August 14 - The evil empire

I slept really well, waking up only around 7:30 or so. I took my time in getting ready, it must have been after 9 that I started heading up the hill - there were quite a few kilometers left with a steady incline. The village I saw at night must be really busy in winter, there were a lot of hotels, motels, restaurants - all around a ski lift, there was even a luxury hotel, built by Austrians. As I was heading up the hill, I saw a herd of horses in the middle of the road, the cars were zigzagging around them, they could not be bothered. However, as I came closer to them on my bike, they got really agitated, started growling and quickly moved out of the way, running to the meadows. I must have been a scary sight for a horse!

Horses - they were really scared to see me!

There were a lot of adventurers around here, biking, hiking, walking - the countryside was beautiful. Soon I was at the summit, where I saw a little modern hut which I mistakenly thought was a restaurant, it turned out to be a small monastery. A monk, who spoke very good English, invited me in, offered me some cookies, made a fresh coffee for me. He was unfortunately slowly going blind due to a childhood illness, but was still content with life. He told me stories of winter time, when they can hardly leave the hut due to the columns of snow - after all, we were at 2400 meters in the High Caucasus.

The monk

The pass

Interesting architecture

Not bad, eh?

More of the road

Chalk formations

Now the road was heading downhill and I saw a huge line of trucks. It turned out they were all headed for Russia and according to the drivers, they have a minimum wait time of two days, but usually it's more like 5 to 6 days to cross the Russian borders. While I did not understand everything they said, their negative feeling about the Russian customs officials came clearly through. I was slaloming between these trucks, the cows laying lazily next to them and the oncoming traffic. I was by far not the only biker, a Russian father and his son were headed towards the south, followed by a group of about 8 Polish riders.

Huge line of trucks waiting to pass the border

The scenery was impressive, huge mountain peaks surrounding me, some even over 5000 meters, below me a wild river flowing in the valleys, water roaring down the hills. There were more ancient monasteries, I only visited one, wish I had had more time, I did not have time to climb up to the Trinity Monastery on Mt. Kazbekh. Instead, I decided to roll down to the Russian border, at least I can say I rode through entire Georgia from south to the north.

Did not make it to the monastery up on the hill...

...but did visit the border to Russia

It was time to head back to Tbilisi, it was getting late in the day. I tried to hitchhike with my bike at the border, none of the Russian cars were kind enough to take me. The majority of the cars were from Russia, but some were Georgian, Armenian and Ukrainian. Now I was climbing up, holding my hand out everytime a car passed, but most thought I was just waving at them, so they waved back. In Stephansminda, the local capital of hikers, I first tried to catch a bus, but none would take a biker. Some taxis offered their services, demanding close to Eur 100, which was a bit on the expensive side. I did not give up hope, went from car to car, asking if they would drive me to the real capital.

A young guy with a jeep all of a sudden agreed to take me there. He must have been a distant relative of Niki Lauda or so, we were soon racing first up to the pass, then all the way down back to Tsibili at breakneck speeds, passing the cows, horses, trucks, other cars, slaloming through people walking lazily on the road - I was quite relived to have arrived safely to the city. There I found a hotel close on the hill next to the president's residence and soon fell asleep in the clean white sheets.