I travelled back to the UK from Georgia at Christmas to spend it with my family by public transport and it was an adventure of it’s own. I wanted to take public transport to avoid the general boredom, financial and emissions cost of taking a plane.
The bus from Tbilisi to Thessalonika was a long [...]
By Andy
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Also posted in Europe, Expedition Journal, India
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Tagged boat, Bus, Christmas, England, Europe, family, Georgia, georgians, public transport, Train, travel
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Tom emailed me last week and to tell me he was going to follow an old man on a horse to a hot spring at 3000m. That sounded like my idea of fun so I decided to go to Yerevan and do it.
I went to the bus station in Ortachala in Tbilisi at 9.30 am [...]
By Andy
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Also posted in Armenia, Expedition Journal, Mountain Biking
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Tagged Adventure, Andy, Armenia, biking, caldera, church, Curry, Cycling, dolma, epic, explosif, kona, Mountain Biking, Mountains, retro, snow, tom, Wild, wildnerness
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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 [...]
By Andy
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Also posted in Expedition Journal, Georgia, Mountain Biking
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Tagged bread, Caucasus, cheese, Dogs, epic, Extrawheel, Food, Khevsureti, kona, mountain bike, Mountains, mtb, off-road, Tbilisi, tour, trailer, wilderness
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This is the first post in a while to the Ride Earth blog because I’ve not been cycle touring recently.
I returned via Public transport back from France to Tbilisi at the end of the summer. I met Tom in Venice and we spent a long and strange evening sleeping on a bench drinking wine with [...]
I wanted to write something more about my experience in Iran. At the time I didn’t write much on the blog. But I did write a lot in my diary which will appear in a book in the future.
Some experiences stay in my mind in particular. They started at Agarak, the Armenian-Iranian border. I remember [...]
By Andy
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Also posted in Expedition Journal, Georgia, Iran
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Tagged bam, Couchsurfing, culture, Cycling, desert, history, Iran, isfahan, kerman, memories, Philosophy, south iran, yazd
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Long time since I wrote, I know. In fact I’ve been spending a lot of time in front of a computer. I’ve been writing every morning and now have written 95000 words of my book. I met one of my sister’s friends a couple of days ago who has just finished writing a book she [...]
By Andy
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Also posted in Climate Change, England, Europe, France, Georgia, Mountain Biking, Switzerland, Turkey, writing
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Tagged 4HWW, andrew welch, biking, boat, CENN, Climate Change, creativity, critiscism, Cycling, Dancing, dave allen, demonstrations, design, effectiveness, England, Environment, folklore, freedom square, Georgia, georgian, georiders, greece, GTD, Motivation, Mountain Biking, ngo, parliament, Photography, portfolio, public transport, rustaveli, saakashvili, saburtalo, swimming, Tbilisi, Timoty ferriss, travel, Turkey, uk, Websites, writing
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I’m now 55,000 words into my book’s first draft and I’ve learnt a few things which I thought I’d share:
Get up early in the morning to write. e.g. 6 am. I tried writing late at night and got into a counter-productive routine of falling asleep at 10.30 pm, waking up at 2 am and working [...]
After leaving the Iran embassy having been rejected for the visa a second time, I cycled over to the travel agency, and booked a flight to Istanbul. Flying is not the best transport for me because I feel that it cuts out the point of travel which is the adventure of meeting people and having [...]
By Andy
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Also posted in Expedition Journal, Georgia, India
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Tagged Adventure, bombs, Challenge, China, flying, Georgia, India, istanbul, monks, Pakistan, Police, Tbilisi, terrorism, Tibet, travel
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I’ve been working a lot on creative stuff recently. My profession is in the field of web design. I’ve been posting artwork onto the Ride Earth flickr photo album, and other creative nuggets of inspiration and perhaps they don’t belong there.
I heard about a public-driven journalism website from a friend, http://www.citizenside.com and I uploaded some photos I took of the ‘cells’ that appeared all over the main street, Rustaveli, Freedom Square and around the Parliament building yesterday morning.
These metal framed cuboids covered in plastic sheeting are housing protesters claiming the president Saakashvili has been wrongly [...]
By Andy
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Also posted in Constructive Ranting, Georgia
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Tagged cells, citizen, citizenside, demonstration, Georgia, journalism, news, photos, side, Tbilisi
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Being in a new location, and having hatched new plans I’m finding myself at that stage of tilling the ground and sowing the seeds to hopefully grow into burgeoning new projects.
By Andy
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Also posted in Constructive Ranting, Georgia
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Tagged Friends, Georgia, group, mentality, networking, ngo, Philosophy, Photography, projects, psychology, Tbilisi, Volunteering, writing
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Writing is going ok. It’s new territory and a new challenge and I’m enjoying it.I have written about a previous adventure before- a mountain bike ride from Inverness to Fort William in May 2006. You can read that account in the earlier blog archives. I feel that my writing then was particularly stylised to appeal [...]
So, I’m hanging up the panniers for a while and I’m living in a flat with Fanny in Tbilisi.
I decided to write up my journals into a book which will cover my journey from England to India and Nepal.
I arrived back in Tbilisi in Georgia just in time to witness a demonstration in a similar mould to the one Tom and I witnessed when we arrived for the first time back in January 2008.
50,000 people gathered on the main street, Rustaveli, outside the front of the parliament building. There is a large stage [...]
“Build it up, tear it down”
“A period of expansion, and a period of consolidation”
By Andy
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Also posted in Constructive Ranting, Expedition Journal, Georgia
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Tagged Art, audio, Communication, creative, Georgia, money, Photography, Tbilisi, video, website, Work
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