Sorry, one more blog about Şavşat, but it really is one of the most beautiful ilçe (district) in Turkey. I’ll also include a little about the numerous places to stay in this area. The riding here is hard with lots of up and down, but there are enough small hotels that I think you could put together a mountain bike itinerary where you’d stay inside every night. In other words you wouldn’t have to carry camping or cooking gear.
Ferda and I rode on the Meydancık road (a paved highway) downhill for about 5-6km before turning off for the climb up to Bazgiret (aka Madenköy). When I descended from Çermik nine years ago, I turned right uphill to Meydancık so now I was back on roads that I had never ridden before. We had just started up the climb and were looking for a shady place to eat lunch when Ferda’s derailleur hanger broke. Oops. We didn’t have a spare. Bigger oops.
What to do? In a more remote area I could have made Ferda’s bicycle into a single speed, but as it was, we mostly coasted (Ferda could coast but not pedal) about 10km downhill to the main Artvin-Şavşat road where there was cell service. After many hours and many phone calls, we had a derailleur hanger sent to the small shop there (the delivery point for any packages heading to any of the many villages up the Meydancık Road). That would take a few days to arrive. In the meantime we hung out in beautiful Bazgiret.
