|
Lobo and Linda's travels continued.... We are building a good list of our favourite countries we want to revisit in the future, Kyrgyzstan is on there and Georgia is going to be very near the top for sure. We have moved on now but we had several lovely days in the mountains on our way to the border with Turkey. One day was particularly memorable when we managed to combine our two favourite activities when travelling, they are: riding trails ‘off the beaten track’ and staying with local people. One trail took us up a mountain pass, where we tracked a ski lift until we reached the snowline and were quickly engulfed by the clouds, when these cleared, we were treated to the most amazing views. Other trails took us past startled road building crews who obviously hadn’t expected to see a motorbike, where we were. Health & Road safety doesn’t seem to exist in some places and we found ourselves dodging excavators breaking through the rock. On our last night before the border, we had booked an Eco Lodge in the mountains through Booking dot com. The problem we had was that we couldn’t locate the property on Google Maps, but it would get us to the nearest village. We arrived at the village but couldn’t locate the Lodge using the map off the website. We came across a lady walking up a very steep hill out of the village and asked her if she knew of our place. She walked with Linda for over 1km up this super steep hill whilst translating through her son, who spoke good English. Her son (on the phone) said the Lodge was further up the road and we should follow his Mum. We were joined by another enthusiastic lady on the way and then came across a JCB digging a new lane to the property. A 3rd local stopped the JCB and guided us through the soil stacks and across a scaffold plank (I was glad Linda wasn’t on the back for this!) and right to the property, happy days, we were so grateful for all their help! The 1st lady had called ahead and the owner came to meet us. He showed us into the lovely accommodation and set the place up for us. We went back to the bike to get or gear and then talked about our booking, it was only then we realised that it wasn’t the place we had booked! It was such an amazing property in a stunning location that we didn’t want to turn around and leave, we were also very reluctant to ride down the mountain past the JCB and the 3 super helpful locals! We agreed a rate and they also threw in an evening meal, they actually delivered so much that evening that it did us for breakfast and lunch the next day. In the evening, the owner took us on a tour of his land and to the most amazing view point that he was obviously very proud of (his family have owned the land for the last 200 years). We spent the rest of the evening talking to him and his wife about our families via Google Translate and we also shared a bottle of Vodka we’d been given in China, which always goes down well! On this kind of trip hotels can be instantly forgettable, but this is a place I don’t think we’ll ever forget, as much for the circumstances that got us there as the lodge itself and that amazing view! Cheers Lobo & Linda #blackdogride #mentalhealthmotorbike
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
