‘I “I think this is the farthest we can go,” i say, looking down at the military posts, only 100 metres away from the Zakagori Fortress. This was the endpoint for our day hike in the Truso Valley, north Georgia. Beyond the fortress, there is disputed land. A seemingly endless expanse, with yellowing pastures, stretching beneath icecapped peaks. Only a few sheep wander in this area. Just beyond our line of sight is Russia.
We began our hike by taking a bumpy cab to Kvemo Okrokana – a village abandoned not far away from our Kazbegi guesthouse. Our adventure really began at Leeds station six weeks prior. Then, we took trains, night busses and marshrutki This remote eastern edge of Europe can be reached by (shared taxis).
My partner and I had started to plan a year-long trip a few months earlier. We quit our jobs, stored our possessions and put them in storage. I’d always romanticised the idea of overlanding. I had heard family stories of friends who hopped on a London-bound bus and traveled through Yugoslavia before ending up in Kathmandu. In the 21st century I wondered, how far could we go without needing to take a flight?
On the map of Europe I mark all possible land routes. We travel by train from London to Venice and then continue east.
We book our train to London, then face our first hiccup: we’re on a tight budget and Eurostar tickets in late August are almost £200 each. So instead, we book a £34 night bus from London to Brussels. And so, a couple of weeks later we find ourselves wandering through an empty park in the Belgium capital at 6am, wearing our backpacks, feeling the weight of our decision.
The beginning is a bit anti-climactic. We can’t check into our hostel for hours and only have a day to see the city. We spend our budget on waffles smothered in chocolate, then settle down at a bar to enjoy the evening. The following day, we travel by local trains to Germany before taking the Nightjet service from Stuttgart.
We cross the Ponte della Libertà on to the islands of the historical centre as the sun rises, arriving in an almost deserted Venice. Light glints off weathered gondolas as we take in the stillness from the famous Ponte dell’Accademia. We have three days in the city and no desire to catch up on sleep. We switch train travel for a vaporetto, walk the small island of Sant’Elena to stretch our legs, and order food on the canal walls. cicchetti (small Venetian dishes) and spritz. The holiday feels like it has finally started.
Arriving in the Balkans is a welcome relief after racing through expensive western Europe. The next couple of weeks are filled with a late-summer glow, Slovenian lake swimming and daily flakey Burek (pastries). We go on a hike through the Julian Alps and stop at a mountain hut to enjoy a delicious plate of sweet cheese dumplings with berries.
As we travel deeper into Eastern Europe, the online information on cross-country routes is less. So, we rely on busy transport hubs for help with schedules and language barriers. At Belgrade station, we book a bed on the Montenegro Express night train to Bar, on the Adriatic coast of southern Montenegro. It takes 11 hours, costs about £20 and is as gorgeous as a night train gets. We slept, despite the chain-smoking babushkas who occupied the bunks beneath us. The train sped through the Dinaric Alps as the sun rose. I watch in bed as soft, golden light brightens the rocky, deserted valleys.
Stari Bar in the inland gives us our first taste Montenegro. For breakfast – fresh pomegranate juice and PriganiceThe Montenegrin version of fried bread is served with sweet crumbly cheese, jams with seeds and crumbly jams. Views from the old town fortress make this view even more tasty. Montenegro only has a few train routes, so we rent a car in order to maximize our time along the coast. We also take a trip north. We drive the 16 hairpin curves of the Kotor Serpentine Road, for the best view of our entire trip. And then we dive into the bay at the azure-fringed town of Rose.
Back in Bar, we catch buses to Shkodër, where a grand new mosque behind the bus stop heralds our arrival in Albania, our first Muslim-majority country. We spend our time here in the mountains, hiking a gruelling but spectacular section of the Peaks of the Balkans trail between Valbonë and Theth. In Theth, we rest on a farm-homestay. Bujtina Zemra TraditesWhile we eat pickled green tomato, white cheese, and fresh, we can enjoy the evening’s antics as the owners try to round up the escaped sheep. kulaç The soda bread. It’s a slow, repetitive life in the mountains but it is what we need to rest up before our next leg.
The lessons of the London-to-Brussels night bus are a distant memory by the time we arrive in Albania’s capital, Tirana, and book a 9pm journey to North Macedonia. A family has already made a bed in our seats when we board, and we awkwardly ask them to move. North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, is reminiscent of a mini-Istanbul – defined by minarets, Turkish coffee shops and bazaars. Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria, where we can see its stunning churches, rattling trolleys and candlelit bars. Then we take the night train to Istanbul. This is a place I know well, and I enjoy showing my partner all the great spots. menemen (Turkish scrambled eggs) breakfast, and the views from the Süleymaniye Mosque for lunch.
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Compared with the relatively small nations of Europe, Turkey seems like a daunting land to cross. We take a bullet train to Ankara and then the scenic 22-hour journey by bus. Doğu Express To the east of Turkey A few other overlanders fill the sleeper carriage.
The couple from Switzerland are going on vacation to Georgia, and they’re taking trains instead of flying. An experienced traveller told me that he was going to Singapore. I dive into the details – has he found a route we didn’t look at? He acknowledges that he may need to fly a short distance into Russia or Azerbaijan. But, for the moment, we are all heading the same way – to the Georgian border.
What should have been an easy hop from Erzurum to the border turns into one of the most arduous days of the trip. The bus was stuck behind a large landslide and it took hours to clear the road. Only then were we allowed through. We are pushed through passport control at the border with hundreds of Turks headed to Batumi to party for the weekend. Then we rush to catch the last bus into the city.
In Istanbul, we had crossed the Bosphorus Strait into Asia, but Georgia is like returning to the Balkans, with its Soviet influence. In Kutaisi, our homestay Giorgi, our host, sits down with us and pours glasses of Georgian wines. He spends some time trying to convince us this stuff was invented in his country. The food and wine are both fantastic. We eat daily adjarian Khachapuri – a boat-shape bread filled with melted cheese, butter and an egg, alongside piles of crushed walnut salads.
After hiking around the mountains of Mount Kazbek and the surrounding valleys, we hurl back down the mountain. Marshrutka minibus to our last stop – Georgia’s capital. Tbilisi combines crumbling faded splendor with refreshing modern cool. This is the far edge of Europe and it’s clear from the pro-EU, anti-Russian graffiti that there is division – a detail I looked back on when the protests After the October 2024 elections, there was a violent eruption.
We know that Georgia is the last country. Azerbaijan has closed its land border with Azerbaijan since the pandemic. No date is set for the reopening. The Foreign Office has red-listed Russia, so even if you got a visa that is hard to obtain, your travel insurance would not cover it. We could go south to Armenia but we would be surrounded by closed border and limited flight options. We can only go so far.
Over 3,000 miles we enjoyed the freedom that the road and rails offered. Some of the most memorable moments of the journey – those divine dumplings at a mountain hut in Slovenia; that glorious night train ride from Serbia to Montenegro; the hike through Albania’s stretch of the Balkan peaks – were experiences I might never have encountered without the spirit of overlanding. It invites you to linger, guides you to unexpected places, and encourages you to heed the advice of local people and fellow travellers. Perhaps one day a hippy trail-style bus from London to Kathmandu will once again be an option, but for now, we board a plane to Nepal’s capital where a new adventure awaits.
The writer used the Man in Seat 61 Website Plan ahead You can also find out more about the following: Omio Booking Transport between citiesThe blog is a good example of this. Wander-Lush As a travel resource Balkans and Georgia
