About Me
Sunday 30 June 2013
Georgia
Georgia
Georgia is an ex Soviet, Orthodox Christian country situated on the boundary of Europe and Asia and claims to be one of the most ancient countries in the world and also the first people to make wine. Christianity arrived in the first century AD here through Saint Nina who was saved by Saint George who slayed a dragon. All the literature we read told us to dress conservatively but we found a secular country where everyone dressed like Europeans, just the older women who wore head scarves and long dresses or trousers. The ride from the border with Azerbaijan into Tbilisi was one of high hills then mad traffic as we approached the city. Even as close as a few kilometers from the city centre cows would wander across the road where they had been left to graze in public space, the cars and trucks just drive around them barely slowing down. Our first impression of Tbilisi was that we were now on the tourist trail as there were many people who had come to see the impressive churches in the city. Through wars Tbilisi has been ransacked a number of times, the churches destroyed when muslim rulers conquered and then the mosques were destroyed when the Christians were victors so the existing churches are eighteen century though history records civilization here 6,000 years ago. We spent a couple of days being tourists ourselves in this old city of churches and modern buildings blending together. There were many people begging in the street. Café culture is very strong here and as we were strolling down a street we saw three men who were obviously cyclist enjoying lunch and went over to say hello to them. As we exchanged details of our route, one of the men said “do you know my brother Mark Lye”. We were surprised, Mike has known Mark since they went to tech school together fifty years ago and one of the people we are planning to catch up when we get to England. Mark had mentioned to his brother Paul in passing just before he left to cycle through Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan that he might meet us along the way, never expecting to. So we sat down and had an enjoyable cup of tea with Paul, his friend Mike and Mike’s seventeen year old son Will wondering what the odds of us meeting up like this would be.
We had a great ride out of Tbilisi, just the opposite to the ride in the other side, four lane divided highway with an emergency stopping lane which we rode on all the way to Gori, the birth place of Stalin. We went to the museum, which Stalin himself commissioned but died before it was completed, the house where he was born was in the grounds as was the train carriage he used to get around in during the second world war. The museum needs a update, it has not changed since it was first opened and is full of interesting things about Stalin’s life but also a lot of propaganda about the revolution and nothing about the many people who died who opposed him. After Gori the road became a narrow road but the scenery was beautiful, rolling hills which we were riding up and down every day, dense greenery and every house had grapes growing over trellis giving them shade from the hot weather, about 35 degrees every day. After a very long and arduous climb we arrived at what should have been a tunnel entrance to take us through a mountain range to avoid climbing all the way over, but the tunnel was closed for maintenance. We saw the traffic which included many trucks wending it’s way up the narrow steep road which was a 4.5. kilometer bypass and decided to ask if they would allow bikes to go through the tunnel and they agreed, the foreman drove his car through with us as there was no electricity, we were very grateful. After all that stress we went to a café and had tea, we must have looked hassled as a very nice lady came up to us and gave us a delicacy here, a cheese pie, which she had bought for us. as we were visitors to her country This is the first time we have had this happen in Georgia but not the last. One day we stopped to ask directions just outside Samtredia and we were invited over to a café where a man insisted buying us cold drinks, beer for Mike and soft drink for Heather and sharing dumplings, another favourite here. Mike was also given a shot of vodka by a man who was drinking a bottle with his friends, we had stopped at a shop for a cold drink, and when he refused the second one it was offered to Heather, who also refused. Generally, people have not been as friendly here, but others have made up for it. At long last we met some other cyclists on the road, eight all together between Tbilisi and Batumi including one woman, which Heather was quite excited about, all from various parts of Europe. We were headed for Batumi, the last city before the border with Turkey, with 50 kilometres to go when we decided to camp for the night, but just as we had set up our tent the police arrived and told us we would have to move, they loaded all our bikes and gear into the police ute and took us to somewhere “safe” – a grassy back yard of a hotel right on the beach front of the Black Sea. We set up out tent and went to the beach side restaurant for dinner. Next day, after Mike had a 5.30am swim, we rode along the beach road all the way to Batumi, encountering one very big and steep hill, where we were looking forward to a hotel and a rest day. Batumi is a holiday destination for locals and people from Turkey as well as a port with lots of holiday makers, hotels and restaurants. There are extremes in dress with bikinis and other skimpy beachwear to women dressed completely in black with only their eyes uncovered. The food has been good and with things like cheese pies there has not been a dramatic weight loss as in the past. The food is always freshly cooked, no tins or packets here, and locally produced. We see the local producer delivering the tomatoes he has grown to the shops and restaurants in his car with crates tied to the roof and the boot is full as well as the back seat.
Sunday 23 June 2013
We are now in the Great Caucasus
We are
out of the Stans and now in the Great Caucasus
Bacu,
Azerbaijan
Bacu
was a refreshing change. Like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan is a former
Soviet ruled country, but unlike their neighbours they have been able to
embrace their independence and their old culture using their wealth from oil
and gas build a modern city. The esplanade along the Caspian Sea has been
landscaped to include parks and restaurants and when lit up at night is very
impressive. There are records of Bacu dating back five thousand years. We stayed in the walled city of old Bacu,
where we enjoyed walking along narrow alleyways and cobbled streets. There was a lot to see here, an old 14th
century palace belonging to a ruler by the name of Shirvashah complete with
mosque, mausoleum and baths, and remains of St Bartholamew’s chapel. People live here and there are small markets
and many small caves where carpets and souvenirs are sold, creating a great
atmosphere. There is a restaurant, a caravanserai, where the silk road traders
stayed, the original water font where camels drank from is still there. Another
thing which impressed us was the rise in the standard of our accommodation,
everything in our room was clean and worked, we had wifi for the first time since Beijing and a lovely
breakfast was provided. People do not spit here either which is a nice change
after Asia and the Stans.
We
left Bacu riding along the coast where Azerbainjan’s new wealth is evident in
the many luxury houses built or being built here. The road then took us inland
to a dry and dusty landscape, no trees or crops, no livestock. We had a flat, narrow, busy road with a good
surface. The drivers here take risks by driving very fast and passing when it
is not safe to do so which means we cannot relax at all. There were many cafes and restaurants all the
way through Azerbaijan, most had outside tables under shady trees which was our
preference. When we sat down a basket of bread and a bowl of salad was put on
the table to accompany whatever we ordered.
Borsche was always available and we sometimes ordered it – a soup with
vegetables and potatoes with a lump of meat, usually lamb or chicken. Salad was
usually tomatoes and cucumber, sometimes there was onion and capsicum. The
tomatoes are just divine, red and picked ripe, we see them growing as we ride
and people selling them by the side of the road, if it was legal I would take
some home to grow. We rarely saw women in cafes or shops, it was always men
serving at the tables and behind the counter, in one café there were twentysix
men and Heather was the only women in the room. In some places there was only a
male toilet. The women we did see walked freely on their own dressed in jeans
or knee length skirts and tee shirts, hardly ever a scarf to be seen.
As
in Kazakhstan people would buy us drinks or the owner of the café would refuse
to take our money, this happened about twice a day and always amazed us. We
also had offers to stay at people’s places but managed to refuse because at the
end of the day all we wanted to do was go to bed but if we stayed with someone
we would be up late trying to have a conversation when neither of us could
speak the other’s language. One evening Mike rode into a town close to where we
were staying to buy a cold drink, a man paid for the drink and then insisted
Mike join him and his friends for a beer, which became two and would not let
Mike pay for anything.
One
day as we were pedaling along a truck pulled up and it was one of the truckies
we had met on the boat to Bacu, then not long after we were sitting under a
tree at an outside café and three French men we had met in Almaty came along
and joined us. We have seen very few
cyclists, none since Bishkek, so we were delighted to see them.
We
had a rest day when we reached Ganca which has an aluminium smelter and not
much else but it did have a hotel and we were glad to see it. Heather went into
the hotel to check it out and if it was okay to book in, the staff, all men,
kept saying “man”, when he was pointed out to them waiting outside they took
the booking, and when we had to show our passport they insisted that they
resister the “man’s passport”. We wonder
how women travelling on their own cope without a “man” The best thing about
Ganca was the food, we found a place which cooked a pretty good shaslick.
After
Ganca we started to have trouble with dogs chasing us, big dogs, so far Mike
has always been able to scare them off. The countryside greened up and there
were crops growing and sheep and cattle grazing. As we got within 60 kilometere
from the border with Georgia the area looked like progress had forgotton about
this part of the country, houses were not well kept, horses and donkey’s were
being used to pull carts and the café quality took a slide.
We
did not need a visa to enter Georgia so the crossing was smooth, no forms to
fill in and no cost, we just had our passports stamped and we were free to go.
Tuesday 18 June 2013
By train and boat from Shymkent, Kazakhstan to Bacu, Azerbaijan
We had
to be at Shymkent railway station to catch the train to Aqtou by 4.30 am. The
train originated from Almaty so there were many people getting off as well as
many people getting on. We found our
carriage, a first class soft sleeper, in which we were to spend the next fifty
four hours travelling to Aqtou on the Caspian Sea and loaded ourselves, our
gear and our bikes in. We had a comfortable two berth cabin with plenty of room
to stow our bags and the bikes went in at the end of the carriage. We were settled in very nicely when a railway
man came and using sign language advised us that our bikes would have to go
into the luggage compartment at the next major stop and that would be an extra 20,000
tenge, thank you very much. When we
booked the train we had asked about the bikes coming on the train with us and
we were assured that was okay and there would be no extra charge so we argued
our case strongly. After about two hours and after a bit of back and forth as
well as a few phone calls the railway man agreed to leave the bikes where they
were and there would be no extra charge.
It was a long trip and we had
taken food with us but we were able to buy some from people who hopped on at
one station and got off at the next. Hot
water was available and we used this to make drinks. When we stopped at major stations there were
also people selling food and drinks.
Kazakhstan is a large country, the ninth largest in the world, and a lot
of it is desert which is the reason we are taking a train for this part of it. We used our time to look at maps and define
our route through Turkey, we read , looked at the scenery and enjoyed the
experience. The land scape flying by was
desolate flat plains, dust blowing in the wind and the only houses appeared to
be for railway staff who man the stations and maintain the track. Rail is used to move goods from one side of
the country to the other, particularly oil and we pass many goods trains. Other
passengers are interested in our maps and our bikes but no one speaks English
and we have limited conversations with them.
Just out of Turkistan we saw the remains of an old silk road
civilization which normally we would have had to hire a four wheel drive to
see, we passed close by to what used to be the Aral Sea and later, large
sandstones cliffs eroded by the wind, but for the rest of the time it was
desert and camels.
After we
arrived in Aqtou station we had a windy 16 klm ride into the city. Aqtou was a
seaside resort for mainly Russian tourists until oil was discovered in the
Caspian Sea and now it is a booming oil town providing employment to local and
overseas people. The boats which sail
from here are known to be unreliable and we have heard of people waiting twelve
days for a berth so we were keen to find the shipping office before we did
anything else as we only have five days left on our visas. We found the address given in the Lonely
Planet easily enough but the office had moved and none of the locals could help
us find it. We decided to ride the eight
kilometers to the docks and see what information we could find. We were in luck. There was a ship sailing
tonight at 8 o’clock, but we had to book at the office we could not find in
Aqtou and it was 5 o’clock. A young
German man, Cornelius,(who had been waiting a week for the boat) offered to go with us in a taxi to show us where it was,
the office would remain open until we got there. It was about 50 metres from where we had been
standing a few hours before asking locals if they knew where to find it. We purchased our tickets, bought some food
for the trip as this was really a truck ferry which takes some passengers not a
comfortable passenger ferry, and hurried back to the docks. We need not have worried, we sat in the
waiting room with others until we were cleared through customs at 3.00 am,
boarded and waited until 7.pm the following evening before we left the dock. Conditions on the boat were not very good,
we shared accommodation with the truckies whose vehicles were loaded on board,
everything needed a good soak in White King, but we had a smooth crossing and
good company. We had been on the train
for two and a half days and then the boat for two days, we were glad to get on
to dry land and looking forward to some nice food and bed that doesn’t move. Customs staff came on board and cleared us and we wheeled the bikes off into Azerbaijan.
Monday 17 June 2013
We are no longer "foreigners" but "tourists" or sometimes "travellers"
The road
out of Bishkek was very busy with traffic and full of potholes, to complicate
matters President Putin was in town and all traffic was diverted off the main
road but we were allowed to walk on the footpath with our bikes, police
everywhere. We were heading back into
Kazakhstan to ride to Shymkent where we plan to catch a train to Aktau, then a
boat across the Caspian Sea to Baku in Azerbaijan. Kyrgyzstan is quite a poor
country, it had a rundown feel about it as we rode past dilapidated houses and
untidy parks. Once we crossed the border
without incident back into Kazakstan there were open grassy plains, mountains
in the distance and friendly local people.
The first couple of days were reasonably flat and intermittently we had
a good four lane highway which would disappear and we would be back to a narrow
bumpy road. Livestock, mainly horses and sheep, grazed along the road watched
over by men on horseback who herded them down every morning and rounded them up
in the evening. The Kazakhstan
authorities require people on a tourist visa to register with the police and
have their visas stamped within five days of crossing a land border so when we
reached Taraz, a small city of the
Russian style, we had to do this. By the
time the visas were processed , we think they have so few requests here they
had trouble finding the stamp, it was too late in the day to start riding so we
had a rest day. The weather is now very
hot every day and we try to ride early in the morning, have a long lunch at the
hottest part of the day then continue.
After
Taraz villages were few and far between so we learnt to stock up on water. We
were amazed at the generousity of people between Taraz and Shymkent. One day we
were looking for somewhere to have lunch and a man invited us back to his house
and we enjoyed a social lunch with his family.
A couple of times we were in a shop and another customer bought us drink
or chocolate. On another occasion we stopped for a meal at a small family
business and they refused payment, saying we were their guests. Once we were looking for somewhere to camp and
we asked a young man if it was alright to camp near his house and he insisted
that we come in and sleep inside. While
this is embarrassing we could not refuse for fear of offending people. The flat road changed to rolling hills along
this stretch, we would just get up one and there was another one waiting with
strong head wind just for good measure, but we had lovely scenery which
included many wild flowers
Shymkent
was a pleasant surprise. There was a lot of new housing, modern shops and
vibrant feel to the place. A monument to
celebrate twenty years of independence dominated the city square and is well
maintained with fountains that actually work, which is not the norm. We booked
a sleeper to Aktau,but the train did not leave for two days so we had a couple
of days rest while we waited, eating nice food and enjoying the comfort of a
hotel.
The road
out of Bishkek was very busy with traffic and full of potholes, to complicate
matters President Putin was in town and all traffic was diverted off the main
road but we were allowed to walk on the footpath with our bikes, police
everywhere. We were heading back into
Kazakhstan to ride to Shymkent where we plan to catch a train to Aktau, then a
boat across the Caspian Sea to Baku in Azerbaijan. Kyrgyzstan is quite a poor
country, it had a rundown feel about it as we rode past dilapidated houses and
untidy parks. Once we crossed the border
without incident back into Kazakstan there were open grassy plains, mountains
in the distance and friendly local people.
The first couple of days were reasonably flat and intermittently we had
a good four lane highway which would disappear and we would be back to a narrow
bumpy road. Livestock, mainly horses and sheep, grazed along the road watched
over by men on horseback who herded them down every morning and rounded them up
in the evening. The Kazakhstan
authorities require people on a tourist visa to register with the police and
have their visas stamped within five days of crossing a land border so when we
reached Taraz, a small city of the
Russian style, we had to do this. By the
time the visas were processed , we think they have so few requests here they
had trouble finding the stamp, it was too late in the day to start riding so we
had a rest day. The weather is now very
hot every day and we try to ride early in the morning, have a long lunch at the
hottest part of the day then continue.
After
Taraz villages were few and far between so we learnt to stock up on water. We
were amazed at the generousity of people between Taraz and Shymkent. One day we
were looking for somewhere to have lunch and a man invited us back to his house
and we enjoyed a social lunch with his family.
A couple of times we were in a shop and another customer bought us drink
or chocolate. On another occasion we stopped for a meal at a small family
business and they refused payment, saying we were their guests. Once we were looking for somewhere to camp and
we asked a young man if it was alright to camp near his house and he insisted
that we come in and sleep inside. While
this is embarrassing we could not refuse for fear of offending people. The flat road changed to rolling hills along
this stretch, we would just get up one and there was another one waiting with
strong head wind just for good measure, but we had lovely scenery which
included many wild flowers
Shymkent
was a pleasant surprise. There was a lot of new housing, modern shops and
vibrant feel to the place. A monument to
celebrate twenty years of independence dominated the city square and is well
maintained with fountains that actually work, which is not the norm. We booked
a sleeper to Aktau,but the train did not leave for two days so we had a couple
of days rest while we waited, eating nice food and enjoying the comfort of a
hotel.
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