Day 88 - The hardest day

If we would go back the same way from mestia as we came from. But we wanted to continue and and finish the big circle around the mountains back to kutaisi. A swedish guy, fabian, that we met in samarqand was about to go the same way and turned round: "the road is too awful" he said. We asked around a bit and found out that the road is possible but it is a really rough dirtroad over some mountain passes - but the scenery is supposed to be beautiful. As we dont like backtracking we decided to give it a try. Chris and me where totally down for this but Kim needed some convincing. His BMW is way heavier than our bikes and it might be trouble to ride it over a maybe snowy mountain passes.
Anyway - peerpressure made him come with us and so we found ourselves on rough winding mountain road.
The terrain changed from easy gravel to stressful rocks and to slippery mud.

It was the toughest riding we have do e so far and it took us 7 hours to make the 100 km around the mountains.
But the scenery was well worrth the effort - see these pictures
Even it was a very exhausting day we would do it again.

About Kim i am not so sure ... Actually I am sure he wont do it again. The muddy sections where hard work for him and he took some falls. Everytime needing at least two people to pick his bike up. We where almost trough when he took his tenth fall and twisted his ankle.
Damn. Luckily we where in a small village and there was a kind of guesthouse run by an old grandma.
We discussed what to do - keep on going the last 20 km to the next big city and the end of the dirtroad or stay here and check the damage.
But Kim was too exhausted and so we stayed a night with the granny.
Kim made a painful face everytime he stepped on his foot - "how does it feel?" - "not good - not bad"he answered - but maybe thats the korean way to say: "it feels really bad and you two stupid idiots dragged me into this road i didnt want to go in the first place."

We put some cream on his foot and painkillers in his mouth and hoped he could go on tomorrow. Staying a few days in some remote georgian mountain village was really not an option. If it would start raining the whole road would become a mudfight and we might be stuck here even longer.
Sometimes the line between adventure and supidity is a thin one as we learned
But as i said we would do it again as it was amazing - even if Matthas also took three falls himself.