Georgia

Exiting Russia was the border crossing I was most feared it could go wrong, I had read and eared about how difficult or impossible to cross the it with someone else's vehicle, that I thought it could be the end of the west going. Regardless of all my doubts, this was the fastest border crossing so far \o/
The military road, right after the border is in pretty bad condition but the views let you easily forget about that. After ridding over 4.000 km of plains, mostly against strong winds, cold and rain, looking at these mountains with the top still covered in snow, the absence of wind and the warm temperatures made me feel good.

Plan was to ride up to the Gergeti Trinity church but I met two other Africa Twin riders going in the opposite direction and they mentioned that due to the weekend it was all full with tourists and it would be better to drive up on Monday. Spend the night in Gudauri, took a look at the map for the next day and saw an interesting mountain pass going back to Stepandsminda, that should be partially unpaved at the top. On the way stopped for breakfast at a roadside cafe and had a Chatschapuri, way too big for one person.

The road was unpaved right out of Pasanauri but easy to ride until I came across a strong water stream where the depth was uncertain.

I waited for a while until a truck came by and I could watch it jumping around in the stream and see that it was in fact quite deep, so I made the wise choice and turned around. On the way back, already on tarmac I met Otto, an Austrian guy on a KTM 990 Adventure who is also ridding solo, we talked for a while and agreed to meet again at Stepandsminda. I stopped a couple of times on the way to take pictures and enjoy the views spending a lot of time but Otto did not catch up, so I thought that he had stopped on the way for lunch or something else and I rode up to the church, awesome.

On the way down I saw Otto's bike at one hotel and we I lunch together and chatted the rest of the afternoon.

Next day was time to get as near to the Turkish border as possible to cross it the day after.

I heard that the Khulo pass was a really nice route so I went for it.

Met a Russian guy at the top on a Suzuki DR Big but the only thing we could exchange was the remaining amount of km of bad road ahead for each of us, 20 for me over 10 for him.

The pace on this stretch was very slow and the daylight was getting to the end, once I got to paved ground I increased the speed considerably to avoid ridding in the dark but after a couple of corners I began to loose the front and I realized that the front tire was loosing air very fast. I stopped, took the air compressor that I had with me and tried to inflate the tire but it was broken. I looked at the GPS for the nearest logging possibility and it was only around 5 km away, walked the bike for a while until I saw a parking lot with trucks, went in asked if they had a compressor but had no luck. So slowly I walked the bike further until I reached a hotel, kindly they let me park the bike inside for the night.

The following morning I took care of the tire.

Actually I should not have started with this front tire in the condition that it was but had already lost two days with the electric problem and decided to take the risk. It's true that the front tire was complete garbage from the moment I started but the tube was even worse, full of patches and falling apart, as a matter of fact I didn't puncture the tube, it simply disintegrated itself, very lucky that it didn't happen in the middle of Kasakhstan. It's amazing how careless some people are with the lives of others, unbelievable. Sometimes in this trip, I feel like I'm in a reality TV Show, looking around for the cameras pointing at me.