Return to Tusheti

Tbilisi, August 28

The hard-won top of the Col de la Croix 

Since I last updated the blog, I have finished the second draft of my book (while in Bali), and then travelled for nearly 2 months around Namibia with Terri in our beloved camper Stanley before leaving him in storage for the next couple of years near Cape Town.  A month of catching up with my mother and working further on my book followed, and now I find myself in full-time gainful employment for the first time in three years as I start a two-year teaching adventure at an international school in Tbilisi, Georgia.  I will update my blog retroactively with stories of our trip through New Zealand in February and March, and of our Namibian escapades as well, but for now I want to keep the blog up to date by writing a bit about a trip that Terri and I did as a welcome-to-Georgia adventure.

Myself with former LAS students Ashley, Eric and Arshia

I arrived in Georgia on July 29th, bleary-eyed from two successive night flights, and was picked up by my school and taken to our new home, a spacious two-storey three-bedroom place in the far northern suburbs of Tbilisi, in a neighbourhood called Dighomi.  It's a rapidly-developing part of town, with plenty of new houses on sizeable lots being built.  It's also close to the US Embassy, so many American diplomatic families live nearby and send their children to our school.  

Reunited with Steve in Leysin

After two days I caught another night flight to Geneva and spent three nights in my old stomping ground of Leysin.  I picked up 40 kg of ski and mountaineering equipment to bring back to Tbilisi, and caught up with a number of friends and former students in the village, as well as riding a road bike for the first time in three years around a couple of my favourite local routes, up the Col de la Croix and around the Col de Forclaz-Voettes loop, the latter with my cycling and skiing friend Steve.  I was definitely a lot slower and more leaden-legged than I was three years ago, but it felt indescribably good to be riding in the beautiful
Alps again.

Yet another night flight, my fourth in eight days, brought me back to Tbilisi on August 4th, more bleary-eyed than ever.  The next morning Terri arrived from New Zealand and was promptly whisked off to dinner with Ardak, a former student from my Leysin days, in Georgia to visit her father.

Myself and my Kazakh former faculty daughter Ardak

Roadside picnic during landslide break below the Abano Pass

There was no rest for the jet-lagged the next day, as we got up early, shouldered full backpacks and set off for Ortachala bus station for a 3-hour marshrutka minibus ride to Telavi, the capital of the picturesque, historic Kakheti region of eastern Georgia.  Kakheti is abundantly fertile, and it was a feast for the senses.  We zipped past vineyards and stalls selling churchkhela, delicious snacks consisting of strings of walnuts dipped in thickened grape juice, along with peaches and melons.  Finally, in Telavi, we tumbled out and boarded smaller, tougher 4x4 Mitsubishi Delica minivans, the workhorses of Georgian mountain travel, for the crossing of the high, rugged Abano Pass into the legendary Tusheti region.

Dramatic hillsides below the Abano

I had been in Tusheti before, back in 2009 during the final leg of my Silk Road bicycle ride.  I rode my bicycle over the Abano and almost didn't make it; I had to camp beside the road partway up, worn out by the relentless steep grade and rough road, and then continued over the top into a magical landscape that stole my heart away.  This time, I thought it would be much easier sitting in the comfort of a minibus seat, but I hadn't reckoned on the weather.  It had rained torrentially a couple of hours before our departure, and the downpour had caused landslides that roared down the precipitous slopes of the pass and buried sections of the road.  We, along with dozens of other 4x4s, were stuck for hours until an ancient Soviet-era bulldozer hove into sight and set about pushing tons of boulders and mud over the edge of the road with nonchalant disregard for the vertical drop just centimetres from the centre of gravity of the vehicle.  In the meantime we shared in an impromptu feast of fish, khachapuri (cheese pie, the staple snack of Georgia), chicken and melon served up by some of the stranded drivers, washed down by some chacha, the eye-watering schnapps distilled from skins left over after wine-making.  Eventually the road was cleared and we roared up the pass, down the other side and back uphill to Omalo, the capital of the Tusheti region, where we spent the night in a pleasant little guesthouse and ate a lavish spread of local treats.

Galloping home in Omalo

Day 1:  August 7, Omalo to Pharsma, 24 kilometres

Wildflower

Wildflower

Terri woke up feeling not at all well; something she ate disagreed with her, and her jet lag probably didn't help matters.  She bravely decided to walk anyway, and to do a double stage; we were worried about getting back to Tbilisi on time at the end of our hike, and decided we could use an extra day at the end of the walk.  The first half of the day involved a couple of steep grunts uphill, first to the top of Omalo village and its impressive medieval defensive towers (a leitmotif throughout Tusheti), and then another to get into the Pirikita Alazani valley.

Omalo fortress

Psychadelic moth

Tusheti is located to the north of the Caucasus watershed, and the Pirikita Alazani River flows east out of Tusheti into Daghestan, on the Russian side of the mountains.  This was all new territory for me; in 2009 I had only ridden as far as Omalo's towers, and had done no hiking, so I was glad to see fresh vistas.  After the second climb, it was a long downhill to the village of Dartlo and its collection of towers, then an even longer level slog along the river, past the village of Chesho and its impressive outlying towers (located high up atop a long ridge) to our final destination for the day at Pharsma.  The scenery was magnificent, with the north-facing slopes mostly clad in forest of hardwood and cedar, while the south-facing slopes were open grassy meadows grazed by huge herds of sheep and the occasional cow.  Tusheti is only really inhabited in the brief summer months, when herders from Kakheti drive their sheep and cattle over the Abano Pass to fatten up on the lush grass and produce huge amounts of cheese, butter and wool.  Tumbling whitewater streams incised profound gashes into the green felt of the hillsides, while above us 3000 and 4000-metre peaks towered into the azure sky.  It was impossibly idyllic.

Another striking butterfly

Towers above Chesho

Terri was pretty worn out by travelling, illness and the rigours of a double stage and was keen to sleep indoors, but there was no room for us at the inn, so we ate a huge meal in a trail-side restaurant and then slept under the roof of its patio after closing time, as we were concerned about impending downpours.

Day 2:  August 8, Pharsma to Kvakhidi Meadows, 17 km

Fresh snow dusts the peaks above the Atsunta

Stone drywall construction

It did rain in the night, although not too dramatically, and by the time we were ready to leave the skies had cleared completely.  It was an easy stroll up the river to Girevi and its border guard post, where we showed our passports and got a border area permit while a curious puppy tried his best to devour my wet socks which were drying on the outside of my backpack.  From there we made our way steeply uphill past Girevi's beautiful towers and further upstream, staying high above the river.  The abandoned village of Chontio was spectacular and its elegant drywall construction and feeling of utter desolation reminded me forcefully of wandering around Mystra and Monemvassia in the Greek Pelepponese back in 2008.

Looking towards Chontio

A meadow viper (I think)

The mountains continued to dominate the skyline, and looking at the map we realized that the line of the highest peaks, a mere 7 kilometres to the north, marked the Georgian-Russian border.  We continued to oscillate vertically, climbing high above cliffs and then dipping down to ford rivers, before finally descending to the main valley floor and a campsite in a large meadow at about 2400 metres above sea level.  We set up Terri's trusty Big Agnes Copper Spur tent, cooked up a delicious dinner and shared some of it with Antoni, a personable Austrian with whom we had played leapfrog all day along the trail.  There were a good dozen other trekkers in small groups:  four Americans, five Russians, Antoni and a Brazilian couple.  There was also a large group of older Austrian trekkers who arrived not long after us but whose baggage horses didn't show up until after sunset, leaving them sitting around without food or tents for hours.  We were in bed relatively early, ready for the exertions of the Atsunta Pass the next day.

Day 3:  August 9, Kvakhidi Meadows to Khidotani Ridge, 17 km

Crossing the snow bridge

Pollinator at work

It was not a restful night, with a Biblical downpour keeping us awake in the night.  In the morning we were the first trekkers to breakfast, pack up and start walking, a highly unusual situation as we are usually among the last to leave a campsite.  We marched upstream, along a valley that was now much narrower as we approached the source of the river.  The banks were a riot of colourful wildflowers, and I spent a lot of time trying to shoot macro photos of the blossoms.  We crossed a rather precarious snow bridge; we had been seeing patches of old snow, sometimes several metres thick, at the base of avalanche chutes ever since Girevi, but this was by far the largest so far.  It surprised me that so much snow survives until August at such a low altitude, but it must reflect the sheer volume of snowfall over the long winter.  We forded the main river (a cold, unstable and rather unpleasant task), then headed up a tributary before turning away from the valley and clambering steeply up a grassy slope that turned into a long uphill slog across a soggy scree slope.

Yet another pretty wildflower

Antoni fording the chilly river

It took a few hours to climb up to the summit of the 3431-metre Atsunta Pass, and we were rewarded for our toil with views of the inside of a cloud and 5-degree temperatures.  As we descended abruptly into the Khevsureti region the cloud began to spit hailstones onto our heads intermittently, while thunderclaps sounded only seconds away over our heads.  When the clouds finally dispersed, we found ourselves on a broad grassy ridge surrounded by 4000-metre peaks dusted white with fresh snow.

Trekkers in the mist:  atop the Atsunta

Fresh snow dusting the slopes above the Atsunta

A brief moment of clarity on the Khidotani Ridge

We made the most of our ten minutes of clear views before the clouds returned, and then traversed endlessly across a steep slope before a cruel uphill and a final descent to a campsite oddly lacking in a clean water source.  No sooner had we set up our tent than the heavens opened on us for two hours and we crawled into our tent, eschewing cooking in favour of cold food and hard-earned sleep.  It had been a long, hard day, and the rain seemed like poor recompense for our efforts.

Day 4:  August 10, Khidotani Ridge to Shatili, 20 km

Wet flowers

Terri teetering above the muddy torrent

We awoke to a soggy world, hungry after our frugal repast of the night before, and cooked up sizeable portions of oatmeal before leaving camp with Antoni.  It was a steep descent to the Andaki River through the lushest fields yet of wildflowers, a quilt of violent pinks, purples, yellows and oranges.  The path was less slippery and muddy than we had feared, even after the torrential downpour of the night before, and within an hour we were beside the river, a grey mass of liquid mud, swollen by runoff.  A few dodgy bridges led over the river to a jeep track; one bridge consisted of a slippery log and a rusty pipe, millimetres above the raging waters, that required a great deal of concentration.  After that, it was an easy, almost flat stroll through wilderness, fields and the occasional village to the towers of Mutso, then on to Anatori, where the river led north to the closed Russian border barely a kilometre beyond.

Badland scenery between Anatori and Shatili

Anatori necropolis

Anatori was a lonely promontory high above a confluence, with a few old stone plague houses full of bones from the victims of an 18th-century epidemic.  From there it was just a short stroll upstream, past eroded conglomerate pillars reminiscent of Cappadocia, to our endpoint, the medieval tower village of Shatili.  We had anticipated spending the night there and then returning to Tbilisi, but we found Antoni, the two Brazilians, the four Americans and a handful of other trekkers waiting for us to fill up a chartered minibus that they had arranged.  Minutes later we were off along another dodgy mountain road, over a 2600-metre-high pass (less alarming than the Abano Pass, but still dangerous-looking).  Four hours (and a flat tire) later, we were being dropped off beside the highway, a short walk from our house, and our Tusheti adventure was over.

Blossom and insect

More wildflowers

I loved this walk for its combination of nature, big mountains and historic, picturesque villages, as well as its vast proliferation of wildflowers.  The Caucasus is a magical part of the world, and it was the memory of my bicycle rides through various Caucasian valleys in 2009 and 2011 that lured me back into teaching.  I am looking forward to returning to the mountains this coming weekend for another traverse, this time from Juta to Roshka, and I will post about that trip next week.  I hope you enjoyed this blog post and its pictures, and that it inspires you to get out into the mountains, either here in Georgia or wherever you find yourself in the world.

Tired, wet but elated at the end of the trek

A quick update from Bali

Cycling Georgia back in 2009

Trundling along the Danube, 2015

Just a quick update from our little pocket of tropical island life here.  Most of you, my faithful readers, are already aware of big changes coming in my life, but for those of you not yet aware, our time here in Bali is rapidly drawing to a close.  Not forever, mind you; Terri is keeping her house here which has been such a great place to base ourselves over the past year.  I've loved living here, doing lots of diving and snorkelling in the ocean and running and cycling in the mountains, and writing.  I'm halfway through the second draft of my book on my Silk Road cycle trip, having written almost the entire first draft here in my writing eyrie perched high on a hill overlooking the waters and sailboats of the Bali Sea.  It has been the perfect spot to write, and I am frantically trying to get through the hard work of the second draft before I lose this base.  We will certainly be back here in the future, probably living here again in a few years' time.

Sailing in Finland with my friend JP, 2015

Atop another hair-raising climb on the GR20 in Corsica

In February, when I was at the northern tip of the North Island of New Zealand with Terri, I received an offer from an international high school in Tbilisi, Georgia to teach science and mathematics there.  It's been almost 3 years since I last taught, and I've enjoyed my "pretirement":  cycle trips along the Danube and through Scandinavia; hiking in the Pyrenees and Corsica; a cruise to the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula; cycling in Chile, Argentina and Paraguay; working on Terri's pre-school in Zambia; our year-long African odyssey in Stanley; diving here in Indonesia and qualifying as a PADI Open Water SCUBA Instructor; hiking in New Zealand.  Of course, there was also the less fun aspect of my father's death last July, although being free to help nurse him through his final months was an important part of saying goodbye to him.  

Happy in Antarctica

Terri and some of the staff and students of Olive Tree

Riding the Carretera Austral, Chile

At any rate, I have had an incredible time on the travel front with Terri, and there is so much more that I want to do:  drive Stanley all the way around Africa; hike the fabulous mountains of Central Asia; explore Central America, northern South America and Brazil.  However after 3 years on the road, the sad realities of economic life dictate that I need to earn some money, and while I would have liked teaching SCUBA diving, teaching high school is a much more lucrative profession, particularly on the international circuit, and Georgia is one of the few countries that I was willing to come out of pretirement for.  I cycled in Georgia in 2009 and 2011, and skied there in 2015, and every time I really enjoyed the feel of the country, the culture, the people and the amazing Caucasus Mountains.  I accepted the job, and so in August I will be moving to Tbilisi along with Terri to start a two-year commitment.  I am looking forward immensely to living in Georgia:  the food, the wine, the opportunities to hike and ski, the chance to polish up my Russian and learn some Georgian, and of course getting to try to inspire young minds to love mathematics and science.  I am very excited indeed.

Wild camping in Botswana

Before we go, however, we are heading back to Namibia to pick up Stanley and take him for a spin for the next 7 weeks.  He's been parked in Windhoek, and we want to do more exploring of Namibia, a country that we really enjoyed last year despite having to curtail our travels because of my father's illness.  The plan is to drive less and stay longer in the various spots that we visit, particularly in the northwestern deserts.  It will be wonderful to restart Stanley's Travels, if only briefly.  

I want to spend July in Ottawa, visiting my mother and working on my book under her eagle-eyed editorial supervision, before flying to Tbilisi at the end of the month.  I have to nip over to Switzerland to pick up my skis and other winter sports gear that I stored in Leysin back in 2015, and then I will have a little over a week of liberty before orientation for new staff begins at the school.  I would like to spend that week exploring some corner of the Caucasus on foot with Terri; I have done plenty of cycling but not nearly enough walking in Georgia, and it's time to remedy that.  I would like to explore a leg of the newly-developing Trans-Caucasian Trail system, perhaps linking Tusheti and Khevsureti, or maybe between Racha and Lentekhi.  There is so much stupendous mountain scenery to explore that I am sure we will be kept busy every weekend for the next couple of years.  

Damaraland, Namibia

The plan for next summer is to go to Kyrgyzstan, my other favourite Silk Road country, and do some serious trekking there:  Lake Sary-Chelek; the Inylchek Glacier; the Turkestan Range in Batken province.  I'd also like to have a couple of weeks left over for more Caucasus trekking as well.  Then in 2020, when my time in Georgia comes to an end, I want to go back to Africa to take Stanley on his longest trip yet, up the west side of Africa to Europe, and back down the east side to South Africa.  

Moremi, Botswana

So much to see, so little time!  I hope to see some of you, my faithful readers, in Georgia for some skiing, some cycling, some hiking or some wine-tasting over the next two years, and I hope you continue to follow my adventures here online.

Bali sunset

Back In The Saddle: A Quick Bicycle Trip Around Bali

Lipah, May 1, 2018

Dozens of sails along the RollerCoastal

I got back to Bali about ten days before Terri at the beginning of April, and used some of that time to put right something that has been bothering me for months.  I hadn't gone on a bicycle trip in over two years, the longest such gap since 1994-97.  Terri and I rode our bicycles up the Carretera Austral in Chile, and around Paraguay, in 2015-16, and since then I have done lots of travel, but none of it on my trusty Rocky Mountain.  I decided that I should do a short jaunt around the eastern part of the island of Bali, and quickly charted out a 4-day itinerary to hit a few of the highlights that I had so far missed.  On April 8th I loaded up my bicycle very lightly (just two rear panniers, as I was going to be sleeping indoors every night and eating in restaurants) and set off to explore.

Eye candy along the RollerCoastal

Day 1:  April 8.  Lipah-Peneloka          91 km, 2660 vertical metres

The coast east of Lipah is very pretty indeed!

The first day was the hardest ride of the entire trip, with some 2660 vertical metres of climbing in some pretty intense heat.  I started off by riding the RollerCoastal, the back road to Amlapura, the biggest town in Karangasem Regency (in which Lipah is located).  I often ride part of this road as a fun morning outing, but I had never cycled all the way to Amlapura.  My nickname for the route tells you what you need to know about it:  lots of short, steep ups and downs.  The road climbs up and down over a series of sharp ridges coming down from the caldera of the extinct volcano that rises just behind Lipah.  Lempuyang and Seraya are the two highest surviving bits of a mountain that blasted itself to pieces sometime in the dim prehistoric past, but looking on a map you can see that there is a clear outline of what was once a much broader, higher volcanic cone.  It was a hot, challenging ride, with lots of it ridden in my lowest gear.  About two thirds of the way to Amlapura, the road finally became gentler, with better pavement and kinder grades.  It felt amazing to be back in the saddle, headed out for more than a couple of hours of riding.  I had missed the sensation of freedom and exploration that a bicycle tour always brings me.  The views along the RollerCoastal are sensational, with every headland bringing another vista of a black sand beach crowded with fishing boats, with the shimmering azure of the Bali Sea studded with sails beyond.  This stretch of coast has escaped tourist development, and the villages are devoted to fishing as they have been for generations.

Gunung Agung seen from Amlapura

After two and a half hours of tough riding, I got to the big city and had lunch in KFC so that I could use their free wi-fi; my SIM card had been locked by the government, and I was hoping to get it unlocked at the Telkomsel office in town, but I had forgotten that it was Sunday, and the office was closed.  I sat in the air conditioned restaurant, loaded up a Google Map route onto my phone and then set off northwest into the highlands under the fierce midday sun.

Lovely rice terraces on the way to Besakih

I had a wonderful view of Gunung Agung as I rode out of Amlapura.  The volcano has returned to its usual peaceful state after a few months of intense rumbling, shaking and puffing from September to January, and it looked magnificent in an almost cloudless sky.  I rode along the main road for a while until Google Maps directed me off onto a side road.  I am usually a huge fan of side roads, but in this case the side road was a tiny bit shorter by being a lot steeper, with a series of steep ups and downs through the spectacular rice terraces for which Bali is famous.  It was gruelling work, and when I finally re-emerged onto the busy main road, it was actually a bit of a relief to have gentler grades, despite the incessant noise of motorcycles and trucks and the standard Balinese maniacal driving style.  The road led around the western slopes of Gunung Agung, past the turnoff to Besakih, the main temple of the mountain and the starting point for climbing Agung.  I was definitely feeling all that vertical climbing when I finally reached the rim of the Gunung Batur caldera.  It was disappointing to discover that this was not the end of the uphill, as the road undulated, more up than down, for the next several kilometres until I got to the junction at Peneloka.  There a road plunges down to the shores of the lake, Danau Batur.  I was less than keen to lose all that hard-earned elevation, so I took a room at a hotel perched on the caldera rim, hoping for a fabulous sunrise view the next morning; it was already dusk by the time I climbed off my bicycle, legs weary but otherwise feeling pretty good.  A much-needed shower, a big meal and an early night completed the first day.

Day 2:  April 9.  Peneloka-Candikuning          65 km,  1510 vertical metres

Dawn over Batur

I was up in the predawn the next morning after the soul-satisfying deep sleep that comes after a big day of riding.  There was a pretty dawn light show in the eastern sky, but thin cloud led to rather flat, disappointing light on the new cinder cone of Gunung Batur.  I could see the headlights and camera flashes of hordes of trekkers near the summit; Batur is a popular climb for tourists, and has been sewn up by a local guiding association who make it remarkably expensive for a relatively short walk.  I felt no real need to climb the volcano, as there was plenty of exercise ahead, despite it being a significantly shorter and less vertical leg than the day before.  I took a few photos, stretched and juggled a bit to wake up, then climbed onto my bicycle.

Early morning light on Gunung Batur

Festival time

The road continued to climb, albeit fitfully, as I circled the caldera clockwise.  There was a lot of traffic on the road, as this is part of the main north-south route from Denpasar to Singaraja.  Luckily there was a festival at one of the temples along the route which closed the road to all but motorcycles and one lucky cyclists.  After 11 kilometres and some 350 metres of ascent, to just over 1600 metres above sea level, I was happy to turn away from the main road and start descending to the south.  I could see the mountains enclosing the day's destination, another volcanic lake called Danau Bratan, to the west, seemingly close enough to touch, but the jagged gash of a deep gorge means that there is no direct road between the two lakes.  Instead my route led me 25 km south to a crossing point, then another 25 km north again.  The southward leg was all downhill, making for an easy morning.  The scenery was appealing too, across volcanic highlands devoted to plantations of oranges, coffee and marigolds.  I had not breakfasted before leaving, so in the small village of Catur I stopped for a big helping of gado gado, one of my favourite Indonesian dishes, at a small roadside stall.  The woman running the place spoke exceptionally good English, and it turned out that she had worked abroad for over a decade in Turkey, the Maldives and Dubai.  She worked first as a masseuse, then as a massage instructor and supervisor, and had only returned to her native village to care for her aged parents a few months previously.  We chatted about travel, and it turned out that she, like me, is a big fan of Kyrgyzstan.  These sorts of serendipitous encounters with people along the way are one of my favourite aspects of bicycle journeys, and I pedalled off with my belly full and feeling good about being back cycle touring.

A well-travelled restaurateur in Catur

Volcanoes lining up from near Plaga

I lost altitude increasingly rapidly, eventually crossing one deep canyon and climbing into the small town of Plaga before dropping again to the main crossing over the Ayung River.  I was now less than 30 km north of Ubud and the landscape, all rice terraces and pretty ridge-top temples and villages, was very similar to the magical countryside that made Ubud famous (too famous, to judge by the appalling traffic that was choking the place the last time I visited, last September).  Now all that remained was 900 metres of regaining lost elevation.  It was a steep, hard grunt, but much of the way I was on a small side road without any traffic at all, so I had time to look around and appreciate my surroundings.  It was a bit grey and hazy, not so good for views but a welcome relief for a cyclist sweating his way uphill.  About 6 km short of my destination, I joined another major north-south road and resigned myself to more heavy traffic and obnoxious driving behaviour.  I finally got to the village of Candikuning around 1:30, found a cheap hotel, showered and then set off in search of sustenance, both physical and intellectual.

Highland plantations

Marigolds grown in the highlands

The former came in the form of mujair, the fish that is raised in fish farms in both Danau Bratan and Danau Batur; it was pleasant, but the sweet soy-based sauce was a bit strange.  I then wandered up the road to the Bali Botanical Gardens where I hoped to do some birdwatching.  I had read several accounts of birdwatchers who had seen a couple dozen species of highland birds in an afternoon there, but I was either incompetent or unlucky, or both.  I could hear birds calling high overhead in tall trees, but peer as I might through my binoculars, I couldn't spot anything.  It was a complete strikeout in terms of new species; at least I had a pleasant stroll through the gardens.  After a big dinner of nasi goreng, I was in bed early, feeling a bit tired.

Near Danau Bratan

Day 3:  April 10, Candikuning to Lovina        33 km  330 vertical metres

It was a good thing that I was in bed early, as I had not paid enough attention to the religious makeup of Candikuning.  Bali is mostly Hindu, but there are pockets of Muslims here and there, and Candikuning was almost exclusively Muslim.  I was sleeping with my earplugs in (Bali's obsession with roosters, along with its packs of feral dogs, make for noisy nights), but they were no match for the high-decibel call to prayer that shook my hotel at 4:30 am.  I eventually fell asleep again, but I was not a well-rested little cyclist when I crawled out of bed.

Overlooking Danau Buyan

The day's riding was amazingly short and easy.  I rode out of town along the shore of Lake Bratan, then along a level valley leading to two more lakes, Buyan and Tamblingan; all three are nestled under the caldera wall of another extinct volcano.  At Buyan the road climbed steeply up to the rim of the caldera and then continued fairly level, with expansive views of the lakes to the left and the ocean to the right.  I felt suspended in mid-air and it made for wonderful cycling, especially when the main torrent of traffic disappeared downhill towards Singaraja.  Not long afterwards I followed Google Maps down a very steep route to the tourist hotspot of Lovina Beach.  I had 1500 metres to lose over 15 km, an average gradient of 10%, but the first half was surprisingly level.  The second half, however, was precipitous, and my forearms were starting to cramp by the time I got to the bottom.  It was very pretty and there was next to no traffic, and I really enjoyed being so far off the beaten track.  At the bottom I was able to boil water from my bottles on my brake rotors; all that gravitational potential energy that I had gained the day before was converted into heat, a fact that pleased my physics-teaching brain.

I had stayed in Lovina one night back in November during a quick diving trip along the north coast, and I had been surprised at how tatty the village is.  I knew that lots of expats and retirees live in Lovina, and I was hard-put to figure out where.  This trip revealed another side of Lovina in the hills above the coast, where genteel villas have been constructed to catch the mountain breezes.  I stayed closer to the coast, in the cheapest hotel so far; 150,000 rupiah (about US$ 12) bought me a spacious room in a complex with a swimming pool and pleasant gardens.  I went out for a sizeable lunch, then ended up spending much of the afternoon catching up on my beauty sleep, undisturbed by any muezzins.  I went out for dinner that evening overlooking Lovina's rather underwhelming beach and listened to quite a good cover band before retiring to my room.

Danau Buyan

Day Four:  April 11, Lovina to Lipah         90 km, 740 vertical metres

The last day of the trip was a bit of an anticlimax.  After the mountains, climbs, descents and new scenery of the first three days, the final stage was a fairly flat, uneventful trundle along a road that I had travelled twice before in each direction on visa runs (Singaraja is the nearest visa extension office to Lipah).   I stopped in Singaraja and got my SIM card issue resolved, a process that took almost an hour as I was behind a line of Chinese visitors who had also been stymied by the government's obsession with having all SIM cards registered.  After Singaraja I was able to ride fast enough to generate some wind cooling in the heat of the day, and I made good time all the way to Tulamben, site of the USAT Liberty wreck and many more less well-known muck-diving sites that Terri and I have visited many times.  From there the road got a bit hillier, but I was still back in Lipah by 2:30, having taken less than four hours from Singaraja.  I was hungry and a bit sunburnt, but elated at having seen a few more corners of Bali by bicycle.  I can't wait to do more cycle touring (probably just weekend jaunts) when I move to Tbilisi in August!