A personal view. I'm currently in Aktau/Kazakhstan and last afternoon/evening/night arranged for my bike that I rode from Bishkek/Kyrgyzstan, via Uzbekistan to here to travel by ferry to Alat/Azerbaijan.

I'll fly to Baku/Azerbaijan in a couple of days to meet up with the bike. Land (and sea) borders into Azerbaijan are closed, but flying in and riding out to Georgia is possible.

All hotels in Aktau are full with Russian men in their 20s and 30s, some with their partners and children too, but mostly single men, some shipping their cars on the same ship as me, although it's currently very windy in the Caspian Sea, so all ships are at anchor, going nowhere. Them and me are flying to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey (Russians don't need visas for these countries). Flights are booked out for 2 or 3 weeks in advance.

I've spoken to several of them. They're all educated (IT jocks, engineers etc) and speak English. They are on local social media channels like Telegram where they share their "avoiding-mobilisation experiences". Of course this is possibly all just complete fiction and I should just exclusively follow Yandex traffic information?!

They told me of 40km queues (as in the road is blocked) at the Russia/Georgia border south of Vladikafkas. There is a special lane for buses. The buses get stoned if they try to travel along it ("queue jumping"), so they just sit on the queue instead.

I have a valid Russian visa in my German passport, but chose to take the ferry/ fly option. Because:

The riding on my 650 thumper has been mind chillingly boring for the past 3000km. My tyres are nicely squared off already... I couldn't face more thousands of straight line slabbing around the top of the Caspian Sea, and I genuinely can't be ar$ed with the disaster of the stretch between Atyrau and Astrakhan.

Will the Russians even let me in, considering the EU was allegedly stopping Russians with valid Schengen visas getting in? Reciprocity etc. Do I want to chat with Russian uniformed types as to what I'm doing on the country if I do get in?

I'm not planning to ride to Finland. My destination is Bulgaria.

I'm particularly not keen to get involved in the border situation entering Georgia from Russia. While I pretty much wrote the manual creative riding (Cairo 1999 for example, palming off an Egyptian policeman (he was very slight in stature and crumpled ) trying to stop me riding 200 meters the wrong way up a one way street ) , negotiating 40km of p!ssed off Russians of conscription age isn't my idea of fun and giggles.

So, insha'Allah, me and Engelberta, the Humperthumper, will be Georgia sooner than later and I'll probably park the bike in Armenia and fly back to Bulgaria. Then return next early summer and ride the lovely biking friendly Armenian and Georgian mountains before taking the Turkish TET west to mi casa en BG.

I'm in the market for tyres in Tiblisi

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