Struggling Toward Shelter

Progress slowed to a crawl. The front wheel spun uselessly on pure ice, sometimes refusing to move at all. Staying on the road was impossible, so I worked along the edge, pushing and walking the bike meter by meter. Even trucks were skidding. One stopped further ahead, unable to continue. The police passed by without stopping, barely slowing as they descended. I wasn’t sure whether they planned to turn around or had simply decided this stretch was no longer their problem.

By around 3:30 p.m., I had covered less than a kilometer. Time stretched strangely in the cold. I stopped checking distances and focused instead on small goals: the next bend, the next flatter patch. On downhill sections, I used gravity carefully—engine on to gain momentum, then off, boots scraping the ice as brakes. It was exhausting and tense, but it worked.

I spotted a small structure on the slope below. For a moment, I wondered if it was a cabin where I could shelter, but it turned out to be little more than a corral. From there, I could finally see the village ahead. It was tiny, tucked into the mountains, and didn’t look like a place with many options.

A truck driver told me the border was likely to close until the next morning. That changed everything. Twenty kilometers at this pace would mean darkness before arrival—and nowhere to stay at the border itself. He mentioned a larger town seven kilometers farther on, but even that felt ambitious in these conditions.

Still, I continued.

The Hotel I Didn’t Take

At the entrance to the village, a sign pointed to a hotel just 100 meters away. I made my way there and went inside, hoping to stop, eat, and decide what to do next. They had a card terminal, but refused to accept payment unless it was in local currency—10,000 drams, about €25. I didn’t want to spend the little cash I had left, so I left, telling myself I could push a few kilometers farther.

That decision lasted less than an hour.

By 4:30 p.m., daylight was slipping away. After passing the truck again, I hit a worse section of road, completely snow-covered. I turned back toward the hotel. Halfway across the bridge, between the truck and a police vehicle, I slipped and fell—this time on my left side.

Lifting the bike was brutally difficult. It leaned forward awkwardly, the camera mount had come loose, and the weight felt overwhelming. After a car moved aside, two people came to help me get it upright. That’s when I noticed someone waving. It was the truck driver who had sheltered me earlier in the storm.

He walked over and asked where I was going. When I told him I’d decided to stay at the hotel, he shook his head immediately.
“No hotel,” he said. “Come with me. Sleep in the cab.”

I didn’t argue.

A Place to Wait

We left the motorcycle beside the truck, still fully loaded. I didn’t have the energy to unpack it again. Not long after, road maintenance workers stopped and invited me into their building—a small service house with beds, warmth, and electricity. For a moment, I considered it seriously. But the truck driver insisted. His cab had two bunks, and staying there meant the motorcycle would be right next to me.

I chose the truck.

Inside, the space was tight but warm. A gas heater ran continuously, making the upper bunk uncomfortably hot. Outside, the wind pushed snow across the road in sudden bursts. I had very little food left—two bananas and a yogurt—and realized that if I had been forced to camp, it would have been a real problem. My tent wasn’t meant for these temperatures.

The storm eased, then returned. Snow stopped for over an hour, then began again just after sunset. Snowplows worked sporadically, sometimes clearing a lane only for the wind to erase it minutes later. The driver cursed the grader operator over the phone, frustrated by repeated delays.

We talked quietly about the weather, the pass, and the chances of leaving the next day. Everything here sat between 1,900 and 2,100 meters. Noon might be the only safe window if the sun showed itself.

Night Beside the Road

By around 7:30 or 8:00 p.m., we settled in for the night. The driver chose to sleep sitting up, leaving me one of the bunks. Outside, traffic was sparse. The road hummed faintly under wind and ice. At 10:30 p.m., the snow stopped again.

Four and a half hours earlier, I had been fighting the road step by step, unsure where I would end up. Now, despite being another day behind schedule, I was warm, safe, and strangely calm.

Sometimes the road doesn’t let you pass. Sometimes it asks you to wait.