Today was another border crossing, leaving Georgia and into
Armenia. Dom lead the procession of bikes out of the hotel car park up the
twisty road where Kevin laid in wait with a video camera. Once the smiles and
thumbs up where done we made the right turn onto the main road following Dom in
the direction of the border.
The old game of dodging the pot holes was in play again as
we progressed down the road amongst the local vehicles. I pulled into a petrol
station to get some fuel, the guy in front with the two behind carried on, unaware of the fact that we were
not heading in the right direction. This only occurred to me whilst I was
filling up as none of the others in the group came by. It took me a while to
find the right direction after going backwards and forwards trying to get my
bearings but eventually I was happy that I was in fact heading in the right
direction all be it on my own.
A few miles further down the road I rode past an old disused
petrol station and immediately thought, that would make a great photo so I
turned around to go back to it. As I rode up to the first entrance I could see
that they had dug out a small ditch and created a mound of earth which meant
that was not going to be possible to enter that way. So a few yards further was
the other entrance which apart from some uneven ground was accessible so I rode
in and parked next to the old stripped out pump. I took a couple of photos and
then thought I had best be on my way. Having forgot about my earlier observations
I proceed to try and go out of the other exit, so I bumped down a small concrete
step and then went to ride over the mound of earth until at the last second I
saw the ditch. I immediately stopped thinking to myself, chances are I won’t
make that as the bike would either ground out or the front wheel would be on
one side of the ditch and the rear on the other side, leaving nowhere for my
short legs to get a footing and then I would fall over and being on my own so
it would be foolish to attempt this. Using my sensible head, I decided to
manoeuvre my bike around, however this proved to be a lot more work than I
bargained for and soon became out of breath. When I finally got back past the
pump I stopped to check for damage as something on the bottom of the bike got
bashed going back over the concrete step. Just as I was doing that, the other
three went past, obviously having also realised that they went in the wrong
direction and turned around. Later on I did make a couple of other photo stops,
but chose to park on the on the side of the road! I felt my phone vibrate so I
stopped to check and it was a message from Kevin asking if I was OK as the
others had reported seeing me at the disused fuel station and thought
afterwards that I may have ran out of fuel. I sent a message back confirming I
was OK, that I did have fuel and was on my way!
The road to the border had more pot holes in than the moon
has craters. I eventually got to the border where everyone else had gone
through the first stage of exiting out of Georgia except Kevin who was waiting
for me. Oh, and two others that I passed going back the other way as I
approached the border. One of the couples on the trip had got to the border and
realised that they had left their passports in the hotel room safe so had to
ride back and get them. Exiting Georgia was a quick and simple process, but
entering Armenia was a different story taking over 4 hours.
The wait at the border was quite tiring for some...
Once through we then had to purchase the compulsory insurance for 20 US Dollars and we were then free to go.
I set off as a loan frog and not gone more than a few miles
down the road before stopping to put my waterproof over jacket on and take some
photos. Later on that proved to be a smart move as I just caught the edge of a
hail storm but soon rode through it and back to semi dry roads. As I entered
the next town the sat nav wanted to take me the wrong way down a one way street
and after a bit of my own navigation I ended up to close for comfort near a military
base but eventually got on the right road heading out of town. The hotel didn’t
come soon enough as I was getting rather warm and tired towards the end, but
the room had a great shower that helped to make everything great again.
After having something to eat in the evening, we went to the Republic Square where they have a musical fountain display.
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