This post is all about my experience and impression about the trip from Armenia to southern Georgia and east-northern Turkey. It may be quite useful for those who’re up to make such a low cost hitchhiking trip in this region.
Important data about the trip itself will be highlighted.
Just in case: primarily, I was planning to visit Tbilisi, stay there for 3-4 days and get back to Yerevan. But things went more complicated and amazing when I suddenly decided to hit the road to the west.
Ok, let’s start with a general information about the route. Here is the list of cities visited (not a complete one, of course):
(6:45pm, October 15, 2013) Yerevan - Tbilisi - Makhinjauri - Batumi - Sarpi - Trabzon - Rize - Erzurum - Sarikamish - Kars - Akhaltsikhe - Akhalkalaki - Yerevan (3:30pm, October 19, 2013, >2000 km)
Spent < $200 (could be much less)
Important: not all the trip was hitchhiked, as I was harshly constrained in time!
Day 1. (Yerevan - Tbilisi - Makhinjauri)
Starting a trip, especially after 3-4 hours of sleep was very hard. At 6am I had a confident desire to repeal it all, but I somehow mastered my waking up in the morning. A glass of strong coffee increased my self-confidence drastically. We took a taxi to the central bus station in Yerevan.
The microbus was to leave Yerevan from central bus station (station url, Tsovakal Isakov 6) at 8am, the ticket was 7000 AMD (30 GEL).
In general, the microbus was pretty cozy, maybe, a little bit loud, but one could easily get along with it. I slept nearly all the trip, about 6-7 hours, and arrived in Tbilisi bus station near 3pm. Of course, the first to-do thing was to get Georgian money and to eat. I had lived in Tbilisi earlier during four years, so I knew the city rather well, and it didn’t take me too long to get to the center. After several iterations I finally changed currency to GEL (about $30), bought MAGTI phone card with 3G enabled and got fed in a local pub near the Tbilisi State University.
The card with 3G enabled cost 20 GEL, it had 9 GEL on account and 500 MB of free 3G internet. Compared to Moscow, the pub was also rather cheap. The average price for Adjarian khachapuri was about 5-8 GEL depending on the size, khinkali was about 0.5-0.75 GEL apiece (usually about 10 is more than enough). The most expensive Georgian wine in that pub was 35 GEL for 750 ml, which is again pretty cheap for a pub.
The city itself was, indeed, very beautiful. I was always claiming that if asked about my desire to live in a particular city I’ve already visited, I’d definitely choose Tbilisi. Though, unfortunately, I never knew Georgian. We walked all the way from the Turkish bathhouses, through the Mantashev trade rows, the main square of independence, couple of old Georgian cozy streets, the great building of parliament to the Tbilisi State University and the house of opera.
After we got fed near the TSU, we took several long walks in old suburbs near the city center, visited Mtatsminda Park with its ferris wheel and funicular.
Funicular ticket was about 2 GEL, but in addition you had to buy a card for 2 GEL, in order to to use it for all attractions in the park. The Ferris wheel ticket was also 2 GEL.
The train to Makhinjauri was to leave at 10:35pm, and, as I knew the city pretty well, it took about 40 minutes of walk to get to the railway station.
Georgian Railway schedule can be found here, the price of a ticket to Makhinjauri was 14 GEL for standart-class place and about 23 GEL for first-class.
As we were already quite tired, and the trip was going to last all night long, we decided to take a standart-class ticket, as it completely didn’t matter where to sleep.
Day 2. (Makhinjauri - Batumi - Sarpi - Trabzon - Rize)
At 6:45am the train arrived in Makhinjauri Railway Station (10km from Batumi). I was waiting for this moment quite a long, as I haven’t visited the sea for about 4 years, and I turned the Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Doors”, it was a quite dramatic and sentimental moment in my life. Nonetheless, we needed to get somehow to Batumi after all, so I didn’t really have time to fully enjoy that moment.
There were, of course, several ways to get to Batumi: one could take a taxi or а public transport (bus, microbus). As enthusiastic “mavericks”, we hitchhiked. The Batumi city near Miracles Park reminded the sceneries of elegantly cozy Italian towns at the coast of Mediterranean Sea. Early in the morning restaurants and cafes were closed, however, we managed to find a Turkish fast-food and eat a pork burger with Borjomi.
Trip to the south lay along the sea coast with nice rows of palm trees and orange bicycle track near the beach.
Unfortunately, because of the lack of Georgian money, we didn’t manage to rent bicycles (0.5 GEL for 15 minutes). But it would be a rather comfortable option of moving along the sea coast. After about an hour of walk we eventually got to southern part of Batumi, where the highway to Turkey was. Georgian guy, who was going to Akhaltsikhe agreed to hitchhike us to Sarpi, though his route was quite different. Sarpi is a small town separated by the border of Georgia and Turkey, where it is said to be a place of the most clean sea water of the whole Georgian Black Sea coast. And indeed it is! Though it was October, we swam a little bit in the sea right near the border, and then left Sarpi for a completely mysterious trip to Turkey.
I strongly suggest buying Turkish currency before crossing the border, as I haven’t met literally ANY currency exchange spots in Turkey during my trip. The Turkish visa (for those who’re required) is 15 USD, or 10 EUR. The algorithm of getting visa is quite involved: you must first cross the border passing freely the passport control, buy the visa from a weird guy, who doesn’t even look at you while giving a vise, after that you should go back to passport control to get a stamp and back again to ultimately pass the border. The whole process takes about 10 minutes, so it’s not very irritating.
As far as I understood by that moment, in Turkey they simply fuck the bureaucracy. It didn’t take us too long to catch a guy heading to Rize, who gave us a hitchhike. During the whole trip he was telling us about his Kurdish identity, demonstrating Kurdish music etc. But we found another rather interesting and urgent activity – we simply slept.
After about 2-3 hours of drive (and my hand injury right on the road) we switched a car from Rize, and were taken by a Turkish family, who gave us a ride all the way up to Trabzon city center. The elders in the family didn’t talk English much, but the guy of about 5yo was asking all the questions and translating our answers to Turkish. Children were playfully asking “how are you?”, “where are you from?” and “what is your name?” -like questions, elders, however, were just laughing and commenting our responses in Turkish.
The first impression of Trabzon was just magnificent; I couldn’t believe the city was in one of the poorest regions of Turkey. The variety of tourists, different stores, fast-foods, hotels and miscellaneous cafes and restaurants were indeed very impressive. We found a Turkish bath right near the Trabzon central square.
After a long hitchhiking trip bath is something you would really need. The price for a single bath is 18 TRY (about $9); extra services like traditional massage may cost extra 5 to 10 TRY. Turkish phone card with 3G cost about 20-40 TRY depending on provider (Vodafone or Turkcell).
As we were hungry, we quickly found a fast-food with Wi-Fi and chargers. The Georgian cook-guy who spoke Russian told us about Trabzon and other Turkish cities in general. He told us, that a lot of Georgian young men and women who knew Turkish at least a little bit moved to Turkey for a permanent residence, as life in Turkey was a lot more profitable and cheap, compared to their salary, than in Georgia. He also told us about Erzurum and Kars, and added that we should buy Turkish tasbih in Erzurum, where it’s was made “by the reference of ancient arcane traditions”.
The decision was made to move deeper into southern Turkey to Erzurum. Lately, near 9-10pm we left Trabzon on foot moving to the east to find a highway to Erzurum. There were actually two ways to Erzurum, one highway starting from Trabzon, and another one from Rize. According to the map, the one from Rize was shorter, so we decided to get to Rize first. After about an hour of walk we finally were picked up by a guy heading to Rize.
The one characteristic feature of Turkish young men is that the music they listen to in cars is way too loud than our ears could afford, and hence they usually speak vociferously. The guy we met on our way from Trabzon back to Rize was a marine-engineer student who was living in Rize and working in Trabzon, so he drove that highway every day. Like most of other people we’d met in Turkey, he was not quite good in English, so mostly our conversation consisted of independently separated well known words and phrases like “were are you from?”, “student”, “Trabzon - beautiful!”, “music - good”, “smoke?”.
He stopped by the place where the highway to Erzurum was starting near Rize and called by the phone to his friend who spoke English, well, let’s say, a little bit better than him. His friend told us that at that time we had nearly no chance to hitchhike cars to Erzurum, he also added that the highway was rather dangerous and advised us to have a night break in Rize motel to move further early in the morning. Well, it was our great mistake that we ignored his advice, thanked the driver-guy and started to try hitchhiking at the highway to Erzurum. After 2-3 stopped cars we understood that the way to the south at that time was really dangerous, as several guys simply gave a screw-loose signs and drove away. A seller in the nearby supermarket said that the microbus to Erzurum is leaving at 8pm in the morning from that place, so we decided to spend a night in Rize and move out in the morning, but, actually, we didn’t quite realize how far we are from Rize itself.
We were soon picked up by another guy who drove us to the motel and showed the bus station, where the buses from Rize to Erzurum are moving out. The sleep was conquering our minds in spite of the loud music in the car, so in motel we didn’t really haggle the price and gave $30 for a double room, later we grasped that it was far overpriced.
