I continued riding and pushing my bike up what I thought would be a long mountain pass. About 3km later I was stopped by a group of Georgians sitting and drinking at a cafe on the side of the road. They offered me free food and vodka while I tried to figure out how to say in Russian "I just ate not 10 minutes ago." They ended up offering me a place to stay, so we loaded my bike on the top of their car and they drove me the last ~10km into Khasuri where I spent the night. I was surprised to see that the one driving didn't seem to be drinking with the rest of the group.
The next day was a fairly easy ride into Gori, Stalin's supposed birthplace. They have a bunch of Stalin statues still standing as well as a museum dedicated to him.
Most of the rest of the city still looks very soviet, with 50+ year old decaying block housing everywhere.
I left Gori the next morning heading towards Tbilisi. On the way I detoured to see Uplistsikhe which is an ancient rock dwelling. I was fairly interesting, but I'd seen very similar dwellings in Turkey
I stopped again in Mtskheta which boasts 3 monasteries. Number one: Svetitskhoveli Monastery
Number two: Samtavro Monastery (not a great picture but they all look the same anyway)
Number three: Jvari Monastery
That would've been a 15km detour and about a 3-400m climb which I decided to skip at the end of the day. Near the monasteries I met up with a polish couple who were also cycling towards Tbilisi, so we rode there together, though stayed in different hostels. We decided to meet for lunch, and spent some of the next day wandering around Tbilisi together. Tbilis has more churches than I can count. It's an interesting capital, with all kinds of old buildings drastincally contrasted with some incredibly new ones.
I left Tbilisi in the morning, and made it into Azerbaijan without any trouble. In fact I had sort of a royal treatment as I guess Azerbaijan is fairly strict on cars coming into the country and it took me approximately 20 minutes max to cross the border as I was waved through all the long lines. This was the second time my bags were searched, but it was a sort of half-hearted attempt as the guard just pointed to each bag, said "open", and when I opened it he only spent about 3 seconds looking at the contents.
First impressions of Azerbaijan: They really love this faux castle motif, as they use it everywhere.
I had loaded up on food and water before leaving Tbilisi because I knew it might be a while before I reached a town with an ATM. Anyway, along the way I pulled up to a gas station and began filling my water bottles with tap water only to be stopped by a local who said that there is literally no potable water in Azerbaijan. Apparently the entire country drinks water that is bottled elsewhere. Well luckily since I had expected to wait until the nearest major town I had enough to last. I rolled into Qazax around 7pm and started asking people where the nearest ATM was (apparently they also speak Russian quite a bit in Azerbaijan). It took 5 tries before I found an ATM that worked, but I was finally able to resupply before heading out of town and camping in a field. I was woken up by the sun, as usual, only this time I was also facing some curious goat herders, so I started riding early.
It turns out the drivers in Azerbaijan are worse than any I've so far encountered. Constant honking. I continue to go slowly insane. Here I'm even afraid to retaliate because if I'm mean to the wrong driver I might get arrested. Queue statues and posters of this guy everywhere:
Anyway I made it to Genze (Ganja) which is a fairly unremarkable town except for the fact that half the roads clearly haven't been paved in 50 years.
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