Thanks for the post Kiwi!
I decided to ride north and round the war in the end, entering Ukraine by Shebekino, nice little crossing, it took forty minutes on each side to work out if I was British, Scottish, UK, GB, GB&NI etc on their computer
the police were very funny about it, actually good fun. Luckily a genuine Mr Kalashnikov was in the car behind to help out!
Anyone going that way the mountain road from Georgia to Vladikavkaz is largely washed away, passable but budget a lot of extra time if its a road bike. The crossing itself was one of the best, took a while but super helpful soldiers, even got invited to dinner. Right after Vlad there were police with fake breathalisers demanding €1700 in bribes, apparently common in that area; the magic word was 'embassy' and some fake (and rather toxic
) cigarettes.
The mountain roads from Guzeripl to Sochi that were on my Russian map turned out to all be closed by what looked like soldiers, so a long detour to go round. The well surfaced single road to and from Sochi was 100ks of hell in the dark and rain, tight, twisty, trucks, suicide drivers, cliffs busses, up, down; next time I'm taking the train!
Would be really cool to hear if anyone crosses from Crimea in to Ukraine....
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