breakfast, and ended up having dry bread and bananas as the options in the shop were fairly limited. I bought a few bottles of water to make sure I was carrying enough, but as I started trying to find places to stash the water and food, people started to gather around me and the bike a little too interested in what was going on. I didn't do the best job of packing as I was keen to get moving again to get some space. The east of Turkiye is stunning and raw, villages are a scattering of farm small holdings with shepherds staying with their flocks or herds, few and far between, with nothing to bound the land in any direction as far as you can see. I rode up through mountains and down valleys once mined for resource, with few trees on the hillsides, just reds or greys of quarry works and rock but pretty for its raw asthetic.
As I got to Kars, I still had an hour of daylight so wanted to travel further if I could and pulled over to check if there was somewhere futher north I could stay. I found a little town 30 minutes ahead which had some hotels and a centre where I could probably get some food, so continued out of Kars - my original destination for the day. I got to the door of an apart-hotel in Arpacay and found the owner, a room and paid for the night. It was a full apartment with kitchen, living room and two bedrooms which was far more than I needed but it was warm and dry - it gave me an early start for the border an hour north the next fayt, and I wasn't ready to camp again for a little while. I was able to store my bike in the locked garage beneath the hotel, then headed into the centre of the town to find some dinner.
The cafe I found was the sort of place you just ask for a serving of the food they have that day, rather than specifying what I wanted to eat. Proceedings were a little delayed as the power tripped out a few minutes after I sat down, and after watching them interrogate the fuse box I had a look and decided it was definitely best not to get involved, the un-sheathed wires and bypassed MCBs were not inviting. After witnessing a sequence of shutting items off then slowly trying to turn them back on, the cafe was 'live' again, and a menagerie of salad, bread and meat emerged which hit the spot.
I loaded up and was on the road by 9am the next morning, keen to get to the border as getting into Turkiye was a bit of a farce and I wasn't sure how tedious leaving would be. Things were going well, the ride there was an hour of cool but sunny dry roads, I skipped to the front of the queue of lorries, got my passport stamped at passport control and commenced the process of leaving. I handed my passport and vehicle documents to the chap at the gate, who spent a long time holding them and frowning at the computer. I used to think borders were a passport check, make sure you aren't a criminal & not wanted by interpol, then you're free to continue, but the process seems to have developed a healthy slice of faffing and this crossing was no different.
After watching 3 or 4 lorry drivers documents be handed over and returned whilst mine were still being held, I went back to my bike and sat patiently watching and waiting. Eventually I was called forward and passport returned, then told to open my luggage. One of the most annoying parts of a border crossing for a bike is having someone lift and unpack the game of tetras that takes practice and a specific order to reassemble. Obviously I wouldn't expect them to take for granted that I'm not smuggling contraban into or out of the country, its a shame there isn't a 'trust' card that exists when people just believe you on face value because you're honest and straightforward. Thinking about it, that 'trust' card would probably help with quite a lot more than just making life easier for bikers at borders - maybe someone should look into that. Free to continue I rode through the melee of lorries to the bottleneck exit from Turkiye, and was told that I needed 'scanner'. Scanner? I rode from the only gate into the bottleneck, to the only exit - there was no other option, what scannner? After some broken english pointing through the opened barrier between those entering Turkiye and those leaving, I was told to go to 'scanner'. I rode through the 4-door thick separation and was stumped, I was now joining lorries entering Turkiye, but I didn't want to do that. Someone came up to me and gesticulated that I follow so I rode at walking pace back towards Turkiye, and was parked in front of a huge x-ray machine designed to scan lorries entering the country. I waited for the current lorry to clear, and was eventually instructed to park my bike in the tunnel and stand back whilst they sterilised my bike with x-rays looking for chests full of weapons, a stowed illegal immigrant or maybe a tonne of carpets I hadn't declared.
'All clear' - ideal, I went back the wrong way against lorries entering Turkiye, got to the front of the final bottleneck after passing the still open 4-door barrier between those coming and going, and was moments from leaving the country. 'You need to pay fine'. Fine? What fine? The chap couldn't see on his system, only that my bike had accrued some fines in my time travelling across Turkiye. It wasn't hard to believe, I ride carefully and concientiously, but not always the way the signs suggest I should. Okay, I have fines to pay, where do I pay those? 'Back where you were'. I have been on both sides of the border control, through every gate and checkpoint, and seen nowhere that suggested it would handle paying fines. I negotiated leaving my bike just beyond the gate, handed the chap my passport so I wouldn't disappear and went in search of a computer to tell me how much I owe the Republic of Turkiye for secretly accrued infringements. It turns out I had used two toll roads which had ANPR tracking to use, and amounted to 30 lira - about 68p. Narrow escape, dues paid, I returned to the gate, and was clear of Turkiye - 3 hours.
Entering Georgia was 10 minutes at one gate, I had previously bought insurance online for 15 days (£5.50 for the bike) so that was easy, and I could be in the country for a year without visa. It went from feeling interrogated, to feeling very welcome in the space of 100m.
Riding into Georgia the way I had come in, was not a main route into the country. The road led through tiny villages with fairly rough condition of roads, past people who exist on subsistent farming in their communities. However, fairly quickly, it started to feel quite different to Eastern Turkiye. There was more farming, the land was more arable, greener, there was a familiar smell of dairy activities you get in the UK countryside from cow feed and silage. After an hour I was riding along pastures with rivers meandering through, feeling as though I had somehow slipped into a very familiar world. The vehicles on the roads were more recognisable with western brands, newer, less salvaged looking. The small holdings and buildings were similar but the stuff that wasn't bolted down and permanent seemed to be slightly more affluent. I'd had some apprehension about coming into Georgia so close to troubled political times, parts of it being occupied by Russia and commanded strict no-travel regions, it has some spicy neighbours, but the feeling on the ground undid almost all of that.
White capped mountains to the north accompanied me most of the 4 hour ride from the border to Tbilisi. Fuel was astonishingly cheap, 2.6 GEL (lari) which was about 75p/litre, and the strange sense of calm continued. It was very obviously autumn here, deciduous trees turning yellows and oranges and reds all over the hills and mountains around me in the afternoon sun as I got closer to the capital.
I had booked to stay for 5 nights at the Fabrika hostel where Andrea was staying, so I arrived and unpacked then moved my bike round the back where many other bikes (mostly mopeds) lived. The hostel was an old soviet sewing factory, was huge and was adorned in murals and graffiti. The back side of it had a courtyard with bars, pottery studio, cafes, winery, film studio and a few other businesses which were filled with young people from all over the world, below the fairy lights festooned between trees. It had a very relaxed and vibrant atmosphere - Andrea had chosen well to stay here and I had just copied when planning what to aim for.
It was really good to see Andrea again, a familiar face after a few heavy weeks. We caught up and chatted, went for some food then headed to the dorm (we were coincidentally in the same room). Here we met probably the fastest person I'm ever going to meet (and he'll hate me for describing him that way!). Peter was from Scotland and staying in Fabrika for the week too, having flown over to compete in a couple of Orienteering races before heading back to the UK for a cross country race on the weekend. Over the last two years I'd started running again, had done multiple shorter distance races, done what I would consider a decent amount of trail running, trained for and made a (failed) attempt to run the UK Coast-to-Coast in June but am familiar with paces, effort, training, most of the mid-level stuff associated to running.
Peter's version of running is quite different, I won't say too much to avoid embarrassing him but to paint the picture, his best 5k time is 14 minutes 10, and its been 3 years since he hadn't come first at a park run. In the 5 days we were in Tbilisi together he ran over 60 miles, I ran 5. It was really interesting to talk about and learn more about top level running, the training, the 2 or 3 runs a day, the way orienteering competitions work, his view that you should do the things your body is good at, at those stages of life (i.e. speed and short distance at younger age, endurance and longer distance in later years), I really enjoyed meeting him. He had studied Russian at uni too and knew a lot about the soviet union, its impact on post-soviet countries and the historic connections and timelines of significant dates which gave me the start of an understanding with whats happening in Georgia now, and what has happened to other countries in the past. During his studies he had lived in Tbilisi so was able to give Andrea and me some good advice on things to do, places to go, and an intruction to Georgian food.
Georgian food is something worth visiting for on its own and I already miss it. Almost every street had a bakery producing alluring scents you can't walk past without being drawn-in by. Restaurant etiquette is a little different to the UK, food is presented as its ready and you eat it when it comes, hot, and you're better off ordering a few different things to share amongst those you're with rather than specific mains as you would be accustom to in the UK or elsewhere. The bread, fuelled by the baking prevalence of the country is incredible - fresh, light, tasty. Lobiani is a red kidney bean filled flatbread which is so good, Khinkali are dumblings filled with mushrooms or beef or cheese or a few other traditional fillings, you eat with your hands and leave the pinched end (sort of similar to how a cornish pastry 'should' be eaten). Various other flatbreads with fillings, Kubdari is a flatbread filled with meat and vegetables, khachapuri is a cheese filled bread with an egg on top, many things I didn't get the chance to try and all so tasty and filling. If you ate Georgian food every day you'd be a whale in a year, but they have a strong identity of traditional food and all of it was good (if a little salty at times). To accompany the food culture of the country, Georgia was one of if not the first country in the world to make wine and is the first place I'd had naturally made wine using the yeasts present in the grape rather than adding any to the process.
The following day Andrea and I went around the city exploring the old town which felt quite small compared to other 'old towns' I've been round, but nice and quaint. We went on the hunt for postcards, fridge magnets and I found a little piece of art being sold by a student who had painted some scenes of Georgia and was selling them by the wonky Gabriadze Theatre to make some pocket money. We wandered up to the Mother of Georgia for a view out over the city and watched a musician peacefully playing his soul out into the guitar for the passing crowds to ignore, it was a serene and slightly sad moment.
All over the city, the discord against Russia is present. At the bottom of the menu in last night's burger bar the statement 'Russia occupies 20% of our country, we don't speak their language here'. On the sign outside a rental accommodation 'Russia is the occupier, you cannot deny that'. All over the city spray painted onto walls of buildings or bridges or near cafes and restaurants, explitives about Russia and the war and occupation. It's not all centric around Russia though, a mural of a white rhino with its horn cut off 'Sudan, world's last male norther white rhino dies 18.03.2018'. The city of Tbilisi is charged with passion, political energy, young angst at the injustice of so many wrongs both locally, nationally and globally.
That evening was a week on from the elections that many in the country (and some of the international community) felt was rigged, stolen by the government, and protests were arranged to march through the city and conclude outside parliment where speakers would address the crowds and talk about the next steps for the country, watched by the international community. Until this point I'd not had a Georgian sim card in my phone so had been without internet, but I picked one up that evening after Andrea had gone back to the hostel to remotely work, and was sat having a coffee and some tiramisu when the protest passed by the cafe. I finished up and headed outside to follow it on the periphery, to watch and be a part of the energy of the city. The parade was led by two trucks with sound systems in the open flatbeds, and Georgian flags being waved alongside the blue and yellow starred flag of the European Union through the streets, with a thousand people chanting and marching to Parliment. The strange thing is since coming to Georgia, I had seen a lot of EU flags, at the border, outside police stations, even raised outside Parliment. The feeling of western culture was entwined with Georgian everywhere you go, the feeling that you're in a european city is everywhere, yet laws were passed last year which seemed to steer away from the involvements of Brussels in the law-making of the country, and the party that won the election is more aligned to Russian ideologies rather than European. Peter had explained some of this to me and it goes deeper and it obvioulsy further back than the current elections, with involvement from billionnaires and their Russian gained wealth influencing behind the scenes, the physical location of Georgia and not wanting to alienate itself from its neighbours whilst also building its own identity after breaking from soviet occupation. As everything is, its complicated.
Peter met me outside parliment where members of the opposition parties gave speeches, some to cheers of the crowd, some to apathy of those listening. We concluded that the energy of the evening was dissipating because there was no single charasmatic leader to oppose what was happening in the country, there was no unifying direction to go, no solution to fight for and the energy and frustrations of the people had nowhere to go. It was an interesting evening to be a part of something personal the country was going through, even from a bystander's perspective, and gratefully we returned to the hostel (via a Chinese for dinner) without drama.
Before arriving at Tbilisi, I had concluded this would be the most East I would go. Seven weeks ago when I was in Sweden, and learned that Azerbaijan had closed their land borders to all in 2020, things begun to shift with my intentions. Some of it was conscious, some of it wasn't, but the fire I'd had to get to Kazakhstan had started to burn out. I'd heard how incredible the 'stans were from travellers I had met who had been there, as well as my own understanding of what it would be like and wanting to get there, but ultimately it was unobtainable at the moment without going through Russia or Iran. I started to spend more time in the countries I was passing through, exploring more, slowing down. I wasn't going to be able to get there so I wanted to make more of the places I was in, I'd extended stays or added in more local visits to places of interest on my way. I need to find way to get to Kazakhstan in the future, I could fly in and rent a vehicle but I'd still rather have my own prepped bike with me. I don't know what the answer is, I just know it can't happen this time - not an easy pill to swallow (but entirely predictable if I'd done any actual research before setting off from the UK..).
Andrea and I spent a few more days exploring Tbilisi, and chatting to and learning more about the city from Peter then we prepared to travel separately to the north west of Georgia to meet again in Mestia, in the Svaneti region of the Caucasus Mountains.
