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Week 11 – Tbilissi + Georgia recap

June 10th – 60 kms, 875+, Tbilissi
June 11th to 12th- visiting Tbilissi
June 13rd – 55 kms, 560+, Dashtapa

After a nice night in our spot in the middle of the flowers, it was time to go to Tbilissi, capital of Georgia. The road until the city was great, beautiful downhills, until coming close to downtown where it started to be very crowded. Also, it was much warmer down there, coming from the countryside the temperature difference was obvious. Once there, we had troubles to find a hotel, everything was closed or booked… Finally, Zaira’s Guest House had a place for us. As always, Georgians are very happy to share their language, food and, above all, their alcoholic beverages… Every morning, Zaira offered us fresh wine, chacha, vodka… At 9AM! It was somehow too early for our stomachs 🙂 We spend 3 days in this nice city, eating icecream, tasting georgian food and visiting this very pleasant place. We also met a french couple, Jeanne and Alex, travelling with motorcycles, also going east. Having some company to visit a city is always fun!

Views of the city

Architecture

On the streets

Botanic garden

Our last day in the city passes very quickly. After trying to fix Pierre’s wheel and making a huge logistic effort to send a package from France to Armenia, we left the city. While we cycled, we decided to look for a place to camp, using the app iOverlander. We ride in the direction of the place and, on our way, we met another cyclist. Suzane is coming from Germany and traveling alone. And is carying 3kg of cherries for some reasons! We had a nice evening all together in this spot full of turtles and snakes, eating cherries, sharing histories and diner.

Recap

Distance travelled inside the country
Flat tires – 0
Chacha – We stopped counting
Icecream – 3 per day when there was a Luka Polare store
Kachapuri – 20/person
Nights with locals – 3
Bivouac – 5
Hotel/Guest House – 7

What did we like?

Food ! Khachapuri, Khinkali, Lobiani, Georgian cheese, ice-cream among others, everything was really delicious.
Wine : Georgia is producing interesting wine. What is even more interesting is the home-made wine produced by the people in their cellar. It was especially enjoyable for us after having travelled 6 weeks in Turkey including 3 weeks of Ramadan, meaning close to zero alcohol.
Freedom : after 3 weeks of Ramadan in Turkey, it was good to eat & drink freely during the day, without having to hide ourselves. Also good to be dressed with short/t-shirt without the risk to shock locals.
Black sea : large streets for pedestrians and even a cycle path along the beach in Batumi. Big contrast with Turkey! Beautiful blue, clean and pleasant water to unwind.

What did we dislike?

Bad roads : if you think the roads are in bad shape in your country, come to Georgia. Even the government apologizes for the road conditions.
Crazy drivers : too many Schumacher in this country. And honking all day long.
Storms : almost every night we had a storm while we were in the mountains
Having to drink wine/chacha at 9:00 am. This happens a few times and it was quite difficult to escape such invitation without having one or two shots.

What is growing?

Beside the many fields we have seen, we had this impression that almost everyone in the countryside has a small garden, where one grows what they need. Corn, beans, wheat, melon, water melon, grapes, cows, goats, sheeps,…

Curious facts we learned

Georgia is one of these countries where the animals are breeded outside enclosed plot of land, and usually without a shepherd. So the cows/goats/sheeps are just walking freely everywhere : in the middle of the roads, in the bus stops, on the bridges aso. We are still asking ourselves how many times a farmer takes to group his herd at the end of day.
Georgia has a complex relationship with Russia. There’s a tension among both countries considering some territories. But, on the other hand, many russian tourists come to the country to enjoy the cities, the Black Sea and the mountains.
It seems that Georgia is a kind of a new underground tourist destination, still a bit unknown, and attracting more and more tourists because of its food, wine, beaches, mountains, culture. We were happy to visit it before the tourist explosion. Maybe you also shall do it. 🙂
There’s no right time to start drinking alchool in Georgia. It only depends on your thirst.

Week 9 continued – Hello Georgia

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May 30th to 31st – Batumi
June 1st – 44 kms, Pirveli Maisi
June 2nd -11 kms, Vaio – shitty day due to broken spoke

Crossing the border between Turkey and Georgia is quite a contrast. Pierre is not the only men wearing a short. Women are wearing skirts. Alcohol advertisement along the roads. Even people swimming in the Black Sea! Yes, we are in another country.

Black Sea in Georgia
Home made parasol
Black Sea
Arriving in Batumi

Few kilometers to absorb the contrast and we arrived in Batumi. Batumi is the second largest city of Georgia and is also known as “the Las Vegas of the Caucasus”. This is actually easily understandable : nonsense skyscrapers, casinos, many disco clubs, alcohol everywhere… It looks like many people from Russia, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia are coming here to “unwind”.

Batumi
Batumi
Batumi
Batumi
Batumi

We met our new cyclist friend Flo here and enjoyed his company to visit the city during few days. Beach, ice-creams, restaurants, working on our blog, relaxing. We were also lucky as we were in the city for the last Friday of the month and could therefore join Batumi’s Critical Mass – a nice way to meet locals and discover the city. Cyclists in Batumi and Georgia in general are very few, but the Critical Mass is getting bigger and bigger according to the organizers. Again, they were struggling with the politics and mayors to promote bicycling in the cities, developing bicycle lanes aso. A tough never ending discussion that we know pretty well in France (and almost everyhere?).

With Flo
Critical Mass in Batumi
Burgers

June 1st started and it was a good date to take up the road again. We quickly realized that drivers in this country are completely crazy. They by-pass everywhere, everywhen and anyhow. Honking for whatever reason. Also, if you believe the roads are in bad conditions in your country, come to Georgia! You will be surprised. Pot-holes, peddles, gravels, missing asphalt. Sometimes it is quite a disaster. It is common to see a car with 2 spare wheels on the roof. And often, the spare wheel is more worn out than the installed wheels. Also, the cars are rather old here. It looks cars from western Europe are all having a second/third/fourth life here. And also from Soviet Union. You can find cars with the steering wheel on the left, others having it on the right, which might be disconcerting as at first glance you just think that there is no driver.

So it is with such new conditions that we cycled towards the Goderdzi pass. A long uphill through a green valley following the Adjaris-Tskali river. As stiff that it is actually slightly difficult to find a place to camp. We asked a grandma if she knew a place where we could rest, and indicated us a nice spot along a stream. Perfect spot, with a small river, green grass, shadow and very quiet.

The following mornind we felt full of energy to attack the oncoming uphill. Unfortunately, after only 11 kms – BANG! – the sweet noise of something borking. It comes from Pierre’s bicycle. It’s a broken spoke. Pierre’s nightmare happened one more time. (Geek mecanic alert!) To give some background, Pierre’s rear wheel was completely re-laced with new spokes and trued before our departure, as the wheel was constantly breaking spokes after about 10000 kms. So we were confident with this new departure that spokes should not break on Pierre’s rear wheel. We were wrong. After a few 3000 kms, broken spoke again. But ok, we have spare spokes so it should not be a big deal to fix this one. Oh, wait a minute, the spoke is broken INSIDE the nipple. Do we have spare nipples? Obviously not. So we first tried to find a way to remove the broken part of the spoke from the nipple, in vain. And then, realizing : one of us has to go to Batumi to find a stupid nipple. It was easily 14:00 and we started to stress: it was a Sunday, and luckily one bicycle shop was open in Batumi until 16:00. So we should move quickly to be there before the closing – we were at 60 kms from the city. We packed our stuff quickly, Larissa found a place to wait far from the road with never stopping honking cars, and Pierre started to hitchhike. Took 2 minutes for a truck to pick him up. Pierre arrived at the bicycle shop with the wheel at 15:50, wheel was fixed 10 minutes later. Then Pierre took a bus back to Larissa’s place and it was easily 18:30. We both felt emotionally exhausted. So we decided to camp there, even though the place was for sure not the best one : weird people were hanging out inside their car, drinking beers and smoking cigarettes. At least they gave us some warm beer to raise our moral. Then we realized that we lost some tools during the rush before the hitchhike… And to end the day on a high note, when she came back from the shop to purchase some groceries, Larissa thought Pierre had been kidnapped or felt in the river as he disappeared. Pierre was actually looking for the lost tools, 200m away. It was the first tears of the trip. We ate quickly and went to sleep, this day definitely had to stop for both of us.

Pierre’s bicycle waiting for a fixed wheel

Week 8 – on our way to the Black Sea

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May 20th – 48 kms (plus 15kms pick-up), Adatepe
May 21th – 61 kms, 1200+m, Atma
May 22th – 85 kms, 1300+m, Erzican
May 23th – visiting Erzican
May 24th – 23 kms, Ahmelti
May 25th – 77 kms, 900+m, Günesli
May 26th – 65 kms, 800m+, Kiliçkaya
May 27th – 50 kms, Caykara

First day of the week started with a good breakfest offered by the family who hosted us. We discussed about our route and learned that it will basically just go uphill. Nice! Let’s eat a bit more then! After some farewell, we started the climb. We had perhaps not even the time to sweat that a pickup stopped in front of us: two miners going to their work site offered us a ride. Few moments of hesitation… Hmmmm, ok! This will spare us 11 kms of uphill 🙂 These nice guys are both working in the mines, as the father of the family who hosted us. We learned this area is actually full of gold and iron mines. When the ride was over, we showed them a picture of the family who hosted us and they recognized their colleague, who was also a good friend of them. Small world (or should we say small Divrigi?).

Happy after a nice ride that avoid us 1km of uphill

You think that the uphill is over? No. It never ends. We keep on going up and it was time for our picnic below the rain. A huge Kangal and some curious cows showed up, but no shepherd. One of the cow was actually too curious : she found some old bread we had, that we used to keep for wild dogs. Within few seconds, she ate everything, included the plastic bag carrying the bread. Two plastic bags, actually. We tried to take it off from her mouth, but it was simply impossible. Man VS Cows: we definitely lose. Let’s hope this lovely cow managed to digest the plastic bag, and that she is still ok.

In the evening, it was getting dark when we found a place to camp. Luckily we found a good spot with a gorgeous view.

On the road

Next morning we ware awaken by a kind of song coming out from the surrounding mountains. What’s happening? Singing goats? It looked like someone very happy was singing. We prepared our breakfast enjoying the melodies and few minutes later, we saw the first goats and the shepherd, who was indeed our happy singer. It was so nice, he really looked like the happiest person in the world. Actually, it was not only him. We are living a dream, seeing the morning sunshine, wonderful views and having a delicious breakfast. It was the 3 happiest people in the world, sharing the same mountain and sunrise. 🙂

Our balcony for the night
Wild camping

The day cannot start on a better manner and we felt in a very good shape, ready to climb the coming mountains. We even add some uphills to our route to visit the small city of Iliç. Some workers at the hyraulic dam offered us fresh water and at noon, we found an open restaurant serving the typical Ramadan meal. We had food and lots of baklava. In the evening, we could feel tired of the climbs. We just prepared some delicious pasta and found a good place to sleep, still in the mountains.

Wild camping
Our garden for the night

The day after the landscapes were absolutly gorgeous. We kept on cycling in the morning, with some difficult uphills, but with the reward of those views. The road followed the Euphrates river. It was very nice to finally meet this legendary river that, together with the Tigris, defined the Mesopotamis, this land full of history. Unfortunately, we also felt some tension in this part of Turkey, perhaps due to the proximity with Kurdistan. Many soldiers, army trucks, and also some police roadblocks. In one of those, the soldiers stopped us, asked us our passports, where we were coming from aso. After a handshake, they offered us a cola and some smiles 🙂 It was very kind, but we also felt kind of weird, to find ourselves in this police roadblock with a fresh cola in our hands… Later, we learned this route was also sadly known as a place where many Armenians have been killed during the genocide. Full of history we said…

Euphrates river
The police roadblock
Uphills. Beautiful hills.

Later, we arrived in Erzincan city. The arrival ws beautiful, as the city is surrounded by snowy mountains. We stayed for two nights in the Ogretmenevi, witch was a good place for a good price. After traveling through the middle of nowhere, it is always funny to arrive in a big city. We felt like if this city was huge. Many cars, buildings, markets, restaurants, food and supermarkets with european food. And alcohol! We bought some wine, good italian pasta, pesto, beers, strawberries and ice-cream. Ready to have a relaxing fatty evening!

Arriving in Erzincan
I think we bought too much food… Who is going to carry all this?

Usually when we take a hotel to rest we enjoy it until the last minute. What we did again.
After a late departure, we noticed a nice and huge painting of Atatürk face on a mountain. Atatürk admiration in Turkey seems to be limitless! Our progression was then quickly stopped by multiple storms. We counted 4 storms from the moment we decided to stop to the next morning.

The 2 pm storm.
One more storm?

Next day, the stormy weather didn’t stop. We faced another 2 storms during the day, which was dropping our energy down. We had also a nice uphill to a mountain pass, with very strong wind. The scenery of this climb make it even harder, as the mountains looked quite austere, with several abandonned and vandalized places. The downhill coming afterwards was however completely breathtaking: no more wind, everything was much greener, little hills, even flowers. Life is back! Sometimes it is quite interesting to see how a landscape can utterly change just after a turn or a pass.

Bayburt
The university of Bayburt and plenty of new buildings.

The spring was definitely here, with lovely flowers everywhere.

We continued our progression through these mountains to reach the Black Sea. From the first time since we started this journey, we met a French speaker in a very small village. Pierre was happy 🙂 Perhaps 5 minutes later, a car stopped and the driver spoke to us… in French! What a coincidence. At least 2 Turkish French speakers in this very small mountain village. The rest of the day was going desperately uphill against the strongest headwind we faced so far. It was also getting cold. Several cars going down stopped when they saw us, telling us we were crazy and encouraging us. A nice guy offered us some corn bread, which looked like a brick. Quite nourishing though, we called it the « Elfic Turkish bred ».

As good frenchies, we thought that it was cheese… But it is the famous « Elfic Turkish bred »

We did not make it to the pass when nightfall was coming very quickly. We were quite frozen and tired because of the heavy wind. It was shivering and tired that we found a place to camp below a house in construction in a middle of an empty village. This house provided a welcomed refuge for the cold and strong wind during the night. We slept as babies.

It is getting dark…
Behind the house that protected us from the wind

Next day was easily the epicest day we had so far during our jouney. The wind finally stopped. There was still 1 hour going uphill in dirty roads to reach the pass of the mountain. This pass was 2330m above sea level.

Nice views!
Cows in the pass

From the pass, it was supposed to be just a long and nice downhill until the Black Sea, right? Actuality not at all… During 5 hours on the bicycles, we moved only 15 kms. The road was such in bad shape. Probably cool for MTB, but not at all with loaded touring bicycles. Good that this was supposed to be a main road! In a crossroads, there was a sign showing that the road was closed. But it was not clear which one. We choosed the one we could see on our GPS. After some kms going downhill, there were still lots of snow around. The problem was that some of those « névé » collapsed and were actually blocking the way. Impossible for us to continue the road.

In the begining it looked funny
« Look how big it is », we said…

Oups, road is blocked

We need to go back, cross a river, change the mountain and take a smaller (vertical and worst) road that will lead us some ours later to the city of Caykara.

It is good for blood circulation
On the right above the cliff, the blocked road by snow

Very tired, we ate a « ramazam menu » and went to sleep in a small ogretmenevi. Can’t wait to finally find the sea again…

Zig-zags !
Stiff village
Other zig-zags
The landscapes looked like a mix of Machu Picchu and Avatar movie.
Pinhão and Rodolphe, our beloved bicycles

Week 7 – Leaving Cappadocia to the Wild Anatolia

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May 13rd – 23 kms, Aksalur
May 14th – 68 kms, Kayseri
May 15th – 56 kms, Hazarsah
May 16th – 60 kms, Kaynar
May 17th – 85 kms, Kuskayasi
May 18th – 60 kms, Gurukbekir
May 19th – 78 kms, Devrigi

We started this week with an early hike through the Gomeda valley, last one we visited from Cappadocia. Before visiting Turkey, we were thinking about take a bus from Cappadocia to Erzurum. Actually, we were loving this country so much that we decided to keep on going with our bicycles. We’ll take a bus in the futur, if necessary. We then cycled about 20 kms above Urgüp, getting up and having a really nice view on the different valleys. During the last uphill of the day, two kids driving a tractor with a small trailer (yes we know, funny scene rather common in rural parts of Turkey) suggested us a ride to spare us part of the uphill. Lovely, but the trailer was way too small. So we offered them some chocolate and they were the happiest kids we’ve never seen 🙂

Our last view on Cappadocia
The two kids who offered us a ride

We camp on a nice hill, having a beautiful view on Mount Erciyes.

Wild camping. Mount Erciyes is on the right.

Next morning, we got awaken way too early by angry birds – angry magpies actually. We had to go to the big city of Kayseri to see if we could fix the broken screen of Larissa’s phone, which felt. The ride to Kayseri was a beautiful and long downhill with almost every time this impressive Mount Erciyes on the background. However, Kayseri city was rather disappointed – crowded & simply not enjoyable – and furthermore we had to go on the highway to enter inside the city as militaries were doing some exercises on small roads we targeted. We quickly found out that it won’t be possible to fix the phone in Turkey, and then we were actually tired because of entering in this lousy city. So we stayed in a hotel called Ögretmenevi, literally « the professor’s house ». Ögretmenevi is a chain of governmental hotels, offering decent place to sleep with rather cheap price in every city from Turkey. Good tip for travellers.

Leaving Kayseri took us a while, as it was hot, had to stop in a sport shop to find some gas for our stove, bought some groceries for being autonomous for the next few days. This city was just sucking our energies out. After a lunch break in a parc with another friendly turkish guy speaking german and giving us some company, we escaped from the suburb after a difficult 53 kms ride. Back in the wild, we camped in a nice spot, just before nightfall.

Camping and flowers

Next day, we found back the lovely gravel roads in the middle of nowhere. As we were cycling on one of this difficult road, a truck stopped when we were pushing the bicycles due to slope >15%. What a truck! It was the ice-cream truck, and the happy driver offered us 2 refreshing ice-creams 🙂 We could still remember his so happy face when he opened the trunk of his truck to search these ice-creams 🙂 This was exactly what we needed as this day was very warm due to unstable and stormy weather. It was actually the beginning of a long period where we had at least one storm per day. We had to stop our day too early due to a big storm approaching quickly on us, finding a shelter in a petrol station. We were allowed to camp in a glasshouse behind the station, feeling wet as the growing vegetables.

One of the many storms of the day
Best icecream
We slept there. 🙂

We then arrived in perhaps the worst part of our journey so far: never-ending false flat plains, with never-ending heavy head wind. The villages were ugly. No tree at all to provide some shadow for resting. Larissa’s mirror broke when her bike felt on the ground during a stop due to the wind. We had a horrible late lunch break as we could not find one single spot under the shadow and/or protecting us from the wind. We named this sad part « the windy plain ». Also, people did not say hello anymore. We do not know if this was because of the wind so they could not hear our salutations. Or if they were just as sad as this area. We celebrated our 2000 kms in the middle of nowhere and cycled 85 kms until we could reach a decent and hidden place to camp. The funny moments of the day is that all the shepherd’s donkeys we saw from flocks decided to run behind us for some reasons. Perhaps the believed we were one of them, laden down as much as they are 🙂

Beautiful spot in the horrible windy road

Next day we finally reached the city of Kangal. Kangal is the city where the dog having the same name is coming from, symbol of Turkey and Anatolia specifically. The Kangal looks pretty much intimidating : it is a large and muscled dog, powerful, can easily reach 1m high or so. When they do belong to someone, their owner often add them a pike collars, just to be sure we can understand that the dog is a badass. We saw plenty of them along our road, most of the time they were barking at us like crazy. Sometimes we were willing to pet them, but the fear to lose a hand doing so was still curbing us. So we thought it would be good to see this city. Arriving in the city, we crossed one dog farming place of this little monsters, saw an interesting lego-looks-like castle having nothing to do with the rest of the city, and one « beautiful » status of a Kangal.

Lego’s castle?
Kangal

We had a Ramadan soup in the city center, and the guys invited Pierre to drink a beer hidden in the kitchen! Did we look so dehydrated? During the discussion, this nice guys told us there are famous fish therapy pools 8 kms from there. We looked at the time and quickly thought « hmmm, this might be interesting to try ». 30 min later, we were in warm source water, getting « cleaned » by multiple little fishes. At the beginning it is not really relaxing: it gives you a foretaste of being devoured by piranhas. It took us few minutes to clear our mind out of this scenario, and then actually enjoyed this 🙂 We ended the day camping in a beautiful spot along a river, having wild pigs as neighbours. We also discovered the flies-that-are-biting-you-without-you-can-feel-anything-and-leave-you-a-5-days-long-horrible-bite.

Wild pigs around
Happy!
Spa with the fishing bath
The perfect spot (if you’re able to forget that ther’s wild pigs at 500m and angry flies)

Last day of the week, we cycled to Devrigi city. The road was pretty nice, we had a lunch on a village were Larissa initiated children to bicycle – one of them cried but this is because she was afraid that her sister abandoned her with the bicycle 😉

On the road

Arriving to our destination, Pierre had another flat tire. The flat is actually at the exact same location than the first one he had, as the tire got a bad scar and plenty of dust/gravel can come in. It took us a while to properly fix this tube under a lovely storm, and to find a way to reinforce this lousy tire. While Pierre was working hard on it, Larissa sympathized with a kind lady and her 2 hyperactive kids touching everything on our bicycles. Few minutes later, she invited us to stay to her place. After few minutes of hesitation as we were tired after this long day ending with this flat under a storm, we accepted and joined her place which was 4kms away on the top of a stiff hill. We arrived lately to her place but were warmly rewarded : A good diner, a relaxing shower and a comfortable bed 🙂 Thanks a lot Nurhayat & family for your kindness and hospitality!