Tag Archives: walk🚶🏻
viruka
The good news: My big fat winter sleeping bag was with me, so the night hadn’t been too cold for me. The bad news: everything was wet. The tent, the sleeping bags, the therma-rest – it was all covered in dew: I decided to start the day with some sightseeing. So I bought a ticket […]
1-1-0-0-0
This post is about a 31km walk from Kavtiskhevi to Uplistsikhe. I pass the 11,000km mark on The Longest Way and do my little dance. For some odd reason, this had been a formidable night. I felt refreshed and happy when I got up and went to the kitchen to boil some water for my […]
just as lost
The world was still wet, but at least it had stopped raining. So I said goodbye to one of my favorite churches ever and got on the road: It was quiet. There was hardly any traffic. There were hardly any people. Even the villages seemed empty: Once I saw a cross by the roadside: And […]
the end of a journey
The tiger. He destroyed his cage. Yes. I left the apartment at about ten in the morning: Got the Caboose from her garage, loaded her up, and got on the road. Tbilisi was doing its best to show that it was a big city: I passed a monument of some horse-riding dude: And then, after […]
bike lane
I had been wanting to stay longer, and I had been meaning to extend my stay, but I had recently developed a propensity towards indecision. And so in the end someone else had ended up renting the apartment, which meant that I had to leave. Luckily, I had managed to find a new place. So […]
spirited away
I was going to move to my secret hideout today. So I said goodbye to my friends, got out the Caboose from under the stairway, and then I loaded her up and told her that the road was waiting for us once more: What I didn’t tell her: it wasn’t going to be that much […]
Tbilisi
When I woke up, I noticed two things. Firstly, there was a mysterious new hole in my pants: And secondly, the bath salts that I was carrying around in a zip bag looked like something out of Breaking Bad: And then there was supposed to be Tbilisi. At first it was just a road sign: […]
what would Jesus do
When I left the house in the morning, I knew it was going to be a long day. It was Friday, and I would have to be in Tbilisi on Sunday in order to get my next rabies shot. Tbilisi was still about 70 kilometers away, so today I needed to cover some distance. Shota […]
winehouse
The hotel had turned out to be not actually that expensive (about 50 euros per night), but still, it had a very posh vibe too it. Word had it that there was a pool, that there was a spa, and that there was also a golf course. I only saw the gate to a place […]
the rabies scare
I filled my thermos flasks with hot tea, and then I left. It was a day for optimists: the sun was shining, the Caboose seemed light, and I had not a worry on my mind. One time I ran into a bunch of cows and they were very annoyed by the Caboose and me: That’s […]
Taco Taco
When I got ready to leave, Jemal was there to wave me off and give me hot water for my tea: Then another gentleman appeared with what seemed like a bottle of cola, a cup of either water or vodka, and a very relaxed mood: And then I got on the road. One thing that […]
confidence or defiance
The first thing I noticed when I started walking through Georgia was a truck from Iran: Hmm… I thought, Iran. A country to hate and to love all at the same time. The driver was nowhere to be found, so I started to walk out of Lagodekhi: Very soon, the little town gave way to […]
which way to the Coke Museum?
I drank a little more of the V, and then I packed my stuff and left the hotel to walk the rest of the way towards the border with Georgia. The streets in Balakan seemed a tiny bit more flashy than the others before it: The late President’s words were carved in stone on a […]
bowl, bottle, bonhomie
I woke up with something like a faint notion of optimism within me. Sure, the border was still about 50k away, but it felt possible to reach it before midnight the next day. That was when my visa was going to run out. Zaqatala turned out to be a bit bigger than I had expected: […]
the absence of light
I woke up in a hotel that was small and dirty. There was a slightly stupid-looking cat greeting me outside of my door: Everyone else seemed to be still asleep, so I just left the key in the door and stepped out on the streets of Qakh: I needed some tea, though. So I went […]
a breaking voice
I only had four days to get to the border, or else my visa for Azerbaijan would run out. So I said goodbye to the old town and the caravanserai and the mushroom, and I stepped out of the gates and started walking again: It was at least 110km to the border, and some of […]
full of piti
I woke up to the most gentle of morning lights: Fazil was busy doing his accounting: And two gentlemen were busy playing backgammon: Want some piti? Fazil asked me, and he showed me the food he was preparing: Piti is a dish of mutton and vegetables slow-cooked in a little crock. Of course I wanted […]
take my picture!
I woke up in a small room with another piece of classic hotel art on the wall: Someone gave me hot water for my tea, then I left. I was going to reach the historical town of Sheki today, finally. I had been looking forward to it for quite some time. But first there was […]
stress
I woke up in a wet world. The only thing that wasn’t moist was the inside of my tent. I packed up and started walking: There was a myst of morning due that hung in the air… …covering everything in a thin layer of water: It took a while for the sun to cut through […]
wet lands of the forgotten people
When I left the museum/hotel, it seemed as though the whole place was asleep. The season was over, I was told, there were no tourists and almost no visitors. And then something very good happened. If you look at the map, you will see a river that runs from the north to the south, a […]