How far can we go on the old hippy trail? Overland from Leeds to Georgia | Georgia holidays

The idea retreated a few months ago, when my chicks left our jobs, our property has placed storage and started planning for a year of travel. The screws have always been a romantic thing. I heard stories from family friends about jumping on a bus in London, and high through Yugoslavia, Iran, Afghanistan and India before going down in Kathmandu. In the twenty -first century, I wondered how much we could go without having to pick up a plane?

On the map of Europe, I follow all the lands we can take. We decided to search for the sun, and travel by train to the gun, before continuing in the east.

We reserve our train to London, then we face our first hiccups: We are on a narrow budget and Eurostar tickets in late August, nearly 200 pounds each. So instead, we reserve a 34 pounds of £ 34 from London to Brussels. Thus, after two weeks, we find ourselves wandering in an empty garden in the capital of Belgium at 6 am, wearing our backpacks, and we feel the weight of our decision.

It is an anti -climate start. We cannot check for hours and we only have a day to see the city. We wander around the free walk tour, and we spend our dinner budget on the recruited chocolate pies, and stability in a local bar in the evening. The next day, we take local trains to Germany, then the Nightjet railway service from Stuttgart to Venice.

Ponte del Della Liberta crosses the historic center of the sun with a height of the sun, and reached almost the abandoned gun. The light shines from the roaming gondola and we take the stillness of the famous Ponte Dilakadia. We have three days in the city and do not want to sleep. We switch travel to the Vaporetto Water bus, and we extend our legs wandering on the small island of Sant’elena, and we sit on the walls of the canal. Cicchetti (Small Venice Panels) and spritz. It seems as if the holiday has finally started.

After the race across the expensive Western Europe, it is amazing to reach the Balkans. The next few weeks are colored with sunlight late in the summer, and the Slovenian lake swimming and daily Flakey Porn (Pastries). We visit a day in the Julian Mountains, and stop at a mountain hut to get a divine dish of sweet cheese and berries.

While we move deeper in Eastern Europe, there is less information online about traveling methods across the country, so we transfer tables and linguistic barriers in loud transport centers instead. At Belgrade Station, we reserve a bed on the Black Montecine’s Rapid Train, on the coast of the Montecine Adriatic. It takes 11 hours, and costs about 20 pounds and is great like a night train. Despite two Babushkas smoking in the chain on Bunks below us, we sleep, and we sleep to the winding train through the dinar mountains at sunrise. I see from the bed while the soft light leaks into closed rocky valleys, lighting from blue to bronze.

Stari Bar, a few internal miles away, gives us our first taste from Montenegro. For breakfast – fresh pomegranate juice and PriganiceBlack mountain bread served with rated jam and crushing sweet cheese. The view of the old castle in the city is more delicious. Monnegro has a few train lines, so we rent a car to make the most of our time on the coast, and we take north. We move in all the sixteen curves of the Kotor Serpentine way to get one of the best scenes on our entire journey, and we dive into the Gulf from the Rose village covered with Azure.

Returning to the bar, we pick up the buses to Shkodër, where a large new mosque wanders behind the bus, we arrive in Albania, our first Islamic majority country. We spend our time here in the mountains, and walk long distances in a hard but amazing section Balkan peaks Train between Valbonë and Theth. We rest on a house farm, Bujtina Zemra TraditesAnd enjoy the evening strange for the owners who escaped from the sheep that escaped while spreading on the pickled green tomatoes and white and fresh cheese Cola Soda bread. Life is slow and frequent in these mountains, but it is the rest that we need before our next leg.

London night bus lessons to Brussels are a distant memory while we reach the capital of Albania and Tirana and booked a 9 pm trip to northern Macedonia. A family has already made a bed in our seats when we call, and we ask them to move embarrassingly. The capital of North Macedonia, Scopji, reminds us of a small-specified strike by Turkish minarets, cafes and bazaars. Another bus moved us to the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, with its churches that are divided into the jaw, the tram -filled with candles, and candle bars. From there, we call a night train to Istanbul. It is a city I am familiar with, and I am the happiest to show the best sites of the sites men (Turkish scrambled eggs) Breakfast, and looks from the Süleymaniye mosque for lunch.

Compared to the relatively small European countries, Türkiye appears to be an arduous land. A bullet train takes us to the capital, Ankara, followed by slow slow and picturesque landscape 22 hours Doğu Express To eastern Türkiye. A handful of others from the filling of the sleeping cart.

The Swiss couple is heading to Georgia on vacation, and they choose trains instead of the trip. The veteran traveler tells me that he will go to Singapore. Dive into the details – Did you find a path that we did not look at? He admits that he will need a short trip to Russia or Azerbaijan. However, at the present time, we all go in the same way – to the Georgian border.

What should have been an easy leap from Erzurum to the border turned into one of the most arduous flight days. The bus is stuck behind a ground collapse, and just hours after the road cleansing, we were met via the past fallen rocks. On the border, we are paid and hit by controlling passports, along with hundreds of young Turks heading to Batumi for the weekend, then we are running to arrest the last small bus in the city.

We crossed to Asia again in the Bosphorus Strait, in Istanbul, but Georgia feels that it is returning to the Soviet culture spread in the Balkans. In Kotesi, we have house The host, George, sits with cups of Georgian wine and spends a few hours trying to persuade us of his country invented things. Not only great wine, food is also a great surprise. We feed daily Adjarian Khasaburi Bake a boat filled with dissolved cheese, butter and eggs, along with piles of broken walnut salads.

After walking long distances across the valleys surrounding Mount Kazak Marchartkka A small bus at our last station – the capital of Georgia. Tbilisi is a mixture of dilapidated, diligent and refreshing glory. This is the distant edge of Europe and it is clear from writing on the pro-European Federation walls that there is a division-details that I looked back when when Protests He broke out after the elections in October 2024.

Now, we know that Georgia is our last country. Since the epidemic, Azerbaijan Earth borders have been closed, with no clear reopening date. Russia is listed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, meaning even if we get a difficult visa to obtain, we will not cover travel insurance. We can retreat south to Armenia, but we will leave us with closed borders and lower flight options. This is as much as we can go.

For more than 3000 miles, we converted to freedom of the road and bars. Some of the unforgettable journey moments – that divine dumplings in a mountain hut in Slovenia; That glorious night train from Serbia to Montenegro; The height was through the extension of Albania from the Balkan peaks – experiments that may never face it without the spirit of the screws. It invites you to the rest, directs you to unexpected places, and encourages you to take care of the advice of the local population and their travelers. One day the Hobbi bus will be TRIL from London to Kathmando again, but now, we take a plane to the capital of Nepal where a new adventure is waiting.

Use the writer A man in seat 61 Website For planning and Umu For reservation Transmission Between citiesAnd the blog Wander As a supplier to travel in Balkan and Georgia