We pass from Turkey through Georgia. A lot of crisps are consumed.
Rain. Shit!
We wake up in the lovely mountain town of Telavi to the sound of heavy rain pelting the roof like marbles thrown by some asshole 12-year old with sociopathic tendencies.
Normally we don’t worry too much about the weather, not being spoilt in this matter ourselves, but this time we were hoping for blue skies and dry roads. This has to do with today’s target: Omalo, in the remote Tusheti region of Georgia. The road there goes over the legendary Abano pass, which is the highest drivable pass in Europe, if you count Georgia as a part of Europe, and you should (according to Georgians, anyway).
The road is said to be only for vehicles with four-wheel-drives, but we are determined fools and intend to try anyway.
The Abano Pass in Georgia, at 2850 meters
The rain is pouring down and the locals tell us that now the road gets so slippery that even jeeps struggle to get up the steep slopes, and that we were fools for even thinking to go up there, and what were we thinking anyway, are we stupid or something? and here – have another pancake with your tea, why don’t you?
млинець, also known as blin, blintchik or blintz
Oh well, for once we will let the advice of locals overcome our own boundless stupidity. We let this one go… but one day, on another journey, we will be back for sure. Oh yes!
Right. So we head back to Tbilisi, because this morning we got in touch with our lost fellow Mongol Rallyers, Geoff and Li. They have found themselves a cozy hostel in the center of Tbilisi. We jump in the car and try to negotiate the crazy traffic, the ultimate Darwinian game of chicken, in heat that will melt the fillings in your teeth. After less than an hour we find ourselves at the aptly named Hammock Hostel. Yes, there actually IS a hammock in the front garden 🙂
The place is almost empty, so we decide to stay for the night and see what the city of Tbilisi has to offer. The hostel has working wi-fi, so we get to do some work on this blog and recharge our cameras and laptops. This has become a familiar routine on the Mongol Rally:
1. Whenever we stop anywhere, before we even go to the bathroom, ask for drink, food or life-saving blood-transfusions due to a particularly nasty paper cut, the first thing out of our mouths is always: «Do you have wi-fi? Can I have the password? Why not? No, not hi-fi. Sure, you can write it directly on my phone», followed by the miming of the term (don’t ask how we’re able to mime «wi-fi»… it’s disturbing).
2. The next thing we do is take out our 3 GoPro cameras, 1 Panasonic DSLR, 1 Nikon P330, 2 laptops and 2 mobile phones, plug them into any available wall sockets for re-charging and begin the tedious process of downloading and sorting the previous days’ footage from the memory cards. This takes from a few hours up to half a day sometimes, depending on how much sand and wildlife we have to clean out of our equipment each time. If this sounds soul-destroying to you, we’re here to tell you that it’s as boring as trying to fold paper birds using Australian money (there’s a joke there. You hear me, Geoff?).
But first the two of us, together with Geoff and Li head out for lunch to try some Georgian specialties at a hip place in old town Tbilisi. We get a nice outdoors table away from the band, which is playing their music so loudly that the chair next to us is beginning to bleed.
To be fair: the band is great, although the guitar player for some unknowable reason spends two minutes after each song, tuning his instrument over and over and making annoying ‘poing’-noises into the microphone.
The band
When the food arrives, we are overjoyed. We’ve ordered far too much of everything, as is our preferred way of doing things on this trip. In between the hovering waiter dropping by every two minutes to empty the unused ashtray and replacing our plates everytime we take our eyes off of him, we get to enjoy the fabulous local cuisine.
Snorre and Geoff
We try the famous Khinkali (a kind of dumpling stuffed with stuff) and several other dishes we share among ourselves. The pig brain with mushrooms and cheese is surprisingly good (Lars wasn’t aware he was eating – and enjoying – actual brains, until he overheard Geoff talking about it. He didn’t turn green at all). Also delicious is the dish that Geoff describes as «fish in vomit».
The famous ხინკალი (Khinkali)
We also swap stories from the rally so far and talk about the other teams that we’ve heard from. Some are out of the rally already – for different reasons too numerous and boring to get into (we will… later though).
It’s good to spend the afternoon in the airconditioned rooms of the Hammock Hostel, instead of in the mobile pizza-oven that our car has turned in to. Our home-made auto air circulation system works well (AACS for short, although the older term «windows» is still widely used), but it’s still too damn hot in the Toyota tinbox.
Li, Geoff, Lilac and Snorre
We discover that in Georgia there are lots of other Toyota Yaris’, driving around, however here they are called Vitz («haha, that sounds like the German term for ‘joke'», Lars says, not really getting a response from Snorre, who is too busy trying to keep his circulation going in the heat). This is good news, since it means that there would be easy access to parts for us and Yaris Hilton, should we need them, but so far there have been no problems whatsoever with the Toyota.
Knock on wood!
We plan an early exit in the morning and go to bed quite early.
Today we only did 105 km.
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