Ups & Downs in Russia

Day 21 - 240 Km ( 6882 Km total )

 

It has been day of ups and downs, but once again changing countries reveals stark contrasts in geography, culture & behaviours.

 

I had a good night's sleep in the little hostel I was staying at in Kazbegi. It was quite cool, so slept with the windows open, a nice refreshing change after so much heat. When I woke I threw open the curtains expecting to marvel at the view but was greeted with this ....

 

Where's the mountain gone?

 

It was only 15km from my lodging to the border, so after a quick sausage roll at a local cafe I met up with Russ & we set off. The Georgian Military Highway continued on from yesterday's run, but was a little bit damp & quite cool, I decided to leave the waterproofs off, hoping it would brighten up.

Nice mountain roads - shame about the drizzle & lack of view

 

 

There was a section where for a few km the surface went, but it was nothing as bad as its reputation, so I assume there has been signifiacnt road improvement in recent years.

Just the occasional building to break up the sombre view

 

And then all of a sudden we were at the Georgian exit border - not much of a queue here and we were through into no-mans land in about 20 minutes.

 

No man's land is quite bleak .... Not really somewhere you want to spend long in when its raining!

The Russian entry border was a real pain. The stretch of no-mans land between the two border posts is a few kilometres long and as soon as you leave Georgia, you hit a queue of stationary traffic.

We sat in it for a while as the road was quite narrow and we could'nt see what was ahead, but then a couple of cars came past the queue on the wrong side of the road & we decided to follow them. Several other cars pulled out and followed us too, I could see in my mirror.

After a few hundred metres the road entered a tunnel, this is going to be interesting is there is traffic coming the other way I though! But the cars continued and so we followed.

About 100m before the end of the tunnel, they met oncoming traffic, stopped and immediately we had gridlock with queues in both directions facing each other.

There followed much shouting & gesticulating but eventually a little space was created and some movement started. The problem then was that two cars immediately in front moved together into a single sized space & made contact - only slightly but contact nevertheless.

Well then the fun started, shouting, pushing & shoving, more shouting, revved engines - we were just wondering what to do if the guns & knives came out as we couldnt move at all and were still in the tunnel about 3 meters away. Anyway, after half an hour or so, the car in formt was able to move & we just manage to sneak past before anyone moticed.

We carried on sneaking past the stationary queue whenever there was no oncoming traffic, until we were eventually stopped by a Russian soldier with a big gun - he eventually let us go past, but we only managed another 50m or so before the way was blocked by stone barriers. By this point howevere we were only about 10 cars from the front, so wont be long now I thiught. Wrong!

 

This is wher we waited for an hour or two

I was really hlad we had queue jumped, as even from that point it took about 2 hours to clear customs - lots of form filling, different offices, queuiing etc. i must say that the Russian border guards and customs officers were a lot more friendly than I expected, thiugh.

So 3 hours adpfter we hit the Georgian exit border, qe were finally in Russia & queuing again to buy some insurance, at least that didnt take too long and off we went.

 

 

Russia, just after the border

The roadcontinued its downward trajectory out of the mountains and begore long we were on boring, flat land, with boring straight roads, quite a bit of traffic & lots of police & army check points. We still had 3 hours to ride.

It was only a matter of time I suppose but after an hour or so we were stopped at a police checkpoint and 'done' for either running a red light (it was an accident honest) or going faster than 50km through roadworks (that wasnt) . Not sure which it was due to language difficulties, but we were suitably adminished and fined. Funny how the fine was exactly divisble by 5, 5 being the number of officers at the checkpoint!

The rest of the journet we did everything by the book (which meant it took longer and as much less fun of course) And by the time we reached our destination, our mood was a grim as the weather (it had continued to drizzle all the way)

The hotel chosen was only £20 for a night & as the sat nav led us down folorn looking streets and past rubbish dumps I had pretty low expectations. But when we finally arrived, what a nice surpise! Good rooms & a decent restauarant for a meal .... Shame the receptioist, couldnt manage to smile at all ....

 

The only £20 per night Hyat I've ever seen!

 

 

Ah well, ups & downs ... Deeper into Russia tomorrow.