Azerbai-bai; Georgia on my Mind

Kazbeki, Georgia, September 8th

I don't have much time to type up a reasonably detailed summary of what I've been up to since Baku, so I will have to put up a Reader's Digest telegraphese summary. Suffice it to say, however, that Georgia is perhaps my favourite country so far along the entire length of the Silk Road: friendly people, great food, lovely landscape, lots of culture and history, and stupendously beautiful women. What's not to like about it?

Aug. 24: Left Baku for good; hideously long grind across bleak steppe and through construction.

Aug. 25: Scenery improves, as I enter the Caucasus foothills. Great fruit for sale, but obnoxious stone-throwing kids.

Aug. 26th: I pick up a cycling partner for the day, young Mori-san from Japan. My Japanese has been hopelessly corrupted by speaking Russian for weeks. We stay (in separate rooms) in Seki, in a converted caravansarai that is hopelessly romantic. My right pedal bearings explode into tiny fragments.

Aug. 27th: Mori-san sets off alone while I go out, buy a new pedal, try unsuccessfully to get old pedal fixed, and then ride uphill to the fantastic stone-built village of Kis to see an Albanian (a medieval Christian country that has nothing to do with the current Muslim Balkan country) church. I leave Seki at 4:20 and still manage to knock off 70 km with a brisk tailwind. My ThermaRest develops a fatal aneurism that makes it more or less useless. I take a few pictures of the ubiquitous cult-of-personality posters of the late deified President Heydar Aliyev. I have been seeing these posters for 16 days, and have yet to see two the same.

Aug. 28th: I make it over the border into Georgia and camp a few km down the road. It finally stops raining on me. I am now pedalling with mismatched pedals, one with clips and a cheapie faux-Specialized pedal without clips.

Aug. 29th: Culture and wine in the Kakheti region. I visit Kvareli, see a wonderful museum to Ilya Chavchavadze, father of modern Georgia, tour a winery, visit a monastery perched on a cliff, and camp in a wonderful meadow. Life is good.

Aug. 30th: I ride up towards the Tusheti region, through a Lost World of waterfalls, rock overhangs and no traffic on the worst road since Tajikistan. I run out of steam well before the top of the 2935-metre pass and camp beside the road in a horrible campsite.

Aug. 31st: Up and over the Abano Pass into a wonderland of high peaks, alpine meadows, ancient defensive towers, rushing rivers and pine forests, the prettiest mountains I've seen this summer. I stay in a homestay and eat like a pig. The daughters of the house take me up to their ancestral village on horseback. A week later my butt is still sore from the Marquis-de-Saddle I had to ride on. The daughters laugh at me.

Sept. 1st: A lazy day spent riding into the regional main village of Omalo, climbing up to the beautiful defensive cluster of towers and photographing and sketching them. I feel tired but elated to be in this amazing landscape. We have a massive barbecue in the evening with some visiting cowboys and devour an entire lamb.

Sept. 2nd: Returning over the pass is easier from this side, as the climb is only half as high. I stop on the way down for a soak in some hot springs, have a long conversation with a shopkeeper over beers, and find a great campsite.

Sept. 3rd: I discover that the lovely "highway" marked on my map is a Calvary of rocks and gravel. It is a long, painful and frustrating day, but it ends outside Tianeti in a campsite of bucolic beauty.

Sept. 4th: I hammer over another rockpile road to Zhinvali and then up a great road (marked as a secondary dirt road on my map) to Barisekho and Korsha, where I stay with a friendly family who run an ethnographic museum; the husband is a very accomplished painter.

Sept. 5th: I have another lazy day, hiking up into a lovely alpine meadow and watching the stormclouds gather. I make it back to the homestay minutes before the downpour starts. A voluble fellow Canadian whom I had met in Tusheti shows up looking like a drowned rat after hiking through the rain.

Sept. 6th: I fly back downhill to Zhinvali, then around a reservoir to Ananuri, where I have a lunch of Olympian proportions and explore the exquisite fortress, before riding up the storied Georgian Military Highway that connected Russia to Georgia in the 19th century. My campsite for the evening has the twin disadvantages of being on a slope, and separated from the road by a swamp. I sleep two kilometres from the disputed "border" with South Ossetia.

Sept. 7th: Energized by yesterday's luncheon, I fly up over the Cross Pass, through the interesting-looking ski resort of Gudauri, and then down into Kazbeki. I find a homestay and then hustle up to the church high above Kazbeki, perhaps the most dramatically-situated church I have ever seen. Loads of photographs, then down to more food.

I am off hiking today to the foot of 5000-metre Mt. Kazbek, and then, with the seasons changing fast (the birch trees are already turning yellow on the hillsides) I will head to Tbilisi, south into Armenia, do a loop through Nagorno Karabakh, come back to Georgia briefly, and then head into eastern Turkey before the end of September to complete the Silk Road Ride.


Peace and Tailwinds

Riding Day No.	Date	Distance From Bushehr	Daily Distance	Final Elevation	Vertical Metres	Cycling Time	Average Speed	Maximum Speed	Daily Destination
1	7/16	119.0	119.0	515	1075	7:55	15.1	?	Konar Takhteh
2	7/17	204.8	85.8	1047	1222	6:14	13.8	55.2	85 km from Shiraz
3	7/18	306.3	101.5	1460	1512	7:37	13.3	47.7	Shiraz
4	7/21	380.7	74.4	1630	581	4:41	15.8	66.5	Estakhr (ruins)
5	7/22	474.0	93.3	1955	777	5:58	15.7	?	Past Pasargadae
6	7/23	601.0	127.0	1950	1297	7:44	16.5	60.8	Abadeh
7	7/24	744.3	143.3	1725	456	7:55	18.2	47.1	Past Shahreza
8	7/25	813.1	68.8	1560	353	3:45	18.4	44.5	Esfahan
9	7/28	951.1	138.0	1633	1060	8:48	15.0	60.5	Natanz
10	7/29	1026.0	74.9	1005	533	4:14	17.8	52.1	Kashan
11	7/30	1133.2	107.2	990	463	6:01	17.8	31.9	Qom
12	7/31	1263.9	130.7	1415	874	7:36	17.2	39.1	40 km past Saveh
13	8/1	1383.2	119.4	1280	645	8:03	14.8	31.3	Qazvin
14	8/3	1542.0	158.8	1280	778	7:02	22.6	46.2	Qazvin
15	8/4	1630.7	88.7	1366	2385	7:22	12.0	51.8	Past Moallem Kelayeh
16	8/5	1655.2	24.5	1730	1021	2:10	11.3	55.2	Evan Lake
17	8/6	1735.5	80.3	1305	1923	6:00	13.4	53.4	Qazvin
18	8/7	1891.7	156.2	1764	828	7:55	19.8	33.4	Soltaniyeh
19	8/8	1993.9	102.1	436	1552	6:35	15.6	60.6	Past Gilvan
20	8/9	2090.5	96.2	16	809	6:35	14.6	60.3	Rasht
21	8/10	2214.3	123.8	6	342	7:50	15.8	34.6	Talesh (Hashtpar)
22	8/11	2292.8	78.5	-38	268	4:21	18.1	40.2	Astara, Azerbaijan
23	8/12	2397.2	104.4	-7	304	6:30	16.1	33.7	Celilabad
24	8/13	2504.1	106.9	-25	189	6:41	16.1	23.3	Shirvan National Park
25	8/14	2627.7	123.6	0	664	9:10	13.5	42.2	Baku
26	8/18	2695.1	67.4	0	402	3:27	19.7	52.8	Baku (day trip)
27	8/19	2793.1	98.0	0	441	5:35	17.6	41.9	Beshbarmaq
28	8/20	2886.6	93.5	968	1280	6:46	13.8	28.3	Qacras
29	8/21	2925.2	38.6	1952	1919	5:03	7.6	40.1	Xinaliq
30	8/22	3081.4	156.2	18	866	7:13	21.7	51.5	Sitalcay
31	8/23	3142.2	60.8	0	319	2:42	22.6	47.9	Baku
32	8/24	3241.9	99.7	675	1816	7:12	13.8	46.4	Maraza
33	8/25	3327.7	85.8	709	1448	6:13	13.8	54.6	Ismailiya
34	8/26	3448.4	120.8	687	1399	7:01	17.2	47.5	Seki
35	8/27	3530.7	82.3	298	689	4:34	18.0	42.0	24 km before Zaqatala
36	8/28	3632.0	101.3	438	907	6:16	16.1	44.0	Kabali (Georgia)
37	8/29	3709.6	77.6	595	670	4:41	16.7	31.2	Pshaveli
38	8/30	3748.9	39.3	2367	2018	5:34	7.1	30.9	below Abano Pass
39	8/31	3773.3	24.4	1864	653	2:57	8.4	29.2	Chala
40	9/1	3802.5	29.2	1864	831	2:48	10.4	35.4	Chala (day trip)
41	9/2	3868.9	66.4	638	1344	6:44	9.9	36.6	outside Pshaveli
42	9/3	3930.5	61.6	1293	1117	5:06	12.1	33.1	outisde Tianeti
43	9/4	3998.2	67.7	1463	1139	5:28	12.3	40.8	Korsha
44	9/6	4097.3	99.1	1447	1135	6:24	15.6	47.6	past Pasanauri
45	9/7	4152.6	55.3	1790	1291	4:32	12.3	61.2	Kazbeki
46	9/9	4262.2	109.6	680	1193	7:06	15.4	51.1	past Zhinvali
47	9/10	4311.9	49.7	481	156	2:46	18.1	36.6	Tbilisi