Georgia was a country that I was absolutely determined to visit in early 2018, and I didn’t really care what I had to do to make it happen. I almost had a flight booked to Tbilisi in 2017, via Turkey, though some last minute changes took place at that time and I needed to fly to India and Australia instead. As soon as January 2018 hit, at that time I was in Sydney, I decided to take a lengthy, cruel and really expensive route to Georgia, which included over 65 hours of travel, 3 airport stopovers, 2 in China and another in Kazakhstan, a lot of really boring airport time, close to no sleep for almost three days, a trip that proved to be extremely exhausting, but almost 3 days later, arrived in Tbilisi in the middle of the night and was back in Europe and I felt rewarded. I was still on a mission to make it to every country in Europe before the end of February 2018 and this was the ideal location because I would be able to do the land border crossing to Armenia which was only a few hours from Tbiisi, I would also be able to fly directly to Istanbul, then fly directly to Cyprus and then finish up in Malta and there the celebrations would begin, so the plan was looking more and more perfect, day by day.

I was in absolutely no mood to do anything for my first two days and had given myself a week in Georgia to get used to Europe and the European climate again, overcome jetlag and get used to the environment, winters in Europe are far too cruel. The weather was freezing and I had already finished the most exhausting and agonizing route that I’d ever done before, though the thought of just having 4 more European countries to go, after Georgia, was keeping me going and keeping me strong and stable and I promised myself that I wasn’t going to stop for anything, regardless of how difficult it could get.

So I got back into winter mode, still horribly jetlagged, and invested in some more warm clothes and explored Tbilisi for the remaining few days, a country that is difficult to navigate around because they use their own alphabet and use their own characters, not having any similarities with English whatsoever. After two days I was getting back to normal again, but still felt exhausted at times, especially in the evenings when the weather dipped significantly. I had slept well the second night and my Air BnB host was really chatty and really informative about life in Georgia and why it’s now becoming more popular as a tourist destination.  The next day I wasn’t willing to take baby steps anymore, instead I went to the main city center and began exploring Tbilisi in its entirety, even took a bus tour and ate some proper food for the first time in a few days. Everything was almost back to normal by the time that I had departed for Istanbul and I was hungrier than ever at that stage to finish my task, a task that I’d been working on since 2015, though I did have some gaps in between, and I was almost finished visiting every single country in Europe.

I was a bit disappointed leaving Georgia after a week because I enjoyed Tbilisi a lot, mostly because I had a lot of time to recover and enjoyed going to Vake park, Narikala and the Bridge of Peace, a country that I would love to revisit and a country with daily links to Istanbul, a place that I know I’ll be connecting through time and time again on my return home and elsewhere.