Day C9: Batumi Down the Hatches

August 3, 2024

It was going to be a wicked downhill drop from 2100 meters at the top of the pass all the way to sea level, basically a cycle tourist's wet dream.

A late start surely seemed appropriate. After all despite nearly 115km of distance, this whole thing was going to fly right? Well before getting started I wanted to repack everything and dispose of all the bags sitting on the handlebars. Maybe that Portuguese cyclist was right, there had to be a more efficient way of doing this. So I somehow manged to fit as much as possible in the panniers and strap the rest to the back of the bike with bungee cords as shown.

I also spent considerable time fixing the back rack and securing the wheel in place. It was loose last night actually and partially came off while storing the bike inside the hotel. I wanted to make sure it was airtight and that there wouldn't be any incidents with wheels falling off down a pass. You kind of wouldn't want that.

Little did I know that the first 30km were going to be an insane bumpy ride so these two jobs ended up really saving the day.

The view looking out my hotel window now it cleared up. Spectacular! This was looking exactly down the pass I would be heading

A quick note about the Georgia flag, sometimes you will see it side by side with the EU flag. This was also evident at the border crossing when I came in through Armenia. Although they haven't (yet) joined the EU, they certainly aspire to. They were granted candidate status in December last year. Ukraine also got candidate status, along with Turkey and Moldova. It's fairly obvious the direction that this is all going.

Ski gondolas ahead. This place gets a ton of snow in winter

The beginning of the descent was extremely brutal. Brakes had to be used at all times, yet conservatively because I didn't want to burn them out at the beginning. The road was all rough and unpaved, basically the worst kind of descent you could hope for. Add into the mix an absolutely ridiculous amount of traffic coming up the pass. It was very slow and difficult slogging, and I made use of foot braking multiple times at first so as to keep my real brakes saved for later.

It was a bone shattering ride and it never really let up.

Around 25km into it, I saw another cyclist chugging up the hill and I greeted him enthusiastically as did he. Turns out Zennin was also from Canada and this was a quite the shocker -- he is from Toronto, basically our arch rival. He told me he is doing a round the world trip and had also started in Portugal where he had been an expat for some time prior. He was riding a bike with much narrower tires than mine and all his gear was on the back. It looked like a very light setup yet he carried tons of stuff in there, up to 60kg he said, including a tent. I was quite impressed. Thankfully my new and improved gear setup drew only praise from him this time. He also said he really liked my bike and we talked a lot about logistics.

I told him, "Well you're not gonna believe this but I met another cyclist on this same route two days ago. She also started from Portugal and also uses a tent."

He had to laugh at that and said, "Aw shucks, well if she's two days ahead of me then there's no way I'll catch up.

He explained, "I just came out of Turkey and the people there are incredibly friendly. Drivers too very courteous. You really need to give that country a try. Here it seems the drivers are rude and aggressive, very impatient and the standard of driving is terrible. They also don't give you any greetings."

I said, "Yes for sure that has also been my experience. I came in through the Armenia border two days ago and since then the traffic got worse, the roads narrower, and the drivers way more aggressive. They come at you from behind, honk like crazy, and literally run you off the road when you're climbing these passes. You need to be extremely careful."

He said, "So you're only doing a short tour from Yerevan to Batumi?"

I said, "Yeah that's pretty much it, wish there was time for longer ones like yours but so much of my trip got taken up by other shit."

He said, "So what were you doing before Yerevan?" I explained I was in Dubai where I had just about resolved a midlife crisis.

At that very moment, a Belgium cyclist showed up out of nowhere in the same direction as Zennin. Now we had a group of three. The banter continued to flow. His style was different to both of ours, it turns out he got a rental bike from Khulo and was doing short tours through the passes and various hiking trails. Then he would return the bike and continue his travels via minivans.

While we were talking the traffic continued to flow past relentlessly and create noise. The drivers surely must have wondered what this group of cyclists was all about now.

I said to both of them, "These conditions are fucking brutal. I'm literally skidding downhill and braking with my shoes to conserve brake power. This road doesn't allow you to get any speed on the descent especially when you have to watch all this fucking traffic. I would much rather be climbing the pass like you guys."

They just laughed and said, "Don't worry about it bro, at most you only have 3km more of this shit. Then it becomes paved road and you can fly down."

At that point Zennin said, "Alright guys, nice chatting but I gotta bounce. I'm slow and need to get over this pass and down the other side."

I wished him well and said, "Good news, once you clear the top of the pass it is paved on the other side and much less traffic. It will be a much easier descent for you than the shit I have to put up with now. Plus you'll get tailwinds all the way to Yerevan"

He seemed really relieved to hear that. Earlier he had mentioned he wanted to be in Yerevan by Monday night (it was Saturday noon when we met). I didn't want to tell him this, but that would be impossible. It took me nearly a week to go the other way. The reason he was doing this was so he could apply for a Russian visa then swing back to Tbilisi and cross into Russia and then through all the Central Asian countries.

Well good luck with that. He had earlier said, "They don't do Russian visas in Tbilisi" Mmm hmmm yes mmm hmmmm. I didn't want to say anything about that one.

Better him than me. The chances of me getting a Russian visa are slim to none and the way I've trash talked that country so much on social media I would likely be banned entirely.

With him cycling up the pass, that left me and the Belgium guy to banter for a bit. Then it was time to keep going. My parting words were, "I'll be doing both Batumi and Pattaya in the same trip, let's see anybody else do that." He had a nice laugh at that and off we went.

Insane conditions. The traffic was like this the whole time.

The paved descent was short lived because headwinds started roaring up the valley and these were extremely strong. I did some research to find out they are called anabatic winds. Basically even on calm day like today, when the valley floor heats up, the warm winds roar up the valley. This also means they change direction constantly so it's a headwind regardless of which way the road switchbacks. It made me pedal downhill on 6-8% gradients which was no fun.

Eventually I found the tourist hotstop of Khulo that the others had come from and stopped for the famous cheese bread and a beer. They ended up giving me so much cheese bread I could only eat half, then kept the rest for later.

Good stuff but three slices is all I could manage

Next stop was an impressive bridge designed with Georgian midieval engineering. While wanting to check it out, I parked my bicycle on a post and it started slipping. Trying to correct it I parked a 'better' way but this only made the bike fall down entirely. The bike almost slipped down the cliff! One pannier bag did roll down the cliff and I watched in horror as it would tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble down towards the river. It stopped at the last minute by a bush.

Realizing I could retrieve this, I used all the rock climbing skills I had and was successful. It was slow and painful progress but surprisingly the whole thing took less than five minutes. While all this was going on, two cheeky kids were swimming in the river watching the whole thing and laughing at me!

The bag tumbled off this cliff right here

The bridge that was worth all this hassle

After all that, by now the main headache was becoming the traffic and the extremely aggressive and fast speeds of the drivers. These roads are just not designed for the volume and speed they carry. They are extremely narrow and yet there are way too many cars. The closest comparison I can make is Malaysia and also not a very good place for cycle touring.

So I was getting sick of this and stopped into a restaurant.

For motivation I booked a nice hotel in Batumi at that restaurant which was about 20km away. My thinking was that eventually the road would widen as the city approached. It wasn't quite looking that way, but eventually it had to.

Finally, almost there. Turned off the highway

It was so nice to get off that traffic hell onto quiter roads towards the beach. And there it was, the Black Sea

I was quite astonished with all the development, and the immediate comparison that came to mind was Pattaya. Still it felt more of a toned down version here. The main difference was that Batumi had casinos. So after checking into the hotel, I had to try my luck for a warmup.

Much to my surprise I won 120 lari which basically paid for the first night hotel and all the food in Georgia up to this point.

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