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 :-) :-)

Travel and eat well: Turkish flavors

Turkey is known to be the country of loukoum and kebab. Fortunately, there is much more to discover. We loved everything we tasted in Turkey, and we tasted a lot!

First of all, special mention to Baklava, the Turkish pride but also the Turkish anger when people think that it's from Greece :-)

There are some varieties of baklava, with walnut, almond, pistachio, or hazelnuts (especially along the Black Sea coast, the best place for hazelnuts) but all deliciously wrapped by filo pasta and honey.

Yogurt corbasi (soup of yogurt): a wonderfully delicious soup.

Normally, every kind of Turkish soup is worth trying: lentile soup, meat soup, soup with tongue, with intestine....

üzümlü pirinç pilavı: rice pilaf

Manti: turkish typical ravioli. Those tiny ravioli are considered perfect when a spoon could hold 14 of them !!!! Really a must

(Only women are patient enough to do this :-)

(just out of the pan)

(with yogourt and butter "noisette" and chili, soooo delicious)

We forgot the name of those little things, made of bulgur, tomato and herbe: perfect finger food :-)

Yaprak Sarma: wine leaves stuffed with rice. They are also very popular in Greece. The criteria of a good yaprak sarma is that it shouldn't be bigger than a woman's finger !!!

(photo: internet)

Eggplant dolma: dried eggplant stuffed with rice or meat.

(photo: internet)

hurma tatlisi: wonderful dessert with nuts

Kunefi: dessert of pasta kataif with cheese, pistachio and sour cream. A bomb!!!

Ayran (drinking yogourt): you can find it everywhere. It's very hydrating and energetic.

How to eat well while travel: the cooking stuff

Because we love eating and because cycling is so energy consuming, we care a lot about meals :-)    In our opinion, to better endure and enjoy a long cycling trip, it is super important to provide ourselves sufficiently with vitamins, proteins.... Think about it, lots of people's routine is 8-hours-working day in an office, in front of a computer, and ours is to exercise all day long , ours muscles need to be fed accordingly:-) :-)
Food is also an interesting aspect of every culture, a must to discover wherever we go :-) It's also for those new tastes and flavors that we went for this trip.

During our trip, it happened that we spent some times with other cyclists and we realized that a lot of travelers think that it's complicate and difficult to make ourselves good food with our camping gears. That's why we decided to invest into this special chapter: HOW TO EAT PROPERLY AND WELL ON CAMPING.

We will give you ideas about very simple but good and nutritional meals, with some local spices you can easily find on your way. Those are meals we had during our trip so they also depend on the seasons and ingredients we find along our way, you can freely inspire and modify to adapt them to your own journey :-)

Here is our cooking material, what we've been bringing with us since September 2014

From left to right, top to bottom

First row

 Backpacking stove: our works with fuel, so far we use exclusively petrol. It depends on the quality of the petrol but half a liter can live long, up to 8 hours of cooking.

We recommend stove with fuel rather than with gaz because firstly, unlike fuel, you could not find gaz everywhere (we think about Central Asia for exemple) and by cold weather, it heats much less.

The refrigerated bag: very useful to store food and to keep them fresh (meat, fish...). They are also very easy to carry: light and can be kept behind the bike, between backward bags.

Second row

Flat chesse grater: very useful for making salad or to grate cheese  or aven onion and garlic. Very light and flat so doesn't take much space.

Alunium wrap: to protect the stove from the wind while cooking. It also protects the tent's ground in case of cooking inside the tent (when it rains for exemple)

2 plates: made of silicon, can be flattened. Can be also used to prepare salad. 

pan's handle: normally is sold along with the pan. If you could, chose one made of aluminium, more resistant to the heat.

frying pan and its detachable handle: made of steel, very resistant and easy to clean, especially after campfire!!! Its thickness makes it very suitable for roasting (eggs, fish, meat...)

accessories: 

an Opinel folding pocket knife, number 9. The lock system is very secure. Very useful to prepare fish, meat. Tiny, sharp and can easily be sharpened everywhere. You could take a bigger one but not smaller than number 9.

a swiss knife, of which usefulness is not to discuss anymore (can opener, saw, bottle opener, tweezers...). We do not recommend a big one because of the weight: it's better to have it always with you in the pocket. 

two forks, two spoons, which can be used to mix ingredients, to smash potatoes, carrots... for a puree... They should be light, strong but not too big. 

Third row

Chopping board: very useful to prepare veggies. You can find it for a very cheap price in local markets. Be careful: it should fit your bag, but not too small.

Towel: to clean your oily hands, to take a pan from the fire/heat, to put your burning pan on.... You can easily clean it in gaz station, with the pressurized water. They do it for free, with a smile. 

Pan and its lid: we can also use the lid as a second (frying) pan. It's better to have it in steel, a bit heavier but more resistant, easier to clean even when you let some food burnt (which happens!!!). Do not take aluminum, even they are really nice looking and light !!!

Accessories: 

two plastic cups (for tea, water, soup, beer and whatever :-) :-) . You can also have them in aluminium, bigger and you can heat them directly on the fire.

a small sieve, very useful for pasta or tea, to filter the cooking waste, to take the veggies out of the boiling water...

Those seem to be a lot but in fact can be stored in very little place. For exemple, here is how we store all the forks, spoons, cups, Opinel knife, plates and all the pans and their handles:

in the tiny pan

Note: we would have loved to have a bigger pan. With ours, sometimes it is difficult to cook 500gr of pasta, which is our portion for 2.

And here is how we store our food in the refrigerated bag

About food's stuff: we prefer buying from local markets and small shops (where you can have real local products and spices, fresh and organic, at least, with a small scale of production) than from supermarket (where everything is standardized with big scale of production). It's our way to support (slightly) local economy and agriculture but also in our opinion, it's a good way to feel the local culture and cuisine.

Along with the daily purchase, we carry with us some usual things: olive oil ( enjoy it in Greece and Turkey, they have very good and cheap olive oil, after it becomes more rare and more expensive), salt, pepper, vinegar (and butter) and a lighter (always very useful, a lighter :-)

And a small grill, perfect for campfire !!!!! You can cook meat, fish, veggies and use it as a pan support on the fire, by putting it between two rocks. Light, flat so easy to store.

Those things may be too much for very light-weighted travelers. In our opinion, it's worthy to take one or two kilos more, especially that we can split this weight for two, to guarantee a healthy diet on a long trip. It also helps us to save money: it's cheaper to cook ourselves than to eat even fast food or to buy prepared food.

Travel and eat well: Greece and the Olympian Gods food

Greece is a wonderful country for food. Local fresh veggies, fruits are sold along the roads. Everything is relatively cheap (compared to other countries of Europe). We found juicy oranges at 50 cents a kilo, and delicious spinach at 1 euro.

We highly recommend Greek pastries, especially karithata, the Greek nuts cookies

kourabiedes, the Christamas butter cookies

(photo: internet)

and our favorite: melomakarona, the Christmas honey cookies that taste like heaven!!!!!!

(photo: internet)

We also advise you to visit at least one "Cafe Neo",  the heart of the Greek popular life and where you can taste delicious "tapas" of grilled meat, fish, octopus, veggies..... miam miam.

We found everywhere in Greece, all along the road, wild fennel.

(photo: internet)

(photo: internet)

Their seed with a flavor of anis , is an wonderful accessory for food, such as cabbage salad or fish. You can also find it in supermarket for very cheap but we like the idea of collecting those little seeds ourselves.

There is also rosemary

(photo: internet)

and wild salva 

(photo: internet)

 which give meat an extra taste.

You can also find lemon, (bitter) orange, very good for making sauce. Along the coast, you can buy very cheap frozen fish: 2 euros for 4 filets, it's quite enough for two!

What we recommend to try absolutely:

Feta: sour, low fat. Normally it's a mix between goat and sheep milk but one also can have feta from cow milk which is less expensive. You can find it everywhere, the "heart" of the famous Greek salad. A bit expensive but worth to try.

(photo: internet)

Pita (Greek bread stuffed with meat and veggies). Cheap and so tasty.

(photo: internet)

Taztiki sauce (with yogurt, cucumber and garlic).

Skordalia: garlic and bread cream, perfect for appetizer.

(photo: internet)

Thesaloniki trigona: filo pasta with pastry cream.

(photo: internet)

Spanakopita: filo pasta with spinach and cheese, our daily breakfast. A good combination of protein, fat, carbohydrate and some vitamin, to start a cycling day.

(photo: internet)

Olives: oil or to eat. The kalamata is the most famous for eating.

Chipuro or Tsipouro: the local grapes distilled. Can have a taste of anis or not. The best one can be found in Evia :-)

Greek is also a perfect place to have dried fruits, especially dried figs from Evia, the best place in Greek for this delicious fruit.

(photo: internet)

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