Day C14: A Stopover with Unique Flavors

August 7, 2024

Another travel day without the bike. The hotel was absolutely magnificent and without a doubt the best one on this trip. It was right in the heart of the city center, nestled in the Meidan, and tucked away behind all these buildings near the restaurants. It was blissfully peaceful as well. The staff were also outstanding and with amazing service. What makes these hotels so great is that you have the most convenient location possible within walking distance to everything and it is also quiet so a good night sleep guaranteed. That I sure did have and well over 10 hours worth.

The next day there was some time to enjoy the delicious breakfast and do a little bit of sightseeing. The vibes in Tbilisi were off the chain. Now I wish I went directly here instead of Batumi and spent more time. Not only there was lots of picturesque stuff to enjoy and walk around, there were also casinos in Tbilisi. But no matter, if not for the route I took I wouldn’t have seen all the multitude of Russians flocking to Batumi with my own eyes.

Here I just wasn’t seeing many them which was odd. The closest border with Russia is actually here via the mountain pass and you can technically reach it within a few hours. I was able to piece together a theory which admittedly doesn’t have the facts to back it up as of yet but it seems reasonable. The main land border crossing in question became more tightly controlled when Putin realized he was losing mass numbers of potential conscripts fleeing the country. So it became harder and harder for military aged men to leave since about this time last year. Indeed I saw photos in 2023 of a mass number of Russian cars and people trying to reach the border and planning to leave permanently before Putin closed the loophole.

So if these people already left, they would have obviously made a plan to settle somewhere else already and there wouldn't be much influx of new Russians. A year later this confirmed it: I just wasn’t seeing them in Tbilisi.

There's no way to know for sure, but there must be some easier way they come in and out of Georgia. After all, look how many Russians were in Batumi. They had to be crossing back and forth from Russia through some other border, maybe via Abkhazia, or even flying in directly.

But Tbilisi was really the better of the two cities. Live and learn. It did get me to plan a route for next year. The trip would somewhat repeat the same one this year to start, but would route via Azerbaijan instead to cross into Georgia and make for Tbilisi again. From there I would consider going into Turkey

That said, for this trip, I got extremely lucky to have made those stops in the countryside and met the wonderful hosts. Maybe there'll be a repeat, who knows. But for next year I want to somewhere new while also giving Tbilisi more time that it deserves.

For now there were more immediate matters: packing up my luggage, folding up the bike and getting it to the airport. The taxi driver had arrived early and so off we went. It hardly took any time at all.

Once at the airport it was small which was good in many ways but I got a sense of bad vibes at check in. The bike, thankfully he checked right through without any issues. It was the carry on bags that became a problem. He weighed them all and they totalled to be 20kg. This was astonishing: it was the same weight as the bike! Well there was some proof that I was still carrying way too much stuff. How I managed to haul 20kg worth of shit over the mountains was beyond me. The bigger question is why. No wonder the biking was so sluggish.

I resolved for next trip to cut this weight at least in half.

Even so, my estimations at the beginning of the trip were that I was carrying well over 30kg, maybe even 40kg worth of weight. Perhaps it would be better to go on a ruthless downsizing spree at home first before traveling.

Anyways, the check in guy said if I wanted to carry all that shit onto the plane, I would have to pay $320 in excess baggage fees. I told him I would repack and spent an hour doing so.

First thing was to empty out one pannier and then put that in the first pannier along with clothes and stuff. Then I put all the items into a backpack I wanted to check in, basically the alcohol. The remaining items I put into another bag and found a luggage storage to check this in temporarily for 10 laris.

After all this I went back to the check in counter. The guy said, "You have an allowance of two checked bags for 25kg. The bike came in at 20kg, this backpack has 8kg. Can you take 3kg out of the bag?" I certainly did with a bunch of books and electronics. He said it's all good. Nothing was mentioned about the carry-on since I had severely reduced the size, well on appearances that is!

I then went back to the luggage storage and claimed my bags then went about repacking again. Out came the empty pannier and then all the items were again repacked into two pannier bags. There was plenty of time to go through security and board the flight. And of course I repacked again to make things appear smaller, expecting to see the same crew at the gate who checked me in. Sure enough they were there. The guy said, "Nice to see you again" and there were no issues, he just said, "Enjoy the flight"

It's really all about appearances.

Once the flight landed in Qatar for the stopover, you guessed it, I repacked again. This time unfortunately I was lingering too long near the security after going through the transit hall. Some official asked me to move downstairs. That done I realized something: why waste 9 hours in an airport transit area eating food, drinking alcohol and spending a fortune when it's possible to go through immigration and into the city?

I asked around for how to do this, and much to my surprise and delight it WAS possible! They escorted me back through security the other way and told me to go back upstairs through a long corridor which indeed led to immigration. I then needed to change some money and asked around for a luggage storage facility. Well guess what, they didn't have one. The guy at information said, "You probably want to store your luggage and go into the city and come back right?" I said, "Yes that's right" He asked how long my layover was and said, "You can book a sightseeing package with us for a few hours, we'll make all the arrangements"

I told him thanks but no thanks, I was on a mission to find and do a fitness class. First order of business was to get some local currency. Realizing that currency exchange was slow and would rip me off anyway, I took out 200 dinars from the ATM and just made my way to the buses. Surprisingly you could get a day pass for only 5 dinars. (Apprximately $1 = 4 dinars)

So with those awkward pannier bags and a laptop I got onto the bus. It didn't take long to reach my destination, and there it was, the location of the fitness class. Due to my bad luck, the one about to start was for ladies only, so I had to wait over an hour. They helped me store my stuff in lockers then it was a nice photo walk around the area.

The class was awesome, the music was pumping loud, and the coach was high energy. Just my bad luck of course, it was a 12 minute run for distance military challenge when I hadn't done any running for two weeks. Not surprisingly I was out of shape with intense cardio (biking is low intensity) and had to dial back my speeds. The coach still was super impressed. They let me do the class for free.

On the way back to the airport I took the bus again and used the day pass. All told with that and the 15 dinar coffee at Starbucks, I only spent a grand total of 20 dinars or about $5. I then breezed back through airport security with a full bottle of water that they didn't even bat an eye over. Then once in the lounge, I got free access and that included unlimited wine if I wanted.

It is a very good thing that after the Armenia and Georgia trip I now despise alcohol. Otherwise I could have done some serious damage by carrying through a bottle of "water", cough cough vodka, and still made use of the lounge. But having seen firsthand with my own eyes how much people abused alcohol in those two countries, this really changed my perspective.

That aside, it was a most amazing stopover. Qatar just broke ranks to become another massively favorite country. The entire Gulf is like this. Long live the Gulf forever!

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