HOW BAD ARE THEY???
Georgian roads are so bad that when a dog chases a car, he usually catches it...
The scene along one of Georgia's better rural roads
I discovered this first hand, on several occasions, while scouting out the area where my partner Indre and I would be working on election day.
Of course, we weren't left to our own devices - were were given a map of the area and a list of the villages around the central town of Aspindza that we should try to visit, with travel times and notations on road conditions that included comments like:
- Village Ota - access only by tractor
Fortunately, Indri and I were also provided with a pair of indespensible assistants - our translator Merab and our driver Pavle, who advised us against going to villages "behind very steep slopes" or that required travel by tractor.
This turned out to be a very good plan, since the roads without special notations were rough enough to make poor Indre carsick on our initial exploration of the region...
Merab and Pavle meet us at our hotel in Akhaltsikhe at 10 a.m. the day before the election to show us around. Our plan was to drive upriver on Highway A-360 to the town of Aspidza, around which were located a dozen mountain villages that we would try to visit on election day.
The main highway wasn't too bad - although there were very rough sections with signs that indicated that they were "under repairation."
The fun part was when we left the main road to travel up into the hills on rockstrewn, potmarked cart paths, or to cross the river on bridges that looked as though their structural integrity was questionable at best...
One of several rustic suspension bridges across the Kura River near Aspindza
Better walk across first - just to be safe...
The roads up to the hillside towns were so bad that we could often travel only slightly better than walking speed in many cases, bouncing up and down and being jolted from side to side as Pavle did his best to steer around the worst of the jagged ruts and avoid having us bottom out.
It was such rough going that whenever a stray dog decided to chase us, it easily kept pace for as long as it wanted - which was invariable far too long...
Have you ever wondered what a dog chasing a car does when he actually catches the car?
I'll tell you - he does pretty much whatever he wants!
He barks and snarls as he runs along side, nipping at the tires and snapping at the bumpers.
I swear one of them actually lifted a hind leg and marked Pavle's car as part of his territory while we were all moving down the road at 10 kph...
And when it wasn't stray dogs, we had local traffic to deal with...
Georgian traffic jam
All in all, however, getting there is half the fun - especially in a place like Georgia, with its beautiful scenery and wonderful roadside attractions...
More to come...
SPB
No comments:
Post a Comment