As I look up at the stars, warming my back by the campfire we just made, I feel small. Like an ant discovering the world, small but strong. Small because the world is just a small planet in this huge universe. Strong because most of those stars are uninhabitable, and we got it working here on this planet.
Rickshaw and Sawadee offer ready-made tours for Georgia. Sawadee mainly focuses on group trips and family tours, while Riksja sells more individual trips.
At Riksja you can also use building blocks. A day less or longer here or there is no problem. You then actually put together your trip exactly the way you want.
- Good price / quality ratio
- Very flexible
- 20 years of experience
Vibrancy in the wilderness
We feel so alive during this journey. Camping in the wildest places – well, as wild as our bus can go. We cook on campfires, wash ourselves in small streams, rivers or lakes, and use a secret place behind the bushes for our needs. We are much more aware of the food we make, what we put into our bodies and the effort it takes to make it when you have nothing but a campfire. The comforts that come with it The Netherlands considered normal have become a luxury here.
It's funny how city life has never made us feel so alive, even though we absolutely love the hustle and bustle of cities. Nature is where we humans belong, we feel that. Nowadays we feel a bit strange in cities, as if we no longer belong in these concrete jungles. They are too busy for our liking. Everything is just too much, the traffic, the people, the sounds, the smells, the colors.
We are happiest when camping, where we hear nothing but the wind in the trees, the birds chirping and a river splashing against some rocks. We feel at home with grass under our feet, stars above our heads and surrounded by trees and mountains.
Back to Nature
That's why we're alone Tbilisi (Location here) if it has to. And alexine – fond of the city's good roads – makes us return more often than we would like. But then we return to nature as quickly as possible. We find the most beautiful places, often only sharing them with some dogs. Sometimes with the locals who have a barbecue and often invite us too.
Perhaps it is humanity's constant flow of sound that makes us crave the sound of birds so much. Perhaps it is the walls of the city that make us need forests in our lives. Maybe it's the screens we stare at so often that make us want to see mountains again. Maybe it is the city we know so well that we feel so free in nature.
Also read: Georgia revealed in 3 seconds
Roadtrip with friends and meetings in Svaneti
However, cities are good for meeting people and making friends. And we did that. With these friends, owners of Volkswagen T3s, we had a short but wonderful one roadtrip. The planet is so diverse yet so similar. We drove through the fog and found ourselves in what is known as the Lake District of Georgia.
The weather, the views, the roads – we felt like we were back in Western Europe. We visited the Georgian birthplace of Christianity, the chocolate making nuns and one of the oldest castles of Georgia. We drove through the fog into the sun, almost got blown off a cliff and blinded by a big rain storm. We had car trouble, were helped by the locals and visited an old slave market.
Exploration of abandoned cities
In the end we had dinner in a very luxurious restaurant, got a doggy bag and slept at the foot of the famous cave city vardzia (Location here).
The next morning we climbed the stairs of this cave city, explored the secret tunnels and had a sound check in one of the dark rooms. We left for borjomi, where we drank a glass of 'stinking' water that drove Stalin crazy. True story. And after two days, 300 kilometers and countless enjoyable moments, we said goodbye to our friends and headed back into the wilderness.
In the concrete wilderness
As we drove north to Svaneti, we made a short stop in Skaltubo (Location here). It's a small town, but very interesting. It was once a bustling spa town, but since the fall of the Soviet Union it has become an urbex jungle.
If cities are called concrete jungles, I'm sure this is called the concrete wilderness. A city where, just like Chernobyl, nature has taken over. Or back, I guess. The baths where thousands of Russians once came to relax are now home to bushes and dogs. The sanatoriums where the Russians came to regenerate and get better are now in disrepair. Stairs without steps, windows without glass, walls without a roof. For explorers like us, this is a treat.
The refugees from Abkhazia
Even more so because we discovered that people actually live there. It is certainly not suitable for living, but the people who live here have no choice. They are called internally displaced people Abkhazians, forced to flee from their home due to the civil war between Abkhazians who want to be part of Georgia and Abkhazians who want to be part of Russia. The war started on August 14, 1992 and ended 16 months later. The people were given a temporary house. Thirty years later they still live there. So while we wander this lost city like urbex explorers, these people are living in these buildings that are basically ready for demolition.
More hot springs and back to the Mountains
We continued our journey to the hot springs as we needed a hot shower. Well, Yuri needed it. Okay, a hot waterfall, who can resist that? The next day we moved to the mountains of Svaneti. We felt like Bilbo in Lord of the Rings, happy to see mountains again. And that, folks, is the end of this story. We explore the mountains and our climbing altitude limits over the next few days in this most famous area of Georgia. Now, fortunately, with much fewer tourists!
Rickshaw and Sawadee offer ready-made tours for Georgia. Sawadee mainly focuses on group trips and family tours, while Riksja sells more individual trips.
At Riksja you can also use building blocks. A day less or longer here or there is no problem. You then actually put together your trip exactly the way you want.
- Good price / quality ratio
- Very flexible
- 20 years of experience
