Ardahan

unfortunately (or even fortunately as it turns out), the guy from the day before never came to pick me up. the hotel manager guided me to the main road, where i was unsuccessful for a while. it took about two hours of trial and error until i found the right spot. i was selectively only signing truck drivers to stop, thinking they would be able to take me the furthest.

it worked better than i could have ever expected. a belarussian trucker pulled over for me and told me he could take me to erzurum, my first goal of the day. but then, after a bit of talking in broken english and google translate, it miracioulsly turned out the guy was on his way to deliver pringles to russia, passing through georgia. he agreed to take me all the way to tbilisi.

we spent two days and one night crammed inside the truck cabin. on the way, we had no less than a dozen tea time stops, he cared for me very well. spending a night inside the cabin bunk parked at a truck park in the middle of nowhere next to the border was definitely an experience as well. my impression of alex was a bit tainted by the three hours of yapping i had to endure towards the end of the ride. he wouldn't stop talking about the jews, the flat earth, putins fight against the rothschilds, moon landings, pyramids, white supremacy and so on and on and on, the whole array. i was still no less thankful and he seemed to have enjoyed my company a lot, he even gifted me his pocket knife as a souvenir.

there are about 200 kilometres of road between the border crossing and tbilisi, so i thought i would arrive there in about 3 to 4 hours, but i hadn't calculated with what georgia is like. if it weren't for the people walking through the roadside villages, you'd think they were abandoned since the collapse of the soviet union. the turkish 4 lane highway literally turned into an unpaved dirt road with pot holes so deep you could almost see china through them. after saying goodbye to alex and taking a taxi to the center of tbilisi, i arrived late at night in the famous fabrika hostel just in time before the check in deadline.Read more