Georgia part 3: Kakheti

Saturday March 7th, finally after two weeks of resting (our bodies need and claim some laziness) and a temptation of hitch-hiking :-), we left Taylor and Tbilissi, heading to the George W Bush highway, with a huge smiling picture of him, to get out of the city.

Tim and Karina were already at the Armenian border, ready to cross. But we wanted to discover a bit more Georgia , especially Kakheti, the wine region.

The weather was perfect, sunny with a breeze. I cycled most of the day with short sleeve T-shirt and short. We felt so in shape, light-hearted even the road was uphill, up to 10% sometimes....

The next day was cold, and rainy. and the road continued to go up and up again. We reached Telavi around 2PM, decided to stop for the night: if we had continued then we would have to wild camp, which was not nice under the hard rain. So we just showed up, covered in our nylon, by way of rain coats, at the police station, asking for help. No one spoke English so my little Russian revealed itself very useful to say: we have no money, we need a dry place for our tent!!!! After some minutes of discussion, they put our bikes on a pick-up and drove su to a big hotel.... in construction. We had a big room for us. The guardian invited us to share some warmth in his room. Unfortunately, he didn't speak Russian so the conversation was very much limited.

It snowed the next day so we stayed there a day more, visiting a bit the town, playing a it with the two dogs, going to the market where we bought the best smoked bacon (lard) ever for so cheap!!!! We also had some wonderful beef filet and gave ourselves a pleasure with a big bottle of beer. A 3 Michelin stars dinner we had, I tell ya :-) :-). The two dogs went crazy when we gave them the bones, we had to separate them: they were so jealous and didn't want each other to get closer to us....

Tuesday March 10th, the weather was cold but at least dry. We visited Badagoni, probably the best wine producer in Georgie. We tasted a red from 2014, a bit young and surprisingly good. Following their advices, we went to Alaverdi, famous for the Monastery wine, still made in the traditional way in jar of terra cotta, unique in the world!!!!!

Here, we bleeded ourselves to death to buy the best Badagoni bottle, also made in the traditional way, but with the Italian quality control in addition...
We drank it in a place one could not dream for better.

And it was indeed damn good, worth the money to every single drop!!!!

The next evening, we had dinner with Chenchikhan (????) the Sherpa we already crossed.

The table was made of a truck tire and two planks of wood, we seated almost on the ground, at 50 cm from the sheeps , eating raw sardines with unwashed hands and drinking home made wine and chacha. We spent the night, surrounded by "meeeehing" sheeps and barking dogs. Chenchikhan had the two most useless dogs we've ever seen, they avoided almost sheeps.....

Thursday March 12th was quite a special day: we visited a bakery, learnt how puri was made. It was impressive to see Valeri almost disappeared in the burning jar to place the bread!!!!!

Then on the road, people kept stopping us to give us food, chacha, beer... that we were already slightly drunk when we stopped in the middle of a uphill road, in a field near the woods.

Our tent was set when some men appeared with their cows. Somehow they made us understand that there were wolves nearby at night. We must look so miserable then that one man just pronounced the only magical Russian word of the whole "hands and facial expression conversation": Мой Дом (my house). Zaza lived in a very nice two stories house with Ana, his beautiful wife and two lovely kids, Lali and Georgi. The treated us like kings while normally, they were doing us a great favor to let us stay in their house.

(young Robert de Niro, in my favorite character: Zaza, our Georgian host!!!!)

Such generosity touched us deeply every time. We promised ourselves to be as generous as we could, to help others as much as we could, to pay back all the good things we are receiving on the roads.

Saturday March 15th, a week later, we finally reached Davit Gareji, one of the must see in Georgia before heading to the Armenian border. The road was difficult, stiff and sometimes in bad condition. The heat hit us hard but we kept rolling. The monastery is 50km away from almost everything :-) :-)  But the visit was worth the effort!!!!

We spent the last night on Georgian land in an abandoned gaz station. Here we met a couple of friends: an Armenian and an Azeri who have to go to Georgia to see each other!!!

It rained a lot the last days: we arrived in Georgia under the rain and under the rain, we left, hearts and minds full of wonderful memories.

To be continued...

Georgia part 2: to hitch or not to hike?

March 4th, 10:15AM, we were at the door of Iranian Embassy, full of hope about this precious paper that is called Iranian visa.

It was so quick. The guy who wanted to extort us went to the Consul's bureau, got out 1mn later with our visas ready. Yahoo!!!! We can go to Iran now (and to ask for more visas there.....)
As planned, with Taylor, we decided to go for a hitchhiking trip. The first time we hitchhiked was in Trabzon, for a forty something kms trip to Sumela Monastery. It was quite fun, and as we met some hitchhikers on the way, we were quite exciting about experiencing this mode of traveling.

1:30 PM, we were at the Tbilissi mall, the exit point of town, trying to find our way to Stepantsminda. The first car stopped after 10 mn of thumb up. They were a middle age couple whose sun is kinda traveler too. We might remind them of their faraway child, on the unknowed route of Tibet :-).

The second one was the President of Martial Arts Association in Tbilissi, on his way to his boxing training session. We didn't quite understand wether he trained others or it was for himself...

The third man wondered why we wanted to go to such a cold place and gave us a lift until his small village.

The fourth one had a Russian car but we were not sure wether he was Russian or Azeri. Maybe Azeri-born Russian? We had very interesting discussion with him. When we introduced ourselves, he seemed shocked that an American guy (Taylor, our Warm Shower host) and a Vietnamese girl could travel friendly together. I tried to say that the war was such a long time ago, that it's normal to be friends but he seemed not convinced.
Then it was our turn to have a shock when he asked Taylor "Is it true that there are a lot of niggers in America?" We had to ask him 3 times to be sure about the question, the N word seemed to entertain him a lot....
Very disappointed that we had not been and wouldn't go to Azerbaijan (because of visa and timing issues) he asked wether we had been in Turkey and how it was. And he seemed so doubtful when I enthusiastically told him that Turkey was

We stopped at a small village, at 20km from  Stepantsminda

The place was soo beautiful, a bit cold though....

We went up the hill to set the camp: it was much easier without the bicycles....

It was the full moon. There was something enchanting in the air :-)

It was such a quiet night that the sound of the falling snow at some point woke us up. Perfectly warm in our sleeping bags, it didn't bother us but then the next morning:

At least, we had plenty of water to make our hot chocolat for breakfast :-) 

It was useless to go further with this weather, we decided to hitch-hike back to Tbilissi.
After 30 second, a car stopped: it was the same man who took us yesterday. He was this time with his son who is the male singer in this Ensemble. Very nice!!! We recommend!!!

But then he put some Russian Rap that we really do not recommend!!!!!

After one hour and a half, he we were again in Tbilissi, ending this way our first temptation of hitch-hiking!

It was a fun experience but still, we prefer our bikes :-) :-)


Stay tuned for more cycling updates :-) :-)

Georgia part 1 - from Batumi to Tbilissi

 2015 february 13th, we crossed the Turkish-Georgian border under a hard rain. The bicycles with their wet and dirty owners were a bit the "black sheeps" among those dry and clean pedestrians to the customers service.
The lady at the border asked me "where are you from?" which is a bit confusing to me: I just handed her my French passport, we are at the Turkish border.... so I said "Paris" to which she replied "but you look like a Chinese". Normally, it would upset me but I was so surprised that I just laughed out loud " No, not Chinese but I am also Vietnamese".

The landscape changed quickly, we could see that we were not anymore in Turkey.

We arrived to Batumi around 17h but, what a surprise, we just lost 2 hours: it was 19h already, which was great because we still had light, it meant we could cycle later than in Turkey :-)
We stayed here two nights with Teimuraz and his lovely family. And Erekle, his friend, helped us out a lot too with his perfect english. We bought a sim card with 2h calls, 100SMS and 2Mo of internet for 10 GEL (a bit more then 4E), so cheap!!!

Feb 15th, we left Batumi under a wonderful sun. The road was quite good but as we were warned before: Georgian drive like crazy. And they have plenty of those big brand new Mercedes or BMW or Toyota..... We wondered where they all came from!!!!! As Teimuraz told us " if you lost your bikes somewhere in Europe, you may find them back here in Georgia......"

Around 5PM, we wanted to stop: the place we wanted was guarded but after 2mn on the phone, the man just showed around in a big gesture "anywhere you like". So we had a wonderful campfire by the Black Sea, for the last time.

The next day, when we wanted to camp in a abandoned train station, an old man came and invited us home. He lived alone in a small dirty wine-smelly house, he showed us the bed where we would sleep: it was impossible to know when the sheets were changed for the last time. Well, but that was not the point.
The point was that when I tried to help him to clean the house, he, probably happy to have someone to do the job for him, became suddenly capricious and exigeant. He got upset when I left 2 maize seeds on the ground, and when he grabbed my arm to show me more dirty places to clean, it was simply too much. I turned red tomato, ran out to the yard yelling something like I am not his housewife then we left!!! We politely thanked him while pushing our bikes out, he stayed there dully waving at us, probably having no clue why suddenly we changed our mind!!!!

Feb 17, we celebrated TET - the Vietnamese traditional New Year in Kutaisi with a so-called Vietnamese dinner. Kutaisi, some thousands years ago, had seen Jason and his Argonauts coming for the Golden Fleece. Some fleeces are still kept somewhere in the Georgian mountainous areas: sheepskin was used to filter gold from mountain streams.

What we like about Georgia is that you can buy almost everything by unit: cigarette, toilet paper roll and even sanitary napkin.... We also like those little box where you can pay almost everything, with your credit cards of course: your bills, your fines, taxes and even your bets :-) :-)

One night, after the lovely dinner by the campfire in the middle of nowhere, we had the bad surprise to see a police car coming. Two men got out of the car, one fiercely with his kalashnikov. The communication was difficult because none of them spoke english and one very little Russian. Later, came an another car with a woman who spoke russian, which was not easy neither because mine is far from fluent!!! After 10 mn of questioning like who we were, where we were from, which way we took.... there came the sentence " Is there anything we can help?" and the ritual "Photo? Facebook?" ouf!!!

Another night, another story: we had some Georgian coming over with panduri (their traditional instrument) and homemade wine. From this surprise party :-) we had the sound track for our movie

After the rain, comes the sun, and then after the sun: the rain and the snow!!!! We had 3 days of relatively bad weather.

Feb 20th, we camped at mid-uphill way, at about 500m of altitude, by the river. It was a mission almost impossible to bring the bikes to the campsite because the way down the river was too stiff and the river crossing quite dangerous. Karina and I would have preferred the easy solution and camped by the road, certainly noisy, certainly not easy to set a fire, but at least we could have avoided all the struggling. But maybe it would be among the things we would remember the most in 10 years :-)

Feb 22th, we finally reached Tbilissi. The weather was with us: sun and nice wind. Even the road was with us: in perfect condition and flat :-)
Here we stay with Taylor, an American student in Medicine. Such a cool guy who let us "squat" his small flat as long as we needed. And we needed a lot of time waiting for our Iranian visa (first for the reference number to arrive, then some roundtrips to the Embassy because of some papers....). We took advantage of this time to rest too. It was a pleasure to oversleep everyday :-). Taylor was on holiday so we just enjoyed the lazy time together :-)

Monday March 2d. Finally, we got all the papers ready. The Embassy is open at 10 AM, at 9:30, we were already at the door!!!
The man at the Consulat Service was much nicer than the one the other day. He collected all our papers and said "Give me 100 euros per person". WHAT???? The normal procedure is to go to TBC bank, at 15mn walking distance and deposit 50 euros!!!! We protested by the man stayed firm. We knew that he would put the other 100 euros in his pocket but we were so shocked that we didn't know how to react, moreover, he had the power to not deliver us this precious Iranian visa!!!

11:15AM, Tim called me (we told them the story so that they could be prepared and find some strategy against the evil guy) to say that they kept protesting politely, telling there should be a mistake somewhere.... finally the guy took another look at their documents and said "Oh, you are asking for the TOURISM visa and not a WORKING visa. So it's true, it's 50 euros to deposit at the bank" (Yeah that's it!!!!). So we ran back to the Embassy! The man was surprise to see us and felt uncomfortable, especially at that moment, some of his colleagues were just near by, talking, laughing. He waited a while for them to leave and gave us back to money without any trouble, of course with the same excuse "Oh, I thought you asked for a Working visa" !!!!!!!

We went out of the Embassy, quite proud but also felt more experienced of dealing with corrupted Consulat fellows. We may encounter more of them on our visa pilgrim over Asia :-)

To be continued!!! Please pray for our visa, we are going to collect it tomorrow morning but I don't feel sure because "the Consul is sick" today. Hum hum