Curried Haggis in
Georgia!
A lot has changed in the two years since Curried Haggis went
to the Andes. Sunny is starting to lose interest in cycle touring (in favour of
driving and climbing), Andy very briefly owned an expensive bike (which
miraculously was more ridiculous than his shitty Trek) and Toby has FACIAL
HAIR! Yes, the man who only two years ago could produce a barely visible tash
after two months of growth (below, left) now has a beard fine enough to inflame
jealously in the man who almost overnight grew a textbook handlebar (below,
right).
The team members have also changed; we’ve lost Andy to a gay
road cycling holiday in France but instead we are being joined by Guy who brings
with him an unfortunate track record of multiple almost-critical mechanicals on
bike tours and a vast vocabulary of Peep Show references.
Some things, however, will never change. With 5 days to go
till departure:
- We have done precious little planning/organising and almost all of it will inevitably get done at the Weatherspoon’s Gatwick airport.
- 2 out of 3 of the bikes going on this trip are undergoing quite major maintenance/upgrades
- The success of this trip relies quite heavily on a lot of good luck with the weather and mechanicals
Also unchanged is the comically wide range of bikes being
ridden. At one extreme is Sunny’s new Surly Long Haul Trucker, a bike that has
only one purpose in life and that is to be a perfect touring bike.
On the other
extreme, we have Guy’s purple bike, which is built around an ugly old eBay frame
(whose only redeeming feature is its cheapness) and old worn out components found lying around the house.
And in the middle is Toby’s Dawes; a bike that isn’t
quite shit enough to be a joke bike but also nowhere near good enough to be
taken seriously.
Anyway, so in 5 days’ time we will be flying out to Tbilisi
in Georgia. Georgia of the FUSSR variety, not of the home of Coca Cola variety.
We are flying with Ukraine International Airlines which is rated worse than
North Korean and Tajik Airlines and requires you to fly Business class in order
to enjoy luxuries such as in flight meals. We have a brief 7 days of riding
time and we intend to make the most of it by heading straight into the Svaneti
National Park. The scenery looks incredible and the people are supposed to the
most hospitable.
We were keen to avoid going somewhere with rubbish food after
lessons learnt in Peru and the fact that the Georgian language has a word
meaning “to continue eating even though you are full just for the pleasure of
eating” fills us with much hope about Georgian cuisine. The language barrier
promises to be a source of continuous confusion and entertainment as not only
is the script totally alien, the pronunciations of many letters, let alone whole
words, are impossible.
Other things we are excited about include a brief jaunt
into Kiev during our long layover on the way out and the look of pure misery on
Toby’s face after each night of camping in his bivi bag.
Anyway, that’s enough for now and here’s hoping that in true Curried
Haggis style everything will come together perfectly at the last moment, or
perhaps we have used up all of our good luck by now? Getting stuck on a snowed
off pass after a horrible cold wild camp and having to ride back to the start
of the route is an uncomfortably plausible reality.