Curried Haggis in Georgia

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.