Georgia and Batumi

One more country ticked off, Turkey is done and dusted, but not without problems at the border: Georgia has some new procedures due to swine flu. Procedures which seem to be less than second nature to the border police as the queues were unbelievable. The truck magically becomes a bus for border crossings, so we were able to drive straight past the mile or so of stationary HGVs, but we couldn't avoid the pedestrian and domestic traffic. Three hours, one irrelevant form and three queues later, we were through.

One thing that has been really noticeable on this trip is how different opposite sides of a border look and feel. In this case the difference was marked, Georgia just isn't anything like its neighbour. The first obvious difference is the cows everywhere. And I mean everywhere: they are not confined to fields. They happily amble around the roads, oblivious to traffic, I imagine that India must be somewhat similar.

We stayed in a hotel in Batumi, called the Old Boat Hotel. And it genuinely was an old boat, moored in a harbour with rigging, a non functional wheel, and wooden fittings of questionable durability. The wheels on my bag actually fell through the floorboards on deck, the hotel staff nearby apparently neither noticing nor caring.

We took part in a traditional Georgian night at a local restaurant, which was also a boat, but this one was a fake land-locked one. This was a restaurant aimed at locals, so our group were the only foreigners there. There was live music provided by two singers and a chap manipulating some sort of backing band synth, consisting of well known foreign music and apparently well known Georgian songs. The locals regularly jumped up to dance to some song which none of us had heard before, it would have been rude not to join them. The food was large in selection, large in quantity and excellent in quality, every dish was delicious, and very hard to describe to someone who has not experienced Georgian cuisine. And a good time was had by all.

The pics are of the upper deck of our hotel, and the view from aforementioned upper deck.