Trails Worth Hiking podcast: Transcaucasian Trail

Hello and welcome to Trails Worth Hiking, the show that brings you some of the most interesting backpacking and trekking routes in the world. I’m your host, Jeremy Pendrey. In the first part of the show, we bring you the story and history of a trail. Then we tell you what it’s like to hike the trail and how you can do it.

On this episode, we’ll be hiking long distance on a new trail in development that will eventually criss-cross three countries through forests, mountains, canyons, rivers, pastoral lands, farms, local villages, and cultural heritage sites, as we traverse the first long-distance hiking trail in the Caucasus on the Transcaucasian Trail in the countries of Armenia and Georgia.

Hello and welcome to the show, everyone. I’m excited to announce that I’ve started a membership page for Trails Worth Hiking on BuyMeACoffee. Membership is only $3 a month. Once we get to a critical mass, I’m hoping to have live streams for members and other perks. I’d love you to go to BuyMeACoffee.com/TrailsWorthHiking right now to become a member. If you’d prefer to support the show with a one-time contribution, you can also do that as well. BuyMeACoffee works similar to Patreon, so if you’re familiar with Patreon, it’s a similar type of platform. I think BuyMeACoffee is a little bit more creator-friendly, which is the reason I’m using that platform.

As I mentioned in the last episode, I recently retired from my day job, and so your support to help with the expenses of the podcast would mean a lot. I also plan to use the contributions you provide to bring you more creative episodes than before, I hope, and increase the professionalism of the show a bit, and to help build the community through things like a better website, more first-person accounts by me on hikes, and I hope to also bring more in-person group adventures as well. One of the benefits of becoming a member is that I will thank you on the show.

With that, let me thank Nicholas Tansky for being the first member of Trails Worth Hiking. I greatly appreciate Nicholas immediately taking the leap when I posted on Instagram about this. I also want to thank Steph Watts, who is at wilderness.health on Instagram, and Gail Perry, who is at gailperrytrex on Instagram, and Corey Jay, corej on Twitter, for making one-time contributions and supporting the show that way. Thank you all for valuing what I’ve been doing in creating this show, and I hope you’ll consider supporting the show financially and becoming a member on BuyMeACoffee for only $3 a month, which I might add is less than the price of a cup of coffee these days.

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I have one more announcement. Now that I have retired, I have started a YouTube channel. It’s different from the existing Trails Worth Hiking channel that has the podcast episodes on it. The new YouTube channel is called GoGo Retirement, which refers to the early active go-go years of retirement, as they’re called. On the channel, I cover a lot of issues around thinking about retirement, both what it all means and some of the financial side of things, but also lots of other personal issues that have arisen in this time in my life and that others in midlife or even before that might be thinking about. So only some of the content is about my experience in retirement. So far, all the videos are YouTube Shorts, meaning they are under three minutes long and they are the vertical-oriented type of video, kind of like Instagram Reels. So it’s a very low commitment to watch them.

Despite the name of the channel, it’s not only about retirement, and I think the videos will appeal to people of lots of different ages. I’ve actually looked at the early analytics so far, and I’m surprised to see the wide age range of viewers. So I hope you’ll check it out. My ask of you is to check out the channel on YouTube, watch a few of these very short videos, which will only take a few minutes, and see what you think. If you find any of them interesting or useful, please subscribe to the channel. Also like, comment on, and share the videos so more people will get a chance to see them and to help the channel grow.

By the way, I promise that the YouTube channel will not distract me from bringing you regular high-quality episodes of this podcast. It’s a different creative project that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and now I have the time to do it, at least for the moment, until I go out on the PCT in the spring. For now, I’m actually filming the videos for the YouTube channel while I’m training for my PCT hike, so I film them while I’m out walking with my weighted daypack on. So who knows, maybe I’ll continue filming them while I’m on the PCT. Anyway, please check it out, search GoGoRetirement on YouTube, or click the link in the show notes.

All right, let’s do our walking the walk segment, where we highlight listeners who have hiked a trail after listening to an episode about it. I’d like to highlight Joel Bundy and Susan Roel Bundy. After listening to episode 39 of the podcast, which is the episode entitled Shenandoah on the AT, which is about the hut-to-hut style or lodge-to-lodge style hike that you can do in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, along the Appalachian Trail.

So after listening to that episode, they said, ‘we have to do this hike’. Joel was still working at the time, though Susan had already retired, though Joel has now since retired, so congratulations to both of them on that. They ended up doing the hike in the fall in November of 2024. They said booking rooms at the lodges was easy using the Shenandoah website, which is GoShenandoah.com. They stayed at the Lewis Mountain Lodge, which was quite rustic, and then they hiked for a couple days along the AT. They gained about 1,500 feet in elevation each day. Because they were hiking late in the season, they actually didn’t see any other hikers on their first day hiking. They saw some birds, they saw a buck and a doe, but no people. And the next day they hiked to the Skyland Mountain Lodge, again another 1,500 feet or so of elevation gain, and they said it was incredible scenery. And they said that Skyland had a wonderful restaurant with great views and windows all around the dining room, and that they had a beautiful view from their cabin door.

They had to head home after that, but they would say that even the view along Skyline Drive when driving home was beautiful, and they caught more scenes of the sunset from overlooks in the park. And Joel says they’ll definitely do this hike again during different times of the year. So congrats to Joel and Susan on their hike along the AT in Shenandoah National Park, and I hope they get back out to do some more of that area. And of course, if you’ve hiked a trail after hearing about it on the show, let me know. Reach out to me at [email protected], and I will highlight it on this Walking the Walk segment.

All right, let’s talk about this episode. Our guest is Harry Kuril. Harry is a seismologist and cartographer from the UK. He hiked the Transcaucasian Trail solo in 2023, basically when it was first possible to even do it. Harry has a blog at HKuril.com. I’ll link his post about the Transcaucasian Trail in the show notes. Because he is a cartographer, there is some very helpful, specific info about the route on his website, including an interactive map.

So I’ve never been to the Caucasus, but it’s a fascinating region in the crossroads between Europe and Asia. It has a long human history. It has dramatic landscapes. And up until very recently, it did not have a long-distance trail, but now it does. So it gives us a chance to explore this part of the world where, to me, it seems the opportunity for real adventure is still very much alive. Some of the stories Harry tells are fantastic and are situations that you just don’t hear about on most trails, like hitching a ride with a drunken horseman. How’s that for a teaser? You need to listen to the whole interview to hear that story.

So let’s talk about this region. The South Caucasus, as I said, are a crossroads. They’re between Europe, Asia, Russia, and the Middle East, kind of jammed in the middle of all that. There are three countries that are considered the South Caucasus. There’s Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, all three of which will eventually have the Transcaucasian Trail, though for this episode, we’ll focus primarily on Armenia and Georgia, which are the countries Harry hiked through and which constitute most of the current trail.

In addition to being a crossroads between regions, the South Caucasus are also the border between Islam and Christianity. Armenia and Georgia are both Christian nations, while Azerbaijan is Shia Muslim. In fact, Armenia and Georgia were the first two nations in the world to adopt Christianity as an official state religion. Though they have different branches of Christianity, Armenia is considered Oriental Orthodox, while Georgia is Eastern Orthodox. There are some doctrinal and historical differences between those that we won’t go into here.

Azerbaijanis, on the other hand, are Turkic peoples and practice the Shia branch of the Muslim religion, which they’ve inherited from Iran, which is nearby. But they were also very well integrated into the Soviet Union for a long time, and there’s a strong Russian influence still in Azerbaijan. And they have oil and gas resources that make them a bit different from Armenia and Georgia as well.

This is also a crossroads where democracy meets authoritarianism. Georgia and Armenia are today both democracies. While most international observers would not say that about Azerbaijan, and as is my typical way of handling things, I’m not going to wade into that debate.

The Greater Caucasus Mountains are at the north of the area and the Lesser Caucasus are to the south. The Greater Caucasus have Mount Elbrus, which is 5,642 meters high, which is 18,510 feet high, and is the tallest mountain in Europe. The Southern Caucasus and these two mountain ranges that border them are a natural barrier between Europe and Asia.

We often talk on this show about human history going back thousands of years, but humanoid history goes back more than a million years in this area, and genetically modern human history is possibly hundreds of thousands of years old, particularly in Georgia along the Black Sea, where there were resources for early humans. There have definitely been humans there since the Stone Age. At least 24,000 years ago, there were hunter-gatherers living there. And there was early agriculture in the Neolithic Age, so going back at least about 8,000 years. One interesting fact about that is that the first evidence of wine is in Georgia from over 8,000 years ago, so it didn’t take them long to figure out what to do with the grapes they were growing. And also, Armenia has a claim on early wine. The first actual winery ever discovered is in Armenia and dates back 6,000 years ago.

Because it’s in a crossroads between Europe and Asia, there have been lots of empires that have swept over the southern Caucasus. Many different empires have controlled the area. There were the Achaemenids, the Romans, the Sassanids, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Ottomans, and the Persians. In the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Islam, and there were successive Arab caliphates. Later, the Byzantines and the Turks had different spheres of influence between the west and east of the region. Later, there was the independent Kingdom of Georgia that controlled much of the region for a while. From the 15th to the 18th century, the Ottomans and the Persians had a rivalry there.

And then Peter the Great and the Russian Empire controlled the region, completely controlling it by the mid-19th century. Briefly, there was one political entity for the region after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917. But then shortly after that, they were basically swallowed up by the Soviet Union. One interesting fact that you may know is that Joseph Stalin, the longtime leader of the Soviet Union, was ethnically Georgian, and he was born in Georgia and raised in poverty in Georgia. So at least at the time of Stalin, Georgia was very closely associated with Russia and the Soviet Union. But eventually, as many of us remember, in 1991, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the former Soviet states became independent, and it was then that Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan became independent.

Armenia is a landlocked country. It’s essentially on a highlands kind of plateau. The first Armenian state was formed in 860 BC, so there’s been an Armenian identity for a long time. As I mentioned before, it was one of the first Christian countries, and in fact, Armenia was the first. Georgia came second. So Armenia became Christian in 301 AD. The main religion before that time was Zoroastrianism. Today, it is a democracy. There was a revolution in 2018 when the then president tried to hold power longer than his term and was ousted after pressure by public protest. So this was significant because it was a non-violent popular uprising that led to an election and democratic regime change.

One thing that Harry talks about in our conversation is about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This is a dispute over a region that is recognized as being part of Azerbaijan but was ethnically Armenian. Armenia and Azerbaijan have recently fought at least two wars over this region. In 2023, Azerbaijan took control, and this was the year that Harry was there, so you’ll hear a little bit about that as it was sort of happening. But ultimately, this led to the mass exodus of the Armenian population in the region. Over 100,000 people left and moved to a border region within Armenia.

Let’s talk about Georgia for a moment. Georgia borders the Black Sea, Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It’s a more mountainous country, while Armenia, as I said, is sort of a high plateau. The western part of Georgia is lower and lusher, and the eastern part is higher and arid, more plains-like, maybe more similar to Armenia. The Caucasus are a mountain range at the northern border. As I mentioned, early winemaking happened in Georgia, but there was also evidence of some of the earliest making of textiles and gold mining. As I said, it became Christian in the early 4th century. And also, as I mentioned, it became independent in 1991.

In 2003, Georgia had what’s called the Rose Revolution, which led to it being more pro-western. There was alleged election fraud that led to protests, and eventually they overthrew the government and instituted democratic reforms, and the prior government was replaced by a more pro-western government. The protesters carried red roses, hence the name. In 2008, Georgia had a war with Russia, and today part of Georgia is occupied by Russia. Georgia was looking to have closer ties with NATO at the time, and this led to a five-day war, primarily in the South Ossetia region, and Russia ended up taking 20 percent of Georgia following a peace deal brokered by France.

Let’s talk about the current situation in Armenia and Georgia. Currently, there’s significant tension between the EU and Russia over both Armenia and Georgia. Georgia wants to join the EU, though recent political changes have stalled that effort, and Armenia and the EU are talking about a new partnership, but Armenia still relies heavily on Russia as a trading partner, particularly for energy. At the end of the day, from my humble perspective, it seems to be the same as it ever was. The South Caucasus remain a crossroads between West and East, Christian and Muslim, Europe and Asia, and Western Europe and Russia. It is this cultural dynamism and history, along with a dramatic and beautiful landscape, that make it such an intriguing place to me.

Let’s talk for a moment about the Transcaucasian Trail itself. The trail has been in development since 2015. I won’t spoil the story of how it came to be. Harry will tell us about that in the conversation. It’s an interesting story about two men, Tom Allen and Paul Stephens, coming together to work on this project collectively, and Harry will tell us about that. Almost 1,900 kilometers are already open and ready to hike. There have been more than 30,000 volunteer hours building the trail so far. The trail crosses 25 protected areas, seven distinct ecosystems, and goes through 150 local communities.

The goal is interesting. It’s to ultimately have two intersecting trail corridors, so one going north-south and one going east-west, each about 1,500 kilometers long, so maybe a little under 1,000 miles long each. The north-south route that Harry hiked connects the Greater and Lesser Caucasus mountain ranges. The eventual east-west route will follow the Greater Caucasus mountains and connect the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea.

All right, so there’s some background on the South Caucasus. Before we jump into the conversation with Harry, I want to remind you to buy your backpacking meals at Outdoor Herbivore. Use the discount code TWH10% to get 10% off your order at Outdoor Herbivore, our sponsor, who makes high-quality, delicious backpacking meals. The meals are vegetarian and vegan, but as I always say, you don’t need to be vegetarian or vegan to enjoy them, so please give Outdoor Herbivore a try if you haven’t already.

Outdoor Herbivore has been a great long-time sponsor of the show, who has supplied me with all my backpacking meal needs as I go on a lot of the hikes that I go on that I talk about on this show and also on my thru-hikes. I very much appreciate all the backpacking food they have provided me over the years and will continue to provide me over the coming year. So thanks again to Outdoor Herbivore for sponsoring the show.

All right, with that, let’s hear the conversation with Harry Kuril about his hike on the Transcaucasian Trail.

Harry Kuril, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much.

So, Harry, one of the things that’s interesting about this trail is that it’s such a new trail and such a big endeavor and kind of a really adventurous route. But I noticed that your background is really in doing these kinds of trails and these kinds of routes. Can you talk a little bit about how you got into backpacking and big, long-distance trekking and came to end up doing this trail?

Yeah, so I feel like I’ve got adventurous parents and even grandparents. They used to go on road trips during the school holidays and drove from England all the way to Syria. But they’re not big hikers. And I can’t place exactly where the love of hiking came in, but in my early 20s, I started to get more and more, I would say, obsessed with hiking. But I was in full-time education, undergrad and PhD, so I didn’t have the time or I didn’t feel I had the time to do a really long trip, but I started to dream of it. I did shorter trips like the 100-Mile Wilderness (the northern bit of the Appalachian Trail), Cape Wrath Trail, and other adventurous trips.

Let me stop you there and say that for a lot of people, those are not short trips. Those are pretty significant hikes still.

Oh, that’s a really good point. But for me, it wasn’t enough. And I started to sort of daydream a lot about a trip that would take me months. And I did my PhD in the US, which is, to my mind, the birthplace of these thru-hike trails, really long trails like Appalachian Trail being the original, but the PCT and the CDT. And so I started to think what that might look like for me, but I also wanted it to be something that I devised myself to start with.

So I got a chance. I got some time after my PhD and I went to Ecuador and I hiked about a 700-mile route trying to follow the spine of Ecuador. And so many things went wrong. I learned a lot from that. And it also made me appreciate when you go on an established trail, how much has actually been done for you and how much intelligence and human creativity goes into a trail. And I really began to respect that.

And so at that point in my life, I was looking for a trail that had that balance of something that felt really adventurous and not too thoroughly explored, but also the structure and the framework of a trail. And that’s when I heard about the TCT, the Transcaucasian Trail.

And so you heard about this through an article. It just came across your radar and then you decided I have to do this.

Yeah, so I was in that frame of mind. I was like, this is what I really want in my life, a trail like that. And I don’t remember the exact website. It might’ve been ExplorersWeb, but I saw an article saying that they’d been working on this trail for nine years and it was finally sort of in a rough and ready shape for thru-hikers to try and walk the length of it. It seemed like fate even, a serendipitous thing. So I thought, okay, I’m gonna do this. And that was in the winter before I went ahead and did it. So I had some time to plan.

So the planning, even though this is now an established route as of 2023, is still gonna be somewhat difficult because nobody’s done this before, right? Essentially, this is a brand new established trail. Yes, it was, but one of the special things about the TCT is it has this remarkable community. So the people that have developed the trail, from the beginning, it’s been about building up a community, both of international hikers who want to come and hike the trail and of local people who want to hike the trail, but also have learned how to develop trails and everything that goes around that.

And so one element of that community is like a forum or if you’ve heard of the online platform Slack, it’s basically a forum and messaging platform, and they maintain that. And so on that Slack in the winter while I was preparing to do the hike, I could ask any questions I wanted and see what other questions people had asked. And also there was a small cohort of us, they called us the class of 2023, who wanted to try and thru-hike it. They had a few webinars that we could join and ask more questions. So although the planning was hard, they provided us with a lot of resources.

There was also a guidebook that Tom Allen, one of the founders of the TCT had written for the Armenia section, which had the nitty gritty information that was necessary to plan properly.

One of the things that’s interesting about this trail is that even though it’s in Georgia and Armenia, it was developed by an American and an Englishman, which is surprising. So what can you tell us about that?

Well, it seems surprising, but I’m sure you are aware that in many countries, the idea of hiking is a strange one.

Yes.

Most people either work physical jobs or have older family members that they remember working the land. And the idea of voluntarily going out for a hard day’s walk is just crazy. And so that was definitely the background that Tom Allen, the founder of the Armenian half of the TCT, encountered when he actually moved to Armenia. He noticed that there was an almost a complete absence of an outdoors scene. That was hugely challenging, but it was also an opportunity. The region had no long distance hiking trails and there was an opportunity to develop one. And that is what grew into the Transcaucasian Trail.

So the story goes that Tom Allen went to register the domain transcaucasiantrail.org, and he found that it was already taken. And somebody else had had the idea to devise a hiking trail that would cross this region, the Southern Caucasus. And it was a US guy called Paul. He was from the Peace Corps and he was also trying to make a trail. And that was around 2015.

So the thing that really got it off the ground was Tom Allen applied for a grant from the British Royal Geographical Society. And they have a grant that’s sponsored by Land Rover and it includes a Land Rover car, which they drove out to the Caucasus and they used that to scout the route. And it was a very interesting scouting process because Armenia and Georgia, in fact, they’re both former Soviet republics. One consequence of that is they were quite well mapped during the Soviet era. And there are a lot of footpaths and other trails that used to be widely used. And this is a big trend around the world of sort of rural decline or urban migration.

So a lot of trails around the world have fallen into disuse, but they’re still there on the Soviet maps. And Tom and his team, they went and they scouted these trails and they joined them up and you can still see the traces of them. They’re covered by trees, but they’re cuts into the mountainside. And if you find those trails, that saves a lot of time in the trail building process because cutting the trail is the hardest part. Clearing the vegetation doesn’t take too much time. And also there’s the element of planning routes. And if there are routes that have already been planned at some time in the past, that saves a lot of time.

So fast forward nine hard years of work, they stitched together these paths in such a way that it joined the Southern bit of Armenia all the way up to the North of Georgia.

So let’s talk about why this is a place you’d actually want to go hiking. And that’s one of the interesting things to me. I know that you are a seismologist and you’ve worked in cartography. So you probably have a lot more detailed knowledge than most of us will ever want to understand. But from a sort of layman’s perspective, like what are we dealing with as far as terrain here? What does this area look like and what makes it appealing to go hiking in?

Well, rest assured that even if you just like a pretty landscape, it’s worth visiting. The geological setting does provide like a helpful sort of framework for picturing the region. So think about three bands running roughly west to east. In the north, sort of like the northern frame of our picture is the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range. It’s this big sort of Alpine style mountain range. It rises up to more than 5,000 meters in elevation and it’s more than 800 kilometers long, stretching from the Black Sea in the west over to the Caspian Sea in the east. And if you’re in the region known as the South Caucasus, that’s Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, then this wall of mountains is what separates you from Russia to the north.

And then the band at the bottom of our picture is another mountainous area, but it’s not such an extreme mountain ridge. It’s like an area of volcanic highlands. And I use volcanic in the geologist sense because at least in the countries I’ve named, there aren’t currently any active volcanoes. There are some mud volcanoes, but there are these cones that have been active in really recent geological history. So it’s a high land of smooth but high pasture.

And then in the gap between these two sort of upper and lower bands of highland, you have this sort of fertile strip on the west side that drains into the Black Sea, on the east side into the Caspian Sea. And those two sides are occupied by Georgia and Azerbaijan. And so that’s the sort of area where you get a lot of vineyards, and it’s quite hot there, and they have a lot of cultivation.

So it’s a pretty crumpled up zone, because this is all Arabia crashing into Eurasia. And that crumpling means you get a lot of different landscapes compressed into a small space.

So talk a little bit about, in addition to the natural setting that we’re in, the life of the people there or what you’re encountering as you’re hiking. You have rural life. You also have a lot of historical sites like monasteries and churches and things like that, and communities. So talk a little bit about what that’s like day to day as you’re going through this landscape.

So the landscape leads really nicely onto this. I mean, because it’s so mountainous and crinkled up, you get a lot of isolated areas, and that leads to a really rich and varied set of cultural groups. They say it’s one of the linguistic hotspots of the world. The landscape really shapes the kind of people you’ll meet. So on those smoother rolling highlands to the south, the rural life will often consist of nomads who come up in the summer with their herds to graze them on the green grass, even though it’s too cold in the winter to live there. Up in the mountains, the more alpine style mountains in the north, you have these famously fierce, what were once tribes who built towers to defend their valleys, the famous towers of Svaneti and Tusheti, which are now World Heritage Sites.

This area, because of the fertile lands and the caves, it’s been inhabited for a very, very long time. So it has a really ancient history. The oldest evidence of human-made thread was found there. It features in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. That’s the city where they stole the Golden Fleece from.

Okay, wow.

On the Black Sea coast. Then Armenia and Georgia became the world’s first Christian nations. They officially adopted Christianity, they’re early adopters. And that really ancient Christian history survives to this day. So when you’re walking the TCT, it’s really designed to hit some of these amazing historical sites. So I’m talking monasteries and churches that are more than a millennium old and still in active use. They’re not museums, there are monks there. You can go, you can talk to the monks. On one occasion, I was even invited to stay a night in a spare cell in a monastery. I think that’s one of the most unique things about the TCT and this region is the feeling of a living history that you’re part of.

In addition to the rural human life that’s there, what would a hiker in this area expect to encounter as far as wildlife or interesting plant life or just things that are living in the area besides people?

I’d say it’s pretty rich. Having grown up mostly in the UK, I’m aware of how depleted nature can be in areas where humans have lived for a long time. But thankfully, the mountainous nature of the terrain in the Caucasus has preserved some really nice pockets. So for example, in Arevik National Park in the south of Armenia, you’ll see these old-growth oak forests with badgers and bears and herds of wild boar running around. In the warmer parts, you’ll see snakes and bezoar goats. If you’ve ever read Harry Potter, you might remember bezoar is a stone from the stomach of a goat. These are the goats for which that stone is named. In principle, you could see some rarer species like lynx, but they’re still active hunting in those areas. So they’re very shy. So I think you’re unlikely to see them.

I also really, really loved some of the forests. So I’ve already mentioned old oak groves. There are also huge stands of beautiful old walnut trees, amazing yew trees, rhododendrons and ancient beech forests in southern Georgia. So there’s some really awe-inspiring forests to wander through.

What’s the season for doing this hike? What’s the window of time where you’re not going to get trapped by the winter?

If you want to consider a thru-hike, you have a few cutoffs, which are the high passes. If it’s too early or too late in the season, those will be blocked by snow. So for most of those, you can’t really start until June. You can probably start in May if you go northbound, starting from the south, because southern Armenia is a bit warmer. And then the weather starts to set in again in sort of late September, October. But if you’re not interested in the thru-hike, there are sections that can be walked at any time of year. And actually some sections you don’t really want to be doing in the height of summer. Like I mentioned, the more arid sections, they can be pretty hot in the height of summer. I started in mid-June and went northbound, and I felt like that worked really well.

And what’s the weather considerations even hiking during that season?

Actually probably the biggest concern during the sort of standard season would be summer storms, maybe like you might worry about in the Rockies. So you have to be attuned to that. Especially, for example, in the Gegham Highlands, in the center of Armenia, it’s very open. So it can be hard to kind of get yourself away from an exposed area. And they can include quite big hailstones. So that’s just pretty bad luck if you get hit by one of those localized storms. Other than that, temperatures aren’t super cold. I think I probably had only one or two nights below freezing during my summer thru-hike. And it can be hot and somewhat humid, getting up to sort of probably 25 Celsius. Nothing I would say out of the ordinary for hikers. It can also be quite windy on the more open plains of those lower, those southern highlands. But again, nothing, I would say nothing extraordinary.

One of the things that your answer just brought to mind was thinking about what the accommodations are for these nights. So getting down to freezing is one thing. If you’re in a tent every night, it’s a different thing if you’re staying in a home. So what were you able to put together to keep yourself sheltered every night throughout this trip?

Well, one of my favorite things that I like to say about hiking the TCT is I have never slept in such a variety of places. My default was my tent. So I was wild camping most nights. The TCT has detailed trail notes with nice camping spots highlighted. But in many places, it’s really easy to find a good spot. It’s tolerated. It’s normal behavior to camp. And then every three or four nights, I would stay in a guest house. You could cut down on that if you wanted to save some money and do more wild camping. The guest houses are a really amazing way to get to meet more people from the Caucasus. The shepherds, when you’re out on your walk, will undoubtedly talk to you, invite you to come and have a vodka and things like that. But you might not get a chance to speak to many women, which seems like unfortunate if you’re trying to get the whole picture of the Caucasus. And if you stay in the guest houses, you’ll meet, you’ll get to meet everybody.

The other big highlight of staying in the guest houses is the food, because everything is grown pretty much in their own gardens. This very mountainous terrain means it’s hard to have any sort of industrial scale farming. So most people grow their own food. I think if you saw this on a restaurant menu somewhere like the UK or the US, they’d be showing off about it being organic, locavore, free range, but there it’s just the default. And you can really taste it. Super fresh food.

So yes, sorry, your question was about accommodation. So yeah, camping, guest houses, occasional hotel in the larger towns. I mentioned I stayed in a monastery. I slept in a cave.

Wait, how did that happen?

So I said everyone in the Caucasus was incredibly friendly and hospitable. There are two exceptions to this. One was the taxi driver when I first arrived at Tbilisi Airport. So I would say the universal rule that the Caucasus is friendly is trumped by the universal rule that you can’t trust an airport taxi driver.

The other exception was I was walking down into the Tatev Canyon, which is a really sort of like a fantasy world because you You have this enormous deep canyon and on the top of it, there’s a monastery perched. And down below, connected to the monastery, historically, is a hermitage where I guess the less sociable monks would have lived. So you walk down into the canyon and there are all these mulberry trees and all the mulberries are falling on the ground and you can eat them. And because everyone had been so friendly, I thought, maybe I’ll ask if I can stay in the hermitage.

So I went in. It seemed to be empty, but then I heard a monk reciting to himself from a Bible, I assume. I didn’t understand what language he was speaking. I said, can I stay here? Because there were all these empty cells around. Some of them had bats in them, but some of them were empty. And he said, no, no, this is only for monks. You can camp outside. So I suppose he wasn’t super unfriendly, but he was a bit strict. And I didn’t fancy just camping right outside. There was still a bit of daylight. And just further up the valley, there was a cave. I actually hadn’t done my research and I didn’t know it’s not really safe to go in a cave during a thunderstorm. And I thought it was perfect because there was thunder. But anyway, nothing bad came of it. And I got to sleep in a cave.

I think that little episode just illustrates how much of an adventure it can be to walk on the TCT. You get a lot of unexpected occurrences.

What’s the total mileage of the north-south route that you did in miles or kilometers? And then how many days did it take you to do it?

So important point to make here, the route has changed slightly since I hiked it. So when I hiked it in 2023, it was just over a thousand miles. There were some concerns with a border sensitivity between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. And because of that, they cut out a section of the trail that went to the spa town of Jermuk in Armenia, and that shortened the trail. So I believe now the full trail is around 940 miles, the north-south route that we’re talking about.

I guess I would give up the spa day to avoid a war.

Well, it definitely was a concern when I was hiking and I had some incidents that made me nervous. So for example, one day I was following the route and there was a freshly dug out artillery encampment.

Oh, wow.

And the soldiers all surrounded me and I was sure I would get turned back at the very least or maybe worse, you know, interrogated, arrested. But their captain came out and he was very friendly. I remember his name was Hamlet. I didn’t realize that was an Armenian name.

How could you forget that name?

Yes, exactly. And he went over to this big artillery, it’s like a tank with a huge cannon on the top of it. And he climbed inside and climbed out and gave me an amulet. So a good luck charm. And then he asked to look at my map and I showed him the map app that I was using. He confirmed that my route wasn’t going into Azerbaijan, which was his main worry. And then he sent me on my way. So you’re right, it’s definitely better to avoid, you know, walking through these sensitive areas. And that’s why they updated the route. The conflict has calmed down since that region was seized very quickly by Azerbaijan. So it’s still tense now, but not as tense as it was in 2023.

And how many days total did you take to do the route?

Oh, sorry. Good question. It took me 60 days, which I believe is standard or slightly, slightly faster than average. For context, one of the thru-hikers I met going the other way, he was attempting the slowest known time, which meant he was trying to look at every side-quest and detour possible. And he spent 100 days doing it. So about 14 weeks. So that’s the sort of range you could think about.

Okay. So before everyone who doesn’t have that kind of time tunes out, maybe this is a good point to mention that there are some really amazing opportunities here to do shorter versions of this or hike sections that are really interesting. So maybe you could talk a little bit about if somebody was in the area for a few days or a week or two weeks, what would be some good places that they might consider hiking parts of this trail?

Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of sections lend themselves to being hiked as shorter routes. The TCT website has a lot of resources on that. A few that come to mind, say you wanted a three day hike, you could think of the most classic hike that is part of the TCT is the trek from Mestia to Ushguli in Upper Svaneti. So those are the mountains in the north of Georgia with the traditional towers. But that’s, I wouldn’t say it’s crowded by the standards of some hikes, but it’s the best known hike in the region. So if you’re interested in something similar, but a little bit more off the beaten track, instead of going east from Mestia, you can go west and you’ll find similar landscapes, but far fewer tourists, but a similar level of well-marked trails and guest houses if you want them. So that’s an option for Georgia.

In Armenia, a good shorter option is around the Debed Canyon. It’s in northern Armenia, and it’s nice because you can make a loop. It’s really striking scenery. It’s this sort of asymmetrical canyon with some towns perched on the top of the canyon. But the trail actually runs slightly below the rim of the canyon, like sort of skirting along the side. And there are some monasteries built into the side of the canyon. And some of the towns are interesting. There’s one I remember called Tumenyan, which has a Soviet influence. And I remember staying in a bathhouse built during the Soviet time. And it has that feel, and it’s been converted into a hostel. So those are two three-day hikes you might think of, but there are definitely more. So again, have a look at the website for more information on that.

For a longer hike, maybe one week. Well, I already mentioned those ones in Upper Svaneti, sort of two, three-ish day sections. You could easily combine those for a six or seven-day hike. Another option for a one-week trip would be to cross the Gegham Highlands, which I mentioned briefly before. So the Gegham Highlands, or the Gegham Volcanic Field, is this elevated area that’s geographically in the middle of Armenia. It’s not volcanically active currently, but if you look on the map, you’ll see dozens of volcanic cones. So it rises up to a height of around 3,600 meters above sea level. And when you’re up there, you can see down to Yerevan, the capital in the west, and the big, big Lake Sevan in the east. And so the traverse of the Gegham Highlands is many people’s favorite section of the whole TCT. It’s quite a unique experience.

There’s a sort of core section of about four or five days where you won’t be able to pick up any supplies. And in fact, there’s not even any path. You’re just walking across these grassy slopes in amongst these nomads’ tents and obsidian fields. So the ground is just littered with volcanic glass. And the nomads there are super friendly and will invite you for food or even to stay the night in their tents. And the stuff at either end of that traverse is also quite interesting. So you’ve got an ancient caravanserai, sort of like a trading inn or a point where people would stop along their trading routes that you can actually still stay the night in if you are friendly to the custodian of it. And then at the other end in the town of Sevan, you can go for a swim in Lake Sevan and see some Soviet architecture. It’s also a very interesting one-week itinerary, I think.

I’m sold on that one. That sounds pretty cool.

There’s one caveat. The nomadic areas are where you’ll find the scariest part of the TCT, which is the shepherd’s dogs.

Yeah. This is not the first time I’ve heard that. I covered the Via Transylvanica in Romania, and I heard the same thing from our guest on that episode, where there’s just these shepherd dogs can be pretty aggressive.

Yeah, I think it’s the same deal. They’re not as cute as they look in the photos.

They’re working dogs. They’re not pets, right? In the same sense that we think of dogs.

Absolutely. But I think, as I talked about how there’s a lot of resources to prepare for the TCT, and as part of that, you’ll think about your strategy for dealing with that. The key thing is that they are working dogs, and they have an owner who, once they see what’s happening, will call the dogs off you. And then they’ll offer you some tea, or coffee, or some bread, and you’ll have that classic Caucasus welcome.

All right. As far as gear goes on this trip, are there any special things to be thinking about that are different from any other kind of normal backpacking-hiking trip that you would recommend people be aware of?

So, I think, by and large, the gear list is similar to general summer hiking in the mountains. A couple of things to be aware of are thinking about cooking. It’s hard to buy the normal screw-top gas canisters that you might use for cooking. You can get them in a few outdoor shops in the capital cities, but not really anywhere else. And so, what most people do is they buy an alcohol stove. And these are, I’m talking like a tiny, very simple device. It looks like a small cup. Or you can even make one from a Coca-Cola can, if you’re a true thru-hiker.

Cat food can stoves.

Yes, yes. The nice thing is it’s very, very lightweight and simple. And you can buy the alcohol in basically any village shop or pharmacy. The word is spirrt, like spirit in Russian. Yes. So, think about that. Or you can buy an adapter because there’s a different kind of gas canister that you can buy more frequently. So, that’s one thing to think about, unless you are a fan of cold soaking, which I’m not.

The other thing, I’d say it’s a small thing, but definitely have a pair of long pants, trousers, or adjustable trousers, because you’ll definitely want to go into these monasteries. People are sometimes not allowed to, wearing shorts. I generally don’t wear shorts that much when I’m hiking.

I don’t either.

Because plants and yeah, there’s hogweed. Bugs, and plants, and sun, and all the things. Exactly. Yeah. But just so, some people might get caught off guard if they only bring shorts. And I think you’ll need to cover your shoulders as well to go into the monasteries. But apart from that, I don’t think there’s any special gear. I didn’t take snow spikes, which I sometimes carry even on summer hikes, and that was fine. There are one or two patches of snow, but nothing that wasn’t possible just in regular trail shoes.

What about navigation on this trail? Is this something, you mentioned using your, I think it was an app. So how did that work? What was the most convenient way to navigate?

So one of the things that I think is really cool about the TCT and their process of developing the trail was, I mentioned that they needed to do a lot of mapping when they were developing the trail because they were finding old trails that were hidden in the vegetation. And so they made the decision right from the start that they were going to put that mapping directly onto OpenStreetMap, which I think most hikers are aware of it or have probably used it because it’s usually the base map for hiking apps, especially outside the US. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s like the Wikipedia of maps. So you or I could add to it. This is my cartography background creeping in here, but you or I, we can edit OpenStreetMap like we can edit Wikipedia. And just like Wikipedia, it’s become an incredibly useful reference all over the world.

And so what this means is that, in that area, because they’ve made the effort to make sure the mapping is good, whatever your hiking app of choice is, it will probably, as long as it’s sourcing from OpenStreetMap, which most do, it will probably work really well. You’ll have good information. Then on top of that, you have the resources that you get directly from the TCT website. So they provide Caltopo maps with really detailed information. So I’m talking about ATMs, individual water sources, accommodation notes, and things like that. So what I generally did is I would use the Caltopo app to look at that information in the evenings when I was planning my next day or my next few days resupply. But I found the app ran a bit slowly on my phone. I don’t have the fanciest phone, so that could be part of the issue. And also it’s a big complex project. So that also could have been part of the problem. But I didn’t want to use it during the day when I needed a bit more responsiveness. So you can quite easily lift the key layers, like the main GPS track and maybe the water sources and put that into your app of choice. And then it should work really well. I remember using Gaia GPS, which is really well known. I’ve since switched to OSMAnd, but I think you can use nearly any app with that setup.

What’s the signage like? How well is this thing blazed?

So it’s a work in progress. We get more and more done every year. So it generally correlates with how popular the area is for hiking because those areas get prioritized. So in the really popular areas, you’ll have proper signage with mileage and names of destinations. In most areas, there will be blazes. So the classic red and white TCT blaze or the TCT badge nailed to trees and things like that. That’s fairly consistent now. But there are a few areas that are, especially in the Georgia section, that are still kind of being worked out. They haven’t finally settled on the route or the route is currently completely overgrown and needs to still be cut. So there’s obviously no blazes in those areas. And in some areas like the Geghams, which I was talking about, there’s nothing to attach a blaze to and no real need for a blaze because it’s open country. So you just, you follow your GPS or map and compass if you’re old school. So those areas will probably never have any blazes.

How do you get to this area? Is Tbilisi the main city to fly into?

Yes. I think that’s probably the main hub or Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. It’s possible to travel overland from Europe if you’re up for an adventure. Probably a train across the length of Turkey would be your best bet. But yes, Georgia actually has several airports, well, both countries have several airports. And so if you’re traveling from Europe, there might be cheaper flights to some of the other airports in Georgia. The internal transit links are really good. There’s a mixture of trains, buses, and marshrutka, which are minivans or minibuses from the Russian marshrut, for journey. And so using a combination of those, you can get anywhere in the two countries quite easily. Although if, as I did, if you want to start way down in the south of Armenia on the border with Iran, that’s a substantial journey. So you can do it, for instance, by taking the overnight sleeper train from Tbilisi to Yerevan and then an all day marshrutka from Yerevan down to the south border in the town of Meghri.

Okay. And so you mentioned the accommodations along the way as you’re hiking this, this trek, you have the normal things you need to buy in every trip, like consumables, like food and fuel and things like that. What are we talking about price-wise if you have to buy a meal or for accommodations, just so people have a general idea of the cost of what this might look like?

It’s a great question. When I hiked there, which was a couple of years ago now, so there might have been some inflation, but I ended up spending around 30 USD per day. And that was sort of averaged out. There’d be some days where I was wild camping and I had all my supplies, so I didn’t, I literally spent $0 that day, but averaged out about $30 per day. So the breakdown of that, for me, more than half of that was spent on food.

Are you resupplying in grocery stores or where are you getting your food?

Yes. Resupply is generally done in small supermarkets or village shops.

Okay.

And you’ll also have, I hope, at least one or two of your meals every few days in the guest house. So you have a really big hearty meal and I think that helps with the sort of long-term attrition.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. On the thru-hike. But yes. So in the grocery stores, you can learn what the sort of staples are that I eat that you’ll reliably find along the way. So things like oatmeal, greshka or buckwheat, which boils up nicely with a stock cube, lavash bread, which is freshly made and surprisingly easy to find and delicious. And so yes, you’re resupplying in those village shops. And I wouldn’t say it was crazy cheap or crazy expensive. It was, it contributed probably about $10 to that of that $30 a day budget. Okay. And then the rest would be accommodation. And so when you stay in a guest house, in principle, you can ask to only pay for accommodation and eat your own food, which would save money. But it’s the food is so nice and so good and filling that I think it’s false economy. So yes, I would say probably maybe $10 a day average for grocery food, another $10 for the meals you have in the guest houses, and then $10 for staying in the guest houses, assuming that you’re going to do that every three days along the way.

You mentioned earlier going in to get fuel and you gave us the Russian word for it. And that brought to mind another question I have, which is about language. I should mention, by the way, that you have a blog post about this trip, and I’ll post a link to that in the show notes so that people can see your written version of this. But one of the things I’m gonna quote from your blog post, English is not particularly useful along the TCT. Which might surprise some people, because most of the world it is particularly useful. So talk a little bit about the language barrier and how you dealt with that.

Yes, so that’s interesting, and I think it’s a testament to what a good job the trail does of reaching the more remote rural communities where English isn’t widely spoken. You’ll definitely find English speakers in the main tourist areas, but not along the TCT. So I know people who thru-hike the whole trail without any language other than English. The people are friendly and they will do their best to communicate with you with Google Translate or hand gestures, but I think it’s more fun if you know a little bit and you can have, go slightly beyond those very rudimentary interactions. Both Armenia and Georgia are former Soviet countries, and so anyone older enough to have gone to school, high school or primary school during that era will probably speak Russian. Okay. Probably over the age of 35 or 40. So that’s the only common language between those two countries, and that also applies to Azerbaijan.

So I actually learned some basic Russian to help me on the TCT, and actually, it was mostly older people whom I met along the way, and I think that’s part of this kind of rural migration pattern that I was talking about. The younger people have moved to the cities, and the older people are still out in the fields. Some of them should have been in a rocking chair by that point. So Russian can be helpful, and even basic Russian goes a long way, but even more appreciated would be if you learn the local languages, so Armenian and Georgian. They have famously complicated-looking scripts. Armenians like to tease Georgians that the Georgian script was invented by an Armenian scholar slash monk who dropped some spaghetti on the floor, and it became the Georgian script. I hope that’s not offensive to Georgian people, but I actually think it’s quite a beautiful script. But yes, it’s a bit daunting because you can’t even decipher the letters, but even if you learn as little as thank you, please, hello, and do you speak English, do you speak Russian, those phrases go a long way and are really appreciated. So I’d recommend doing a little bit of that.

So Harry, having completed this trail, why is this something that other people should think about doing?

I think the first criterion for any hike is, is it beautiful? Does it go through amazing landscapes? For me, that’s a non-starter if it doesn’t. And the TCT definitely ticks that box. But then the question is, why is it distinct from other beautiful trails? I think one, because of that diversity of landscape, but more uniquely, there is this extremely hospitable culture. If you walk some section of the TCT, you are practically guaranteed to have some fun interactions with the local people. You might be invited to milk somebody’s cow, or an old lady might ask you to come and sit with her and drink some yogurt drink, or two shepherds might have a picnic with you. The list, it just goes on and on, and they’re just very warm and heartwarming interactions. And I think that’s another reason to go in armed with a little bit of language skill, because you get more out of those things. So that’s one really special thing that makes the TCT stand out.

And the other, which I touched on already, is that living history. So really feeling like you’re walking through the pages of a history book or even a fantasy novel is really exciting. In a day and age where I think it’s getting harder and harder to find adventure, things are more and more standardized, that feels really special.

Is there anything that you did on your trip that feels like a mistake from a planning perspective that people should do differently than what you did? Or what was the biggest takeaway from a planning perspective that you’d advise people to do differently than what you did?

So I mentioned I made a lot of mistakes on a previous hike. So thankfully I didn’t make too many on the TCT, but there are a couple of things that I would caution against. So one is if you’re walking a thru-hike, it’s almost a thousand miles, so you’ll probably want to change your shoes. And some people might want other resupply things. I didn’t plan that carefully. I had to go back to Tbilisi to find an outdoor shop. And even then I bought the wrong kind of shoes because there wasn’t a big selection. I bought some approach shoes, which I used in mountaineering, and they hurt so, so much. And I never really sort of broke them in.

Is there a way that you could ship yourself, for example, like a one box full of equipment to like midway through the trip?

So in principle it’s possible, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I think the better thing to do is perhaps if you’re starting, you might arrive in Tbilisi and then on the way down, maybe stay in a hostel that’s near the trail. And if you stay somewhere for a couple of days, they’ll usually be happy for you to leave something there.

Ah, okay.

And come and get it in a month’s time, if they know that you’ll stay again when you come and get it. So I think that’s probably what I would do if I did it again. So that was the main thing. And the other thing is maybe a little bit more philosophical, but I would say, don’t be in a rush. Because of all these spontaneous interactions, you should leave a bit of extra time in your sort of plan for the miles for the day. I really wanted to get going as soon as I arrived in the country. And I think I rushed that journey down from Tbilisi through Yerevan down to Meghri. And actually that could have been more interesting if I’d stopped and seen a few things along the way. So yes, savor the trip around the hike.

So my last question on this trail is gonna be a plug for my own show. So how did you find Trails Worth Hiking? And how does that intersect with your hike of the Transcaucasian Trail?

So I actually confessed to you that I’m not a big podcast listener. I was trying to pinpoint why maybe I don’t have a long commute or a job that really allows me to listen to stuff. But on the last day of the TCT, it goes down to the Black Sea. It wasn’t my favorite section. It was quite low altitude, so it was hot and humid. And I thought, I’m as fit as I’ve ever been in my life. If I really push, I can get this done in one day. It was looking like a 50 mile day, which would be more than I’d ever done. And around 35 miles, I started to really regret my decision and I was suffering so much. And I was looking for ways to distract myself from suffering. And cell connection is really good throughout the Caucasus, by the way. So I got my phone out and I downloaded a podcast app. And I was like, oh, what’s a good hiking podcast? And I scouted around, I did a bit of research while I was walking along. And I thought that Trails Worth Hiking sounded like my sort of thing. Sort of like a long detailed take on hiking or on a topic. And so I downloaded it and I started listening to episode one and just really got into it. And it actually carried me through one of the most painful days of the TCT.

So there you have it. If you’re in a painful last dash trying to finish a major hike, Trails Worth Hiking is a good distraction. All right, well, Harry Kuril, thank you for telling us about your hike on the Transcaucasian Trail. But while I have you, I’ve got a few more questions if you don’t mind. Of course. What is the next trip on your list?

Ah, oh, it’s a similar trail in some ways. It’s called the Pamir Trail because it goes through the Pamir Mountains, which are in Tajikistan. So it’s a trail, it runs the length of the country. Tajikistan is by some measures the world’s most mountainous country. So it’s a very mountainous trail at consistently high altitudes. And I say it’s similar to the TCT, that’s partly because it’s also a former Soviet state and also because it’s a very new hiking trail in a region that doesn’t have a history of hiking and hasn’t previously had long distance trails. So I’m really interested to try that out. And I’ve continued to work on my Russian, which is apparently widely spoken there. So I’m also hoping I’ll be able to chat to the people more and actually learn a bit more about their lives than I was able to.

That sounds like a pretty wild trail. That should be really interesting. I’ve heard of a lot of people who hike in Kyrgyzstan, but I’ve never heard of hiking in Tajikistan. So that’s interesting.

Yeah, I think one day you could probably join the two nations hiking together. Although there’s a recent civil war between them. Might not be the right time.

Alright, so what is either the best or worst campsite or backcountry spot you’ve ever been to?

Well, I’ve talked a bit about learning. And it’s not surprising that one of the worst spots I chose was sort of early on in my hiking life. During high school, I went on the trip to Sweden with my close friend. In Sweden, they have a law or a principle called allemansrätten, roughly speaking, every man’s right, which is the freedom to roam and the freedom to camp within reason. And we took this to an extreme and we were, we had no money, Sweden seemed astronomically expensive to us as teenagers. And so we, we chose a camp spot right next to the airport where we were flying out the next day. It was literally the fence around the runway, just next to that. And it was, I’m sure if we tried it nowadays, we would have been arrested. It was also a very uneven ground. And we had planes taking off all night. So we didn’t sleep at all. It was awful.

I think that one you deserved it. I mean, you, you knew you were camping next to a runway.

It wasn’t smart for sure.

Okay. What is the most resourceful thing you’ve ever done hiking?

Oh, I don’t know if this is resourceful or foolish, but I’m sure a lot of people have seen those inflatable sleeping mats. I’ve got a Thermarest NeoAir Xtherm. It’s actually my favorite piece of gear. And I bet some other people have wondered if you can use that as a raft.

I have definitely wondered.

So eventually that curiosity got the better of me. So I, I was doing a hike, I was trying to go from Cape Flattery, which is the northwest point of the Olympic Peninsula. I was trying to hike from there all the way down through Olympic National Park to the whole river without any sort of breaks. And so that includes the Quileute River, I’m not sure how the Q is pronounced. And you can detour around it. Or you can actually phone somebody from the reservation there to give you a ride across in a boat.

But what fun would that be?

Well, no, I was happy to phone somebody, but nobody picked up or maybe my cell provider didn’t work there. I think only one of the big three providers worked there. So left with the option to walk the long way around or try and go across the water. I thought now’s the chance to see if this works as a raft. The answer is no. It doesn’t. It doesn’t even nearly support the weight of an adult male.

But you’re here and you didn’t drown.

Well, better than that. It does support the weight of a fairly lightweight hiking pack. I’d say about eight kilos is the limit. So I strapped it to my sleeping mat. And I swam across the river and sort of pushing my luggage across on the ThermaRest and clambered out the other side and got dressed and carried on. And I was very pleased with myself having saved, I think, a couple of hours of walk. So if yes, if you’re ever wondering, can I use the ThermaRest as a raft? The answer is not really.

But that’s fantastic information. I love that answer because it is something that people wonder about. It’s good to know that you could at least raft your gear without drenching your gear as badly as yourself. So that is interesting. All right, last question. What’s the most unexpected thing that’s ever happened while you were backpacking or trekking?

That was actually on the same trip as the TCT trip. So I finished it sooner than I expected. And I had some spare time. So I decided and I hadn’t had enough hiking. So I decided I decided to go to northeast Georgia, which is quite it’s sort of a Wild West, I would say in the sense that, how to put it, people still live partly in the old ways there. And so the TCT project, they’re working on a west to east route. So one day that west to east route might include this region, Tusheti in the northeast of Georgia. And I was walking along in this steep valley. And coming up behind me, there’s a man on the horse. And up ahead of me is a fierce pack of dogs. And I’m thinking, oh, good. I was wondering how I was going to get past these dogs. And he said, get up on my horse, and I’ll take you past the dogs. So I did. And I immediately realized my mistake because I noticed he was completely drunk. And it was terrifying on this horse going down the steep path with a drunken rider. Luckily, the horse wasn’t drunk.

So we got through and I got off as soon as I could. And we caught up with two of his colleagues, that sounds like too much of a formal word for shepherds, but two of his companions. And then he started making, picking a fight with them. And I was just watching this not really sure what to do. Then he got a penknife and was really threatening one of them. And the other two of them wrestled him to the ground. And I tried to help by by grabbing the penknife. But I’ve never done a hard day’s work in my life. And my feeble hands were not strong enough to get the penknife out of his very strong working man’s hands. So I stepped back and waited for this to resolve it. It ended with one of the horses, which he’d never let go of the reins. One of the horses fell on top of the pile and sort of resolved the matter. So I was really quite traumatized by all this. And I said, All right, guys, thanks for the lift. I’m going off on my own now. And I thought that was the last I would see of them.

But I actually saw them the next morning, and they completely resolved all their differences. They were all battered and bruised. And they acted, one of them said, this is how life is here. We drink, we fight.

You know, I was thinking about when you were telling the story, I was thinking this couldn’t have been the first time that this happened between these guys.

It probably won’t be the last time. They’re still doing it now.

Harry Kuril, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Thanks again to Harry Kuril for coming on the show. And I hope that we’ve inspired you to hike the Transcaucasian Trail, or at least to hike some part of the trail. As Harry talked about, there are lots of great opportunities to hike just a few days or a week on this trail. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, tell a friend about it or better yet, give us a good review on whichever podcast service you use. And keep in mind that this podcast is entertainment and meant to spark your interest. If you decide to hike the trail, do your own research. Like anything else worth doing, outdoor adventure has risk. So when you go pack your common sense, and when you get back, tell me how it went.

Before we go, I want to remind you to sign up for the Highlander event at Big Bear Lake in Southern California. In June of this year from June 23 to June 27. Use the discount code TWH20 to get 20% off your registration for this fantastic community-oriented backpacking event. Well, you will enjoy a fully supported backpacking trip where you only have to carry one day of food at a time. And you’ll meet lots of people from all over who have a similar interest as you do. It’s a really fun event that I did in 2025. And I highly recommend that you check it out. It’s a great way to spend a weekend or a week in the beautiful Big Bear Lake area. So check it out: Highlander Big Bear Lake. There’s a link in the show notes and you get a discount of 20% off with the discount code TWH20.

Alright, next time on Trails Worth Hiking, we go hiking for over 200 kilometers in a remote desert, where we’ll see stunning scenery, cross challenging terrain, and pass through or near land significant to indigenous peoples. But this time we won’t be in the American West. Instead, we’ll be hiking through hills and valleys of red rock, where we’ll pass gum trees and might see dingoes or rock wallabies. Next time on Trails Worth Hiking, we travel the Larapinta Trail and the outback of the Northern Territory of Australia. If you have any questions or feedback, reach out to me at [email protected]. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at trailsworthhikingpodcast. And please support the show by becoming a member for only $3 a month at BuyMeACoffee.com/TrailsWorthHiking. Go do it right now. Really, thank you so much. So start planning your next hike. And before you know it, you’ll be on the trail. Thanks for listening.