The road was, indeed, along a broad river valley, and there were the fields and orchards along the side. The road took me through Pasinier fairly soon, and it was a crowded and dirty little town. I was stopped at the first traffic light in town, where the intersecting road came over the railroad tracks. There were many, many people there, wiring for the light, waiting for the train, waiting for whatever, and I was carefully scrutinized. There were burqas everywhere. I was relieved when the light changed and I could go.
The rest of the ride to Kars was fairly uneventful, but I kept seeing more and more Jandarma and military vehicles. This was on a Friday, and you will recall that at Friday sermons, the Mullahs preach their most important sermon of the week. Hmmm. I kept riding.
I came through this glorious stretch of road up some canyon lands. I tried to get good pictures, but they don't seem to capture the beauty of the place.
The road surface wasn't the best, but I've ridden worse in Alaska. I really enjoyed the riding and the scenery. Not too hot, no wind, curvy roads. Great stuff.
I got through Kars and headed north and then west. More Jandarma, and all the sentry and guard posts were manned. I came up through one pass and, on the hilltop to my left, commanding both the pass and the river below, was a new army post built on the remains of an old castle or fort. You could see the old stone wall acting as the foundation for the new post's concrete walls. Apparently, whatever type attack they feared did not involve artillery. . .
Not too long after that, the road took me from a high plain down into a valley, and then through the middle of a village. This one didn't have a center median, unless the drain counts. Regardless, I was once again being scrutinized, but now there were groups of men. I checked to make sure there were women and kids still around, and there were. In this village, all I saw were burqas. Then as I came around a curve, there was a stream of men coming out of the mosque. They seemed agitated. I politely rode up the hill and out of town. It was on the way out of this town that the goose attacked my moto. An angry goose running at you and hissing with its neck stretched out is a funny sight on a moto accelerating away.
I kept on climbing. The views were better and better, and the hills were greener and greener. In a high pass, I came upon what looked like government built housing off on the left, as the houses were all the same size, color, and in neat rows. There didn't seem to be any signs of life around them. No smoke, no dogs, nothing moving. Just after I crested the pass, I saw a fair or something, with tractors and tents and horses. Lots of people, too. They seems to be living in sod and stone huts, with grass growing on the tops of the huts. Each hut seemed to have a little courtyard in front of it, and some had tractors parked in the gateway to the courtyard. A stream ran deep in a little valley between the roadway and the cluster of huts that were strewn across the hillside. Women were bringing water up the hill from the stream in tin pails and cans hung from yokes on their shoulders. I didn't want to risk offending anyone, so I didn't stop to photograph them.
Later, I stopped to take some photos at the top of the highest pass, 2500 meters or something. It was just a really nice day.
Do you see that dark line just below the horizon? That is not a shadow, those are the tops of some pine trees. See how flat that looks? Well, those pine trees open into a gully, that becomes a gorge, that drops fast and hard. From this beautiful panoramic hilltop, I dropped into a beautiful, twisty gorge with hairpin 180 degrees turns. The hills were covered with pine, and the smell was fantastic. After getting to the halfway point, and passing a truck that had been in front of me whose brakes had just caught fire, the road split, and my route took me back up, this time (still through pines and now open meadows) to what looked like the Black Forest in Germany. The surrounding mountains were clad in dark pine trees, and the lower slopes were green meadows and hay fields dotted with houses and small village clusters. I had the sense that this was an area with many summer homes.
So far, the traffic had been light, and so it was a lot of fun to ride and see the views. As I approached Ardahan, that changed, and there was more traffic, and I had to pay more attention to what was going on around me. Ardahan is a city/town that is built on the side of a gorge with a river at the bottom. I wondered if maybe they needed two mayors, one for the top half and one for the bottom half, as the top and bottom were separated by a vertical drop of a few hundred feet. The top part was a narrow street with the usual bustle and clogged passageway, while the bottom was more open. The road then followed this valley and the river.
By now it was getting hotter, and I was headed directly west into the setting sun. The valley, which turned very narrow with room at the bottom for only the river, the road, and narrow little fields, had captured the heat of the sun, and was holding it close. There was little wind in spite of the river. That river was tumbling, too. I didn't see any rafters or kayakers, just some fishermen, fishing away.
The road was cut into the side of the rock of the hill. It followed every twist and turn, and the traffic built up. The road was littered with potholes and rock debris from the hillside above, and the drivers became worse and worse. I just hugged the spot where a fog line would be if there had been one, but the close calls kept coming, as driver after driver insisted on passing in the blindest of blind curves. Suddenly, I noticed that the river was no longer tumbling, but had slowed considerably. Sure enough, the river slowly started widening, and so did the gorge, which now became a valley.
Now there were rock walls on the sides of the valley instead of trees, and you could see the monumental efforts the engineers had undertaken to maintain a roadway along the side of the mountains above this reservoir. The rock wall of the hillside had still not found its angle of repose, and the evidence of near constant rockslides was everywhere. The road crossed a bridge back over to the north side, and became much better. That is, there weren't as many rockslides, and the road was wider and better paved. And hell-on-wheels broke loose.
Every dimwitted, unlicensed, egocentric, untrained, race-car-driver-wanna-be with a short p***s and a motor vehicle decided he had to set a new speed record to get to Artvin that day. It was insane. I had a guy pass me less than two feet away downhill in a blind curve against two lanes of traffic (another guy was passing someone coming our way) at 50mph. A few moments later, a minibus did the same thing. A few moments after that, a Volvo coming towards me decided to pass a truck coming uphill towards me in a blind curve. That is, I was going downhill, right hand curve, and suddenly right in front of me was this Volvo coming uphill entirely in my lane, and not slowing or yielding. The pucker factor meter went to 1 immediately.
I have had it. I am not going to ride in Turkey again. It is just too dangerous. Or so I said at the time. I made it into Artvin, got some gas, stopped at a stoplight and had some words with the guy who had barely missed me. He held his hands about a foot apart and let me know I shouldn't complain, he had missed me by that much. Good point.
I made it alive to Hopa, and thought I would spend one last night in Turkey. I saw a hotel, and thought I would inquire about a room. I had to ride two kilometers to get there (central median again). I pulled into their parking area in front, which had a fairly steep slope to it, but I thought I could safely stop and park there. Epic fail. I put down the kick stand, tested the stability of the bike, got off, and it immediately fell right on top of me. So there I am, on the ground, under the bike, crawling out. I looked and, sure enough, I had broken the clutch lever, and the left mirror was on the ground, too. Moreover, the stalk on the left front turn signal was broken. So I stood up, dusted myself off, and with the help of the doorman and a guest got the bike up and stable again.
So there was good news and bad news. First, the bad news was the hotel was full, and the mirror was going to be a problem because the shaft or stem that holds the mirror head had broken the jam nut that holds it in a bolt on the handlebars. That is a bike specific part. The good news was I had another clutch lever zip-tied to my frame, and replacing it only took a few minutes. I was tired, I was hot, and I was thirsty. I had Georgia on my mind. I decided to put Turkey in my one remaining review mirror, and I did.
The border crossing was lengthy because of my license plate. It is a vanity plate, OX AK. They don't understand that. They finally gave up both at the Turkish post and the Georgian post, and let me through. At the Georgian post, a lovely young woman asked in excellent English if this was my first time to Georgia. I said yes, and she said "Welcome to Georgia." This has happened in several conversations with Georgians. They are very nice, and pleasant to deal with.
After I cleared customs and passport control, I started off down the highway, headed to Batumi and a room. About 100 meters in I spotted a sign that said Hotel. I pulled in immediately. Excellent choice. This was a Western style resort motel, right across the street from the Black Sea. I had my own chalet! And dinner was outdoors, chicken Kiev, fries, and a salad. The tomatoes were the best I have eaten in a very, very long time. They were almost as sweet as apples. That food and a hot shower made everything right, although I was still unhappy with Turkish drivers. Turns out they are amateur hour compared to Georgians.
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