Georgia trip/Kintrishi

Day before we had smooth flight over Istanbul to Tblisi, catering and DVD on offer by Turkish Airlines setting the new standard for Nirjhara luxury travel.
Unfortunately, the car transfer from Tblisi to first base camp close to the Black See was less comfortable, 400km took about 6h and the wine offered by our kind Oekrain co-passengers was of questionable quality (do not thrust wine from soda bottles). After a very short night we met the rest of the Two Blades trip members. Turned out two teams would be combined, including Russian, Oekrain, Norwegian, UK, French and Belgian nationalities. Our kayak resumes looked quite pale compared to the other guys and girls, who had mostly travelled all continents and some even had their name in the Book of Legends...

Warm-up river would be the Kintrishi, about 16km of class 3 with 4-5 rapids pushing grade 4. For shuttle, an old Tata truck with good clearance was ordered, a good thing on the 8*8 access road.
For some unclear reason, Ward and I ended up in team B of the weaker paddlers together with the girls and led by Egor. Egor had bombed down this section the week before in 2h and we had a hard time following his lines with way too limited eddies for recovery. Sure enough, Nirjhara style always prevails and with some well organized chaos, we managed to slow down the pace a little.
Good thing as the surroundings of the river were fantastic, green/subtropic gorge, flowers and pronounced perfume all around, clear water,... Think we still managed to finish the run in about 3h only 30min after team A.

At the take-out, Andrej had a Rekkerken moment after eating some nuts he found, we immediately felt a bit more at home. After loading the kayaks, we had dinner in Batumi and had positive first impression of Georgina kitchen, lots of different dishes and important, sufficient quantities.

PS: Dam construction ongoing which will presumably dewater the upper part


Shuttle vehicle Russian style


Ward in action


Subtropic scenery


Small drop


Another drop...

Medevaarders