A hike up the mountain in Tbilisi and getting lost in the middle of the night

I've been in Tbilisi for a few days now and I like it so far. I'm not a big fan of cities as you all know, but fortunately I live in the right area and the mountain is right behind my apartment, so I have a place to escape the hustle and bustle of the city life.
Two days ago I decided to climb the mountain to visit Turtle lake. I met up with a traveller and we both went up to check out the lake and scenery.

I woke up early in the morning so I could work a few hours before killing my muscles with the climb. At 12PM I was finished with work and went for a cup of tea with Ani before going to the mountain.
We had a little chat about our lives and plans and then it was already time to meet up with Niko.
We crossed Vake park and started to climb the stairs. It's a pretty good excercise since it has a looooot of steps to get to the top with the statue. But the view is already great.

View from the stairs in Vake Park

The statue on top of the stairs

When we were on top of the stairs we decided to go ofroad instead of following the path up. Going straight up was faster and ofcourse more of an adventure. You know me!

I do have to admit that it was kind of tough and I realized how much the smoking killed my endurance. Time to cut it down a lot and start training on this mountain more often! After a few minutes of climbing, we got to the main road that leads to Turtle lake and we went to have a look there.

The lake itself is not very special and super dirty with trash everywhere. Unfortunately this was something we saw on the mountain as well. There was literally trash everywhere. So far for wanting to feel like I'm "into the wild". We walked around a bit until we decided to climb the mountain behind Turtle lake. I was already killing my muscles anyway, so why not right? We just started to follow a small path when we encountered a canal. I think it used to be a canal to transport water from one side of the mountain to the other. But ofcourse I wanted to explore, luckily Niko was in for some exploring as well, so off we went!

Inside the canal

My legs and back started to hurt like crazy from crouching all the time and not being able to stand up, so we went back out to continue our hike up. There was a great steep rocky part going up, so we just climbed up there instead of following the path. Much more adventurous and we got the most incredible views over the lake from there. After a while we finally got to the top and the view on both sides was simply amazing! Steep cliffs, several other mountains and we had a great view over most of Tbilisi. Not many people were around, just an occasional mountainbiker and 2 guys with crossmotorbikes. Niko wanted to make a timelaps, so we sat down and enjoyed the scenery for a while.

Having a rest at the cliff after climbing up

View from the top

View over the lake and Tbilisi

View on the other side of the mountain

Enjoying a moment in silence

When Niko's camera was finally done with the timelaps, we made our way down again because I had to work again. This time we decided to take the path, because some parts of the way we climbed up were too steep for descending safely without gear. Especially because of all the lose rocks everywhere. Better safe than sorry! On the way down we passed a lonely tree standing proudly as if watching over Tbilisi.

Poor lonely tree

Going down was definately a lot faster than going up, but just as enjoyable non the less. Once we were back in Vake Park, we said our goodbyes and I went back home to finish off work and then get a rest and sleep.

The next morning I woke up a little too late to start working, so I went into town to try to find some proper food. The other day when I went for grocery shopping, I had a hard time finding products that weren't expired months past their expiration date. So I went again and checked out some local markets with better luck this time. So I was finally able to cook myself a normal, tasty and healthy dish! My legs were killing me from the climb, so having to walk back up to my house (which is on the hill and the road moves upwards) was quite a torture.

In the evening I met up with an American called Gary, who is here for work. We had nice drink in the park with incredible views over the city. It looked quite pretty with all the lights and everything.

I finished the night with way too much vodka, but it was definately a good day!

The day after was quite boring as I had to work a lot. But luck wasn't on my side because it was super quiet. So I kind of gave up and went to the mountain to explore other trails and enjoy the sun. I forgot to bring my camera, so unfortunately no pictures! At night I met up with a Georgian guy named Oto and I went over to his place for a nice drink (the rose wine here is delicious!!!) and some good conversations. He gave me his address and I put it in google maps. After 15 minutes I ended up somewhere with dead ends and google maps kept telling me I had to take a road with a dead end. It was already getting close to 2AM in the middle of the night, in a city I don't know yet, in an area I haven't been yet, so I started to get quite nervous. I saw a gaurd walking around and I went to ask for directions. He didn't speak any English, so with me trying to communicate in English and trying to communicate in Georgian and Russian, I finally gave up and texted Oto. The guard even called Oto for me and it turned out that Oto wasn't even living anywhere close to there. Why google maps send me there, I still don't have a clue. Oto took a cab and came to pick me up, which was a relief for me because I didn't want to end up getting more lost in the middle of the night.

When we arrived we had some really good and deep conversations and I really enjoyed my time. The initial plan was to stay until 3AM max, because I had to work again in the morning. But we got lost in time and I left around 4AM. This time without getting lost, because apparantly he is practically my neighbour.

All in all the first few days were great! Can't wait for the next days to come and meet more awesome people and see more of Tbilisi.

Stay tuned!

A bumpy flight and the first taste of Georgian hospitality!

I'm glad I made it safely here, because I wasn't so sure about that when I was in the plane from Istanbul to Tbilisi. But let's start from the beginning!

An early morning sun shone bright and happy when I woke up last thursday and excitement started to surface when I thought about travelling to Georgia.
The past days in the Netherlands were fine, but I was already there way too long. I was so ready to get out again and get rid of my itchy feet.
My mom and Eric were awesome to drop me off at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
Once there we said our goodbyes and off I went to the gates, ready for a new adventure!

The first flight was from Amsterdam to Istanbul and all the time I was hoping there wouldn't be some kind of terrorist attack at the airport or a Russian/Turkish pilot mistaking the airplane for an ISIS war mothership and shoot it out of the air.
We landed in Istanbul and I had a 5 hour stopover. I decided to stay in the airport, because I needed to be present 2 hours before my connecting flight anyway and all the hassle with immigration services was not something I looked forward to. Especially when I saw how long the queue was.
But ofcourse I was dying for a cigarette, so I started my quest and went on an adventure to find the smoking area's. Which was actually quite an adventure on itself, since there were no signs anywhere telling you where to find smokers Heaven. So I just followed the signs that said terrace, hoping it would bring me to an actual terrace where one can satisfy there smoky needs. Turns out, it was!

While smoking I kept an eye out on the electronic board to see which gate number my flight had. I waited, and waited and waited some more. Still nothing. All the flights on the board, including flights later on in the night than mine, all had gate numbers, except mine.
When it was time to board (according to my ticket), still no number. I started asking several people and employees walking around, information point, but nobody was able to help me. And they were also not friendly at all, so in the end I just felt like; well, fuck you!
Then I noticed a guy who was on the same flight as me from Amsterdam to Istanbul, frantically looking at the board and something in his face told me that he was on the same plane as me.
So I asked and indeed, he's flying to Tbilisi as well. We decided to stick together after we learned that we both stayed in the same area in Tbilisi, so we could share a taxi. (And me not getting ripped off for being a foreigner.) He is from Georgia and was in Amsterdam for holidays.
Still no known gate number and growing frustrations by the second, I needed my cigarette break again and Lasha joined me, apparantly he was a smoker too!
Just as we wanted to enter our smoking Heaven, the gate number popped up on the screen. Finally!
So we quickly poisoned our lungs and went to the gate.
Another miracle happened, because we took off earlier than the announced time, yay for GlobalAtlas!

One and a half hours later we could see the lights of Tbilisi starting to appear and the pilot told everyone to take their seat and fasten their seatbelt. And that's when it happened and what made me think I might not get out alive.
I've experienced quite some turbulence in all my years of flying, including moderate turbulence. After having experienced moderate turbulence once which made the aircraft already shake and fall like crazy, but this one was horrible! The whole flight no turbulence and suddenly from one second to the other, the plane seemed to drop out of the sky. It literally just fell and started to shake as you would when trying to get sand out of your shoe. If I wouldn't have had my seatbelt fastened, I would have hit the ceiling. The seat just dropped from underneat me and I was hovering for a second. People started to scream and even the flight attendents had a look of pure terror on their faces. Everyone clutched their seats and did their prayers. The next couple of second the airplane kept shaking as if a massive 9.0 earthquake hit us. The flight attendents started banging on the pilots door, which ofcourse didn't help in calming people down. Finally we had a few moments of silence and then it started again. I was so happy when we were finally close to the ground and the turbulence stopped. That was quite a scary moment, I swore to myself never to fly anymore hehe.
Anyway, we landed and everything turned out to be okay. A lot of people started clapping, mostly to get rid of their nerves I think.

Lasha and I went to the luggage claim together and we waited for my bag to arrive. Lasha didn't have a bag, but he didn't mind going with me to fetch mine. The sweetheart even refused to let me carry it after we couldn't find a trolly. I needed to get a simcard as well and Lasha needed one too, so we went to the counter together to get one. Lasha did everything for me, I didn't have to do anything, nor pay anything. I was completely flabbergasted. So, we got our sims and we took a taxi together towards Tbilisi. Ani, my landlord/host, was already awake to let me into the appartment I'm renting.
I heared that people drive like wildlings in Georgia and I thought I've seen quite some wild and dangerous traffic in all my travels, but this was insane. Let's just say that I was glad it was in the middle of the night with hardly any traffic around, otherwise I would have had my second near death experience in just 1 hour time. We arrived 15 minutes later and me and Lasha exchanged our numbers and again he refused to let me pay for the taxi. I made a mental note to myself, to invite him for lunch sometime this week to thank him for everything he has done for me.
We said our goodbyes and Ani was already waiting in the door to let me in. She quickly showed me the appartment and then both of us went to bed since it was already starting to get close to early morning.

Today I woke up pretty late and didn't do anything besides some grocery shopping. Tonight I will work all night and tomorrow I'm meeting up with a traveller to go for a hike in the park behind my house. Check out the "mountain" en turtle lake.

So that was it for now, more coming soon with pictures as well! Cheers!