5 Day Tusheti to Pankisi Trek, Georgia (Silent Hiking + Guide)

[Music] hmm wow [Music] so so this hmm [Applause] last step i said so [Applause] two [Music] so so [Applause] [Music] no [Laughter] foreign uh that [Applause] so [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] is [Applause] um [Music] [Applause] oh okay oh hmm um [Applause] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] hmm i [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] uh wow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so so um [Music] [Music] um oh thank you welcome back i'm kim this is dell and we are going the whole hog we make travel films and write accompanying guides over on our blog going thewholehog.com this touchette pancake trek was one of many that we did in georgia's caucuses mountains in the summer of 2020. if you fancy doing the same trek yourself we've written a very detailed guide covering absolutely everything that you need to know and you'll find that on our blog you can find it by clicking the link up here for now we will just go into a few more details about the trek itself and tell you a bit more about our own experience on it this trek connects a mallow in the remote highland area of touchette with the lowland area of pancasi valley in northeastern georgia it takes five days and it's about 88 kilometers you spend one night in a guesthouse and three nights camping or one of those nights could be in a tourist shelter there's some river crossings to deal with and there's potential for a lot of aggressive sheepdogs in this area and there's also very limited water on some of the days so you do have to carry quite a lot with you for these reasons we'd recommend this really just for experienced hikers the best hiking season is from july to august although it's possible to do it slightly before or after maybe mid-june and into september but it really depends on the conditions we haven't actually originally planned on doing this trek it wasn't even on our radar whatsoever it was a bit of a last-minute decision once we were actually in omalu and to shetty we had always wanted to go to pancake valley and to nazi's guest house in particular after i read about it on our friend emily's blog wanderlush.org and when we were looking at the maps and things and deciding how to get there it dawned on us that it was actually possible to walk there so instead of doing the notorious and exciting road to get back down to the lowlands we decided just to give it a go and see if we could plan a route and walk there we had a little bit of information that we'd managed to piece together from a couple of different sites enough that we could see where we were meant to be going we could tell where we could get water and the places that we should be camping we didn't have as much info as we normally would so that made it a little bit nerve-wracking for us setting off there was a few more surprises along the way but we decided to just go for it and challenge ourselves and see how it turned out day one for us was from galley meadow to gerbacelli via the nikaicho pass it was 19 kilometers there was a total elevation gain of over 1100 meters and an elevation loss of over 1500 meters we estimate it would take the average hiker between six to eight hours to complete this distance it took us 11 hours as you know if you've watched any of our videos we're on the slower side plus lots of filming taking pictures breaks taking notes etc we chose to hike along the ridge for day one of this trek but you could actually drive straight to jarvis ellie where we stayed in the guest house or hike along the gomensari gorge instead if you don't fancy doing the ridge hike um it's very scenic though we would recommend it we hired a car just to take us from obalo where we were staying in a guesthouse to getly meadow where that trek starts we'd already walked that part as part of the chatillato malo hike so we didn't want to do it again we paid 50 larry and it took about 20 minutes to drive us there and drop us off to start the hike i had a backpack full of water because we knew that there was nowhere to get water until 16 kilometers in at a daddy carter village which is almost near the end so i think i probably had about five liters of water in my bag or something like that yeah it was heavy at the start of the trek uh start the day going up to the ridge is quite a bit of a climb although it's nothing too steep but just fairly gradual but it's it's quite a big change in elevation once you get up to the ridge there's fantastic views uh either side indeed all around um it was a bit of an atmospheric day with cloudy skies but we did get to see some fantastic views of the villages that we'd hiked through before yeah so you look down to the right to pirakita's valley and over to the left is the gomasari gorge so it's a really great vantage point yeah and we saw about eight birds of prey that were like circling around us at the top that was amazing uh i don't think dell was quick enough to capture them on video unfortunately but i did get some of my phone if you want to check out our instagram story highlights they're on there and i did manage to snap a couple of pictures as well i'm not sure exactly how they turned out but maybe we can pop them up if they're any goods i'll pop them on the screen for you if there's nothing appearing right now you'll know that they were rubbish anyway we undulated along the ridge after getting to the top and you know encountered a few sheep dogs hidden there gave them a wide berth as usual and yeah it was just a really nice walk with amazing views had a picnic at the pass and then it was time for us to start descending down into the gomezari gorge which was a pretty big descent over 1500 meters down um some sections were steeper than others but on the whole it was mostly okay there's some handy way marking poles that you can just aim for as long as you've got good visibility and that kind of keeps you on track so that was pretty good and um got down to the three little streams which you have to sort of keep crossing in quick succession and near the bottom some forest section which was really nice just before turning the corner and getting this amazing view off the tower at varkavani and then we carried on into gerbicelli village where we were hoping we could get a guest house for the night um last summer we had a bit of trouble kind of getting in touch with guest houses in advance to check if they were open or not so we were kind of winging out a bit and thankfully we found pusholi guest house which was fairly new and yeah really nice place to stay and they had a puppy always good in my books yeah nice place to stay good food and very welcoming hosts day two was jar bucelli to the elaznastavi tourist shelter it was a long day at 21 kilometers and there was over 1600 meters of elevation gain and more than 1300 meters of elevation loss so a lot of up and down we estimate it would take a hiker between seven to nine hours to complete this part of the trek for us it was a twelve and a half hour day yeah it was a big day that started off going quite well and turned into tricky trail and various dramas and got in at sunset so yeah it was a biggie um the first hurdle that we had to cross was the river at georbacelli which used to have a bridge but no longer has one it got destroyed but we were thankful that our guest house owner um drove us across so that was great and yeah the first part of the day is really quite nice the trail's good you're climbing a bit and um yeah it was pretty easy saw some horsies they were nice great views and it was all pretty straight forward oh saw some bear prints along the way very very fresh beer prince i was like dell what do you reckon those are because i know what i think they are and he's just like oh i don't know a big dog and i'm like that's not a dog that's definitely bear prince we have heard that bears here are generally quite shy and we'll just run away into the forest if they see you yeah we took pictures of it and we later showed it to nazi and nazi's guesthouse where we ended up and she confirmed it was definitely bear prince definitely bear prince anyway start of the day was really nice straightforward trail all going well and then we hit a fork in the trail where initially we actually went the wrong way and ended up doing an extra couple of kilometers uh had to come back and when we continued on the right fork also the right fork uh the trail kind of descended into like this overgrown mess there was stabby plants bushies hogweed all that usual stuff a little narrow trail that you keep kind of like tripping yourself up on and slowed the pace down a lot i i was like feeling really confident i was like yeah we're going like the clappers here we're going to be fine and yeah then we got back to our usual slow pace and then we hit the landslide area oh the landslide area so actually we didn't really film this section because it was a bit too tricky and um it was quite wide the trail you could see going across it and dell decided to go up the left and once he got over i said to him oh there's another trail going up the right am i okay to go that way and he's like yeah yeah you're fine i went that way turned out it was extremely steep and there was a huge drop off on the other side i was like on my hands and knees trying to get up it and the position i was in my backpack basically like pinned my head to the ground and i was wearing my white brain's hat and i couldn't see anything and i had like zero field of vision and just like freaked out and couldn't move and i'm like screaming on him to come and get me and uh he had to come and rescue me drag me up pull me up from that bit so after that my nerves were shot a little bit just so i sat there and had me cry and uh got my computer back and it had to have to get over that little moment then tackle another couple of landslides and eventually cam my nerves with a whole load of cheese at the alaskan stami cheese farmers thankfully got invited in by the farmers there they produce cheese in the traditional way which is inside like sheep is it stomach stomach lining i think i think so maybe i'm getting confused with you know our old scottish haggis but anyway it's like sheepskin which is turned inwards so that the hair is facing inwards and they make up so now the stomach lining then the actual the skin yeah the skin if there's yeah there's no hair in the stomach is there so that might be yeah um yes so they make all these different types of cheese they've like won awards for it and so on they just live out there all summer and that was great so they invited us in and showed us all around their the cheese farm and um we got to taste three or four different varieties all of which were delicious and they packed us off with some cheese as well which he was moaning about because of all the weight uh being added i was like let's just eat it then come on i was also worried about her time you know because we were spending time there it was getting late in the day i think it was already about six o'clock or something yeah yeah it was getting towards that anyway we thanked them we managed to move on and the last section took us about three hours to get to the tourist shelter the reason for that was there are a lot of landslide areas again to negotiate alongside the river sometimes you have to go up sometimes you skirt alongside the river we made a couple of wrong turns again so it took us a while it was basically getting dark as we were approaching the the tudor shelter which we expected to be completely empty um and we just had some bad luck and it turned out there was a whole group coming the opposite way from pink casey who had gone there and there was no room in the shelter all of our dreams of an easy night without having to put up the tent and been able to use the lovely toilet there and the flowing water where it shattered and we had to put the tent up and the toilet was broken and we had to cook outside and all that normal stuff so that was a bit of a bit of a downer at the end of a very long day 12 and a half hours and didn't get the best sleep that night because the group were chatting outside till i don't know one in the morning or something like that so it wasn't the best we should have in hindsight camped a little bit further on but we were just too exhausted by the time we got there so that was that day three was the alaskan stavi tourist shelter to masara shepard camp via this corner pass it was 13 kilometers there was a total elevation gain of over 1500 meters and an elevation loss of around 1100 meters we estimate this would take a hiker about 7 to 10 hours to complete it took us 14 hours in the end the longest day of the trek yet so we always knew this was going to be a big day we had not as much distance to cover but big elevation gain and loss i passed across limited water spots and we were expecting heavy rain towards the end of the day so we knew this was going to be a biggie we got up early tried to leave as early as possible the first part of it was fine it's just along the river and then the climb up to sikorno pass was um pretty nice amazing views we met a shepherd on horseback we was going up there to make a phone call because apparently that's the only place you could get phone reception that was about a three hour round trip for him i think yeah something crazy um but yeah the river crossing before the pass was absolutely no problem we just kind of splashed through that and yeah by the time we got to the top of the pass it completely mistied over it was quite atmospheric and had some lunch and then we were glad that we had gps to follow otherwise we wouldn't have had a clue where we were going it was that misty um not long after leaving the top of the pass we hit that very hairy landslide section um that seemed to just be the theme of this trick it was like really bad landslides that were pretty treacherous to cross this was definitely the worst one of the lot yeah it took us a while to negotiate it was quite difficult for me to go down with a heavy bag on yeah it maybe didn't look that steep in the video but trust me it was very steep and the the loose stones were just completely falling away underneath our feet or our bums or whatever we were going down on and there was a huge drop and where everything was just flying off so it was pretty heavy for me to watch him trying to get across and i don't even know how hard that must be for you with 25 kilograms on your back i could feel the whole weight pushing me down and i was very conscious about the small stones sliding out from under my feet and so i was just kind of hugging the ground as much as possible once i got down that little steep corner it was okay to get across i bumped my bag and then came back to get kim which is what you saw in the video yeah so he carries my bag across while i just tried to negotiate it uh yeah that was not fun and again the adrenaline keeps you going while you're doing it and then you get to the other side and you're like okay breathe and hope that there's no more of that to deal with which there wasn't uh but the further down that we got i was looking across the valley and suddenly spotted the trail that we had to go up once we got to the bottom and climb up the other side and i was like are you kidding it looked impossibly steep and at that point i was thinking absolutely no way we are stopping early there's no way we're climbing to the top of that today we'll just sack this and find somewhere to camp at the bottom it took us a while to get down to the river in the end because there was tons of overgrown hogweeds and bushes and again a narrow little trail that you're just tripping over your own feet if the rhododendrons aren't trying to trip you up and yet it took us a while to get down to the very bottom to the river at which point we realized there was no good place to camp it was a very narrow river canyon basically there was a small patch of stones that we could have camped on technically but with a thunderstorm coming that was not safe at all if the water levels had risen we would have been scuppered at this point it was about half past four and the thunderstorm was due within the hour and i was just thinking oh man i've got to get up that other side we need to engage some serious concentration and effort at this point which is what we did and what kim did she just pushed on pretty much without stopping from the river up to that next stream where there was a bit of ice covering it still it was so steep it looked steeper from across the valley to be fair it wasn't as bad when we were on it but it was just like steep switchbacks all the way up i look like i was going quite slow in the video actually but i feel like i was really like challenging myself i didn't stop once i just ignored him kept in a zone was like doing some sort of weird breathing technique um rather than slow i would say you were steady and there was no stopping so you can actually cover quite a fair bit of distance if you just go steadily and don't stop is that is that right is that that's right i think the last clip we had in the video was crossing that stream then almost immediately afterwards the thunder lightning started the rain started coming heavy so the cameras went away waterproofs got on and then it was about another hour of climbing still to get up to the shepherd camp area where we were hoping to camp yeah so that was the first bit of a flat grind where it was suitable and possible to camp and there was also a water source there we were met by the shepherds came like running down the hill site uh you couldn't even see his camp actually from where we were it was hidden sort of behind a little hillock he basically just like gestured us over into his camp which was essentially like a tarpaulin lean to um he had the fire going in there it was completely smoked out we were like choking and everything in there but yeah he made us a hot drink and at that point the rain had stopped and we really just needed to get the tent set up and get out for soaking wet clothes i realized that my phone had been in like a little ziploc bag in my waterproof jacket pocket and had gotten waterlogged somehow so my phone wasn't working it wasn't responding that was not good news because i had most of our mapping apps and things like that long story short the shepherd wanted us to stay in his like little lean to camp um we just wanted to put the tent up because it's much drier warmer less awkward for us it was just like a muddy ground there wasn't really room for the three of us to be sleeping in there and really needed to change every single thing that i was wearing so we we just set up our tent a little bit further down the hill away from him then the nightmare ensued that was his dogs they returned from the top of the hill uh when the flock came back at night and they basically just had us under siege for about two or three hours that night in the dark surrounding the tent barking like mad growling one of them attacked the tent at one point uh we were basically held hostage inside the tent couldn't cook any food we just had what was it a 14-hour day ridiculous a 12-hour day before that and 11 hour day before that it was the end of a very long three days and yeah we couldn't it wasn't safe for us to cook foods uh we were just having to munch on some dry foods every time we moved inside the tent the dogs would start up again uh couldn't get out to go at the toilet and the shepherd was shouting on the dogs sort of but i'm not sure if either he didn't really have control over them or whether we'd offended him by not accepting his hospitality and sleeping in the heart with him um but either way we had a pretty horrible two to three hours in the tent in the dark with some ferocious dogs surrounding us and barking like mad of course you saw none of that because we weren't really in position to be filming anything we were just concerned for getting the tent up getting inside the tent and our own safety the dogs actually came at us while i was still in the process of putting the tent fly on kim was inside getting changed i was standing outside in the wind for a good hour shivering you know our clothes were like soaking wet and shining my head towards the eyes of these dogs that were surrounding me and waving my pole and whatnot until i decided just to get in as well um but there it was it was quite a trying experience yeah and we were just starving after such a long day we were exhausted so properly exhausted not being able to eat properly as well just compounded things for the next day yes so day four masada shepherd camp two mountain spring camp it was 12 kilometers it was about 800 meters up and about 900 meters down we estimate it would take about four to six hours to complete this section of the trek it took us about eight and a half hours our morning started with more dogs they were back as soon as the sun was up surrounding the tent any time we made a little bit of noise they would just go off on one and so we had to try and pack up everything inside the tent i mean it was just an absolute bomb site basically everything everywhere a nightmare for him trying to get everything in the tent and yeah so this is basically what you saw in the uh in the video yeah you know cut from us walking up the day before to that morning shot yeah so we'd been through a lot in the in between point uh they surrounded us again for about two hours in the morning we couldn't get out the tent or do anything and eventually they left with the flock about seven in the morning or something and we could get out and just got packed up as soon as possible so that we could move on and get out of their territory there's a spring next to the shepherd's camp so we filled up there because we knew there was no more water until our next camp that afternoon hightailed it out of there and in the end we were able to have the previous night's dinner for our breakfast which was a very welcome feast one of our dehydrated meals that we had we were just pretty broken at that point so tired after three long trekking days hardly any sleep the stress of the docident that day i would say and the section after that which unfortunately we didn't even manage to show you much of um was probably one of the most scenic spots and we were having a constant battle with ourselves of wow this is amazing we really want to enjoy this and we really want to film loads of it to show you guys but we were just so exhausted and we knew more rain was coming that afternoon so we didn't want to like kind of mess around too much and waste too much time this part of the trek was also the one that we had the least amount of information about we had one source of info which was a little bit outdated and we didn't really know exactly what lay ahead in terms of the terrain and and so on so we didn't really want to risk it we were just like let's keep going and we hit the iron mountain trail where you were mostly just doing a bit of handheld footage of me and it was a bit of a narrow trail going along like the side of the mountain kind of kept crisscrossing back and back and forth again very scenic but the weather had started to kind of close in by that point and eventually the rain came back and we had to don the waterproofs one more time for the final the final stretch into our camp for that evening yeah so just going back to the kind of iron mountain section and before that we did consider flying the drone there but the conditions were quite windy at that time we were conscious that i hadn't flown the drone since day one but we've just not been able to because of time constraints and the long days and they've just gotten away from us when you've only got three batteries as well so you always have to be like thinking where do we want to use these batteries and then dogs as well we've realized that dogs really don't like the drone they don't like the sounds we become a target for them you know you might not even realize there's dogs there and suddenly they're all new when the noise comes up so there were no dogs on this day but it was just a case of it was windy and i was just extremely tired as well did you notice that perfect timing we started talking about dogs and our neighbor's dog started started going off and one she must she must know something we'll just give him a minute to calm down so in the end we didn't get as much drone footage of this track as we would have liked but those were the reasons why yeah so we made it to mountain spring camp uh about four o'clock in the afternoon and we were just so relieved to be finishing earlier than sunset for a change um the rain was due so we just got the tent set up there was a mountain spring obviously nearby so it was a pleasure to have a water source at our camp for a change and yeah we were just so delighted to be stopping at four o'clock and having a little bit of a rest we had some some great views from up there in between the kind of cloudy weather there was a little bit of a haiti moment when i turned around and saw another five or six shepherd dogs just like standing there staring at us and i was like oh you are kidding uh but they just kind of had a bit of a stare off with us and there was no there were no animals with them there was no shade yeah they might have been they might be with cows i don't know and they tend to be less aggressive i think their flock was down the hillside and they just maybe sensed some people at the the camp and come up to have a little bit of a nosy but thankfully they left us alone and we didn't have under siege two incident the rain came on we had to do some cooking in like the porch area of the tent for the first time ever and we were being super careful not to you know have any like hazards or fire damage or anything like that finished cooking and then dill zipped up the tent but the burner was still warm and like immediately burned through a hole intense fly he was raging he was totally like kicking himself that happened but thankfully the tent is very fire retardant and it just sort of fizzled out and that was that yeah taped it up no problem day five was from our mountain spring camp to the village of jacolo in panchesi valley it was a total of 22 kilometers only 200 meters up but over 2 000 meters down um we estimate it would take between four and six hours to complete this it took us about eight in the end i think it was so this morning we woke up to again a little bit of mixed weather um but when the views cleared it was absolutely spectacular some sort of crazy clouds going on and some beautiful light and yeah amazing views from there and we were in general feeling a lot more positive about things after we'd had a good sleep we didn't really know how far we had to go this day we knew that the road started after about six kilometers but we weren't sure how busy that road might be if there was going to be the possibility of hitchhiking the rest of the route or not uh in the end carried on the lovely trail passed to batana mountain uh descended down on the path and made it to sakisto lake where the road started at that point we fancied having a little break you know having a nice sweet snack taking in the views but of course sheep dogs they ruined all of that for us we saw a sign for another trekking route to kodori village and and getting to pancake valley that way which sounded quite interesting but we had no information about that whatsoever so we decided to just play it safe and stick to the route that we knew about um but that could be an interesting one and an alternative route if we can find out more about that i think it goes past a waterfall maybe um and it became very clear that there was definitely going to be no traffic we were not going to be hitchhiking so we had a pretty big descent i think it was about 1300 meters on a road descending down to pankissee valley which sits at about 700 meters so it was getting hotter and hotter and sweatier as we went it was going through a forest mostly but somehow there was zero shade and yeah it was it was sticky hot and energy zapping and i think one car did pass us and offered us a lift but they were going the wrong way yeah we'd stopped by the side of the the road to have some lunch so they didn't know which direction we were going yeah and unfortunately they were going up and we were going down so we just had to keep keep on walking and we were so glad when we got to that beautiful cold uh river where we could just take our boots off and rest our weedy feet for a bit have a little have a little refreshing dip yeah not long after that you're going through the batsara nature reserve where there's all the old blue trees there are the outskirts of it there are skirts of it and then before long we were on the road that runs through pancasi valley itself getting past the first small villages and soon after we managed to hitch a ride to jocolo yeah so yeah a couple of guys stopped with us without for us we'd actually seen them earlier they were picnicking up uh in the forest and then they stopped and picked us up and immediately knew tourists pancasi they'll be at nazis so we got dropped off at nasi's guesthouse and we were relieved i would say after this challenging trek with some really long days and yeah it put us out of our comfort zone a few times i would say we were just very relieved to get there nazi's guest house is wonderful and it's a reason to go to pancake anyway it's a beautiful old house hospitality is amazing the food is amazing and nazi's basically been behind the entire building of a tourism network in pancake city she's really built that from the bottom up and it's it's amazing to see so i think we spent four nights there in the end we did yeah monday to friday i think it was resting and having a wander around pancake visiting various villages and yeah just getting our energy back up and feasting on the delicious delicious um chechen foods there way too much food it was great yeah so we 100 recommend staying at nasi's guest house if you're planning to do this trick or if you just fancy visiting pancake valley on its own and she also organizes horse treks off the region so you could actually do the route that we did on horseback with them a guide and camping along the way and so on um so yeah you can check out her website or ask her about hiking and horseback tours that she organizes there as we said before we would consider this a trek that is really only suitable for experienced hikers you know there's challenging terrain there's some long days limited water sources limited places to camp um and a remote area so you definitely need to be fully self-sufficient and confident in your abilities we've got some suggested packing lists for things like food clothing camping gear and so on in the blog post which is on the website specifically for this hike we've also got a couple of other blog posts that where we've outlined all of our camping gear that we have all of our hiking gear so if you're looking for recommendations on what gear to get or you're interested in the stuff that we use and what we think about it check them out as well and again i've linked them up here and they're in the description down below too if you're interested in the filming process for this video we shot everything on the sony a7 iii camera with the 24-70 f 2.8 lens we use the rode videomic pro for all our sound and the peak design travel tripod to set up all our shots we also have the mavic air drone but as we already alluded to we were only able to use that once on this track if you're interested in everything that we use for our travel photography and video we've got a full blog post detailing that what we have and why we use it so you can check that out here and if you fancy seeing a bit more of the behind the scenes of this trek we make instagram stories they're all saved in the highlights uh so you can go and check those out on our instagram feeds it is at going the whole hog to relive this trek and the behind the scenes version of it there's a lot more whinging i'd definitely say that and uh yeah some different scenes that you didn't see in this i think that's us covered pretty much everything that we wanted to tell you about if you've got any questions do leave us a comment down below or comment on the blog post if the question is not answered in there send us an email whatever you fancy we hope you've enjoyed this video and that you found it useful and that you can come and do this trick for yourself sometime if you did enjoy it give it the old thumbs up if you haven't subscribed to the channel please go and do so we really appreciate all your support and we will see you next time on the laguardia national park three-day black rock lake trek where we had the best trail dog that we have ever had three days with maggie the dog i was heartbroken to say goodbye to her at the end but thankfully for me and for you guys we do have three days with maggie to look forward to and she will always be there in the next video that's coming up soon thanks for watching thanks for watching see ya bye so [Applause] so hmm [Applause] you

2021-07-02 19:00

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