The first rule of traveling: traveling is adapting! Simple, the end. But why do I remembered this now? Well, today, on our Georgia motorcycle tour, we were forced to adapt, and that was not easy.
Plans rarely work out 100% as you planned them, and although alternative plans may be part of your bag of tricks, there is no way that you can set yourself up to an adventure and not have to adapt on the spot.
From something as simple as taking a different route if the road ahead is closed, to doing less km’s per day because you got a flat. Anything can happen.
For us, that adaptation was in something far from simple and it came at the cost of changing our initial routing plan on a major scale. The change? Skip Aremina and Iran, and finish the first stage of our trip back in Portugal.
Our initial plan, as you may know if you have been following Tea2Wine for a longer time, was to finish this first stage in Dubai, where the bikes would sit while we came back home to work for a while and get some more money for the next leg of the trip.
As news of an increasing difficulty to change money in Iran came to life, we adapted, and made plans to go around that.
The US was getting out news - and eventually confirmed - that they would back out of the Iran deal. We evaluated possible changes in borders and increasing tensions, and again, we adapted, and still were on board with moving on.
However, one aspect kept lurking on and eventually forced our hand.
Since Istanbul that both I and Charlotte started suffering a lot with the food. No matter how hard we tried, we kept on only managing to find very limited supplies of vegetables, non-spicy foods and diversity altogether, both in Turkey and Georgia.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggs, bread, cheese and mostly the same kind of meat, were the base of 90% of our food intake, being the other 10% lentils or the occasional eatable piece of fruit. Don’t take me wrong, we could’ve dealt with that easily for a few days, even a few weeks, however, after almost two months, our bodies were done with it.
We tried to find multivitamins at pharmacies, we scoured bazaars and markets in search for other alternatives, even overpriced restaurants and we always came down to the same options.
At this point, our bodies were showing signs of food poisoning basically on a daily basis. Not to go into much grossing detail, let's just say that some days we were physically unable to leave the bed, move, or just keep a single glass of water inside our bodies.
Our initial departure, as you may also know, was delayed, and at this point, that would mean crossing Iran during Ramadan. Considering how we were feeling, we decided we could no longer adapt to that, as did not believe our bodies would handle that extra push.
Plans back on the table, and we ended up deciding to ship our bikes back to Germany, fly home for a couple of weeks to rest, recuperate and get some needed medical attention and varied food, drive back to Portugal, and decide how and when to get back on the road, even though we will go to Iran soon!
Travelling is adapting, and adapting does not mean quitting. Means changing and dealing with adversity the same way we deal with the different terrains the road throws at us.
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