And that's my favourite joke in The Simpsons...

And then Smithers says to Mr Burns ‘Women and Sea-men don’t mix’, and that’s my favourite joke in The Simpsons. Because that’s what they’re doing. They’re sat at home eating their TV dinners, sitting on their sofas and their watching the f*cking Simpsons.

My favourite line from my favourite movie, but I can guarantee that whilst most of you reading this have seen the film, not many of you will be able to recall where it’s from.
It’s delivered with subtlety, the focus drawn to more important characters and if you do watch the film but don’t hear this line, it really makes no difference to the story, but to those of us who do notice it, sometimes the small touches of genius can really make a massive difference - and for me this is the perfect way to describe my time in Georgia. If I had been more organised I almost definitely wouldn’t have taken myself through this wonderful country, but I can’t describe how glad I am that I came.

Due to having to wait for a parcel in Trabson I had ended up spending 6 nights there and previously I’d found that when I’d got settled like that, motivating myself to get back on the bike was one of the harder things to do – not from Trabson it wasn’t. In Austria I’d been told the local joke that Austrian diplomacy’s greatest achievement was getting the world to believe that Hitler was German and Mozart was Austrian; in line with this Turkish diplomacy’s greatest achievement is getting the outside world to think Trabson is a tourist destination. The Trabsonians I had spoken to had told me things along the lines of ‘ah yes, Trabson is the best place in Turkey; we have beautiful beaches, the best fish restaurants and of course the spectacular Sumela Monastery.’ Not strictly true though, is it my Turkish friends? The beaches are 6km out of town one way, the restaurants 4km out of town the other way and the Sumela Monastery is 44km or an hour and a half bus ride away from Trabson, tucked high up in the mountains. So whilst the town itself is nice enough, there’s very little you wouldn’t be able to find in any Turkish town and as a result it’s no surprise that on my first day out of Trabson I was only to happy to get away.

A day and a half later and I arrived at the Georgian border. I was sad to see the end of my time in Turkey, it had been a good home to me for the previous month and the excitement of seeing a football team actually winning had left the country with a feel good factor that had lasted long after the European Championships but as I approached the border, I can’t lie, I was looking forward to a change of scenery.

And boy, was it a different culture. The further east I’d traveled in Turkey the more religiously conservative it had become. One of the more bizarre memories I’ll have of my trip is always going to be that of a lady swimming in full Muslim dress with only her face showing as she struggled desperately against the sea whilst trying to teach her baby son to swim, so I found it somewhat amusing that the first thing you come to in Georgia, just 3km into the country and still just about in view of Turkey, is a beach which was home to hundreds of Georgian girls in scantily clad bikinis, an equal number of macho guys and a big party atmosphere with a barbecue on the beach, party music on the stereo and even jet ski races going on out at sea – situated so close to the border the first impression was that Georgia wanted to be fun, and it wanted Turkey to see it was fun.

But I wasn’t here for the beach, and 15 km into the country I turned in land and started towards the mountains and my target of the Goderdzi Pass, located not just 100km away but also 2 vertical kilometers up at an altitude of 2025m. The climb was long and difficult. My map had told me I was on a main road, however what my map didn’t tell me was that after 60 km the road was made of dirt and stones and that even the trucks were struggling. With the road changing it meant time to change my tyres from the ones that had done me so well from England, to the new mountain bike tyres I’d had sent to me in Trabson. As I was sat carrying out the changes in what I thought was a quiet spot away from civilization it soon became apparent I wasn’t in as quieter spot as I thought I was and I was soon surrounded by a local family, who after watching me finish working ushered me into their home for dinner, not to mention several shots of Chacha – homemade vodka served from an old Fanta bottle.

Their home, my first experience of a Georgian mountain house, was perhaps as you might expect: The house was made almost entirely of wood, there were large holes in the wall, no glass in the windows – just an empty frame instead, and upstairs (which you got to by a ladder from the outside of the house) there were 2 bedrooms, one for the parents and one for the 6 children I met. The downstairs had 2 rooms; one was a kitchen which had the women preparing food in, the other, the living/dining room, consisted of one table and 6 chairs.

Oh, and a flat screen TV.

A flat screen TV showing MTV Base.

I stayed for an hour, enjoyed their company, thanked them for their hospitality and left grinning as in my mind I pictured a traditional Georgian family, high up in the mountains huddled together on a cold snowy night, the heat escaping through their glassless windows as they all gather round to watch Dizzee Rascal perform on their flat screen TV. A truly heartwarming image.

My new Georgian friends: I was offered the hand of all 3 daughters!

The pass was a couple of hours further up the mountain and as I was nearing it darkness began to set in. I asked a passing driver how far away I was and he said 3 km. I traveled 8 and still hadn’t found it but by this time not only was it getting dark, but I was in thick cloud and visibility was pretty much zero so reluctantly I admitted defeat for the day and pulled off to side of the road and set up camp.

After such a climb falling asleep wasn’t too difficult, but I was woken up at 6 am by the sound of something going through my panniers. A thief? No, it was too heavy footed, and besides, it sounded like it was eating. Startled and still half asleep I put some clothes on, stuck my head out the tent and what did I see? A cow making off with my breakfast, that’s what I saw.

Without thinking I jumped out to shoo it off – this was a stupid thing to do and the scared animal ran straight over the bike, the clumsy feet of a heavy animal kicking poor Tullulah all over the place. I was worried – my confidence in being a bicycle mechanic was growing slowly but the thought of what the weight of a fully grown cow could do with the combination of being in the middle of nowhere at the top of the mountain meant that if there was some serious damage I’d be in serious trouble.

Thankfully after a couple of tests it seemed the only damage was that the cow had kicked the front derailleur out of place and after this had been carefully fixed I was free to enjoy the spectacular view. I didn’t have an altimeter with me but I knew that 2025m was higher than I’d been on the tour so far and if you ever want to feel truly free, there aren’t many better ways to do it than to wake up and be able to look down on the clouds. The fresh mountain air filling my lungs combined with stunning views made up for the reduced breakfast I was left with.

Not a bad view to wake up to!

It turned out the pass was just 500 metres further on from where I’d camped and after sailing over I was left to enjoy a day of descent. This would have been even more enjoyable if the rest of the day hadn’t gone as badly as it started: a puncture whilst flying downhill at 30mph almost killing me and then, far worse I would spend the next two days recovering from eating out-of-date sardines – I had been lucky in not suffering any illness up to this point, but the first bout of illness came from the worst possible cause: rancid fish.

A couple of days later and after an afternoon in Gori, the birthplace of a certain Josef Stalin, I arrived in Tbilisi in the pouring rain with my mind away in the clouds hoping that my mountain families TV would survive the storm.

For what it’s worth Tbilisi is a beautiful city, but at the same time is a massive misrepresentation of what Georgia is like. The city does its best to give off a European vibe, and with a lot of the locals asking if I think Georgia should be in the EU (seriously, what the hell am I going to say to that?) there is a strong desire in the culture to become as ‘European’ as possible. The architecture is beautiful in places and by night I have been to fewer more picturesque cities – so in contrast to some of the eyesores I saw on my way in it made a pleasant change.

I was in the city for 5 days whilst my Azeri visa was processed and during this time I aimed to do as little as possible, which I achieved quite nicely and the only other events to report were that I met 2 other cyclists: Andy, who had cycled to Georgia and had been living here for 6 months, but was due to set off again in September, and Danny, a Swiss cyclist who was about 5 days ahead of me on near enough the same route – whilst he’s headed for Turkmenistan, I’ll be in Kazakhstan, but we will be in China about the same time on the same route and I’m personally looking forward to hopefully bumping into him again (and steeling his spare supplies).

Finally, on Monday 21st I left Tbilisi with a shiny new Azeri stamp in my passport and made the border the same evening.

Baku was 600 km away - all you need to know about the ride is that it was long, hot (35 degree average in the day), flat and very, very boring; so instead of the details of the ride I would like to talk about my experiences of the Azeri people.

I have to be honest – everything Georgia was, Azerbaijan was not and my week on Azeri roads has been the hardest week mentally so far.

The main pleasure I find in cycling is the solitude, the time to think, the chance to be getting by independently and most of all the quiet that the countryside can offer: In Azerbaijan it has been impossible to get any of these things.

On the roads the drivers were bad enough. On my second day in the country, sick of the constant sound of horns I did an experiment to see how long it would take to hear 100 car horns - 11 minutes later I’d lost count. Off the road life has been just as tough. Every time I stop for a break at the side of a road I had to make sure I couldn’t be seen or else within minutes several cars would have stopped and wouldn’t leave again until I had gone. Worse still the overwhelming majority of Azeri’s seem to have no concept whatsoever of ‘personal space’. Every town, every shop, every cafe I stopped in I would come out to find people poking through my bags, playing with my brakes trying to push buttons on my odometer: We’re not talking children here either, these are adults. The worst case was in the town of Agsu, where after stopping to ask for directions from a policeman (whilst still straddling my bike) his friend started going through my bar bag, took out my wallet and started going through my cards. I wrenched the wallet out of his hands and said something which made my anger clear. The policeman (who spoke good English) apologised for his friend and ushered him away, but as he left I could see the look on his face told me he still had absolutely no clue as to what he’d done wrong.

Of course, as a Muslim country, there was still a large emphasis on hospitality and making your guest feel welcome but even this became tedious as it soon became apparent just how much of a money obsessed, materialistic country Azerbaijan is. In Turkey and Georgia the questions had been ‘Where are you from?’, ‘Where are you going?’, ‘Do you like my country?’. In Azerbaijan the first question I was asked before any of these was ‘How much does your bicycle cost?’ usually followed by ‘How much money do you have?’ and then more of ‘How much does your watch/ glasses/ shoes cost?’. This materialistic nature is reflected heavily in the arrogance of many of the young-men of Azerbaijan. The fake designer-clothes trade appears to be roaring and the overwhelming attitude, especially to a cyclist was one of ‘look at that guy, why would anyone ever need to ride a bike when I can be the mutts-nuts driving a Vauxhall Opel wearing a t-shirt that had Armani written on it around 300 times?’.

In hindsight I feel like I've been harsh on Azerbaijan - there were some good views!

I spent the entire week being the butt of jokes, avoiding maniac drivers and after 2 days, doing my best to avoid all social situations before arriving in Baku on the Sunday morning.

Baku, like Tbilisi before it but on a bigger scale, is a mass misrepresentation of how the majority of people in Azerbaijan live. The oil trade has pumped money into the rich part of the city and made it visually stunning. Unlike the majority of the country the streets are clean, well maintained and the housing is of good quality with further improvements still ongoing. I’m staying with a host out here and when I mentioned how nice it was in Baku to one of his friends I was promptly told ‘You haven’t seen the rest of the country’.

Unfortunately I had – the gap between rich and poor in the country is growing and with seemingly few plans in place for what to do when the oil runs out (estimated to be in about 10-15 years) the future for a country who’s inhabitants revolve around money could be very interesting indeed.

As for me, I’m here till the boat for Kazakhstan turns up. Thanks for reading and the blog for Kazakhstan will hopefully be up in about a month.

My second night in Baku - The picture is with Ali, my host, who's been nothing short of a saviour for me out here!