17 and 18 August 2019
Atskuri - Green Monastery - Borjomi - Gori - Ananuri
Orux map screenshot:BLUE line is the planned route
RED line is the actual route we drove
Ruins of the fortress Atskuri, too steep and high to climb up today. The fortress was first mentioned in 11th century as one of the most important strategic buildings of historical Mesheti.
Georgia is famous for its Oldtimers
On the streets are always villagers selling their products directly to the passers by ... poor chicken
The Green Monastery was build in Chitahevi in 9th century in the middle of a beautiful forest near the river Kura. The monks cells were located around the church complex.
Nowadays only few monks live in wooden buildings beside the church complex.
The old truck of Sowjet times....
....is replaced by a hidden modern car
Borjomi seems to have been a touristic centre with lots of hotels in the old Sowjet times, but now the glory has vanished. We do some shopping, ask to buy a Sim card with Google translator, but people in the shops are not intrested and willing to help. Even the young don't speak any English. The difficulty for us is also, that the Georgian alphabet is very difficult to read, specially we don't know the names of the telecom companies.
Finally in Gori, Stalins birth town, we find someone in an exchange office, who can speak a little English. He is very helpful and directs us down to Stalin street no.9. Luckily the shop is open on Saturday afternoon and we can buy a Sim card. We didn't stay in Gori to visit Stalin's birth house and museum, because we already did that at our last RoadTrip 2014.
The dam of Aragwi River filling up Zhinvali reservoir
On the opposite side of Ananuri we have our camp beside Lake Zhinvali in the middle of cow shit with a beautiful view to the fortress of Ananuri. We decide to have our 2 days break here in the cool weather of the mountains.
Garbage disposal is also a big problem in Georgia. Wherever we find a nice non touristic place we have to search for a clean place. But in the bushes is mostly always garbage. So sad
In Georgia the cows are really happy....their territory is everywhere.
Within this 2 days we have about 5 campers as neighbours, all German. It's so interesting to talk together and exchange experiences. Marie and Johannes, after talking with us applied for a visa to Iran. They have a car which needs euro diesel, which is not available in Iran, so if they get a visa they will travel via backpack through Iran.
Another camper Markus just has arrived from a 6 weeks journey to Iran accompanied by his dog Nima . Since Iranian government is not allowing domestic dogs, it's very important for us to hear about his experience with his dog in Iran.
Markus and his girlfriend Beate come over for a chat in the evening. We have a nice bonfire, good Georgian wine and Tara is happy to play with her new friend, maybe they exchange their adventures and Tara is getting advice how to behave in Iran.
In the morning we have our daily routine...
... time to say good by to our neighbour Markus
We have 2 cloudy days with some rain in between. It's the first time in this trip that our fridge and water pump are not working for one night, due to the fact that the solar panels don't produce enough electricity.
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