Heading Home

Mestia, Georgia to Tblisi, Georgia to Moscow, Russia to Launceston, UK

In this blog: homeward bound via a sweaty night train and a sleepover in a Russian airport
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After a cracking final few days in the Caucasus mountains, it was time to head back to Tbilisi - the capital of Georgia, and indeed time to start making my way home to England.

In Mestia, I said goodbye to the other travellers I'd been hanging around with over the past few days and as ever exchanged contact details, knowing full well I probably wouldn't speak to most of them again, as no matter how well you get on and how much you intend to stay in touch, most travel friendships are fairly transient and often built on situation and convenience. That said, there are a good number of people from this trip that no doubt I will keep in touch with for years to come and hopefully see again one day.

The finest host of all, Roza

I'd booked a night train for that evening, so had most of the day to tidy up loose ends, write, and chat with Roza, my great host at the homestay who spoke excellent English. I'd managed to stay in homestays almost the whole time in Georgia and really enjoyed it, since you get a real homely feel and a good insight into the local area and culture. Mid-afternoon I headed to catch a minibus back to the town of Zugdidi where the nearest station is. Roza had booked it up with the driver and told me where to wait, but upon getting to that spot none of the three drivers waiting seemed to say it was them who'd received the booking, and confusion ensued. A woman in her late thirties eventually got out from the back of the minibus and offered to help, funnily translating my English into Russian, which her boyfriend then translated from Russian into Georgian - a real life Chinese whispers it seemed! 

We were soon on our way, and the woman started chatting to me, who turned out to be a Russian who had lived in Manchester, UK for the past seven years, on holiday with her Georgian boyfriend who she'd met over the internet. Her parents were also with her, who live in the very north of Russia but come from the Crimea and Ukraine originally, having lived in Cuba for four years along the way - a very colourful and interesting background from all of them I thought. All of them were very well educated, working as metallurgists, meteorologists and pharmaceutical researchers, and fascinating to talk to via the daughter, and I asked them for their thoughts on life under communism (it had some benefits), the Crimea (it's right that Russia has it) and the current war in Ukraine (sad). Stopping for a break, they invited me to join them and insisted on buying me a tea and some khachapuri (cheese bread), all of which rightly blew away some of the nonsense stereotypes of Russians that I formerly had.

Night Train

Arriving in Tblisi, thankfully our train looked a little better than that one

The night train waited on the platform at Zugdidi and I found the sleeper carriage which I ended up sharing with three young Israelis. Travelers from Israel are always interesting, as whilst always friendly, they only tend to hang around with other Israelis, and in this case their group of three had slowly merged over their trip into a group of thirty-odd. The train left on time, and whilst clean and tidy enough was swelteringly hot inside, lacking both air-con and a fan which made sleeping pretty difficult.

Tblisi

The crooked clock tower, Tblisi

We arrived at Tbilisi at 6.30am, and with my flight not until 7pm I headed to the hostel I'd stayed at previously and persuaded them to let me leave my bag there for the day. After abusing their generosity a little by using the WiFi and making a cup of tea, I took advantage of the time of day and went for a wander through some parts of the city I'd missed a couple of weeks before, whilst the sun was low and the streets quiet. It was just fantastic, a good time to potter about and a good time to start reflecting on the fact that a day later I'd be back on British soil. I passed a cathedral, a crooked clock tower. I walked into a brand new funky citizens information building  for a nose about, wandered along the river, and found an antiques market in a park which was great to look about, and bought some old Russian maps and military badges, because I could.

A Swiss horn band were busking in a nice public park which was entertaining for a while, before I went shopping for a souvenir or two, before eventually having my final Georgian meal in a nice cafe I came across. I'd left my tablet charger in a guesthouse a week or so before, and two of my hosts thereafter had arranged for it to be delivered back to Tbilisi by minibus. It seemed a bit of a long and protracted way of getting it back, and in fact it was, involving taking the Metro across town to the station, and spending nearly an hour showing bus drivers a piece of paper which said in Georgian 'do you have my phone charger', which inevitably resulted in the sort of confused looks you'd expect from a foreign man asking strange questions. Just as I was about to go though, a minibus roared in with a driver waving a charger in my direction and all was well.

I headed back to the hostel to get my bag and shower, before that was it. I was at the end of 12 1/2 months on the road, and I was now actually heading home. I remembered the same feeling, stood on a beach in Fiji five years before after a long trip, struggling to comprehend that there was another world of rain, bills, work and routine out there, and I was heading straight towards it. But since it felt fairly over-stimulated by having seen and done so much this past year, it didn't worry me as much as you might think. 

Departures

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Thoughts on Georgia
Georgia had proved to be a good choice of country to end this trip - European enough to feel a bit like home, but rugged and raw enough to still be exciting and different. I experience kindness from some locals and generally felt safe, but I really can't say they I found them on the whole to be particularly nice or friendly people, certainly not compared to in some of the other places I'd visited on this trip.

Tbilisi was a total surprise as a capital city, being clean, tidy, and full of lovely old buildings and interesting sights, but was a total contrast to rural Georgia which felt quite poor and run-down. In fact, with some of the nasty toilets and the sight of cows and wild dogs wandering the roads sometimes, I was occasionally reminded of being in India. The Caucasus mountains however were just stunning, and Georgia wouldn't be half as interesting to visit without them. Interestingly I probably met more travellers in Georgia than I did in two months in Indonesia, despite Georgia being less well known, and I was particularly surprised by the amount of Americans I met, a nation that travels surprisingly little who'd I'd only really seen before in popular tourist places like Petra and Paris. Most people were just on holiday for a couple of weeks though, and following a bit of a set trail around the fairly small country so. However despite these tourists, the Georgian economy did seem very over-reliant on tourism though, which means they're a bit screwed in times of recession.

Georgian food, which included dishes such as cheese bread (khachapuri), dumplings (khinkali), and fried pork and chips (ojapuri) was excellent, though I felt like their repertoire of dishes was a bit limited once you'd tried everything on the menu. It was also interesting to see them so keen on growing and drinking wine - many people would grow vines in their gardens and make their own home-made grog, in this, one of the oldest wine-growing regions in the world. The roads were a mixed bag, sometimes excellent and at other times far from it, and the standard of driving atrocious - at least the bad driving in India happened as much slower speeds. Three vehicles amusingly dominate the road, in my mind at least: the Ford Transit, the Russian open back lorry, and the Mercedes saloon, the latter a funny choice since very few people can really afford them.

Georgia was well worth visiting.

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Flying back
Leaving the hostel, I took the bus to the airport and wandered to the terminal, getting accosted in the car park by a group of well-dressed gypsy-like ladies who were begging for money, before checking in for my flight, destination: Moscow. The Siberian Airways flight took me back over the Caucasus mountains, and with the sun setting and snow-capped mountain peaks sticking up through the clouds it was a really powerful moment, especially with a bit of Led Zeppelin playing in my ears. We soon entered Russian airspace, and when the clouds occasionally parted all I could see below were huge rectangular fields of corn below, which as we neared Moscow changed more to huge green forests, scattered with villages and odd-shaped fields of crops. The landing was a little dodgy but nothing to worry about, though to my surprise everyone broke out in applause, a first for me after quite a few flights now.

Moscow airport

Moscow airport was one of the stranger ones I'd been to, with a huge graveyard of old Soviet places left on one side of the runway, which itself seemed as bumpy as a farm track, alongside what seemed like ten other runways but probably wasn't. The security staff were as dour-faced as I expected but I got through with no stress, and even the the terminal itself was a bit strange, laid out a bit like an ocean liner. I needed a drink, but everything was priced in roubles and there were no ATM's. Thankfully they took cards even for such small items. It was now 11pm, and with seven hours before my connecting flight, I had to sleep there the night. Luckily, the airport seating was made in Cornwall (Zoeftig) so I felt right at home.

It was not intentional, but I flew the final leg home on British Airways which felt pretty patriotic; the first time I'd used them since they were for once the cheapest. The staff were British, the on-board TV shows from the BBC, and the food from brands I'd forgotten about such as Yeo Valley - my acceptance that the trip was over was increasing by the minute. As we flew over London the planed banked over the city and I saw The Houses of Parliament, Canary Wharf and then Wembley. It was almost as if the pilot just wanted to remind me I was nearly home. 

London
I collected my bag and took the train to the main terminal with the intention of trying to hitch-hike home - not because I'd spent every last penny but more because it felt like a fitting ending, one last bit of adventure. Besides I was curious to see if British people would actually pick me up, after the ease of doing it in Malaysia and Indonesia. The airport itself was way too busy for anyone to stop for me, so at the advice of a couple of cyclists who both stopped to ask if I needed help, I took a bus to the main road outside. There, no-one stopped for me in nearly an hour of trying so I tried by a petrol station, before a taxi driver told me I'd be better off at another spot again and drove me there for free on his way to collect someone. I found what seemed like a safe and sensible spot and tried my luck, before fifteen minutes later in the corner of my eye I saw a car roll up and stop nearby. It turned out the AA had seen me on CCTV and sent someone out as they didn't like pedestrians around that area as it supposedly disrupted the flow of traffic. Whilst they told me I was doing nothing illegal they also said I needed to move somewhere else, even offering to drive me there if I could think of a sensible spot.

I'd managed to go over a year abroad with no trouble at all, and within an hour of being in the UK I was having the finger wagged! They were very friendly and even curiously asked a few details about my trip. Eventually, after an unsuccessfully three hours of trying to hitch-hike I went back to Heathrow bus station and caught the next coach to Exeter. It was the most comfortable bus and smoothest road I'd been on in a year, but also the most boring. As if by magic when arriving at Exeter, the connecting bus that went onto Launceston pulled up in the next bay to where I was standing, and just a couple of minutes later I was on my way again. I contrasted this with the hassle of Georgia and some of the other places I'd been, and they seemed a million miles away already.

The bus journey to Launceston was a strange one, as by chance it mostly followed the route that I'd cycled on my way to Sweden just over a year before. Along the way, the entire previous year flashed before my eyes, like a movie on fast forward. The people, places, experiences. Highs, lows, food. The weird and wonderful, the beautiful and ugly. I started seeing changes that had happened since I'd last been home, a few shops had come and gone, lots of windmills that have popped up everywhere in the countryside. I realised that finally the names of Indian restaurants suddenly all made sense to me.

At Launceston my sister picked me up for the final few miles home, the first familiar face I'd seen in a very long time, and not long afterwards I saw my parents for the first time in a year, which was as nice as you'd imagine. It was great to be home.

Fields near Moscow

Flea market, Tblisi

Outdoor art market, Tblisi

 

Flying over the beautiful Caucasius mountains, heading for Moscow

Flying home in style

British soil. It's been a while.

Glaciation

Mestia, Georgia (map)

In this blog: travel nightmares, a walk to the hills, an adventure to a glacier, and a strange hilltop festival

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Walking in the cross above Mestia

9th to 12th century defensive towers in Mestia town

It was a terrifying journey but thankfully the last of it's kind I'd encounter on this trip, as the driver of the share taxi went flat out along the main two-lane road across Georgia, despite driving a right-hand drive car on the right side of the road, making overtaking pretty difficult and dangerous. A car had gone into the back of an artic truck and another car into that back of the first, so we slowed to a crawl and passed around it before getting back to full speed again, our driver unshaken by the sight of mangled metal. I smiled again when we passed an abandoned petrol station full of cows, stood motionless as if queuing up for fuel. The air-con was broken and the journey sweaty, so it was with relief when we reached the city of Kutaisi. I'd planned to stay there a day, but spotting that it was a bit of a concrete mess I changed my plans instantly, deciding to head to the mountains again instead. Whilst the roads have been pretty bumpy and the driving too fast, Georgia has probably been the easiest country on my trip to get around as minibuses run everywhere, all the time, and finding a minibus on to the town of Zugdidi was no exception.


Zugdidi
Getting there late afternoon, things got a little less straightforward. Stupidly, I decided to walk the mile or so to the hostel in my guidebook which it transpired no longer existed, but discovered only after a lot of walking around the suburbs in 32 degree humid heat, knocking on wrong doors and asking people in the street. After an hour of this I was pretty peeved so flagged down a taxi. The driver didn't have a clue what I was on about but drove me to the centre anyway, then let me use his phone and kindly refused to take any money for the journey. I changed plans and wandered to the train station where I hoped I might get a bus onto the town of Mestia, and a minibus driver who spoke no English first shook his head to indicate no, he wasn't going there, then a few minutes later changed his mind and waved me on-board. We slowly drove around nearby small streets for a while whilst he dropped off things, spoke to people and joked around, before ten minutes later dropping me off just around the corner. We were supposed to have driver for three hours so I now had no idea what was going on, before he pointed to his mate outside the van and said 'guesthouse' before asking for £2 fare - enough for a 3 hours journey here normally. It was obvious he was a chancer so I shook my head and walked off annoyed. It was also now obvious I would have to stay in Zugdidi for the night, with no other options for guest houses around I reluctantly took a look at his mate's place. Walking into what looked like an empty monastery complex, then passing a lone chicken stood half way up the stairs, it turned out to be less of a guesthouse and more just a house with a spare room, but tired and with few other options it would have to do, even if it was a bit weird.

I spent what was left of the sunny evening wandering around a nice park, past a castle, then through the large, grassy town square where I ate and wrote for a while. Even by night Zugdidi was still humid and sweaty, and with no fan available I had to leave the bedroom window wide open to avoid drowning in my own sweat, whilst oddly this guy and his brother sat outside on the balcony chatting then watching TV with the lights off 'til gone 3am. The bed springs were so knackered that when I sat on the mattress, it seemed to almost touch the floor, and the bedroom door had neither a handle or a lock either, so I leant a jam jar against it to wake me if someone entered. I had a terrible nights sleep as you might expect.

At 7am the next day I hopped on a minibus and got out of there, heading into the Caucasus mountains again, this time in the west of Georgia in the area known as Svaneti. The scenery was beautiful as we climbed a windy road into the hills whilst following a wild, glacier-fed river below. We stopped at a cafe halfway where with no breakfast available we had to make do with an ice cream, whilst some of the Georgian passengers had a beer... at 10am. I got chatting to David and Claire - an English couple on the bus who were heading the same way, and decided to go to the same homestay as them when we reached Mestia since it sounded good. The owner, a lovely lady in her fifties called Roza was as kind, friendly and helpful as you could ever expect, one of those rare people where nothing whatsoever is too much trouble.

Mestia
David and Claire were both very pleasant and chatty, a Lawyer and a speech therapist, and on their invitation I decided to join them for the day. Whilst I've met a few other English people on this trip it was strange to spend such a long time with my natives, and since the trip was almost over, almost a re-acquaintance with the world I know as they talked of home. We went for a lazy lunch in the main square of Mestia, a nice grassy area full of trees. The town centre was surrounded by buildings that the government had recently put up in an attempt to turn Mestia into a holiday hub for the country, a noble gesture except it now looked like a naff version of an alpine ski resort - not the first time I'd seen poor new development in Georgia. We decided to go on a half day walk up to a cross that we could see high on the hills above, a lovely jaunt through the town then up through steep woods, passing grazing cows, and picking wild strawberries from beside the path. The views at the top were tremendous, a full 360 degree panorama of snow capped mountains, all of them higher than anything in the Alps and I'm fairly sure I spotted Mt Elbrus - the highest mountain in Europe which stood just over the border in Russia. I sat down in the afternoon sun for a rest whilst they made their way back down, and to my surprise fell asleep for 45 minutes - I blame the night before!

That night Claire and David introduced me to Giovanni and Alesandra; an Italian couple who they'd met elsewhere the day before. They were so smiley and so Italian, with their long hair and stylish clothes, and turned out to be an actor and director respectively - he's starred in movies, on stage and in TV series including BBC's 'Rome', broadcast a few years ago - you can see his IMDB profile here. Despite success, they were  very modest people; friendly and curious and only talking about their fascinating lives when we asked. It was only mildly surprising then that despite having homes in Sicily, Rome and Milan, they were travelling around Georgia on public transport and that their car at home was a Fiat. We had a couple of beers sat outside a terrace bar in town, before walking a mile or so to a restaurant they'd been recommended where we were given menus and took our seats, carefully picking what we wanted and ordering. The waitress first came back to say certain items weren't available then after all this, ten minutes later she returned again saying 'sorry, the kitchen is actually shut'. How would you not realise your own kitchen is shut?!

To the glacier
The next morning I was invited to join the guys on a horse ride to the foot of a nearby glacier. I hate horses so thought about it for about a second before deciding to hire an iron horse instead -  a mountain bike. Unfortunately though, after an hour of walking around the town I found that the only two places that supposedly hired bikes no longer did. As a second-best, despite being a little stiff from the previous days walking I decided to head out on foot for the day anyway, heading to Chalaadi Glacier. I could only get hold of a large scale map which told me almost nothing, but had a rough idea where to go so took a chance - how could you possibly miss a glacier I thought?

Unfortunately, the answer was quite easily. Early on I took a path on the left side of the valley - the side the glacier was on -  when in fact I should have walked on the right and herein in things got extremely tricky because of it, the five or six hour walk turning into eight and a half. For the first two or three miles things were straightforward, just a nice flat gravel road. The path then narrowed considerably and I had the choice of heading uphill or into the grounds of a seemingly abandoned house. The uphill route led nowhere so I started heading for the house before I heard a bark and a large vicious-looking brown dog starting to move towards me, collarless and owner-less, and seemingly protecting a herd of nearby cows, before a few moments later an Alsatian-type dog appeared in the background, also barking. I'd read that most dogs in the mountains were trained to kill wolves, and with no owners around I don't mind admitting I was a little scared at that moment, on my own with nothing but a rock in my hand. 

Fortunately, walking away seemed to do the trick but left me with no clear onwards route. I went into a field, rock hopped across a stream, got lost in some meadows nearby for twenty minutes before scrambling down a bank to the original path I'd come on where I branched off to walk along the riverbank. I considered turning back but felt disheartened by the thought of coming all that way for nothing so continued. The path was merely a cow track and started getting worse, sometimes turning into a bog, and sometimes disappeared meaning I had to beat my own way through the bushes. After another hour, to my relief a clear path appeared when I reached a forest, along with litter on the ground telling me people had been there, so I guessed it may head towards the glacier. Eventually though it faded to nothing and I felt proper stuck. The forest had little undergrowth so I decided to make my own path and followed the contour around, eventually spotted a couple of tourist vans parked on the other side of the valley. The white-water river was way too big and fast to wade across so I headed up the valley my own way, walking over piles and piles of rocks left there by the glacier before it retreated years before. Walking was tough going as I clambered over rocks and pushed small trees out the way, but eventually to my relief the glacier came into view and despite going the wrong way initially, my navigating thereafter had led me to the right place. It was well worth all the effort - the sight of the huge snaking mass of ice looked stunning. The final section involved walking through long grass with jagged rocks underneath, followed by clambering across and down a steep scree slope neither of which were easy, but I eventually made it to the underground river which flowed out from underneath the bottom end of the glacier itself.

Sight of the glacier after a very long walk

I was still on the wrong side of the valley though, so carefully made my way up one side of it, and a hundred metres behind its crumbling ice and rock edge, crossed quickly over and down the other side before breathing a sigh of relief. After a wooded descent, most of the walk back was on a flat dirt road which was a pleasure after the journey I'd taken there, and just before dusk I made it back to Mestia, even turning down a lift from a local along the way (I couldn't cheat could I). Totally knackered, I opted to have dinner at the guesthouse where I sat with two Spanish 'alpinists' as they call themselves who I'd been sharing a room with and soon learnt my exploits were nothing compared to their stories of climbing cliffs without ropes and sleeping the night in a tent on the glacier. One of them had even attempted to climb K2 before - the second highest mountain in the world, so they were pretty experienced and full of fascinating tales.

The following day I'd planned to take it easy, which was just as well the way my legs were feeling. David and Claire were doing the same, so a morning of reading in the lovely garden followed a long lazy breakfast chatting with them. It was great to just kick back with no plans or expectations for the day, the first one I'd had in ages in fact and the day soon disappeared in a daze of music, reading, eating and napping.

Hill Festival
The end of my whole trip was nigh and I now had just one full day left in Mestia. It was a slightly strange feeling to know that the lifestyle I'd become so accustomed to over the past year was soon due to come to an end, but just like a man with a comb over, I was still in denial so postponed any thoughts and replaced them with another trip out. Over the previous day I'd met three girls in the guesthouse who were travelling together; Fiona, Natalie and Benedicte - Australian, German, and French - a combination of nationalities so ripe you might think a joke might be coming, but sorry, I can't think of one. This trio had been talking about visiting a traditional music festival a few miles away they'd heard about, an annual event which we could get no further information on other than it's location. I love a good festival and we were all curious about what it might entail, so I decided to join them for the day to see.

Our fine host Roza had booked space in a minibus for us and we headed off at 9am that day, the bus climbing from one mountainous valley to the next and the nice concrete road soon turning into a potholed gravel mess, whilst the driver's son drove us all mad by constantly skipping from one song to the next on the stereo. We'd only travelled thirty miles, but it took a pretty bouncy and uncomfortable two hours to reach the tiny hamlet of Kala. The four of us all had visions in mind of reaching a field full of stalls, stages, musicians, local food, and entertainers, but what we found could not be much different.

Heaps of cars and jeeps were parked up along the track for quite some way, and people were making their way up a steep path through the woods to a small church, set on top of a hill high above us. We were both bemused and confused following the crowd up the slippery and awkward path, passing very old and very young along the way. Eventually we reached the church, built on top of a rocky outcrop and surrounded by a wall. There was a huge queue of people waiting to go in, but for what we still weren't sure. Georgians it seems are terrible queuers and loads of people were jumping the line, or simply climbing the steep old stone bank and wall to get in. It was total chaos, and we realised this wasn't really the organised event we were expecting. Eventually inside this walled courtyard we  breathed a sigh of relief and took a look around.

Rock lifting at the festival

Out for the day with French Benedicte, German Natalie and Aussie Fiona

There were characters galore in the crowd, and some of them wore clothes often so out of fashion I thought I'd been transported to the forties. Young men were taking part in a rock-picking-up competition, lifting a huge lump of granite that must have been nearly 100kg. Various people were lighting candles and sticking them to the wall inside the church, and a guy occasionally played a guitar-like instrument. Nearby, chunks of meat were being boiled in a 45 gallon steel drum heated by burning logs, and it turned out that to save them carrying the meat to the top, they simply walked live sheep and goats to the top and killed them there and then. An old guy plied French Benedicte with a shot of chacha that they were drinking - a type of clear Brandy unique to Georgia distilled from grapes, and she made the sourest face you'd ever seen, whilst beside us a group of men sung traditional songs in an acapella style when they felt like it.

It was all very peculiar, obviously not a music festival in the truest sense of the word but more a rebellious a celebration of some sort. After a while we sat back on a wall and watched everyone enjoying themselves, when a Georgian girl in her mid-twenties came along, speaking to us in both fluent English and German -  a doctor who'd made the long journey from the capital for this annual event which she explained was to commemorate a saint. In fact it turned out many people travelled across the country for it, and another guy had even driven for four days from Holland to be there! I have no idea why.

Back in the valley the four of us had a few hours to burn until the bus left, so took a hike up through some overgrown meadows to an old defensive tower and abandoned house that we'd spotted, leaving us stung by stinging nettles and out of breath. nearing the bottom a woman started talking to us, explaining that whilst she lived away now, the buildings we'd visited were left to her by her parents, and to our surprise was pleased we'd made the effort to see them. Her son then came along and plied us all with the more aforementioned chacha to drink, a custom at these festivals we were learning, which left us all a bit dazed for the rest of the afternoon. Lovely people.

Last night
After another walk around the village to pass time we headed back to Mestia, a good time to be inside as it hammered down with rain. It was my last night proper, and back at the homestay Roza cooked up a cracking home cooked meal consisting of fresh khachapuri bread, rice salad, home made chips, and aubergine & walnut salad. The girls and I headed into town for some beers in a local bar, watching some traditional local dancing, and chatting to three local chaps who again pressed us to join them in drinking chacha, this time out of a hip flask from behind the table. One of the had his keys on the table and I asked if he was planning to drive home, to which he answered 'yes, it's a hundred metres away so I'm only having five beers' to which I smiled politely at him, whilst looking at the girls in bemusement. It was a fun night and a perfect near-end to the trip.

Festival

Last night of the trip

Just a few of the many defensive towers in the Svaneti area

Harvest time

Claire, myself, David, Natalie, Fiona and Benedicte out for a beer

Run To The Hills

Kazbegi, Georgia

In this blog: hiking to a glacier, drinking cheap wine with some Ukranians, and cycling to the Russian border.

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Caucasius mountains

View of Kazbegi, Caucasius mountains

Whilst Tblisi was nice, there were two problems for me:
1. It was stinking hot
2. It was a city

There was only one solution, to head to the mountains, the Greater Caucasus mountains to be precise, a three hour minibus (or marshrutka as they call them) to the north. From the hostel, I took the metro a few miles north to the bus station - one of only four metro systems built by the former USSR, an extravagant decision given the relatively small size of Tblisi but apparently swayed by the fact that Stalin was born in Georgia. The bus station was chaotic, with hundreds of minibuses haphazardly parked in no particular order, people wandering everywhere, and with the destination signs written in Georgian script and therefore totally illegible to me, a lot of asking around ensued. Eventually I squeezed into a very sweaty red Ford Transit van, the tool of choice for Georgian public transport, and half an hour later off we went. We passed heaps of fruit stalls on the roadside, many selling huge watermelons which are very popular throughout the country, and cows wandered along the verges and often onto the road. The roads themselves were bumpy and the driving a bit fast and erratic for my liking, and as we passed churches or crucifixes many people closed their eyes and did the sign of the cross, touching their their chest, head and stomach. The Georgian Military Highway as it's known, climbed through hundreds of turns up into the big green mountains, and eventually a few snowy peaks started to emerge. The area looked beautiful.

Arriving at the village of Kazbegi at 1750m altitude the temperature was more manageable, and the scenery not unlike Switzerland, but I had a bit of a nightmare finding accommodation since strangely few of the many guest houses actually had signs outside. A couple of teenage girls touting for business in the town centre tried to get me to stay at their family's place nearby. I rarely take up the service of touts but reluctantly had a look inside and decided against it. As I left the house onto the street, the two girls and another friend worked hard to pursuade me their friend's place next door, and to my suprise together physically pulled me in through the gateway, saying 'just look, just look!' They were doing it playfully but I really wasn't impressed with their style and walked off.  If you're pushy it mean's you're desperate, and if you're desperate what you're selling probably isn't much good. An hour later I ended up at the unfortunately named but fairly pleasant 'Nazi's Guesthouse', named after it's owner, a lovely lady in her fifties called Nazi Chkeruli.  She was born post war so I really don't know what were her parents thinking with that name! By now the day was all but done since I'd set off late originally, so after briefly chatting to an Aussie, an American and a Polish lawyer I hit the hay.

Gergeti Glacier 
The guesthouse was actually more of a homestay and all the home cooked meals were eaten communally, which is where at breakfast the next day I met Rebekka from Germany and Stijn (Stein) from Holland, a former kindergarten teacher and medical technology student respectively. They had a day of walking planned which sounded good, and kindly let me tag along. We headed up through the fairly dilapidated concrete and rusty steel village, and climbed up a path in some steep woods until we reached Tsminda Sameba church an hour later, perched right on top of a hillock and a local attraction of sorts. After a look inside walked on and up steadily for another four hours, across open mountainous land above the tree line, eventually reached Gergeti Glacier at 3200m above sea level. The glacier was impressive and shaped a bit like a bumpy ski slope, though didn't have the steep crumbling edge like some I've seen before, and even though it appeared to be covered in stones it was deceptively slippery on the few metres we dared venture. A number of people had crampons and ice axes and were carrying on right above to reach the top of Mt Kazbeg a couple of thousand metres higher up. I felt a touch of jealousy, but now wasn't the time. We chatted briefly to a Czech guy who was waiting by the glacier's edge for his friends and fondling a beer - 'beer is the only thing Czechs do well!' he joked when I questioned why he'd carried it so far. The glacier cooled the air significantly so we didn't stay long before heading back, and with the day coming to a close the low sun made the scenery look quite spectacular, especially when we saw the church from earlier seemingly float amongst the clouds below.

Gergeti Glacier with Rebekka from Germany and Stijn from Holland

Gergeti Glacier

That evening at the guesthouse I met a hilarious group of Ukrainians who had just finished a four-day mountain ascent, and were sat around a table with huge plastic bottles of cheap Georgian wine in a merry ol' state, and they invited me to join them along with some other French, Dutch and American folks. One was a 13 year old lad who they let him have a bit of wine, another was surprisingly a lawyer and they were all as mad as each other. My glass seemed to refill itself constantly, and a hilarious evening followed of toasts, daft questions and generally tomfoolery.

Bike to the border
 The next morning my hiking partners from the previous day were keen to move onto another town, and I debated whether to join them since it was a good opportunity.  Being on a two week holiday they were keen to make the most of their time, but I'd long since had enough of moving fast from place to place so decided to stay another day. I hired a mountain bike for the day and realised it was the first time since in Bangalore, three months ago so therefore some sort of personal record of time spent away from two wheels I reckon. The guys in the hire shop spoke barely a word of English, but with some pointing at the map and a waving of hands I had both a ride for the day and some ideas of where to go. Disapointingly, despite what I'd been told the mountain biking in the area simply meant the act of riding a mountain bike on roads in the mountains and not actually riding off-road as one might expect, but it was better than nothing.

We were just ten miles from the Russian border, a fact which sounded quite exciting, so I took the road there which to my suprise it was downhill the whole way. I groaned at the thought of the ride back up later, something I'd never have done this time last year whilst cycling across Europe - my former fitness is nothing but a memory now. After so long since the last ride  it felt great to be back on an iron horse again, and heading down through the high sided green and rocky valley the scenery was quite spectacular. Riding through a dark tunnel which had no lights was a little hairy though, and when cars came I had no choice but to stop and squeeze tightly against the tunnel wall. Nearing the border the road turned to dirt briefly and went through a construction site for what I guess was a hydro electic plant, though given it's proximity to Russia and the mysterious tunnels full of constuction traffic heading into the mountain, it seemed more like a real-life James Bond set. I neared the Russian border and stopped a hundred metres or so away, having a rest and a drink of water. A minute or so later a border guard wandered over.

Guard: What are you doing?
Me: I just cycled from Kazbegi and now I'm heading back
Guard: Why you waiting?
Me: I just had a rest and drink
Guard: Go back to Kazbegi
Me: (casually) OK
Guard: GO BACK to Kazbegi!
Me: (hastily) Sure!

It was a blunt though not exactly scary exchange, but I wouldn't have wanted to argue with him. The ride back up was predictably a right old slog, and I passed back through Kazbegi to ride up the nearby Sno valley, the odd lorry driver beeping and waving at the rare sight of a cyclist as they passed. Sno valley was flat, quiet and lovely to ride along, the road weaving through meadows, past crumbling concrete houses with overgrown gardens, and a beautiful old stone defensive tower. As you do, I looked and smiled at people I passed to acknowledge the time of day but no-one smiled back, and one guy sternly even shouted out a load of stuff. I later learnt a simple nod suffices, but even then might not be reciprocated - Georgian's aren't always the most friendly. I reached a very poor village with dirt roads, crumbling buildings, gas and water pipes running overhead, and rusty old Russian cars sat around. A sight typical of poor rural Georgia. It was bleak enough already, and when it started raining I took that as a sign to call it a day.

Back at the guesthouse I had plans to get on with writing but they were put on hold when I got chatting to a 60 year old Californian guy; a maths teacher who had a slow dreamy drawl and seemed to have travelled a lot to off-the-beaten-track places over the years, including Sudan, Djibouti  and Ethipoia - the latter a place where he's partway through what I thought was quite a specific personal challenge to hike all the mountains over 4000m high. At dinner that night I met a pleasant Swedish couple at dinner from Stockholm, and we compared notes on our respective countries. Whilst many people outside the country don't know where Georgia is, it sure does see quite a few tourists.
In some ways there was probably more to do at Kazbegi, but whilst the location in the centre of a mountainous valley was beautiful,  the village was pretty run down, information on hikes lacking and the guesthouse and food a bit basic so early the next morning I moved on back to the plains.

Caucasius mountains

Gergeti Glacier

Floating church

Border

Sno valley

Smoking Semeru

Mt Semeru, Java Island, Indonesia 

In this blog: hiking through the night to the top of an active volcano

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Sylvain, my French hiking partner for a few days
on the journey to start the trek

Mt Semeru is an active volcano, and the highest point on the main Indonesian island of Java at 3,676m. One of my main reasons for visiting Indonesia was to see active volcanoes, and I'd read a bit about hiking it. I was quite keen on doing so, but in the end I gave up on the idea when it seemed too expensive and full of hassle, thinking I'd do another one instead. Upon checking in at a hostel in the city of Malang though, I spotted a note from another traveller asking if anyone was keen on joining him for the ascent. My travel buddy Canadian Renė was away for a few days sorting out a visa and I needed something to do, so I left a reply and the following morning was awoken in the large dorm room by a guy by the name of Sylvain. He was a friendly and tall 22 year old French guy who before I'd even opened my eyelids, reeled off fact after fact about what we need to do and where we needed to go, whilst I lay in bed half asleep and unable to process anything he said, even if it was in English. Half an hour later when I was a bit more with it, he started over again and making sense I soon decided I was up for it.

We popped into a local cafe for breakfast, where the friendly-as-you-like middle age owner chatted away and asked to take our photo to put on her Facebook page. Through Malang's heavy traffic we took a minibus across town to the bus station, and another minibus to the town of Tampung. We'd been told that to hike Semeru we needed a medical certificate, a new one on me, so we searched around for somewhere to get this done, finding a small local hospital a sweaty twenty minute walk away in the midday sun. It was the strangest hospital I've ever been in in that there were about fifteen staff but literally no patients. None. They spoke little English but were very smiley and we managed to get what we wanted; a simple blood pressure and BMI reading. We asked them if they knew how to get to the base of Mt Semeru and they discussed it between themselves for a few minutes. Different people made phone calls, and suddenly we were told a jeep was coming to get us. Imagine that, a hospital that doubles as a travel agency.

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The jeep was ridiculously expensive for the distance involved but we had little choice, and the journey absolutely beautiful. We started off passing apple orchards for a few miles before the road climbed into the hills and got progressively steeper and windier, passing through jungle, small villages then eventually vast swathes of land growing a variety of vegetables since volcanic soil is pretty good for that sort of thing. The views were fantastic. We eventually reached the small village of Ranu Pani and found a very basic homestay for the night. Being at around 2000m altitude, we opened our bags to find the increased atmospheric pressure had popped both our packets of crisps, and left other packet bulging!

Decisions for the hike needed to be made, and whilst Sylvain was a really nice and friendly guy, he was also a bit arrogant in his opinions and reluctant to compromise and that irritated me. He was 22 and had been traveling for two weeks while I was nine years older with two years travelling experience behind me, and whilst I'm not always right that counts for something. We argued about how much water to take and I was right in the end, we argued how long it would take to organise the trip and a day was fine as I predicted, and we debated whether we needed a guide, which it turned out was unnecessary as I proposed. I realised how easy it is travelling with Rene. Bring back Rene!

Heading for the top 

We set off at 8am the next day having paid the permit fee - a generous ten times more expensive for foreigners than natives, and strolled past some beautifully kept fields of onions before starting to head up the mountain. For the next three hours the walking was steady, shaded and very pleasant and the trees and shrubs we passed were unexpectedly very different to lowland Indonesia. To our excitement after hearing a rustle we looked amongst some trees below and saw a number of wild black langur monkeys which was a nice surprise. Rounding a corner the scenery changed as we unexpectedly reached a nice lake and stopped to admire it for a moment. Another half mile on the going got very steep for fifty metres before a beautiful scene unfolded before us as we reached a brief summit; a dry meadow lake of wild flowers in a green and pleasant valley shadowed by small volcanic peaks on each side.

About three hours in, a beautiful lake part way up the volcano

The scenery changed constantly all the way

The scenery changed again as we entered a forest, meeting three or four huge groups of Indonesian hikers resting and eating, all keen to say hello and 'where you from?' as we passed as did many that day. We had our lunch a little way on, the first of four meals of peanut butter sandwiches we made as we went along - a treat the first time, awful the last, but saved us carrying a cooker. We hid a bottle of water ready for the descent the next day to save weight and continued on. Despite my thoughts on his analytical skills, Sylvain was a really nice guy, and interesting and knowledgeable guy to talk to - a recent graduate in history who likes ancient history cause it's both less gory and 'cause he can't relate to it, whereas I find history I can't relate to immensely boring. His English was particularly good for a Frenchman (!) and many good conversations passed the time away nicely. 

After a couple more changes in scenery we suddenly found ourselves at the campsite where people stay the night, located at the much cooler altitude of about 2,900m. It was only 2pm and we'd made way better progress than expected despite his purposely slower pace - 'slow and no stopping, that's what my father always says' - I prefer to go at my own pace and stop when I need to, but horses for courses. We had to decide whether to stay there or progress to the next campsite an hour on, but soon good old Mother Nature decided for us by unleashing a downpour. A school group of sixteen year olds excitedly invited us to shelter in their gazebo area and for the next couple of hours they chatted away whilst giving us tea and snacks. Come 5pm we put our hired tent up and fashioned the missing pegs from sticks, and after more peanut butter sandwiches it was lights out at 7. 

7pm is a bedtime I've not seen since I was in nappies, but it was fairly necessary since the alarm clock was set for a record breaking (in my record book anyway) 12.30am! The reason for this masochistic action is that the done thing on Mt Semeru is to hike through the night in order to reach the summit for sunrise when the skies are clear, and it's certainly not something I'd normally do. I was convinced it would take just over three hours to get to the top based on previous experience so wanted to leave around 2am so we didn't get cold at the top waiting. Silvain however was convinced it would take way longer and just wouldn't listen, and I eventually relented, telling him I'd be moaning at him about the cold when we got there early. Even when it came to setting the alarm he pushed to set it an extra five minutes earlier than I proposed before I shot him down for being so pedantic; honestly!

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After just two proper hours sleep cause of the noise and discomfort, at 1am we set off for the summit. From the plateaux the campsite was on, it was now straight up. Silvain had his headtorch on whilst I made do with my little pen torch. The track twisted and turned through forest for an hour and we soon hit rush hour traffic - it was just like the M25 on a Friday night. We overtook hiker after hiker, not because we were going particularly fast but because they were so slow - all Indonesian, so I'm not sure whether to blame it on the shorter legs, the cigarettes (the national pastime I've decided) or just a lack of fitness. After an hour we left the tree line behind and hit the real volcano, from then on it was nothing but loose volcanic ash and small rocks below our feet. Hiking was now slow and really hard work, partly due to the 35% gradient now, but mostly 'cause it was similar to walking on sand dunes, and each step seemed to be four forward and back. Indonesian hikers were now littered everywhere beside the track, either catching their breath or in some cases passed out sleeping despite it being nearly zero degrees at this altitude! We ploughed on (literally) before later my torch battery died. I realised I must have left the spare been back at the tent so had to rely on stray flashed from other peoples lights thereon - hiking a volcano by night without a light is not recommended! It was good it was too dark to see the summit though since it would have been pretty demotivating in your sights all the time. 

Summit

Eventually at 4.20am we were finally there, 3,676m above sea level. There was both the relief and satisfaction of getting there, and the amazing sight of volcanic activity since Mt Semeru as I said before is an active volcano. Whilst she's fairly well behaved there's still a natural vent a couple of hundred metres along from the summit, where she was puffing out gases and regularly spitting out red hot ashes into the air. It was such an exciting sight and totally unexpected, and to top it off the sound was like the jet engines of a plane taxing down the runway. It was truly awesome to behold. 

Unfortunately it was also blooming freezing and a while until dawn so we went a little way down to a sheltered spot, where since we'd made it in 3 1/4 hours as I predicted I moaned like mad to Sylvain about the cold, mostly to remind him to listen to people! The views over the various city lights below were amazing and you could see the silhouettes of other volcanoes in the distance as well. At around 5am we saw glimmers of light on the horizon before a while later the sun started to rise, and what a sight it was, truly beautiful. We were soon able to see both the north and south coasts of Java, various towns and cities, and numerous volcanic peaks in all directions, their upper halves poking through a layer of cloud below and a couple of them smoking away as well. It was just incredible, and well worth all the effort. There were a good fifty people on the large summit now but it never felt overcrowded or like a mad tourist attraction. We couldn't stay forever though so after nearly 2.5 hours we started the descent, the loose volcanic sand now working to our favour as you could move almost effortlessly down through it, almost as if you were skiing. It was strange seeing the things which we'd walked past earlier but not been able to see, the rocky features, the green trees.

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Back at the campsite we dozed for an hour before packing up and heading back to base. I reckon there may have been up to a thousand hikers on the mountain at any one time and most of them under thirty and Indonesia, male dominated but with quite a few females and all very friendly as we passed. We saw just five other westerners on the mountain the whole time though, one of them being a White Kenyan lady leading a tour group which was resting two thirds of the way down. She'd been on the mountain many times, and recommended another route the rest of the way, 2km shorter and more beautiful but with another 600m high hill to go over so went for it. She was right on the beauty, but the hill killed our legs and the route ended up taking even longer! Partly because we ended up lost in thousands of acres of onion fields at the end! To top it off it then rained heavily and we sheltered under the overhang of a shed for half an hour, before some farmers pointed us roughly the right way and eventually we made it back to digs. It was a 14 mile journey over the two days, and I took a very necessary and very long hot shower, annoying everyone by inadvertently using all the hot water. We then had a nice conversation with a lovely Swiss couple for an hour or so who'd also just finished the hike; she a exhibit restorer in a museum and he it turned out, a successful French photographer called Andri Pol - http://www.andripol.com/.

I slept for over ten hours that night, quite a feat for me and woke up feeling very refreshed the next morning, albeit pretty achey. After relaxing for a few hours and poking around the very poor mountain village, we then had to try and get back to Malang somehow. The hire jeep was ridiculously expensive so we ended up doing something even more ridiculous - taking a share jeep where sixteen of us stood, sat and squeezed in an old open-backed Toyota Land Cruiser jeep. Despite standing on my aching legs for the whole way it was good fun chatting and joking with the other Indonesian hikers, and they even sorted us a lift for the second leg back to Malang city a couple of hours later. From smoking crater to smoky city, one heck of a trip.

Even at 3am heading up to the summit at close to
zero degrees, I'm still able to sweat

View over Malang city just before dawn

Sunrise. Amazing views.

The crowds

The smoking (and sometimes exploding) vent at the top
of Mt Semeru 3,676m above sea level

Big gas release, though blew the other way

Looking towards Mt Bromo, smoking away in the background

Descending with Silvain

Mt Sermeru from the campsite at 2,900m elevation

Onion fields at the base, on the rich volcanic soil