For most people, Tbilisi is the first stop when crossing borders from Armenia to Georgia.
I’m not most people however, and so I decided to take the road on the far west as I wanted to see Batumi first and from there make my way slowly up to Tbilisi and Azerbaijan.
After having debated with myself about the best transportation option, I finally took a train to Gyumri and from there the Mashrutka to Akhaltsikhe in Georgia.
The train ride cost only a 1000 amd and took roughly three hours. I arrived in Gyumri at 11 am, too late for the mashrutka to Georgia, so I needed to stay there for a night. A detailed description of how to get the train and the mashrutka to Akhaltsikhe, including time-tables, is at the end of the article.
Gyumri is actually a nice little town and the perfect last stay in Armenia. I stayed at station guest house, newly opened, very clean, and conveniently located very close to the bus station for the next day. To top it up, the management was super nice and friendly and reserved me a seat in the mashrutka to Akhaltsikhe and even accompanied me to the bus station the next morning to check if everything was alright.
Gyumri itself is a charming little town, featuring some authentic Armenian architecture in the old town (even though I have no idea what that is) and a nice little street market. The old town is under reconstruction and renovation and from what I could see, it will look really nice once it will be finished.
I got myself the last share of Armenian churches and enjoyed having a room for myself again.
The Mashrutka to Akhaltsikhe left at 10am the next morning.
Arriving in Georgia
I heard a lot of good things about Georgia and I tried to keep my expectations as low as possible, so I wasn’t too disappointed when I got there. Georgia really is like Switzerland, just a bit cheaper. The same landscape, the same rain, the same hospitality. The streets were in need of reparation and the mashrutka driver for Batumi played one of the trashiest electro remixes I’ve heard in a while.
When I arrived at my accommodation I met two other travellers, one who complained about the bus price from Gyumri to Akhaltsikhe, about Batumi having a flat sea with a stone beach and telling me that everything in Georgia is more expensive than in Armenia and asking me why I went to a bank instead changing money on the street to get two Euro more in Lari when changing a 100 Euros (he was from Braunschweig, just saying…). The other one was a Chinese girl who asked the hosts who barely spoke English about visa requirements, resulting in a lot of misunderstandings and loud speak. Summing it up, Georgia and I had some difficulties when we first met.
Getting from Yerevan to Akhaltsikhe
Since I love train rides, I decided to take the train from Yerevan to Gyumri. According to the time-table at the train station, there are actually more trains leaving for Gyumri than listed on the official website:
The train ride costs 1000amd. I think the cheapest, easiest, and fastest way to the train station is by metro. It costs 100amd and from entering the metro station at the Yeritasardakan stop to standing in front of the ticket booth took roughly 20 minutes. I took the early train at 7:55am and the ticket booth opens at 7:30am, so there is no need to arrive there any earlier than that.
If you are like me and don’t want to hitchhike to the border, you have to stay one night in Gyumri and take the Mashrutka to Akhaltsikhe the next morning at 10am.
There are a couple of guest houses in Gyumri, personally I liked staying at the station guest house which was also one of the cheapest options in town. The mashrutka costs 4000amd. Given that Akhaltsikhe has little to offer and the accommodation is not the best, but pricey, I would suggest trying to make it to Bojormi the same day. It’s relatively close and I heard good things about it, even though I didn’t go in the end.
