Finally in Georgia, differences to Turkey, and climbing with Isarne and Humpelino (June 2023)

Finally we made it out of Turkey into Georgia! When I had started my journey in December 2021, Georgia had been the first country I really wanted to visit. Of course the other countries were all nice as well but Georgia was always special to me. It looked just awesome in the videos and photos. And for me it is the country between the West and the East.

I often thought: from Georgia eastwards the real adventure will start.

Immediately after crossing the border between Turkey and Georgia, we felt the difference: no singing/ chanting of Imams, alcohol everywhere, the people were dressed more revealingly, and although we met a lot of lovely people, some people seemed to be a bit grumpy.

After visiting old friends of Cindy near Batumi we continued to continue our traveling only with Rosinante and would pick up Thor some weeks later.

The weather got better and better and we decided to try the first climbing area in Katskhi. I did not have any climbing equipment at that point but we met again with Isarne who we knew from Cyprus and they borrowed me one pair of their climbing shoes.

Climbing was awesome and I loved how much it fits into the car and nature live. It was awesome to wake up, have some breakfast and just walk some hundred meters to the first climbing wall. And all of that together with very good friends.

Katskhi itself is an interesting spot for sightseeing as well: they have a chapel on a big stone pillar. Although it is not allowed to climb up there, it looks awesome.

And again we found some dog friends. Especially Humpelino was a nice companion. He got his name because he was limping and the German word for “limping” is “Humpeln”.

The first time at 3770 meters (June 2023)

Pretty close to our nice place at Van Lake was the Süphan Mountain. It looked wonderful from down there and so we decided to climb up as far as we could. The summit was absolutely snow covered so we did not plan to reach it but still we wanted to go up, up, up.

Again we went up pretty fast and had a super nice time. After we had reached our highest point at 3770 meters, we were sliding down the steep gravel patches and snow fields and had so much fun.

In the meantime, Yolo took some rounds on the paddling board with Vrolex on the Van Lake. Vrolex was a very nice couple from Switzerland traveling in their van. And when they said that they were going in the direction of Georgia as well, we said that we should meet again there.

You can see our tour on Komoot.