Living on a mountain in Winter in Georgia (January 2024)

Our cars had been stuck in a parking lot for weeks when a massive excavator came and cleaned the masses of snow in the parking lot.

The massive machine had a lot to do with it and in the end I gifted the driver a bottle of wine.

Living in Gudauri at 2200m during winter was an interesting experience. Things change a lot with the cold. Of course Rosinante’s heater was running a lot. And I had to clean our cars from the snow because sometimes the layer of snow was nearly a meter thick after a night of snowfall.

Once while cleaning the cars, a tourist family from India came by and asked if they may clean parts of the snow because it looks interesting and they never had to do it in their life. I was happy to let them do so and they had a lot of fun.

We couldn’t open Rosinante’s roof because the heater was not able to maintain the warmth with the popped up roof and so our living space got much more limited and we had to deal with humidity and ice on the inside of some parts of our camper cabin. But we did very well and it was adventurous.

In the beginning we tried to use the heater as little as necessary, but next time I’d just keep it running all day and night and regulate the temperature by opening the windows more or less.

And the route leading to Gudauri was crazy. After Gudauri this road leads to the only real border between Georgia and Russia and so all the trucks have to take it.

Because of the changes in temperature, the trucks and everything else, the condition of the roads got worse. One of the sharp corners broke so much that trucks got stuck for hours blocking the whole road. Other times the mountain pass leading to the border or the border itself got closed and all the trucks got stuck in Gudauri on the road. No chance to turn back or go further.

Whoopy’s refused to turn on after some nights with about -18 degrees Celsius and so she had to wait until the temperatures had risen again. But then it started without any problems.

And from time to time we had the best pizza in all of Georgia!

Thor gets Georgian license plates (December 2023)

Our plan was to spend the winter in Gudauri, the biggest ski resort in Georgia.

Racki wanted to find a job there and I was looking forward to learning snowboarding.

So we decided to get the temporary Georgian license plates for Racki’s car Thor. These ones are valid for three years and with them we won’t need to make a border run every three months.

The process of getting them was partly confusing and did take us about five hours in the offices in Rustavi.

If you ever want to do it, stick to this order:

  1. Technical inspection (if you have a camper car, you need to get a special document there which says you have a car of the category “special”)
  2. Getting a tax number
  3. Document that says how much you have to pay
  4. Paying at the bank office
  5. To another desk which checks everything and gives you all the necessary papers
  6. Getting license plates

It may be a good idea to have a friendly Georgian on the phone who can explain and translate when getting stuck in the process.