By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (11 page)

At last we were through and into Batumi where the Ural was being unloaded. I couldn’t wait to get going. I was really enjoying travelling on all the different forms of transport, but when you get right down to it, motorbikes are where it’s at.

Russ was talking to Nick; a local guy we’d arranged to guide us through Georgia. It seemed like a good idea, given that the country was so unknown to us, and that we didn’t speak a word of Georgian.

‘Nick’s just been telling me that a spy plane was shot down,’ Russ said. ‘Part of Georgia is disputed territory. Apparently the plane was keeping tabs on the Russians and they shot it down. It’s tense, I had a feeling it might be. We’ll have to be careful.’

‘Riots,’ Mungo muttered from behind the camera. ‘Everywhere we go there are riots.’

It was 450 km to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and we had hoped to make it in one day. But with the border crossing and an hour lost in time-change it was already one p.m. Originally we had planned to ride all the way to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, but poring over the maps and train times now, we realised this would never work if we wanted to get our visas for Iran in time. We decided to ride as far as Tbilisi then take an overnight train to Baku and camp out at the Iranian Embassy. As long as we made Tbilisi by four-thirty tomorrow we could jump on the five-fifteen and all would be well.

With Russ already in the sidecar I got on the bike and fiddled around, getting a feel for everything. It started first time which is always a good sign, and Hari told us it was more than reliable. The gearing was one down and three up and the brakes seemed pretty sound. I’d driven a Royal Enfield with a sidecar for half a day but that was the limit of my experience - cornering, especially the right-hand bends, could be interesting to say the least. Also, the Ural’s sidecar was on my right whereas the Enfield’s had been on the left, so everything I’d learned was now the other way round.

‘I’ve never done this,’ Russ said. The rain was coming down and he had pulled the tarp up to his chin. ‘I suppose the trick is to trust the guy who’s driving.’ He looked up with a mock-nervous smile.

‘You’ll be fine, Malkin. We’re back in my territory. I was born to ride, remember?’

With my case strapped on the rack and Russ’s bag in the little boot, we headed out of town past blocks of pink flats that reminded me of Russia. It looked run down; the buildings with that stark, Soviet influence Ewan and I had seen on Long Way Round.

The pitted, bumpy roads weren’t good either, and the weather was horrendous, the rain lashing down. It was hard to see properly and I only just missed a pedestrian who stepped out from behind a lorry. At last I got my bearings, sorted out my position and we rode out into the grey, wet countryside.

The Ural was never known for its speed, and soon we had trucks overtaking so close we were almost forced into the trees.

‘Hey, Charley,’ Russ yelled from the sidecar. ‘I asked Nick what the Georgians would think of two guys hurtling across country on a Russian military motorcycle.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That we’d be OK so long as we weren’t packing a Kalashnikov.’ Black clouds hung low and dreary over the mountains, the trees dripped water and the potholes filled with rain. I could feel my suitcase jiggling around on the rack and Russ was telling me the sidecar had no suspension.

This was absolutely nothing like Turkey. I’ve noticed before that each border crossing is different, and it takes time to acclimatise. This was weird though; it was so like the Russia I’d seen it was incredible.

Climbing the hills we were at last overtaking the slower traffic while I tried to make sense of the steering: the bike juddered a bit under braking and I got one right-hander completely wrong. The rain was coming in almost horizontally and visibility was down. I overcooked the bend, missed the steering and swung viciously across the road.

‘Whoa!’ Russ cried out from the sidecar.

‘Sorry, mate, sorry.’ I got the bike back on line and wagged my head. ‘Fucked that up, didn’t I? Thank God nothing was coming or we’d have been squashed tomatoes.’

We stopped off to meet some of Nick’s friends who lived in a small house with narrow doors that opened on to a large living area. They couldn’t have been more hospitable, feeding us meat, strong cheese and a sort of vegetable curry. Through Nick, they asked us about the expedition. We told them how far we’d come and how far we were going. We told them our fears about Iran and getting into China and they wished us the best of luck. They were like people the world over, happy to open their doors and welcome us, to feed us and show us pictures of their families.

Outside again, I got the bike going while Russ called London.

‘Everything all right?’ I asked, when he came off the phone.

‘We won’t know for sure until we get to Baku. We keep getting told different stories. Thursday morning we’ll have to get straight down to the embassy. It’ll be a fiasco, I can see it already.’

‘Have a little faith.’

‘Faith: right, sure. I tell you what, Charley, I’ll believe we’ll get the visas when I see the stamp in my passport.’

I felt for Russ - it was easy for me to trust in faith while he and the team back home organised everything. We were on the road because we loved it, a couple of mates trying to get to Australia by any means we could. But we were also filming, and although we were doing a lot on the hoof, circumstances change all the time and there was no way we could leave everything to chance.

That night we stopped in a town called Kutaisi. While I took a shower Russ wandered down to the River Rioni. It was here that Jason and the Argonauts were said to have sailed in search of the Golden Fleece. Standing on the stone bridge, Russ thought the river current looked far too vicious, but that’s how the story went. According to the legend, Jason sailed up the Bosporus from Greece and across the Black Sea to Georgia. It is only a legend, of course, but then most legends have some basis in truth. And even to this day miners use sheep’s fleeces to attract the gold from their pans, which is one of the many theories of where the idea of a golden fleece came from.

 

The next morning was still overcast, rain spattering the puddles, and it didn’t make the same old grey apartment blocks any more inspiring. Conscious of our afternoon train from Tbilisi, we set off early. As we left the city a police car pulled alongside: it seemed to linger in the middle of the road, the two cops looking long and hard at two guys on a Russian army motorbike.

En route to the capital we passed through Gori, the sombre-looking city where Stalin was born. After Lenin died he had systematically set about destroying anyone who didn’t agree with him; scientists, writers, artists, poets. During the great purges of the 1930s he murdered six million people and sent millions more to a living death in the gulags. It can be strange how a famous person’s home town remembers them, especially if they were a brutal dictator like Stalin. In Gori there is a massive statue of Stalin in front of the Town Hall, and his old railway carriage - green with a black roof - is on display behind a set of ornate iron railings, as part of the Stalin museum. Instead of the usual five tons it weighs around eighteen because he had it reinforced so nobody could shoot him or blow him up when he was travelling around the country.

As we had arrived in good time, we stopped to take a look round, even stepping aboard the carriage. It was strange to think the man who’d been responsible for so much suffering had eaten, slept and drunk vodka on this carriage. There was a small kitchen at one end with a metal hotplate and a metal sink, and the corridor was wood-panelled, reminding me of the
Orient Express
.

‘Take a look in here.’ Russ pointed out one of the two bedrooms Stalin had used. There was a bunk on the left and a desk and table, velvet curtains tied back from the windows, ornate light fittings and an air-conditioning system and beyond it was a conference room with a large table and eight chairs. There was something macabre about the opulence - knowing he must have made life and death decisions for thousands and thousands of his countrymen here, living in luxury while they starved.

The old brick house where he was born had been preserved too. It seemed to have been part of a terrace once, but it was hard to tell because it looked as though all the other houses had been torn down to make way for the museum. It was covered by a sort of concrete mausoleum that had been built to protect it from the elements.

We had been hearing explosions for some time - on the bike, while we were in the carriage and again outside Stalin’s house. We could only assume that the army, on a state of alert, was practising with big guns somewhere. It was a strangely appropriate setting; the city is overlooked by a medieval citadel, an ancient fortress with holes in the walls from decay and from battle.

‘Hey, listen to this,’ Russ said. He had just received a news text from Lucy. ‘Georgia-Russian tensions: Russia claims Georgia is massing troops in the break-away region today. It warns that it will retaliate if Georgia uses force and Georgia has reacted angrily to the statement. The EU urges caution in this area.’

Again we heard the sound of guns in the distance.

Russ was still studying his mobile. ‘Bloody hell. It’s all kicking off. Two people have been killed in Tibet: a Tibetan and a policeman. China announced thirty people have been jailed and many people are worrying that they weren’t given a fair trial.’ He lifted his eyebrows sharply. ‘That’s still to come, China and Tibet. The closer we get the less it looks like we’re going to find a way in.’

We’d had enough of Stalin and back on the Ural we quickly drove the last eighty kilometres to the capital. I was loving the bike; it was great to ride and I’d got the right-hand bends figured out now. The country was flatter and less rocky here, and the tarmac a lot smoother. The rain eased and we made good time to Tbilisi. There was no need to go straight to the station so we climbed to the Metekhi Church that overlooks the curve of the river and gives a great view over the ancient city. In front of us was a massive statue of Vakhtang Gorgasali, the King of Georgia in the fifth century, dominating the city on horseback. It was an atmospheric spot, the muddy brown river flowing under an old stone bridge and beyond it the city with its tree-lined streets and medieval churches. After the minarets and mullahs of Turkey it was a jolt to be back in a Christian territory.

‘It doesn’t look like Kutaisi,’ I said, ‘or Gori for that matter. No Russian flats overshadowing everything.’

‘The Russians were here, though,’ Russ said, leaning on the ramparts. ‘They wandered in uninvited just as they did the other Soviet territories. They’d been influencing politics here for centuries. They insisted the Georgian royal family relinquished their power way back in the 1780s. Then when they invaded in 1921 the royal family went into exile. Now Georgia’s a democracy the people want them to come back but it seems they don’t want to.’

 

I’d loved riding the Ural, and it had been great to have the wind in my face again, but now it was time to catch a train. I left the bike outside the station, and managed to have a quick phone call with Olly and the kids before it was time to board. They seemed to be OK and I promised Olly I’d phone her from Baku when we could have a longer conversation.

It was our third night on a train, and I’ve got to say this was the shabbiest yet: first the glamour of the
Orient Express
, then the faded grandeur of the
Balkan Express
and now the ‘Baku-Tbilisi’ - we were going downhill rapidly. It was an ugly train, the carriages shunted up against a stark concrete platform that had all the charm of a Soviet dictator. The train was painted green and blue and the paint was flaking badly. The corridor looked OK and there were even some nylon curtains at the windows, but it wasn’t clean and our cabins were pretty smelly.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Russ encouraged me. ‘When we get going and the wind comes through some of the mustiness will blow away.’ He opened the door to the toilet. ‘Bloody hell.’ There was a hole in the floor to pee through, the ground visible below: the pan was stained aluminium with no seat and no toilet paper. The flush was a pedal but when you pressed it all that happened was a hole appeared in the floor and again you could see the tracks.

‘Dumped straight on the ground then,’ Russ said. ‘Nice.’

‘I thought I needed to go,’ I said, ‘but I reckon I can hold it till we get to Baku.’

We crossed the border in darkness, a couple of hours on the Georgian side and again on entering Azerbaijan. Our passports were taken off for inspection - I really hate that moment, especially when you’re on a train. It’s your life, your identity, all you have. I kept thinking, what if the train goes and I haven’t got my passport back?

We were allowed to get out and stretch our legs, but had to stay close to the door of our carriage and not wander off anywhere. Georgian officials in army uniform marched up and down with the kind of sour-faced demeanour only border guards can muster. At Azerbaijan they wore those massive Russian-style caps with wide brims and peaks that scrape the bridge of their noses. They strutted the length of the corridor and searched every inch of my carriage using a camera on a pole before poking through all my stuff.

Finally they gave me back my passport and I joined Russ in the corridor.

‘That was different,’ I said.

‘No worries, mate. Only Iran to come.’

8

Passport Stamps and Oilfields

Riding the Ural through Georgia had been fun, but I’d been absolutely knackered when we got on the train at Tbilisi. Even so, I don’t think I slept a wink.

Perhaps it was the noise of the train, the rocking motion, but I had a feeling it had more to do with our visa hassles, and the problems we could be facing in Baku. Thoughts of Olly and the kids kept going round and round in my head too, and when the sun came up I was more tired than when we had boarded the train.