Raucous In The Caucasus

Two men in permanent mild peril.

Impressive. Very nice. Now let's see Paul Allen's boarding pass. Look at that subtle off-white colouring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my god, it even has an airline watermark...'

Unfortunately, mine did not. No, mine looked like someone had printed a Tesco receipt on tissue paper. I spent the entire flight to Yerevan clutching my pass, trying not to tear it into a thousand tiny pieces in case I needed it at the border.

We finally arrived in the Armenian capital at 03:30 am, bone-tired and beat, but emerged out of passport control to find an airport that was suspiciously lively. Fleets of sports teams came parading past in matching tracksuits, while many waiting behind barriers clutched armfuls of flowers, and actual celebrations were erupting outside. Locals danced in the car park, while traditional music blared and fireworks were popping in rhythmic bursts. Who knows what they were celebrating, maybe it was a returning relative, or the national team winning the yo-yo world championship (or something equally bizarre), or then maybe it was just the fact it was Monday (I, too, shake with excitement before work). But it felt like we were arriving somewhere vibrant.

Once we'd got our heads around the latest squiggles, having gone from Latin to Greek to Cyrillic to Ayuben alphabets in quick succession, and without sleep or a plan, we decided to head for sunrise.

Transport in the Slavic world means one thing and one thing only: Yandex is love and Yandex is life. If you're not familiar, let me fill you in. Yandex Go is the closest thing humanity has ever come to teleportation. You need only tap a yellow button and within seconds you've summoned a battered wreck of a car, usually missing a wing mirror or two, and probably piloted by a stern man named Anatoly, who definitely doesn't speak a word of English. And the best bit: the ride will only cost you 88p, although admittedly that won't include the cost of therapy you'll need from speeding scares, illegal U-turns, and the near-death experience of overtakes.

And so, rekindling our love affair with Yandex, we headed south to Khor Virap, a monastery perched near the Turkish, Iranian and Azerbaijani borders. The journey there took us from witnessing storks nesting upon telegraph poles to seeking out the silhouette of Ararat through the morning haze. And then there it was.

Biblical and towering. Drenched in golden light, as though basted by the heavens and anointed on the horizon. Despite technically being located in Turkey, Mount Ararat is the spiritual heart of Armenia, a symbol of national identity and longing, said to be the resting place of Noah's ark. The 5,165 m volcano, and his friend little Ararat can be seen like lone sentinels over the otherwise arid and featureless land. And while seen from Yerevan, they can no longer be touched. Let's just say that Turkey and Armenia aren't exactly the best of friends.

Soaking in the light of dawn, we sat and watched the orange shades unfold upon many nations, and reflected to ourselves in a peaceful state of meditation, joined by our stray but four-pawed friends.

We were alone for some many hours before a local man appeared, and after a bit of broken conversation and gesturing, he kissed us both on the forehead! Sounds bizarre, and maybe it was, but it meant more than that. As we understood it, he was from Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of bitter territorial conflict and ethnic violence. He was a refugee, he had lost his homeland. Let's just say that Azerbaijan and Armenia aren't exactly the best of friends either.

With our zombified state beginning to kick in, we zoomed around the monastery, where Thomas briefly got stuck in a dungeon (yes, really), eventually making an escape to check into our hotel in Yerevan. A doze or two later allowed us to recollect our strength, and we set back out to explore the capital in all its charm and grit.

First stop, Vernissage market. Now I LOVE a good market, but a market selling Soviet-era memorabilia!? Take my money, I tell you!! I'm rubbing my hands together here just thinking about the damn thing (🤤🤤). Part flea market, part open-air museum, the air buzzed with the murmur of bargaining, and everything was for sale, from dusty typewriters to antique relics, intricate scarves to six hundred identical chess sets, and even shirts with the minions on (or in this case, the Arminions). Giddy and euphoric, I lapped up as many Soviet pin badges as I could plant my hands on for my now eclectic collection (gimme that shit), before I skipped the whole way home.

Elsewhere, café terraces blended harmoniously with soviet blocks and we sampled the many squares of the centre, from Republic to Aznavour (🤞) to Freedom. After pausing for dinner, where Thomas chowed down on a plate of parsley and I clinked a Kilikia beer, we ended the day with an ascent of the Cascade Complex, the vast limestone staircase to nowhere, with glowing views overlooking the city's sprawl. Undeterred by the stirring clouds, we got absolutely soaked. Water dripping from our noses, it was time to call it a day (much like I need to with this entry, dear god.)

We'd barely arrived, and already Armenia had given us so much. Mostly soaked clothes, sleep deprivation and forehead kisses to be fair.

If yesterday's post wasn't enough to prove we've officially gone feral, then buckle up. Today we accidentally trod on a cat, hurled rosehips at each other's heads, and got adopted by a couple called Papa Gagik and Mama Garin.

Our Armenian culture crawl started out strong, first stopping at Charents' Arch, a striking stone gateway with views out to... uhh, nothing. The arch is supposed to frame Mount Ararat in all its patriotic whimsy, but instead it framed a dense milky fog and my mis-shapen head.

Feeling suitably enlightened by the great white void, we hopped back into the van, tuning in and out of the mutterings of our tour guide, Varga, who freestyled facts all the way to Geghard Monastery, dropping bars of trivia like he was about to go head to head with Eminem (he's beginning to feel like a fact god, fact god). Having felt like I'd just downloaded the entirety of Armenian wiki straight to my head, I stumbled out of the van feeling like a corrupted USB stick.

Luckily, Geghard was worth every megabyte.

It was an atmospheric, shadowy monastery half-built into knobbly cliffs, and surrounded by sweeping valleys and gorges. Between gawping at the backdrop and the tragic state of a Soviet-era Lada, we managed to lose our tour group, instead finding our way to one of the monastery's echoing cave-chapels, where the ceiling spotlight had me starting to feel all funky and monk-y. The acoustics of the chamber transformed the noise I make when my dentist tells me to 'open wide' into a half-sacred, half-demonic ambience (I always knew I had some role to play in a cult). Still, without Varga, there was a creeping sense that we were missing something educational.

Between discussing the most memorable times I'd ever wet myself back on the minibus, the next stop took us to the dramatically named Symphony of Stones, a gorge brimming with perfectly hexagonal basalt columns that made out like Mother Nature had just discovered that weird 'hexagons are the bestagons' video from YouTube back in the day (they are very much not the bestagons). Then at last, we gandered Garni temple, a Greco-Roman colonnaded oddity perched above the fractured gorge, where we squinted into the sun and posed like philosophers after asking yet another meaningless question.

At the end of the tour, we were delighted with a Lavash making demonstration, a cultural insight into the ancient Armenian art of bread making. It works whereby two elderly women emerge, faces dusted with flour and aprons rolled up in fury, only to slap each other silly with dough until one of them yields, or the bread finally gives in and agrees to be Lavash.

Once our tour had concluded, we decided to head to the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial. It was quite a change of gear as our day turned from slapstick to sobering. An eternal flame burns in memory of 1.5 million Armenians who were massacred by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. In the museum, the air was sombre but dignified, and although an important subject to touch on, it was quite a difficult thing to stomach, let alone write about. It honestly hit harder than expected.

Feeling quieter in our respects, we then endured another jarring tone shift, having to endure our taxi driver cat-calling girls, quite literally while driving out of a museum which honours the victim of his own country's version of the holocaust. Really makes you wonder, huh. 

But after gobbling up yet more Soviet stamps and badges at the market, our evening concluded by goofing about on electric pedalos, peaking into the cathartic cathedral, and a munching a meal at a restaurant called Burger Queen (who knew his majesty was married!?).

The next morning, we were seen off by Papa Gagik and Mama Garin, our hotel hosts turned guardians. You don't meet these two, you are adopted by them. Papa ambushed us with a bear-hug, Mama force fed us strawberry cake, and somewhere between the warm cheek-kisses, we realised we hadn't just stayed at a guesthouse, but in a chaotic and affectionate Armenian sitcom, an unaired pilot of Everybody Loves JJmond.

Are Georgians gorgeous? I don't know, but our first impressions were that they were certainly rude. Not French rude admittedly, but definitely in a blunt, Slavic, straight to grunts and giving-evils kind of way. More on that later, but more importantly, back to my pun. Georgia does have some of its own Horrible Histories too, and I'm not talking about the Born 2 Rule song.

No, Georgia's version is much less of a musical number, featuring two Russian-backed separatist states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as the fallout of the 2008 war with their noisy neighbours from the North. Russia rolled in the heavies over five days, laying waste to large parts of Northern Georgia. Most of the world still sees the breakaway regions as Georgian territory, but Russia basically said "New phone, who dis?" and still refuses to save any contacts, like that one friend we all have who never knows if they're texting their mum or the local pizza delivery.

But before I turn this into a deep dive on regional geopolitics, let's talk about the battles we had to face. Namely, a twelve hour journey across the rugged, semi-arid plateaus of Armenia, a place so empty I almost confused it with the state of my phone notifications (sorry, not counting Subway Surfers obviously).

This first leg was easy enough, as we squeezed into a mashrutka to Tbilisi, one of the charming Soviet death traps disguised as public transport. On the journey, we stopped only to bag some outrageously cheap sesame-breaded dates and met Peter, a Slovak who looked like if Martin Skrtel had traded Premier League red cards for being bitten by dogs in India.

Upon first impressions, Tbilisi seemed like a delightful and westernised city, lined with cobbled streets and ornate balconies. Don't be fooled though, one metro ride later from sorting SIM cards and cash with a woman who probably hadn't smiled since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we were back in the thick of it. Shacks were jumbled together with corrugated iron, road crossings seemed to be for decorative purposes only, and stray dogs paraded around like elected officials.

With all the seats on our following mashrutka seemingly sold out, this is where the real fun began. Rather than simply driving off, the driver, who had all the likeability of a wet ash tray, saw it as the perfect opportunity to chain-smoke 43 cigarettes, each one lit from the last, leaving us all to cook like unloved hotdogs in the back of the van.

I had no clue what was going on. People were laughing and arguing at the same time; one man, apparently their ringleader, waved around a sweaty wad of cash like he was investing in the FTSE 100; and the woman to my left glared at me with the disdain I usually reserve for war criminals and people who clap when planes land.

Things hardly improved when we did get going. I can only assume that the driver never really loved his wife or children all that much, as he took us hurtling along the roads like an unpaid stuntman. We tore round hairpin bends with enough force that my seat repeatedly folded up into the woman who already despised me in one direction, then snapped back the other way to almost eject me through the door, which for reasons I'll never know, stayed open almost the entire time.

Still, after a few painful butt cheeks and a few more painful hours, we finally arrived in Stepantsminda.

The next day was a much more tame affair. Thomas pulled up his freaky toe socks, and we descended on the town, picking up some unidentifiable fruit on our way to trek the Truso valley.

The valley itself was beautiful. Vast expanses of open plains were ringed with jagged peaks and dotted with rust-red mineral springs. These fed sulfur pools that bubbled and spewed with the pungent tang of rotten eggs, before spilling into the torrenting river which ripped through the landscape.

The path up the valley took us to the crumbling remnants of a men's monastery, only a kilometre on from the women's nunnery (let's be honest, the odd sneaky link definitely went down for the particularly naughty nuns and spunky monks between the two). We also stopped briefly at a lonely hut, where the angelic harmonies of a group of girls had me thinking that Georgia might just have a dark horse entry for Eurovision next year.

We trudged until we could trudge no further, eventually reaching the barbed wire gates of the South Ossetian border, manned by a group of armed soldiers, who must have seen far too many idiots with backpacks confuse their geopolitical frontline for just another scenic hike.

That's a wrap for now. Tune in tomorrow where the Horrible Histories theme could continue with Stupid Deaths if things go wrong (hope next time it's not you).

I've only gone and done it again. At this point, maybe being burnt will become one of those quirky little tidbits about my character, a bit like how I always make tea milk-first or know pi to 28 digits.

It's not my fault ok!! I can't help that I have the skin of a naked mole rat, and the common sense of a slightly sluttily dressed mole rat. It was literally cloudy! I only took my shirt off for 5 minutes (blatant lie). If it makes it any better, yes, I feel very ashamed. I'll drink whatever aloe vera goo my mum tells me to and brush my teeth with 100 SPF suncream for at least a month, promise.

More to the point, today we did an uphill thing. Stepping out from Stepantsminda, we ascended over 1100 m through lush, alpine meadows, heaving our heavy limbs over tuft after tuft of matted grass. Cows lounged lazily on the terraces, wildflowers swayed cheerfully in the breeze and our lungs drew crisp air deep into our bronchioles.

After 45 minutes of wheezing and legs seizing, we reached Gergeti Trinity Church, where the views were so good I might've developed a mild God complex (although it could've just been self awareness finally kicking in on my regular ego tbf). Then I saw the road that literally takes you straight to the front door. Perfect. And so, as we perched on a wall, dripping with sweat and gasping for oxygen, gaggles of Asian tourists flooded off air-conditioned buses, demanding that we move from the recovery position so they could poke Thomas with selfie sticks and pose with the view like Angelina Ballerina (also made funnier by the fact that, for a brief moment, Thomas genuinely thought they wanted a photo with him.)

Lots of elevation gain and even more lots of burning later, the ridgeline views opened up over the ominous grin of the Caucasus: a snarl of chasms yawning wide, sawtooth shards gnashing skyward, and glacial saliva drooling down to the valley floor.

We'd hoped to reach the towering icy walls of the Gergeti glacier, but with menacing clouds shrouding the elusive summit of Mount Kazbeg, we stopped at the panorama cafe, where to continue a theme, I sourced 90% of my calories through beer.

Still, we'd come within four miles of Russia (and a likely prison cell), hammered our chopstick legs, and climbed most of the way up a 5054 m mountain, which being the fifth highest in all of Europe, stands taller than Mont Blanc. The four greater peaks all await us on the next leg of our trip, and I can already hear the final boss music mounting in the distance.

In the final action of the day, we shot back in a mashrutka, where I somehow convinced the driver to stop at the Gudauri panorama, a colourful concrete mural overhanging the rift and plastered with mosaics depicting heroic moustaches and poorly proportioned horses celebrating Russian 'friendship'.

Then in Tbilisi, we finally made our obligatory culture visit to McDonald's, where I had something which called itself a 'Grimace shake with cream'. It was around then the burn started to pang. Fitting really. I grimaced, shook my fist, then applied moisturising cream.

Wake up dear disciples, mister gingerandbankrupt has risen once more with another whimsical travel update on find penguins dot com (or in this case, gingerandbankrupt dot co dot uk). What ever will he do next? Turn putrid river water into wine? Feed five thousand midges with a single slice of bread? Or part the mountains with another sarcastic quip?

After a quickfire opening to the trip, terrorising here, tantalising there, the last couple of days have settled into a gentler rhythm. The slower pace of a multi-day trek has allowed us to shift focus from bumbling frenetically to a more grounded connection: with people, with place, and with peace. Basically, our terrorism has mellowed into more of a mild passive aggression (much more British) and our tantalism into awkward small talk about the weather.

I expected the journey to Mestia to be another harrowing ordeal which might come complementary with a head trauma injury or two. But no, miraculously we chug(didi)d into Zugdidi without any major train incidents. Well, unless you count Thomas walking in on an old lady using the toilet, or sparks raining down from the overhead lines while we were broken down on the tracks of course (quite safe, I'm impressed).

The route mashed on the mashrutka leg was similarly serene, apart from the engine's agonising gasp every time we restarted after a pit stop. But after possibly two thousand train photos from Thomas, only one footprint written by myself (I really need to stop yapping so long on this god damn app😔), and a mild ten hours, we arrived in Mestia, the capital of Georgia's Svaneti region.

And the result? Our experience of Mestia has really been one of our bestia yet (pun or otherwise). Streets cobbled with ancient stone anchor stoic Svan towers that pop up like medieval meerkats between slate roofs and vegetable patches. But the highlight of our stay wasn't the towers nor even the mountain vistas, it was a gracious grandma called Ijorda.

Speaking of which, I have made a shocking discovery: almost no-one in this entire country is called George or Georgia. They're not even Geordie (shaking in disbelief right now, expect to see them on Rogue Traders soon). 

Still, granny's name was close enough, and without so much as a word of English, she waved us through the weathered gates of her home and into the mismatched chairs of her front room. What followed was somewhere between a dinner and a culinary ambush.

Plate after plate arrived, all homemade, homegrown and dished out with the unrelenting generosity of someone who clearly viewed being 'full' as a personal insult. There were eggs: boiled, fried, and quite possibly reincarnated given the clucking from beneath the floorboards; there was Plov so greasy it stood a good chance at getting a Soviet tractor rolling again; and there was Chacha, a hard spirit so strong that I felt a coma coming on with every sip.

Communication was a charming mix of gesturing, nodding and mime. Ijorda would watch us for almost every mouthful, pointing us towards each plate we'd yet to try. We'd nod enthusiastically, and then she'd respond by bringing over an entirely new dish! Still, she was a real sweetheart and it was a pleasure to feel the warmth of her heart and hospitality.

The next day, still nauseous from overeating, we waddled out of the guesthouse and left for our trek to Ushguli with an attempted hug (but Ijorda wasn't having any of it). With extra saucy views in mind, we decided to take an alternative route, up the chairlift then cable car up to the Zuruldi range, and along a panoramic ridge trail to the Ughviri Pass. 

A cast of ice encrusted peaks shimmered on the horizon, while the warm air buzzed with the clicks and chirps of all sorts of vibrant insects. I'll spare you the gritty hiking details, those are what the following footprints are for, but one moment does deserve a special mention: Chris Rea reared his ugly, festive head. 

As we unwound by an algae stricken lake with a game of cards and aching heels, 'driving home for Christmas' played on repeat from a nearby family barbecue (!?) in the 30°C July heat and in a Georgian paddock no less.

Maybe they recognised me as gingerandbankrupt tbf, but today isn't my birthday, just another resurrection.

Our host in Adishi, Tamara, was not your average sheepherding village grandma. An eloquent, well educated woman who also happened to be a political journalist on a radio show, she provided a generous breakfast along with a less than generous indictment of the Georgian state of affairs. As we chomped through lashings of improvised cake, and pastries stuffed with mystery meats, she poured the tea, both literally and figuratively, letting us in on the true feelings of the Georgian people when it comes to Russia, the government, and whether the prime minister is actually just three goats in a trenchcoat.

Tamara had filled us with enough hard truths and carbohydrates to fuel a minor revolution, but rather than storming parliament, we set off to confront a different kind of turbulence, the gushing meltwaters of a glacial river as we traced the valley up to Chkhunderi Pass.

The photos you see of Thomas traversing the strong currents on horseback are straight out of a Putin-themed calendar beloved by babushkas (turn to the next month and it's Thomas bare-chested fighting a bear.) Unfortunately, no photos of me on my steed but it's probably for the best, as I'm sure you'd have fainted from the sheer overload of bravado and concentrated testosterone.

At the top of the pass, the mountains were, like, wowzers! Big yikes, just look at the pictures. I mean, have you not had enough imagery on this trip yet!? They were, wait for it... Retina slappingly gorgeous, moustache twirlingly phwoar, and face meltingly scenic. I've exhausted the thesaurus, ok. The only words I've yet to use in this blog are 'locksmith', 'kerfuffle' and 'bootylicious'. I've used enough literary devices this trip to make an English teacher pregnant (although I've never actually met one that wasn't.)

So yes, the mountains were pretty epic. And while gazing out upon Europe's mightiest, we lunched on a nectarine, an apricot and other out of date delights, all washed down with disease water / sewage water (depending on your preferred flavour of liquid cholera of course.)

We descended into Khalde past trickling streams and rolling hills that made me feel like a termite on the side of a slazenger tennis ball. In the evening, I then set a new high score on subway surfers (kind of a big deal 😏😏), while Thomas made a friend and might have been recruited into the Israeli Defence Force (idk I had headphones in.)

Can you tell I'm going slightly delirious? I've just tried to butter my water bottle. 

Somewhere above the treeline, and possibly outside the legal bounds of my travel insurance coverage (depending on who's reading this), we found ourselves trudging through a landscape that can only be described as Teletubbycore. It had all the key features: rolling green hills, an almost artificial emptiness, and the demonic grin of a baby glaring down at us from the sky (or is that just me developing schizophrenia?)

For this day, we took an alternative trail, if you could call it that, which had clearly been designed by a sadist or at the very least been abandoned since the late sixties. Overgrown foliage clawed at my ankles like a pack of gingerandbankrupt fans desperate for a selfie (happens every time I leave the house without a disguise.)

Steep, overgrown, and narrow, it felt like we were hacking our way through the jungles of Vietnam. We bushwhacked through undergrowth so thick that we couldn't even see our own feet, let alone the horrendous uneven ground of the Lagem pass.

Horseflies rained down on us like a hellfire of napalm, targeting our skin with military precision, even piercing through our clothing to be able to nibble away at us,. Every few seconds, one of us would break out into a frantic slapping fit, like that one episode of the Teletubbies where they all turn on Dipsy for acting like a total bitch (*possibly made-up.)

At one point, Thomas disappeared through a bush like he'd triggered a Vietcong trap, before emerging with giant buboes blooming on his arm and knee from mystery stings. Whether purple from bites, bruises or breathlessness, he had now fully morphed into Tinky Winky (...or Tomky Womky!?), and myself into Laa Laa (uh... Jaa Jaa!?), battered and cbeebies versions of our former selves.

Each running on 3 mini cheddars and 5 Fanta flavoured mentos, we launched a final offensive up to 3,142 m for the most glorious vantage over the Caucasus yet. We could almost reach out and touch the crusted glaciers which lagged beneath us, while Mount Elbrus loomed in the distance, blank and boxy, like a Soviet fridge.

The descent that followed was an aggressive downhill, rife for buckling knees, screaming soles, and the ever present threat of slipping into the oblivion. Thomas nearly became a statistic, taking his very own fall of Saigon after misplacing a foot on the near vertical ground and tumbling for what felt like an eternity before landing miraculously, unscathed at the top of a gully. It was around here, one teletumble away from needing rescue from a chopper, that we asked ourselves 'is this actually fun, or did mountains just get to be our trauma-bond somewhere along the way?'

After a few hours of mental clock out, we finally descended into the four scattered stone hamlets of Ushguli, both in victory and defeat. But before we could fully take in the crumbling towers, we were being beckoned over by our American friends from Zhabeshi. Two of them, it turned out, had been bitten by dogs after doing handstands next to them (?!) and were now understandably keen to get to the hospital for rabies shots (maybe it was telerabies). And so, after being bundled into the back of a van, we looked back, triumphant, slightly sunburnt, and mildly rabid on Georgian Svaneti, celebrating our survival the only way we knew how: with pina coladas and pizza in Mestia (finally real food again😩).

In the end, it wasn't the horsefly-Cong or even Noo-Noo and the Voice Trumpet who had conquered us (don't ask how I know so much about the Teletubbies), but by our own thirst for misadventure.

And your host, Generalissimo of the People's Commissariat! 

Hello, losers (yes, that's your nickname in the gingerandbankrupt cult fandom btw). I bet you thought this trip was done and dusted, and uhhh... yeah it kinda is. But hold your Soviet steeds, because there are still two entries I never got round to writing. We pick up in uncle Joe's house for Season Two of the Post-Soviet chronicles: a birthplace of ideological evil (think fewer mountains, more moral ambiguity.)

This is the town of Gori, birthplace of the world's (second) most evil moustachioed mass murderer, Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known by his self-sworn pseudonym: Stalin - so-called 'man of steel' (cringe much). But while his choice of Xbox gamertag doesn't sound nearly as tough out loud as I'm sure it did in his head, his stint as Soviet premier was a brutal Battle Royale, racking up kill streaks well into the millions with his not-so-Great Purges and mass famine-causing playstyle. He spammed L2 + R2 to bamboozle Hitler with the ultimate skill move combo on the Eastern front, although that might be taking the unskippable Stalin tutorial a touch too far. What kind of a town could even produce such a man? Cue our anti-heroes; and what they got up to, in all its gory detail too. 

Ten hours on a train and I felt like a corpse that had learned to blink. Our carriage-shaped prison cell spat us out like inmates onto a twilight platform. Our sentence: to be bathed in Gori’s grayscale gloom. A stairwell swallowed us up, crunching through crumbled paving and down into its abyssal belly, where the air was dense with nicotine and saturated with a urinal sourness (I must've let a bit of wee out in all my excitement.) We crept past walls tattooed in brutalist graffiti, before being coughed up into the sinister streets of the city. 

Irregularly spaced street lamps bled into the darkness and cut the monochrome with sepia orange, flickering in puddles and the glass of half-drunk beer bottles. Between their intermittent hum and the distant echo of footsteps, shadowy figures hurried alone, faces-half-hidden, perhaps concealing their Slavic disdain. Beyond, strays barked menacingly, their woofs ricocheting between the canyon walls of towering Soviet blocks. The whole scene felt one trench-coat-wearing, cigarette-smoking KGB mob boss short of being straight out of the climax of a cold war spy film, except I felt less like Sean Connery and more like Shaun the sheep. Soon enough though, we arrived at our hotel, a concrete cube furnished with all the charm of a nuclear bunker. Still, we were relieved to have arrived before the outbreak of any Cuban missile crises, and hunkered down for the night. Thomas snored like an air-raid siren while I ordered a £2 kebab (delivery included, naturally).

By morning, the town looked almost innocent again. Stalin’s statue squinted at us through a fog of diesel