Turkey & Georgia – Hello Asia

Monday & Tuesday, 19th and 20th of March – Turkey
In the end, we drove through Turkey in two days: From Izmit (near Istanbul) to Unye on the Black Sea Coast, and from there to Batumi in Georgia. Quite uneventful days, except for that moment where Tom pulled down his pants in a Turkish post office.

Wait, that needs some backstory.

We’d been driving through Turkey on some very nice highways (see previous post). Getting on and off those roads, we always passed some sort of electronic toll system. However, as there were no ticket booths or barriers, we just drove straight through, assuming we would have to pay when exiting. This didn’t happen the first day. On the second day of doing this, an alarm started blaring when we left the highway.

Mildly concerned, we checked our guide book: apparently, you buy credit to use these roads in a Turkish post office when entering the country. They register your car, after which cameras detect you joining or leaving the toll roads. Fuck.

We pulled over in the next town and went into the post office. No one spoke any English, but with google translate and a lot of gestures, they understood our problem. Apparently you have up to 50 days to pay your dues, so we weren’t in any trouble. They did need our car papers and passports though, to register everything. Passports, which were in Tom’s moneybelt. Tom’s moneybelt, which was nicely tucked inside his pants. Woops.

So, Tom found a quiet nice little corner in the office, got the passports, and the registration was finished. Nobody seemed to mind the pantsdropping, as they started talking about football. (These guys knew all about Belgian football, somehow.)

That night, we stayed in a beautiful hotel in Unye, in an old 19th century house with massive fireplaces:

Next day, we just drove straight on to Georgia, as our views of the Black Sea were mostly limited to this:

Wednesday & Thursday, 21st & 22nd of March – Georgia: Batumi & Tbilisi
We arrived in Batumi the previous evening and went to bed early, after another fishy dinner and a nice walk through the old town. Batumi is sort of like the Georgian Riviera, lots of old houses and also very new and modern architecture. Very nice entry into Georgia.

On Wednesday, we drove on to Kutaisi. Nothing much to see there, cathedral was a bit meh and the nearby Gelati Monastery nearby was also a bit bland. Very nice frescos inside the church though.

On the way there, we noticed something about cars in Georgia though… They seem to be having a bumper problem. Also, a lot of Mercedes. A lot.

In the evening, we arrived in Gori. Famous for only one thing: birthplace of Ioseb Jughashvili, AKA Stalin! We stayed in a lovely guesthouse, with Lea as our host. After a warm welcome, we went out for a typical Georgian dinner: ginkhali with an eggplant walnut salad:

As you can see, ginkhalis are a kind of dumplings, filled with a very tasteful broth and mushrooms, meat, potatoes…

The next day we left for the old capital of Georgia, Mtksheta, and the new, Tbilisi. Lovely cathedral in Mtksheta (and some very nice candy ;):

Tbilisi is also a very nice city to walk around in, if you ignore the mental traffic. (Georgians like to drive anywhere. Makes us wonder if traffic is only going to get worse the further East we go.)

(Left: 4400 year old version of our Suzuki. Right, the quirky clock tower in the old town of Tbilisi.)

Friday, the 23rd of March
Today, we wanted to drive to Mount Kazbegi, to see the Samebi Tsminda church. Apparently, this one of the most iconic places of Georgia. The pictures we saw certainly looked gorgeous.

However, we already had a bad feeling when checking the weather report this morning: rain, snow, temperatures around 0°C…
But hey, we didn’t come this far to be turned back so easily! After a couple of hours of rain, the rain turned to snow. The higher we went, the messier conditions got. Especially when random truck lines started blocking the road at 2300 meters altitude…

(We were close to the Russian border, so probably a customs thing.)

In the end, we made it to the village below the church (on a hilltop). Following the road signs, we started driving up the hill on a nice asphalt road. This road soon changed into a hell of mud, rocks and water though. After several attempts to climb on, we decided to drive back to the village before we got stuck in the mud. We still need some practice offroading before we take on this kind of hell… 🙂

Back in the village, we found Manas and his cute Lada 4×4:

For just 40 Georgian Lari, he drove us up and down the mountain, which took us nearly an hour in the end. Looking back, we’re glad we didn’t do this with Suzy. It’s amazing what kind of beating these old Soviet cars can take!

The destination was worth it though:

 

After an exhilarating ride back down, we were happy to find Suzy unscathed!