Meeting the Kartvelebi, day 9, 435 km, Mestia in Georgia

The Day started in Batumi at 0730 local time. I've ridden direction Gomismta, Georgian roads are small but nice so far.
20 km before Gomismta the road turned to unpaved and started to climb: there was even a gate that I had to pass through with the tag: "welcome to Gomismta" the road continued to climb, from sea level up to 2100 meters. 

The muddy road up to Gomismta

It was very nice unpaved road, but for around 10 km it was completely muddy, so I had to ride slowly and I'm quite surprised from the mitas e07 tyres, wich showed a very fair grip on this conditions. On the top there was the big village of Gomismta, I estimate around 1k people live there. No electricity was available from cables, but of course the signal for mobile phones was perfect. 

Gomismta

There were also some children, they were enjoying my pass and when I used the horn they were all saying beeep beep. In Gomismta I took the road for Bakhmaro, which isn't a very common one: on the top, around 2500 meters above the sea, there was no road and I was riding on green grass. Amazing moment of pure freedom. 

The pass between Bakhmaro and Gomismta, the road is not marked on google maps and on the ground.

When I reached Bakhmaro, after 60 km, the road was again paved and I started the descent to sea level. On this region, a lot of person uses horses has main vehicle, but they are always using mobile phone: that's a hard contrast. 

 On the flatland, I rode to north and after Zugdidi, I saw the Caucasus for the first time. It looks like the Alp from Milano. 

Zugdidi.

The road for Mestia was long (more than 130 Km) but very nice. In a dark tunnel I risked to hit a cow, which was laying on the pavement in stealth mode without caring about cars. In Georgia farm animals are almost always free, which means you will find cows, ducks, pigs and horses in the street or around them. In Mestia I spent an Evening with two guys from Ticino (one of them saw me working on a Caucasus map on the train for Zurich) at cafe layla, where a choir of Folk Svaneti music was singing and dancing. Very stunning evening.