August 2013

This is Thomas and Lydwin, a lovely couple from Belgium. Below is one of the bikes they bought secondhand online. When fully loaded, each rig runs at about 45 kilo, about 100 lbs, and includes a kickstand each, horns, saddlebags, and rearview mirrors.

On 9/11 2012 they grabbed a cheap flight to Budapest, and started cycling on a popular bicycle route to Croatia. From here they pedaled on to Serbia, to Bulgaria, then ferried across the Black Sea to Istanbul. Winter was coming, so to speed things up they jumped on a bus through Turkey to Iran, where they cycled city to city, camping two out of three nights, and otherwise staying in guesthouses and with couchsurfer hosts. From the coast they took a ferry across the Persian Gulf to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and then biked to Dubai for Christmas and New Year’s. A girl they met on CS put them in touch with friends there, so they wouldn't be camping alone during the holidays.

They rode on to the "amazing country" of Omam. "So hospital but not pushing,” Lydwin told me. “So friendly, and also one of the safest in the world. We sleep so well in our tent. You can see the sea, you can see the desert, you can see the mountains... it's so quiet.

“They are very traditional, a white dress the men would wear, with fez on their head. All men, even young guys. The infrastructure was amazing. Everyone had like two iPhones, a Blackberry, Samson galaxy, drive big fat car. But they aren't like, 'I'm the man.' They are all nice, and they always joke, 'Who is your favorite dictator?' He is Sultan with absolute power. His is very smart man. He builds the schools and hospitals and he spent all the money to build infrastructure, and so every village now has electricity and roads. In the 70s there was only one school in Oman, and now every village has a school now. The government owns the oil business and so no one paid taxes. He is 75, he doesn't have a wife or children, and everybody thinks he is gay, but of course you can't say this.”

So from Oman, they flew to India, to Mumbai, where the roads are too dangerous to cycle. They took a break from cycling and stayed with friends, working at a hotel where they were responsible for the nonalchoholic rooftop bar, made waffles and sold soda, coffee, and tea. They also lived 12 days in a mudhut in the middle of a farm, weeding a chickpea field. 

Two months passed in India, and then they were on a plane to Kirghistan. From here they rode to Tajikistan, though he mountains to Uzbekistan, (deciding against Afganistan), capital to capital on the famous Pamir Highway I'd never heard of - second highest road in the world apparently.  At the empty endlessness of Kazakhstan they opted for the train and then only across the corner, just to spend five days in the nondescript harbor city of Aktua, waiting for a freight boat that would take them to Baku in Azerbaijan. Here they were issued a seven-day visa, and had to pedal their little Belgium hearts out to get to the border of Georgia, into Lagodekhi. The next day they took the confusing roads out into the Kakheti region, and after a few wrong turns, several text messages, and a friendly truck driver who dropped them off nearby, they found their couchsurfer host, me, in the town Apeni.

They stayed two nights in the big empty village house I had rented and lived in for nine months. They were happy to be able to drink beer again, and wear non-conservative clothing, which amounted to shorts and sleeveless shirts. They'd been on the road nearly a year with only three flat tires altogether.

 They left Wednesday morning towards Tbilisi, and eventually were to cross the country to Batumi where they planned to ferry it to Ukraine, then to Romania, Moldavia maybe, The Czech Republic, Germany, and finally back to Belgium by October. They were my final couchsurfers.

I had several. Couchsurfers show up, hangout, talk in place of paying, and then leave all of a sudden. I have found acquaintanceships work very well in short, discrete bursts. No commitment. Very quaffable. I quite like that. Most of all, it helped me get through living in Apeni.

In July, a young French boy named Andre showed up quite suddenly and surprised while I playing guitar. He had messaged me the week before, but I hadn't heard from him since, and he was a day late. His phone hadn't been working, he’d explained.  His internship in Finland had ended several months before, and he’d since took off, and had been traveling ever since.

Most recently he had wondered somewhat dangerously across the Caucuses down from Russia into Georgia. “Don’t worry,” he’d reassured me. “It’s only dangerous if you go off the main road.” We stayed up late talking. "In Paris, people are all nihilists," he'd said. "They sit around in a cafe not caring about anything all day, not wanting anything, smoking their cigarettes and drinking their coffee, and all wishing they were Baudelaire."

“They all hate McDonald's, but it’s the most popular place to eat. If you go here it’s full of French people, all looking at the ground, all with an excuse for being there.

When he left, Andre hadn't yet decided if he was going to make his way down through Turkey to Iran, or to fly black to Ukraine to reunite with a girl he’d first stolen from her boyfriend in Lviv and then fallen in love with. So on he rumbled the next morning, in the marshrutka, off to surf another couch or some shit like that.

All that's over now. I've changed sites to the charming village Kistauri and am living with a lovely family. I've access to a toilet now, and there's a kitchen, hot water, and not a shower but a shower head, and food not cooked by me. But those are all details, and actually I'd gotten quite used to squatting and bucket-bathing (they have their advantages actually). Most importantly is that the folk I live with are wonderfully nice people, and I think the director and English teachers are serious about having a volunteer as well. The semester starts in exactly one month.

Finally, last weekend I went up north to Khevsureti on an excursion for volunteers hosted generously by our PC training manager Tengo. At one point we were less than 3 kilometers from Dagestan, just a peak in between. It was a beautiful place, mountains and old deserted towns, and stone buildings and towers on the tops of steep hills.