It was the same during the lifetime of Vámbéry

I met two cyclist groups along the last days in Georgia. First I met two English guys. One of them, Nicholas, is travelling to India, but he hasn’t had any Visas in his passport. After I showed him my passport, and all the Visas I had to collect beforehand he told me that he is envious of my Visas.

The second group was two brothers from Switzerland. One of them also travelling to the Far-East, but he hasn’t had any Visas either. He told me, that in Trabzon, Turkey, where till now it was no issue to get Visa to Iran, the embassy denied everyone’s request for entry. So his journey is still pending.

After all this, I considered how different my approach was when I planned the expedition. For me, as an East-European citizen, it was necessary to travel to Vienna and buy my Visas beforehand. But I have not spared the three months and the money to get them. On the other hand, the British and the Swiss have business ties with multiple countries, and are only requested to get tourist Visas to a handful of countries. In spite of that, they were still lazy to do it, and assumed that they will get Visa on entry. To top it off, they sleep almost every night in a hotel, so they are missing out on the everyday life of the locals, they don’t get in touch with their culture. This is where I found similarities between Vámbéry and myself. Both of us travel in a simplified fashion, but both of were as prepared as we just could be.

My journey took me to the wilderness, to almost climbing mountains, next to them razing streams. I had a lot of distance and elevation in my legs, so I decided not to climb further to the next village, but to camp outside, next to the road. The night was clear, the stars shined on the sky. I decided not to raise my tent. This was the third night that I slept outside. It was two in the morning when I realised that I am freezing. The cyclocomputer showed 0 degrees, and the sunset was still fife hours away. In the morning I found a touch of ice on the top of the water in my flask. After this though nigh I cycled through the last kilometres to the 2150m high border crossing between Georgia and Armenia.

About the hardship on the road you can find a quick movie here (the audio is in Hungarian language, please turn on the subtitles for English): http://youtu.be/xEkHlK1UmmE