KEY POINTS:
The policeman flashed his lights, signalling for us to pull over. Suddenly, I regretted trying to ask him for directions at the intersection moments before.
"You don't approach the police in these countries," Marta said from the back seat, a little belatedly I thought.
We had just arrived in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. "Gur-gas-tan," as it's pronounced round here, which gives a better indication of how foreign it is to us.
The decor for example, is still overwhelmingly Soviet. Everywhere are decaying concrete apartment blocks, powerful statues and obscene, smoke-belching factories. But Georgia is uniquely foreign too, with its own distinct language and alphabet that looks like it was invented by a drunk using a squiggle pen.
Unfortunately the decay wasn't just evident in the buildings. The main roads - encouraging, thick lines on our map - were actually mere collections of rocks and pot-holes crowded with reckless Ladas and arrogant cows.
Only minutes after crossing the border we passed a distrubing reminder to drive carefully - a man struggling to prise open a smashed car door in order to free its dazed and bloodied driver.
Perhaps actually asking a policeman for help was one step too far, however, especially seeing as we had been warned against it. But with his dashing, receding hair, aviators and toothy grin he just looked too much like Ponch from Chips to be a bad guy, in my opinion.
I pointed to our destination on the map. Ponch waved it away. Next I tried showing him the list of countries we were passing through, written on the door of our car. He looked bemused, then burst into his toothy trade-mark grin. Minutes later another police car had arrived and we had four policemen debating our route on the bonnet.
After a quarter of an hour and several failed attempts to communicate with us, Ponch took charge, got in his car and gestured for us to follow. As soon as we pulled out behind him, he began to accelerate and weave through traffic. To our delight, we realised that this was not going to be another ramble through the streets of Tbilisi (Georgia's capital).
"Get some photos of this!" I yelled to Chris, laughing. But the ride was just beginning.
As we approached our first intersection, Ponch hit the sirens and lights. "No, no, get this on video!" I barked, as traffic parted for us.
On our police escort sped, weaving through traffic and leaving Oddy - our beloved car - struggling to keep up. Finally, 15 minutes later, we left the city and our police escort pulled over to the side of the road.
"Thank you" we yelled, our mouths aching from grinning and laughing so much.
"You like Georgia?" Ponch asked.
"Yes!" we shouted.
Ponch smiled, gave us the tumbs up, and stepped on the gas.
Just as the car lurched forward - wheels spinning and smoking - he yanked up the handbrake and threw the car screaming in a perfect 180 degree arc, before speeding away. In disbelief we looked at each other. Like Georgia? We love it.
Vital Stats
Countries: 12
Kilometres: 6,500
Breakdowns: 3
Police chases: 1
- Matt Kennedy-Good
Click here for photos.
Click here for video. (Our camera was on timelapse so it's only short)
Click here for the team's website.
