Driving The Military Highway to Russia

After collecting our passports with our transit visas and a last stock up with fresh produce for the next few days, we visited an Iveco service place on the outskirts of Tbilisi to get Lolly's electrics checked. We had hoped it would be a simple fix, like needing a new fuse, but as always it turned into a long process of trying to identify where the electrical fault was coming from. After a rocky start with some surly people in the garage, Colin was relieved to find the auto-electrician was a really nice guy and spoke pretty good English. After 2 1/2 hours it looked like it was resolved and the issue had been an LED light bulb that was shorting the system.

It was 6pm before we were heading out of the city. We had planned to drive to the Zhinvali Reservoir aboout 60km north, but instead cut the journey short to park up at the Jvari Monastery, a UNESCO site. There were still quite a few tourists there when we arrived, and we'd read the car park was used by boy racers doing donuts at night (we could see the circular rubber marks around the car park), so we parked Lolly up on a grassy verge just outside the complex. There were nice views into the valley and onto the busy Military Highway. As we were washing up after dinner, the wind suddenly picked up and we were rocking around terribly. We could see lightning in the distance, and decided we'd have to move to a more sheltered spot. We parked up near the back of the car park. There were a number of cars there with windows steaming up if you get my gist. It was raining heavily, so we naively hoped it would deter too many unwanted visitors that night. We had an awful nights sleep - constant sounds of vehicles pulling up or leaving, the rain, then the donut boys.. We could hear the tyre screeches over the other side of the car park, but then they got closer. Colin went into the cab and switched our headlights on which seemed to deter them. We had put a lamp on our dashboard earlier so they would see the truck was occupied, but then worried it might mean something different to the visitors and moved it!

Another set of donut boys arrived at 4am, but thankfully moved on after 10 minutes.

We both felt pretty shabby in the morning, but were looking forward to our drive up the 212km Military Highway which goes through spectacular scenery with views of the Caucasus mountains and past historic monuments and churches. We had all day to get to a car park about 10km short of the Russian border which we would be crossing the following morning. Colin and Theresa, the Germans in a Toyota, would be joining us that evening.

Not long into the journey we came across a long line of cars parked up at the side of the road. We were cruising past them, when we realised we had a police car in hot pursuit. We pulled over and he told us the road ahead was closed due to heavy snow the previous night, so we must wait in the line of cars. We asked if we could at least carry on to the reservoir, but he said no and intimated that we'd be fined if we carried on. So we joined the line of cars, hoping we'd get the all clear soon. Luckily for us we were parked next to a coffee shop and bakery. We got chatting to a group of birdwatchers from County Durham, who said they'd had a bit of a disastrous trip. They'd been involved in a road collision in Armenia which lost them quite a bit of time, and they had no plan B if they couldn't get up the Military highway on this day.

Colin tried asking the police when the road would be open, but only got a shrug - we don't know if they were just being unhelpful, but suspect they really didn't know. We had conversations with other tourists as the hours ticked by. Colin and Theresa caught up with us mid-afternoon. They had a multi-entry Russian visa which is more flexible than our 3 day transit visa. We had to be exiting Russia on 27th April. With a 78 0km drive once through the border with Georgia we didn't have a lot of leeway.

We were then told by another German couple we'd been talking to that their friends had managed to avoid the road block by taking some back lanes running parallel to the main road. We decided we should give it a try, so we headed off with Colin and Theresa leading the way. They had given us a walkie -talkie which was brilliant for easy comms between the two vehicles. Sure enough we managed to rejoin the main carriageway further down the road and there were no police waiting to stop us. We passed a line of lorries parked up that went on for miles. We had an update from the other German couple to say that they had made it through to Gudauri, a ski resort about 35km from the border, but the road was still closed here. They suggested we park in the valley before the ski report which is at 2300m, in a large car park of a church. It was a good call. The light was fading as we arrived and there was another German vehicle parked up who had also been tipped off to park here. There were still very few cars coming past so we could only assume the road was still closed where we'd waited before.

We set the alarms early to set off at 6.30am. I'd slept well, but Colin said he was listening out for traffic all night. it was a beautiful bright clear day, so we all hoped that meant the road had been cleared and that there would be no more hold ups. The road climbed up to the ski resort, where there were quite a number of vehicles parked at the side of the road, but we could see the road out of the village was still closed. We joined the queue of parked vehicles at around 7am. We had a walk around - the snow covered scenery was beautiful, but it was freezing cold. There was a constant stream of other vehicles pushing their way past the queue - mainly Russian and Georgian cars. They were causing havoc blocking the road and having trouble turning around on the icy surface. We were getting anxious that one would clip up, and in fact one did catch his wing mirror on us, but thankfully no damage was done. At around 10.30 there was a flurry of people running back to vehicles and starting their engines. We had to battle to hold our place as vehicles around us tried to barge into non-existent space.

Finally the queue really did start to move at around midday. It was a bit like the start of a grand prix as cars jostled to overtake - no-one wanted to get stuck behind slow Lolly. There was still thick mushy snow at the side of the roads, and German Colin kindly took the view, better safe than sorry, and kept the pace steady for us. The scenery was stunning though and we saw the Russian-Georgian Friendship Monument buried in snow in the distance. The hardest bit for Colin was going through the tunnels - his reactalite lenses don't lighten quickly and our height meant we needed to drive fairly central in them - not easy when you can't see a thing. Also throw in oncoming traffic to add to the excitement.

The road eventually started to descend towards the border, with the snow thinning out. We passed another long convoy of parked up trucks, before reaching the Georgian side of the Border where we were glad to see the queue wasn't too long. Theresa and I had to go through on foot, and we reunited with the Colins to drive through the no-mans land to Russia.

The real adventure into the unknown starts now.