Tom, David and I went for a bike ride into the Caucasus mountains of Georgia. I’d been planning it for a while and I wanted to get some proper riding in before the snows descended. Tom arrived on the Sunday but leaving was delayed until Tuesday. To pass the time we decided to build up my new Kona Caldera frame, ate Khinkali (Georgian dumplings) and deejayed at a cafe under the big TV tower in Tbilisi.
On Tuesday evening we rode through the streets of Tbilisi to the bus station where David wangled us putting our three bikes and kit in the back. The bus trundled off about 35 km to Zhinvali where we would start our trip and where David’s gran lived. We stayed the night, munched many freshly picked apples, plates of lobiani (bean stew), and went to sleep early. There was no electricity and hasn’t been for one year because another local resident couldn’t pay their electricity bill.
We awoke to a chilly morning and the sun emerging over the valley ridge. More lobiani for breakfast and then we made tracks. We followed the highway for 5 km up to the Shatilli turning and then along that road, a mixture of destroyed asphalt, potholes and dirt-track. We passed chickens and cows being herded along the road, and people going to fetch their morning bread and cigarettes.
The first vista of note was reaching the man made emerald Zhinvali lake. The expanse of water stretched away into the far gulleys. Bare mountain sides succumbed to the water. White horses danced briskly over the textured water’s surface.
The changes in the season could be seen everywhere. Bright autumnal yellows, red, and browns created a visual feast. I’d double-take at the vibrant shades, like paint daubed straight from the pot onto the landscape. I never remembered autumn colours being so rich. In England I associated brown leaves with autumn. Perhaps it was just Georgia or perhaps I was somehow more attuned to the colours. The lush foliage was like a elixir for the soul. I wanted to escape from the ‘data’ of everyday living into much more soothing natural surroundings. Something instinctual urged me onwards like self-prescribed medicine.
With almost a hint of desperation I churned my legs along, not used to the loaded bike, banging the wheels over rocks with misplaced steering maneuvers. A bus drove past and threw up a cloud of dust as school kids waved and shouted out of the window.
I switched back to SPDs (Shimano clip-less pedals) for the ride and I began to get knee twinges that I thought would have disappeared after a good stint on flat pedals. The persistent nagging injury was still haunting me from as far back as the end of my last trip to India. I had to stop to make adjustments to try to find a sweet spot in the positioning of the cleat but with every change I made the pain would start to creep back after a short time.
The beauty of the surrounding valley was about as idyllic as we could hope for. Auburn-coloured trees on steep brown valley sides interspersed with vein-like waterfalls, deciduous trees shedding their leaves clinging onto the lower hills. A majestic fast flowing river followed the valley bottom gradually becoming thinner, rockier and faster flowing as we progressed. David said there were some big fish in the rapid waters and I imagined a dinner of wild mountain salmon sizzling over a fire. We rarely saw a soul on the road. Occasionally we passed a man on a horse or a donkey or sometimes an old soviet van or a truck bellowing grey smoke.
David on his bike, free of luggage, rode ahead and Tom, finding the pace a little fast, dragged behind. He cursed his fitness, although his detraining is understandable after a month of celebrating his wedding.
Tom’s mindset when he visits Georgia is to consume as much delicious Georgian food as possible. As lunchtime neared bowls of steaming Ostri (a traditional spicy Georgian beef stew) could be seen rotating round in his eyes. Unfortunately the restaurant in the next village was closed so we settled for chocolate bars and some puffed rice crisps, that didn’t really warrant the effort of eating.
This was much to all our disappointments, but the promise of Ostri in the next village was a good motivator. It was 25 km to Barisakhlo, and just before the start of the big off-road climb towards Shatilli. That was our aim for the end of the day.
We planned to get all the way to Shatilli initially – 96 km away from the road, but we were overoptimistic. At Barisakhlo we decided to load up with food and camp the night at the next opportunity as the light was already starting to fail. We stopped at a little shop to buy cheese. The lady pottered off to her house and returned with a whole round cow’s cheese about 2kg worth, so we bought half. The cheese was the strongest most pungent stuff known to mankind. Tom described it as both ‘wrong’ and ‘on another level’, which is surprising seeing as we’ve both eaten Fromage de Banon in the past.
David also bought a couple of huge loaves of bread from a farm. I asked him how much they were and he said 1.50 lari. I replied ‘that’s expensive compared to the normal 70 tetri’. Then I saw the bread, two huge dense loaves that reminded me of the Trabzon loaves in Turkey… a bargain.
Sweeping areas of grass lead down to the river side as tempting places to wash away the day’s dirt and grime.
After the village we turned off the next suitable looking side track onto an area of grass and building ruins. David told us it had in Soviet times been a village, constructed for the building of a tunnel directly from Georgia to Russia through the mountain. The construction had apparently stopped for the dubious reason that there could be an accident where an oil tanker could spill into the river and pollute the Tbilisi drinking water. Perhaps, I mused, it was more a paranoia that the water might be deliberately poisoned or a multitude of other conspiracy theories.
Sharing the same camping area we met a group of student alpinists who had been living there for a month doing expeditions into the mountains and a drunken shepherd who seemed mostly concerned with consuming vodka and pilfering cigarettes from anyone who would donate. In exchange he would offer a tale or twelve.
David built a huge bonfire and released the pyromaniac within. He claimed with sincerity in his eyes, that it was to ward off giant red wolves. We ate a dinner of potato, pea and noodle stew, dried fish, hunks of bread and gas-inducing cheese washed down with beer and got an early night. It was cold at night. I had no idea because I was tucked up in my -25 sleeping bag and slept wonderfully, whereas David emerged in the morning shivvering from his thinner sleeping bag.
We left and took a few minutes to investigate the entrance of the big derelict concrete tunnels at the foot of the off-road mountain climb.
It was another beautiful sunny day, no sign of snow clouds descending yet. As we emerged up through the treeline, the raw white and black mountain peaks could be seen clearly in the distance. David explained he could also see the same peaks from his village near Gudauri to the west.
Tom increasingly needed rests and David was increasingly creeping ahead which started to cause a bit of interpersonal bother, culminating in a point at which they both said they were ready to go back to Tbilisi. A bit of diplomacy and compromise meant we tentatively continued. The terrain certainly wasn’t easy going with loaded bikes, ‘climbing-out-of-the-saddle’ steep rocky tracks. More masochistic than fun.
Hills with steep grassy banks lead up to into-thin-air cliff sides. We passed a village nested beside the river in the valley bottom, guard dogs barking at us from the houses. Other singular houses lonely up on the hillside made me wonder who lived there and the simplicity of their lifestyle. Houses cobbled together from any building materials available.
We saw a couple of trucks loaded with supplies for Shatilli, probably helping to stock up before the road passes were snowed under and impassable.
The hillsides gradually became barer as we passed the tree line and you could feel the temperature dropping. Sheep and cattle lazily grazed, shepherds and their dogs watched wearily from afar. Occasionally David would stop to chat to a local and ask about the weather.
David decided it would be a good idea to use the lead he had gained over us to go and stock up with another half kilo of cheese for some strange reason. Having refused to eat our potato/ noodle stew the night before he preferred to stick to Georgian fare of bread and cheese.
The process of pedaling had become near to cripplingly painful to Tom who had slowed to a crawling pace up the last section of climb. My knees were also complaining with the SPD pedals. I wanted to get my knees used to using them again.
Eventually nearing 5.30pm we make it up to the pass. The overriding factor was that Tom and David had managed to settle their differences and we all stuck together. A stark reminder of the perils of group expeditions. The defining moments of the journey.
At the pass, there was a table for a supra (a traditional Georgian toasting session), along with a single granite memorial cross, some candles and a bottle of vodka. I took a couple of swigs to toast the dead, the liquid strong, hostile and repulsive seemed a fitting addition to the remoteness and wildness of the location.
A decision making process ensued about whether to descend down to the village of Shatilli. It was about to get dark. We couldn’t camp where we were because David didn’t have a warm enough sleeping bag, and it would definitely be into minus figures as we were at the snowline. Descending down to Shatilli would mean repeating the 25km 1200m climb the next day, which Tom didn’t want to do. So we made the slightly difficult but right decision to descend back down the way we came.
I was determined to get some good film footage, but I now had little time to do it before darkness. I rushed to film David speeding down the track, dust kicked up behind him. It was liquid. Flying across the environment. I put the camera away and followed. Not quite as fun with a bike loaded with stuff, with a lesser bike and wheels I would have ended up in a pile of twisted spokes.
The darkness gradually set in, the sky was purple, mixed into pale orange and blue as the last remnants of the sun’s light filtered through the atmosphere. Tom laying on the ground and filmed David and I skimming his ear with our knobblies kicking dust into the camera lenses silhouetted against the backdrop of the mountains.
The rest of the descent was by headlights. Thinking back, it’s astonishing that it’s possible to descend 20km in the dark on a thin track with a shear drop to the side without light. At one point we were chased by a pack of Caucasian hounds whining, barking and bounding along bearing teeth. It was comforting not to be able to see them. Visual stimulation reduced, my memories are of inside my head, a virtually created schematic of my surroundings based on glimpses of track by headlight and sound and patterns.
We made it down, and camped back as the previous night. David adamant once again on creating a huge bonfire to scare off the red-wolves twice as big as wild dogs he claimed. We sat and he told me stories about his meetings with Russian girls going skiing in Gudauri and other tales….
The following morning we befriended a dog, possibly because in the morning we found it had raided our rubbish, left out the night before, and consumed the liver of the dried fish which none of us could face eating. When we started cycling it bounded along with us barking with glee. After a while it probably regretted the decision as the only thing I had to feed it was repugnant cheese and squashed cucumber during the adventure it unknowingly (or knowingly – I don’t speak dog) em-barked on (excuse the pun).
At one point David managed to have a race with a guy on a horse and beat him. The film footage has to be seen to be believed – seriously.
We protected the dog from other packs of wild dogs by throwing stones, and cycling very fast swerving towards them.
After 25 kilometres of running beside us, I admit I had developed a fondness for the dog. A surprisingly handsome specimen different from the usual mongrels. However, thoughtlessly we lost the dog on a downhill, without the patience to wait and as quickly as our friendship had been bonded it was sadly broken. I hope the dog, which somehow got the name of Robinson Winston Dog-Friday, is okay in it’s new location.
We returned via the same road back to David’s village and finished the ride with a feast of Khinkhali meat dumplings and Katchapuri- cheese pizza, washed down with flagons of beers which we smashed together over the table.
It was a good introduction to self-supported off roads trips. Next time I’d try to minimise the equipment further but that which already have is spot on but I would take less. The Extrawheel could be combined with a full suspension bike. I think the Extrawheel is definitely a better choice than panniers for off-road trips because it’s a lot less strain on the bike frame and offers better bike handling.
I really enjoyed the trip, the off-road and the tranquility of the mountains. It was important that we managed to overcome the differences between the different members of our small group. There is a deeper communication that exists between humans and the environment that can only be connected to when you get out into the true wilds. A peace in the complexity and wonder of nature that is calming and reassuring.
More photos on my Flickr account here.
