Georgia

[gbags]

Hi Gang,

Has anyone been to Georgia? The country, not the state.

It looks lovely and unspoilt, interesting and fun. Oh, and cheap too.

If you’ve been, I’d love to hear some recommendations and suggestion. Places to visit, mountains to trek, food to eat, roads to ride and more.

Cheers all.

[PaulinBont]

Yep, loved Georgia, went a few years ago . Entered from Russia and out via Turkey.
It’s all great ( especially if you like wine)
Highlights were the people, the Military Road, Stepantsminda , the mountains, the scenery.
With hindsight, I regret not going to Tbilisi for a few days as by all accounts it is a great city to visit for a few days. Batumi was lovely.

I was hoping to cross the Black Sea from Batumi to Bulgaria or Romania but the ferry was too unreliable so came back via Turkey , Greece and the Balkans.

I’d go back in a heartbeat!

[gbags]

Thanks Paul,

Great stuff. I’m looking at YouTube vids and it looks wonderful.

I like the idea of that ferry back as I’ll be going in via Turkey. I love Romania and want to ride the Transfagarasan. Is the ferry always chaotic, or just then for some reason?

I’ll look up the other places you mention and post some pics when I go.

[DanielS]

We've done it three times now. Here's the second time I think when I took my other half.

https://adventurebikerider.com/forum/vi ... 21&t=44599

Was good fun, would go back again.

[PaulinBont]

Thanks Paul,

Great stuff. I’m looking at YouTube vids and it looks wonderful.

I like the idea of that ferry back as I’ll be going in via Turkey. I love Romania and want to ride the Transfagarasan. Is the ferry always chaotic, or just then for some reason?

I’ll look up the other places you mention and post some pics when I go.

Sometimes it runs, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it goes when it’s full, sometimes…..

[gbags]

Thanks fellas,

My Garmin Europe doesn’t extend to Georgia; what mapping did you use?

[gbags]

I like your trip report Daniel. We (wife and I on one bike) went to Ukraine a few years ago and loved it. Your trip looks great but off for the foreseeable future.

[PaulinBont]

Thanks fellas,

My Garmin Europe doesn’t extend to Georgia; what mapping did you use?

My Garmin went blank when I entered Russia from Estonia and suddenly came back to life once I crossed from Georgia into Turkey; used locally-purchased paper maps, did the job and were very useful when faced with Cyrillic road signs

[DanielS]

I used Waze/Google maps (You can download the Google Maps for Offline use so you don't need Internet/data) on my phone.

I think the very first time I went, I had a Garmin 660 and I just downloaded the maps from OpenStreetMap's NL server and put those on the Garmin. I see that's defunct now though and been replaced with this. https://download1.bbbike.org/osm/ Same thing really, just takes a bit of timkering with, but I found OSM's maps better than Garmin's official ones anyhow for almost everywhere I used it.

[gbags]

Waze and paper maps it is then.

I can’t do all that downloads thing and I do like paper maps.

I have bought chips for the Garmin on other long trips but just for Georgia, possibly Armenia, paper maps will be fine.

DeepL is a pretty good app for anything written that needs translating but it doesn’t have Georgian.