The road between Kutaisi and Abastumani (an ex-soviet mountain resort or rather sanatorium area in the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park) is winding through wonderful mountain areas.

Off roaders will love this route and the terrain, especialy the middle section, unlike my little Vitara which was definitely not designed for this. However, she got away with some knocks on the bottom (some minor, some major), nothing serious after all.

It’s not really visible on these photos that sometimes I virtually had to climbe rock “stairs” with the poor car…

Nice road...

... testing the Vitara

The landscape is truly amazing, snow capped mountains around (in late June!) and everything is so greeeen! Huge fields of wild flowers, peace and amazingly fresh air.

Greeen!

There was snow at the edge of the road... in the middle of the Summer.

Somewhere in the mountains I met some locals who were out on a picnik (or sort of) and as I was the only human being around they instantly invited me to dring with them (just “sto gram”). I managed to escape telling them I’m in a rush (stupid excuse while driving obviously the longer and more difficult road through the mountains). Not as I wouldn’t drinnk and have fun with them, but it was 10AM and I had to climb 2 passes above 2000 meters and drive to Batumi which meant another 8-10 hours.

After all I reached the Zekari-pass (2200 meters) and descended slowly. After driving half an hour on more or less good roads I headed to Adjaria and climb up to another pass. Crossing a stream here is as normal as paying toll on a highway in Europe.

At the Zekari-pass, 2200 meters.

In the mountains of Adjaria

Finally I reached Batumi, which was especially hot and humid now, thanks also to the constant rainfalls of the past days. There was nothing else I needed than a room with AC and a cold beer. Luckily both are available pretty easily…

A.

Funny how they completed the operation, it was all secret, overnight,  as they didn`t want any locals to be present, nor the media.

Well folks, one less for Gori, but let me tell you, there are other Stalin statues on our route, and another one even in Gori…

Read the news here.

Some teams of CC 2008 at the statue in Gori.

A.

This is my sixth time in Georgia but the first time I arrived here without a car.

My flight arived to Tbilisi at a convenient 3:20 AM so I was pretty tired by the time I left the terminal. Surprisingly, the man with the car was not waiting for me as agreed before, but after I called the guy at the hostel I was staying he arranged me another car in 2 minutes.

I got there at around 4:30 where Gio, one of the owners greeted me… and how things work in Georgia, 5 minutes later we were drinking beer and chacha not stopping this till 6 AM. Well, a welcome drink or two is always a must.

Next day Gio tried to help me with the car rental (I wanted to get a Niva for the mapping in Georgia and Armenia) but no luck, it seemed nobody wanted to rent out a Niva and the next price level was beyond my budget.

So I did the work I had in Tbilisi and decided to travel to Yerevan the next day as I had much better chances there. 2 days loss, and a useless travel again: it did not make me very happy…

Tbilisi, this lively city is improving all the time and whenever we come here we find something new. Buildings get renovated, roads get fixed… slow but steady growth.

Their new pride is this fancy glass bridge connecting one renovated area of the old town and… dont exactly know what because the other side is not ready yet,so it doesn”t lead anywhere yet. But whenever they finish it will be a lovely walking area.

New "Glass Bridge" of Tbilisi

Impressive...

The first thing one should do in Tbilisi (after the welcome drinks of course) is to have some local food. So did I! This pelmeni in the clay pot looks great and even though it looks like a small portion s it”s a really filling stuff.

Pelmeni and a Natakhtari beer... lovely!!

At night (they say this is the case all night) there was a party at the hostel, the place which feels more like a hippy home of the sixties especially with the 2 relaxed owners, but this is the cool part and everyone seems to enjoy it. Again,beers, chacha ad libitum (I also bought 2 liters for the community) and difficult wake-up the next day.

My home for 2 nights.

I decided to take a taxi rather than a marshrutka as I was simply not willing to sit in a crowded minibus for 7 hours… I did it enough before. The diver was a real rip-off guy and we stopped 46 times en route to buy tomatoes or watermelon but he was keen on bargaining on 5 cents difference and spend his (and my) time with that.

Anyhow, got to Yerevan, got to my favourite hostel where they said they had not one bed free. Lovely. 11PM, I met Levon, our local friend who arranged me a superb apartment in 2 minutes, took me for a dinner and beer and also arranged a car for me for next morning. After waching the soap opera between Brazil and Ivory Coast I saved myself for tomorrow.

Levon picked me up at 10:30 and drove me to the car rental agency where I took my new workhorse, an almost brand new Suzuki Grand Vitara. Wow! Electric everything and A/C too! Life is too kind…

I planned to do the trip till Gori but since I had no time consuming paperwork at the border this time I was driving as far as Kutaisi and will continue from here tomorrow. Honduras lost. Goodnight.

“Kosovo has a deep historical and spiritual meaning for the Serbian people, it is, in a way, our Jerusalem. We cannot accept unilateral conclusions by those governing in Pristina,” he said.

Well, this is a good example of the completely different thinking on the two sides of the Ibar river. The bridge over that river is not connecting but separating the inhabitants of Kosovska Mitrovica and – symbolically – Serbia from Kosovo.

KFOR post by the bridge of Kosovska Mitrovica - the divided city

There was a serious threat for conflict on May 30 and only the KFOR and EULEX forces prevented the fight between Albanians and Serbians.

For the details, click HERE.

For a Hungarian article, click here.

This situation alone is interesting for the participants of the Caucasian Challenge, but what makes it even more interesting that the folks on the 2 sides of the river are pretty pissed off each other nowadays. And we’re going to cross this town on Day 2 of our challenge.

We are not even surprised reading the news, it seems that ethnical and political conflicts or natural disasters follow the route of the Caucasian Challenge each year.

In 2008 right before the start the Russian-Georgian war bursted out, luckily it more or less calmed down before we got there. Same year there were fights between Karabakh and Azeri forces on the frontline, again, a couple of months before we arrived there.

Last year an earthquake of magnitude of 6.2 on the Richter scale struck Northern Georgia, not far from the place we stayed that time. Then just before we were leaving for Europe again, we heard about the devastating flood in Turkey, stopping some of the teams around Istanbul.

We have no idea what we face this year but we are positive that both people and nature will work on entertaining us…

Attila

Anyhow, since I had to wait I drove back to Kavala and spent an unplanned night there on the beach (what a disaster) and relaxed a bit.

Kavala town by the sea

And Kavala food. Yum.

Saturday morning they quickly changed the shock absorber, I got a coffee and played with the mechanic’s kids. And finally paid a very low labour fee, again, half price.

After we said goodbye I was off towards Turkey. The border crossing took only half an hour and the visa was only 15 Euros for a multiple one (2 years ago it was five hours and the visa was 40 Euros for a single entry, so things go the positive way here). As usual, I had to chat with the border guards but after 2 Puskas, 1 Albert and 8 “ah, Macaristan” and lots of smiling, was on the way towards Istanbul.

I previously decided to drive only till Tekirdag as it’s an important site for us Hungarians and we had no chance so far to have a look at it. We stopped there once but arrived at 1AM and left at 7AM, so no sightseeing.

Fishermen's boats in Tekirdag

Turkey is surprisingly big and you realize it once you drive around the country. For fans of numbers:  780500 square kilometers and 73 million people. Quite interesting that even today and despite the growing tourism 80% of tourism is local.

And now it’s low/pre-season, and weekend, so zero foreigners, lots of locals and me. Everyone is incredibly kind and try to grab the oppotunity to use their school-English. I can’t understand Lonely Planet, they say it’s a dangerous country in general. Well, I don’t know where the authors have traveled but I never felt danger anywhere.
OK, the turks say the Kurdish eat Turks. (Actually the Serbs think the Albanians eat Serbs.) We have spent enough time among kurdish people and we are all alive.

Locals here very much take care of the Hungarian-Turkish relationship and history, another good example was 3 years ago the Kossuth house in Küthaya, and here the “Rákóczi kaddesi”, the place where Ferenc Rakoczi II lived and died in exile. And everyone knows what this is all about. OK, they were invaders and ruled in Hungary for 150 years, but you know, it’s like the Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where the leaders of the Judean People’s Front ask the question: “What have the Romans ever done for us?” One of my favourite scenes. So we like it or not we learned a lot from them.

The Rakoczi house in Tekirdag

So,  scouting part I is completed and finished a bit East of Istanbul. Part II is planned for mid-June.

Stay tuned.

Sz.

I finished the blog in Peja. I wanted to wake up early and finish at least the half of the next rally stage and get somewhere around Peshkopi.

When I was in Albania for the first time I was a bit worried… the image of the country is not really good. Now after 3 years and my fifth tour here I have similar feeling like with Georgia:  how  good is to be here again!

I don’t know if you met anyone having bad memories with this country, I haven’t. OK, it’s run down sometimes and there are no roads especially in the East, but the people are so amazing.

The Albanian Switzerland.

There are a couple of roads towards Tirana, the capital and in South by the coast, but the rest… from North to South along the Macedoniain border it’s virtually impassable in European terms. If somebody wants to get from Kukes to the Ohrid lake (apart from idiots like us) they need to drive 200 kilometers West to Tirana, and back 150. While the whole distance on “no roads” is 130.

Well, this 130 kilometers is 11 hours when it’s not raining and you find the right road for the first attempt.

Road to Kukes

It was more yesterday as there were serious rains in the region and I had to wait for hours while they pushed the rocks and mud from the “road” with a dozer.  At least I had time to lower the tire pressure.

Kukes was a routine drive where I found a fancy little hotel for the group.

Later on while driving towards Peshkopi I met a most interesting British couple in their 60′s  driving an old MG convertible. Since I’m driving a car on British plates too and there is no traffic over there at all, we made friends soon.

Their story is short… they started thinking back home and asked the question: what if?… and they were off.

They were pretty amazing with that oldtimer they managed to cross everywhere. I advised them to cross the border to Macedonia at Debar if they want to use their car in the future and don’t check the route in the South.

A beautiful British MG...

... rolling through Albania.

I got a quite new edition Albanian road map in Peshkopi and discuss my options with the waiter in the hotel we stayed last year. I wanted to check a route for 2WD cars but after I made half of the distance it turned out that it’s impassable due to rock fall. But they knew another road, and another, and so on.

I drunk 5 coffees with locals in different villages bars while asking for the route – of course they didn’t let me pay anywhere, although I tried. As usual, you can’t just ask for direction and go… they are happy to meet someone from the outside world and want to drink and chat with you.

I drove down to Pogradec in dark (that was a funny drive in darkness) where I found the accommodation for the rally and wanted to sleep after 16 hours of offroading.

As that place is a camping by Lake Ohrid and still not in the season, the don’t really have rooms – but as they looked at me they gave me a nice supper and made the couch in the “Piano Bar” for me so first time in my life (OK, not to mention the unintentional ones) I slept in a bar. “The Transporter” was on TV in Albanian, a great evening indeed!

My accommodation - in the bar.

Compared to my previous day, today’s drive covering 600 km was pretty easy. I didn’t mind driving on good asphalt and do more than 70 km an hour not 15.
I can feel and see the crisis here, the place I stopped for tonight is a resort but lots of shops and hotels are closed, fewer tourists come… but the Greeks are relaxed, they don’t complain.

One of the rear shock absorbers of the Pajero died on the Albanian “highways” but fortunately I found a nice cheap repair shop not far from my place so they will do the repairs today and I can continue to Turkey tomorrow.

Sz.

(Meaning “Hello” in Albanian, but the pronunciation… huh, we always struggle with this language…)

This day was shorter than yesterday but it was equally interesting. We agreed on all the details with the owner of the hotel in Ivanjica, also tested the restaurant which turned out to be excellent. I travel with 2 chefs so if they say it’s very good I’m sure we won’t have any problem with the food and drinks.

We learned from previous rallies that having a kick off party the night before the start is not a very good idea as most of the participants do their last minute preparations, spend their time with the families or whatever, they seem to be busy. So we decided to organize the party on the first night in Ivanjica where there shouldn’t be excuses for partying…
All you travelers, get ready for a kick ass kick off party in Serbia!

After some driving around I found the right way to Kosovo and got there relatively fast.

Err... what is this exactly?

The Serbian side of the border is nothing special, just 2 minutes and 3 dobar dans.

The more interesting things we experience later.

The Serbian - Kosovo border

This corner of Kosovo is inhabited only by Serbs… I knew this but would not know that I see only Serbian flags, cyrillic signposts and Serbian number plates here. Well, 4-5 out of 10 cars don’t have number plates at all. And the reason is that after Kosovo declared its independence, they issue only new number plates with Kosovo symbols. And the proud Serbs are not willing to put these plates on their cars, they just throw them into their trunks.
Civil disobedience, simply, but it seems to be OK . There’s no real government in this part of the country, we can only see KFOR vehicles here.

This odd situation is even more tangible when reaching Kosovska Mitrovica, the biggest town in the region. A city divided by a river but much more divided by cultural differences.

Up to the bridge it’s just like anywhere Serbia. But on the other side it’s the typical Albanian bustle, VW Golfs and Hummers and the white KFOR Land Cruisers are substituted by Italian and Hungarian KFOR vehicles. A petrol station and a car wash at every corner and almost everyone speaks at least a little English in this part of the city. Such a difference in one city is really amazing.

The road to Peja, our favourite town is even more scenic with growing mountains and the snow covered peaks of  Montenegro in front of us.

"Black" mountains of Montenegro

Since we left Ivanjica pretty late today and I kept on setting the challenge points I reached Peja late afternoon. As it’s not a smart idea to drive on the world famous Albanian back roads at night I decided to sleep in Peja. Nice hotel, free wifi and the best Beer in the region (called Peja). What else should a tired traveler need? Food. And I think I had the best döner in my life in a corner shop near the hotel.

Tomorrow I head for Albania, one of the all time favourite countries of CC participants.

Keep you posted!

Szabolcs

All these happened in the past. We wanted to cross the border in 2009 the same place we did in 2008 and they told us it stopped working as an international border. Nice, we had to find an alternative one. Next, we were happily driving in Karabakh on a well known “main road” when we were stunned realizing that a river was flowing where the road should have been.

The main road in Karabakh

So the scouting team has started to make the plan alive, finalize the route, set the challenges for the competition, find the best accommodation options, and collect all necessary info for the participants. We are lucky to have Nenad with us, a Serbian guy who lives in Budapest and has contacts all over the region. It was nice of him joining us for the first couple of days.

The idea was to spend the first night of the rally in a national park in Serbia. This was the first surprise the scouting team had to face. The lovely mountain resort only existed on the web and in some people’s dream.

There was nothing ready for tourism, we only found some weekend houses, an empty hotel waiting for renovation and no infrastructure. The local bar was (obviously) open and the point when we decided to give up this plan was when a local guy told us it’s not uncommon at all to have snow in July or in September and the peak temperature rarely exceeds 15 C in the summer.

Locals relaxing in the Bele Vode bar

Plus we were freezing like hell in this lovely late-Spring weather. Honestly we were not expecting this…

Nenad says enough is enough.

Spring in Bele Vode. The point of return.

Luckily we found a lovely little town near the “mountain resort” with a nice little hotel and some cool restaurants. Ideal for party for the first night.

Ivanjica boulevard.

We already like this place: it’s called The Last Supper. We wonder why…..

We keep in going towards Kosovo today. A nice challenge for day 2 is the border crossing between Serbia and Kosovo.

We keep you posted, check for daily updates in this blog!

Szabolcs

*** Kerényi György, “ladánedzett” sporttárs szines beszámolója ***

(ezen az oldalon alul vannak a korábbi bejegyzések, érdemes sorrendben olvasni…)

*** A Quart Team blogja ***

*** A Roncsbrigád csapat blogja ***

*** Az autosforum.hu beszámolói ***

(és alatta linkek a többi cikkhez)

Jó szórakozást!