Alhaktsikhe - Kars, 3/3; 11th September
11th September
After two Nescafé coffees from a cafe in Damal (5 Lira each), and saying goodbye to the hotel manager, we headed out.
We got to the town of Hanak where we found our first ‘BIM’ supermarket — the boys had told us about this chain, as a place to get good value food. After the BIM we stopped off at a bakery where I got a loaf and small pastry which was filled with a small amount of cream.
After Hanak it was a long road to Kars — some uphill, some downhill, but all on highway like road, very smooth tarmac and fortunately with few cars — about 3-4/ minute.
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Due to the low volume of traffic I felt safe riding on such a wide road, but it’s hard to switch off knowing that a lunatic could bomb pass you at 100 km/h. It also doesn’t require much thinking as the road is dead straight and the immediate surrounding unchanging— I imagine this is what cycling on a turbo trainer is like — you don’t have to think, just keep pedalling.
We got to Kars late in the afternoon after a 100km cycle and about 1000m elevation. We walked past the Hotel Ani and the young worker there gave us a quote of 1400 Lira/ night which was not bad. He had an energetic air about him and was very helpful in getting the bike parked in the storage area.
We chatted with Vitali, who had cycled from Russia, through Georgia and was heading no Iran and then onto Turkmenistan and back home. We went out for dinner and mainly talked about our cycle trips and his hiking in the Alai mountains too.
The conversation turned to the war in Ukraine and I asked if the sanctions had affected his life at all. His answer was no, as gas and electricity were still very cheap, and although many western brands were no longer available in Russia, local companies had occupied the factories and used the machinery to make their own versions of the unavailable goods; e.g. CocaCola is now substituted for something that has a name like ‘BestCola’.
He couldn’t use his Russian bank card outside of Russia, but as a Russian it’s easy to set up a Georgian bank account and use that abroad, which is what he is doing. He did say though that he often sees wounded and maimed young men at the train station, casualties of the war, and expressed hope that after the US elections there would be some sort of path to peace.
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