Distance: 82km
Elevation: 627m
Magnetiti: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWf7PTZ2D7A9u69JA?g_st=ic
I woke up with the sun. I went for a swim in the Black Sea. It was simply beautiful. There was a lot of dirt at the beach, but that did not change the feeling.
Then I went through my morning routine and waited for A. to show up for breakfast. Eight thirty became nine thirty. Until breakfast was ready it became closer to ten. That is fine. Being invited to breakfast is a gift. I appreciated it.
While waiting, I had a chat with a young guy from France. He was on his way to Japan using busses, trains and hitchhiking as means of transportation. Today he wanted to hike to the border and cross into Sarpi.
No surprise, the breakfast was definitely worth the wait. Delicious.
By half past ten we said farewell and I was on the road to Georgia.
The remaining ten kilometers to the Georgian border went quickly. The border crossing itself was something else. There were different queues: for cars, busses and trucks, and then another one for pedestrians. As a cyclist, I belonged with the pedestrians. That meant climbing up into a building that spans the entire border crossing, wheeling Rosinante through two rounds of passport control, X-ray machines, and a narrow corridor packed with people. Everyone was moving fast carrying imported goods. Everyone was trying to get in front of everyone else. It was a little chaotic. But after about an hour and a half, I was through. No issues.
I arrived on the other side in Georgia, a little overwhelmed by all the noise and movement.
The symbols changed immediately. No more minarets. Now churches. No more crescent moons. Now crosses. Georgia is further east than Turkey on the map. But it felt further west.
I cycled into Sarpi, the first Georgian town after the border. The difference was visible at a glance. More variety everywhere. More hair colors, more clothing styles, more different brands, more different kinds of faces. Also more variety in the cars. Turkey had been comparatively homogeneous. Black hair, similar clothes, a consistent look. Here, the variety was much bigger. It was interesting to notice how quickly that shift happened. Just a few hundred meters, and a different world.
What I had not noticed at first when I crossed into Georgia was that I had been also crossing another time zone. I was now two hours ahead of Germany.
In Sarpi, right at the border, I bumped into another cyclist. His name was Martin, from the Netherlands. He had been cycling home from Singapore for the past several months. From his perspective, he was nearly done. About five thousand kilometers still to go, but the end was in sight. We traded a few stories from the road.
Martin had been recently divorced. That answered the question of what his wife might think about him being away so many months from home. His kids were grown up and had visited him at various points along the route. He had been a journalist and had decided that this was his new way of living. And while he was not yet home, he was already planning his next adventure.
I got myself some cash, bought some groceries, and cycled into Batumi.
Batumi is known as the Las Vegas of the Caucasus. Casinos. Big name hotels. Fancy cars. A busy beach. Commerce. People from everywhere. What I found was a beautiful seafront with highly individual high-rise buildings and architecture. Between them, some older structures that have not yet been torn down plus some historic monuments. Old and new, side by side.
Spontaneously, I liked Batumi way more than Las Vegas.
After three weeks of cycling through Turkey, I was also struck by something else: the amount of skin that women showed here. That was quite a difference and sometimes rather irritating.
I went to see the famous statue of Ali and Nino. The sculpture stands on Batumi Boulevard by the Black Sea and was created by Georgian artist Tamara Kvesitadze in 2010. It depicts two eight-meter-tall metal figures representing Ali, an Azerbaijani Muslim boy, and Nino, a Georgian Christian girl, the tragic lovers from the 1937 novel by Kurban Said. Each evening, the figures slowly move toward each other, pass through one another, and separate again. They never truly touch. The novel is considered the national book of Georgia and is often called the Caucasian Romeo and Juliet.
It is hard to believe but drivers here are even crazier than in Turkey. Mostly because their cars have more horsepower but also because they are more reckless. It was a little scary getting out of Batumi.
After some lunch by the road – also here a different taste from Turkey – I wanted to follow the coastline north.
Komoot again had some „good ideas“, routing me over two serious climbs to reach some beautiful viewpoints high above the sea. I took them swearing at that app. However, the views were in fact stunning.
The dogs here are very different from Turkey. In Turkey, I did not have a single incident with a dog chasing me. Here it started from almost the beginning. I have no good explanation. The dogs do not seem to be treated badly. Maybe it is a different mix of breeds. In Turkey, the kangal dominated. A big, calm livestock dog. Here I saw mixed breads, even a German shepherd. However, the situations were never dangerous.
It was hot. It was humid. The sharp climbs slowed me down. On top of that, I was adjusting to a new country. It takes time. The SIM card needed to work. I needed cash and to understand the exchange rate. I did not yet know the basic greeting in Georgian. All of that still had to be figured out.
I cycled through a number of villages and was struck by the amount of shops. I had been outside of the tourism bubble for a while.
As evening came, I approached a campsite at a natural reservoir. It had bad reviews on Google. One person had described it as Soviet-style. That actually attracted me. I went to have a look.
It turned out to be wonderful. A small pine forest directly by the sea. No traffic. A small shop and restaurant nearby. The beach is black sand. The water was exactly the right temperature. Simply paradise.
The site is small. Maybe twenty pitches in total. Tents, cars, a few caravans. Almost all of the plates were Russian or Belarusian. Very few Georgians.
I will be honest. Since the war in Ukraine, I carry some sentiment toward Russians. I was in Kyiv in a bomb shelter when Russian cruise missiles hit. The same happened again when Uwe and I visited Lviv earlier this year. I am not neutral. I know that. At the same time, these are human beings with their own histories and their own stories. I would have liked to talk to some of them. It did not happen this evening.
I made dinner. I enjoyed myself. I went to bed when it got dark, which was early.
Country number twenty-four on my tour around the world.
Learnings of the day:
Arriving in a new country takes time to adjust. Not just logistically, but mentally and emotionally, too. . The SIM card, the currency, the basic phrases, the people, the dogs — all of it is new and all of it adds up. The body and the mind need a few days to calibrate.
Carrying a sentiment is not the same as acting on it. I know where my feelings about Russians come from. They are not abstract. I also know (or hope) that the person sitting across from me at a campsite by the Black Sea did not personally fire a missile. Both things can be true at the same time.