I had planned relatively short day trips for the next two days so it was clear that the day would start late. Breakfast in the beautiful restaurant (see pictures from the day before) was only at 9 a.m. so I took it easy. My planned itinerary was only a 250 km, so I could afford to leave the hotel at 11:45. When I was slowly rolling through Borjomi, I heard the sound of a police car behind me and saw the flash lights behind me. I moved to the side. They still stayed behind me. Oh. They mean I should stop? OK, I stop in a safe place.
The police agent asked for my Passport and driving license. ‘Do you know this?’ he asked me, showing me a plastic mouthpiece. ‘Alcohol?’ I asked with a laugh? It was 11:55 a.m. and he wanted to do an alcohol test? Really? Fine. I took mouthpiece, sticked it onto the measurement device and blew into it. The result was apparently the right one. I asked the agent for confirmation of the alcohol limit in Georgia. 0.3 per mil, just as I had read. Good to know. I could continue my journey. Soon I filled up and topped up the oils. After a while, I could luckily pass a very long queue at some road works. When we were allowed to go, the bike wouldn’t start. It took the starter a while to fire up the XBR. Probably the rich mixture results in a lot of deposit on the spark plug electrode, maybe I should clean it. The secondary road lead to a new motorway which took me faster than expected to Kutaisi., There, I wanted to do a little detour to watch the Bagrati Cathedral. But before that, I passed the Colchis Square; I had to stop and take a picture of the iconic fountain.
The Colchis Fountain is a monument in the central square of Kutaisi in Georgia that celebrates the ancient kingdom of Colchis. It is adorned with 30 large-scale copies of the famous gold jewelry discovered at archaeological sites in Georgia. My brain started scrolling through my memory….Colchis…Colchis…ah, yes…the destination of the Argonauts and the home of the Golden Fleece. Reading all these Greek sagas as a boy was not for nothing.
My next stop was at the cathedral, a large building overlooking Georgia’s third-largest city. I walked in the interior a bit and looked for a good shot on the outside.
It is an 11th-century cathedral, a masterpiece of medieval Georgian architecture. It suffered heavy damage throughout centuries and was reconstructed to its present state through a gradual process starting in the 1950s, with controversial conservation works concluding in 2012. These works prompted UNESCO to include the cathedral on its list of endangered World Heritage Sites, and then to remove the church from the World Heritage list.
When I returned to the bike, a boy on a small bike was staring at the XBR. Wasn’t this boy way too young to ride such a small motorbike? Without any helmet. It looked small, but it had a proper motor, half scooter, half pocket bike, probably of Chinese origin.
I left the hot city and started my ascent to the Greater Caucasus, more precisely the Svaneti region, flanked by the defected regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, considered Russian-occupied territory of Georgia after the Russian-Georgian war of 2008.
It soon became clear that it would take more time than expected to get to the booked guesthouse in the mountains. In principle, it only would be 100 km away, but the road was winding and dictated a slow pace. However, I had enough time on my hands. First, the surface was still ok, but steadily, the surfaced deteriorated. A lot of road works with bumpy stretches. And some landslides. It was sunny, but it seemed that a massive thunderstorm but have passed through recently, there were many puddles and a wet surface. The river carried lots of muddy grey waters in enormous quantities.
The mountain got higher and higher and more impressive. In the small town of Lentechi I had to fill up, I knew this would be the last possibility to get petrol in a long time. From here on, the road quality was on a different/lower level. There were still small villages where you wonder ‘what are the people doing here’ but it is definitely a poor and hard life up here. It was not easy to find my destination in my GPS. It was just a very small village. Luckily, the name of the guest house was indicated and I followed a small gravel road that turned into a steep goat track or a small rocky river bed. I was jumping on the rocks and luckily Rami, the owner, heard me coming and opened the gate so I could use the thrust and not have to slow down. The garden was also my garage. She found a proper flat stone to put under my side stand.
It was a very warm welcome from Rami and her husband, and although Rami spoke no English, we communicated well with sign language and the translating app on her phone. The room was very simple, but clean. The bathroom had a shower with running cold water – so I skipped this part. The balcony was my living room, that’s where I spent most of my time. What was surprising – in this remote place, I had perfect phone and internet coverage.. We agreed on 7 o’clock as dinner time and I was planning my next day, riding over the Zagari Pass. I wanted to play it safe and chose Zugdidi as the next stopover, only 225 km away. But this trip would be very slow, after all it was the mountain highlight of the whole trip. Finally, the weather seemed to be ok, at least during the day. From the balcony, I watched the quiet village life…from time to time, a ripe pear left a twig in the opposite huge pear tree and came down with a mighty THUD when it hit the ground. The house’s daughter was guiding the cows back home. The dogs were barking at any mouse fart that only they could hear in the distance.
At seven, Rami served a large dinner of the Georgian salad (cucumber, tomato, onion, coriander), some salty cheese, bread, fried potatoes and Lobio, a Georgian bean stew served in a clay pot, accompanied by some home-made pomegranate juice. Simple, but delicious. Real home-cooked, traditional food. After dinner, a massive thunderstorm broke loose. Rami asked several times if the bike needed cover, I declined. She explained me where the candles were, should the lights go out. Aha.
If was genuinely impressed by the power of the thunderstorm. When you thought this is it, it would switch gear and even more water would come bucketing down. And it wasn’t over soon. It carried on for hours still. I went to bed early, writing on my report, when suddenly at 9:30, lights went out after a massive lightening. It came back an hour later, but I had decided to call it a day and try to sleep early.
I had a very refreshing long sleep, just interrupted by some preoccupied thoughts how these massive rainfall would leave the road. There were already many muddy sections before – would this render the pass impassable? As agreed, Rami served breakfast at eight o’clock. I tried my best, but I couldn’t all of this home-made products.
Boiled eggs, Georgian salad, fresh milk, home-made cheese, bread, home-made butter and jam, pancakes and a large jar of kompot – an apricot drink. Too much, and again delicious. I packed my stuff and wanted to get on the road. After paying a very modest price in comparison to my previous accommodations and a farewell, I carefully hobbled down the goat? cow? track until I reached the sealed road. I was pretty alone here, not much traffic. After a while the landslides started, slowing you down and I have to be very careful to ride through muddy section, I don’t have any nobby tyres.
My first location would be the notorious Zagari Pass (2600 m). However, since this concrete road was built in 2024, it is pretty easy to do this with a normal road vehicle. Before, only 4×4 and off-road bikes would be able to ride the road after these thunderstorms (mud!). Soon, there were no more villages and I was on my own. I progressed well, but the landslides and rocks on the road slowed me down. Although the concrete road was only two years old, it looked much older. I got closer and closer to the high mountains and the views were getting more spectacular.
I climbed higher and higher until I reached to top. It looked not that spectacular, but my GPS indeed confirmed the altitude.
From here it was downhill to the coast.
The first settlement would be Ushguli, a community of five medieval villages and one of the highest continuously inhabited settlements in Europe, located at 2200 m. Because of their preservation and traditional architecture, Ushguli, Mestia, and the surrounding area was recognized as the Upper Svaneti UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
The most notable feature of the villages in Ushguli are the defensive tower houses found throughout the community. These houses, between 3-5 stories tall, were built primarily between the 9th and 12th centuries. Although many of the towers in the lower towns such as Mestia have fallen into disrepair, the isolation of Ushguli has preserved the towers.
It was after 11 a.m. now and many small tour vans came from the other side, carrying tourists to this remote place. This side of the Zagari Pass is much more populated and touristic than the other one. The road down to Mestia had suffered a lot, there were lots of landslides and flooding and lots of mud. Quite with some hair-rising parts.
The clouds disappeared and its was sunny now. I had to stop and remove all my inliners and warm gear that I had put on for the first time on this trip. Soon I reached Mestia, the capital of tourism in the region. The quietness of the mountains was over. I still had 140 km to go, but I decided to have a break have a snack. In a café, I had a home-made chicken soup. The location flew the flags of Georgia, Europe and Ukraine, on their shirts you could read ’20 % of my country is occupied by Russia’, making reference to the nearby occupied territory. Mestia is quite a bustling town where you can book a lot of activities. I continued my ride and for the next 40 km, the views were great, but the older concrete road was very bumpy &@%!!§#!!!.
After that stretch, there was a tarmac road of improving quality and soon I rode next to a reservoir lake.
Just when I was about to descent to the plain, I saw two motorbikes and one guy trying to fix something. Of course I stopped. It was a Russian couple on two old Suzuki thumpers. On the guy’s bike, the toothing of the shift lever was damaged and the lever would come off the gear box shaft. He tried to put some coke can in the toothing, looking pretty desperate; He considered welding the lever to the shaft, a pretty final but doable solution. I convinced him not to go any further but to turn around and find help in a town in the plain, in the mountains, there’s little hope. Also another rider from Portugal stopped and wanted to help, but there was little to be done. It turned out he would also take the ferry the next day.
I rode down to the city of Zugdidi, but before I filled up and topped up the oil. I realised that I had used almost all the Scottoil that I had topped up the day before – yes, the chain and all the surrounding parts were very oily – does this mean that the lubrication system is already failing?? After only 110.000 km??
I reached my hotel and after turning myself into a presentable and olfactory acceptable state, I wanted to visit the hotel’s restaurant. A large group and blasting music made me think twice. Was this the wedding party I saw before? Ok, let’s go outside. I walked to a restaurant praised on G Maps…an empty, dodgy place with an unfriendly old hag. Goodbye. Another, large place filled with groups. Only one table in front of the music loudspeaker that started blasting distorted noise (a wedding party) after I sat down….impossible! Another place…only fast food with menu in Georgian….ultimately, I found a mandarine bar that would serve me a chicken stew with bread. Ok, not the last, authentic dinner I had hoped for, but enough to get something decent. I bought some cookies for dessert in a small shop and returned to my hotel.
Finally, I had received word from the ferry company: I should come to the port the next day at 23:30, the departure would be a few hours later as the boat would arrive late. No need to come to the office. So the plan was this: get up, leave late and try to kill some time until midnight. The boat in Batumi is only 150 km away. Then, a 2.5 day trip on the ferry to Bulgaria. In the end, I was ok with the decision to take the ferry. That was not the initial plan but I never was very keen to ride the extra 1400 km on Turkish roads either, this is not something I find very attractive. The bike is running, as always, but the failing lubrication system is unexpected. The XBR just needs to get back home, then she will be awarded with a great, major revision that last happened 120.000 km or 15 years ago. Just a few kilometers more.
Hutzlmandl On Tour 
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