Are We Going to Die at the Georgia-Azerbaijan Border?

Are We Going to Die?

It is not a great day when you send your exact location to family members in case you go missing. Apparently, sending drivers down dirt roads that are not made for normal drives is considered appropriate. Thanks a lot Google Maps. It took us over 2 hours to go 18km. We thought we were going to die or be detained, more on that later.

Where were we going you might ask? We had just left Tbilisi and were exploring the countryside. Our first stop was Rustavi and then to see the David Gareja Monastery near Udabno.

The Road

The “road” wasn’t the issue, even though it was mildly passable. The first issue was it went through an area where an active military exercise was underway. That should have been a hint it was not going to be a good day. Next, we get to a fork in the mud path they call a road and we see the “firing zone no entry” sign. Well, that was interesting. We took the option to get away from that risk. Had we known what would happen, we should have turned around.

Should we trust Google Maps on this road? Probably not, we have ended up in weird places thanks to Google Maps. Luckily, we passed a 4×4 military ambulance that was probably part of the exercises. I stopped and asked if they spoke English, it was a solid NO. He did say the name of the monastery we were trying to get to alive. He then pointed down the road to hell behind him and drove off. He is probably still laughing about the idiots he gave directions.

As we continued down the road from hell, we came across about 8-10 lovely pissed-off sheepdogs, these were similar to Tibetan Mastiffs. They were also chasing us at up to 40 kmh as we tried to get away. These were 150lb mini-dinosaurs with running shoes that looked very angry. Unfortunately, I was too busy saving my life to get pictures.

Are We In The Clear Now or Are We Going to Die?

Ok, that was enough excitement for the first 10km. We were happy to have survived those fun adventures. But wait, there’s more.

We then come across a “border near warning” sign. It would not have been an issue, but they were to the right and left side of the road as if they wanted you to see them. We knew we were close to the border with Azerbaijan. However, at the time little did we know that we may or may not have made an unauthorized crossing into Azerbaijan along this dirt road.

Azerbaijan Border Crossing Warning Sign — Azerbaijan border crossing warning sign

Just In Case

With all that behind us, we just wanted to get out of there. We sent our daughter a Google map pin as our last known location in case we were detained at some point. Along with the border warning sign for some context.

Not Again

We almost made it out before another angry mob of sheep mastiffs arrived and attempted to eat the SUV and its occupants. Luckily, I was now experienced in the run-like-hell maneuvers that were required to escape death by the dino-dog. These dogs were looking into the windows and over the hood, we were in a Renault/Dacia Duster SUV.

Light At the End of The Tunnel?

We only had another km or so to get to a paved road, we should be set. Then we encountered a steep and muddy incline with dirt ruts about .5-1m deep. Not to mention there was a large drop-off on the right side. We were glad we had a 4-wheel drive SUV, with full coverage insurance.

This was our first day of driving in Georgia, and we were going towards the Russian border next, I did not have a high level of confidence for that part. It was only a few feet across the border since the “road” ran next to it. It wasn’t an intentional crossing if it did happen. We may never know the truth.

I forgot to mention my passenger was screaming for about an hour with “Oh my God we are going to die”, “Oh f#$%”, “Oh shit”, and “Don’t hit the dogs”.

Did We Cross the Border?

FYI, we checked our drive on satellite images and there is a 100% chance we did, or did we? Life 360 app showed we crossed, but Google timeline doesn’t, Google might not want to show the oopsie they caused. Our phones did connect to cell towers in Azerbaijan though.

Check out the directions we used here. It appears on this map once we were on the paved road, we did cross the border briefly. The dirt road ended up being much further from the border. The area of concern is after Lemshveniera where we turned onto the first dirt road. What do you think?

Luckily, we weren’t actually going to die. However, something bad happening along this road felt highly probable. We will laugh about this one day, but not today.

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Are We Going to Die at the Georgia-Azerbaijan Border?