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Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.
#1

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Inspired by Pacesetter20's Tbilisi datasheet I decided to bust out a datasheet about Abkhazia since it looks it hasn't been covered before.
Please read the full post since it has some cool stories later on.

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Background/overview

Abkhazia is a small country located in one of the shadiest backwaters of the former Soviet Union between Russia and Georgia. It’s still officially within Georgian borders even though it claimed its independence 20 years ago. It’s only recognised by a few countries like Russia,Venezuela and some small island nations in the Pacific Ocean. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Abkhazians fought a bloody war with Georgia lasting 13 months between August 1992 to September 1993. It ended with an Abkhazian “victory” and thanks to heavy Russian support they pushed out all Georgian forces. Thousands of Abkhazians and Georgians died in this tragic conflict and the relations between Abkhazia and Georgia are still very infected.

Even if only a handful of countries recognise Abkhazia as an independent country, it has already acted like one for twenty years without any Georgian involvement. It’s not wrong to call it to an Russian satellite state because without Russian support it would be completely isolated and it wouldn’t survive for long. For example, the shops are full of Russian products, the currency is Russian roubles, Russia is giving Russian passports to everybody in Abkhazia who want one and so on.
Russia is Abkhazias big brother numero uno.

On the other hand Abkhazia has many qualities to act like an independent country. They have their own language,their own culture, their own traditions, they control their own borders and so on. Abkhazia is like the Caucasian Kosovo, their situation is quite the same. But Abkhazia will never be a free and a widely recognised independent country as long as the Western world has Georgia as their close ally. Until anything changes Abkhazia has to rely on Russia to survive. Georgia will never recognise Abkhazia or South Ossetia as an independent countries. Maybe you remember back in 2008 when Georgia attacked South Ossetia and tried to take control over Abkhazia again. Mother Russia stepped in her foot immedeatly and pushed out all Georgian forces and that was the end of that conflict. Another interesting thing worth to mention is that Abkhazia recently took 120 Syrian refugee families. Quite impressive for a poor small country with a population only of 252000.
However, I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying that Abkhazia is located in maybe the shadiest backwater of the former Soviet Union. It’s hands down the most rundown country I’ve ever been in. Almost nothing have changed since the end of the war in 1993. No development at all. The cities are full of destroyed houses with no windows or roofs and you can see bullet holes everywhere. Everything is rundown or destroyed. One of the reasons why you can see so many destroyed buildings is because after the war Russian oligarchs bought large chunks of land in hope of making big bucks in the future. Things didn’t develop as they planned so they are still holding their hands on their property. BUT there is an other side of Abkhazia also.

Abkhazia has a very pretty coastline, it has a very beautiful nature full of snow covered mountains,rivers,lakes,palm trees,waterfalls,forests,caves and a blue ocean. I thought New Zealand was the only country in the world that had that. It’s has also a lot of other different attractions and a bunch of UNESCO heritage sites. The Russian black sea coast can’t even compete. It has so much to offer so it’s no wonder that Abkhazia attracts a lot of Russians who spends their summer holidays there. I dare to say that it beats Sochi in almost every category. Abkhazia has so much potential if they would clean the place up and of course, if their political situation was better.

Visas.
You need to apply for a visa online in advance. Just fill in the application, print out the confirmation letter and then head to the consular office in Sukhumi where they give you the visa. It was 500 roubles and it took 5 min to get it.
I needed to apply for a visa in advance but it was quite funny because the Russian border guards didn’t give me an exit stamp and neither the Abkhazians gave me an entry stamp. That’s because having one of these stamps in your passport is a violation of Georgian law. If they had stamped my passport they would put me in prison immediately if I enter Georgia. I was a little bit nervous about this because I didn’t know if they would give me a stamp or not. Luckily they didn’t. The visa wasn’t even glued to my passport so nobody can prove that I’ve been in Abkhazia. These same rules follow for people visiting South Ossetia, that’s also a violation of Georgian law so don’t enter Georgia with any of these stamps.
(PM me if you need help with this)

Getting there.
It's basically two ways of getting there.
From the Russian side or the Georgian side, but it's impossible to enter from Russia and exit to Georgia or vice versa. You need to get back to where you came from.
And if you're coming from Russia you need to have a double or multiple visa.
Remember that.

Costs & currency.
Abkhazia are using Russian roubles. There are no ATM's working for international credit cards so you need to bring your cash. Abkhazia is very affordable compared to Russia and especially Sochi. This is the reason why it attracts a lot of Russian tourists in summertime because it's a way more cheaper place than Sochi and the Russian Black Sea Coast.

Accomodation.
I don't know about hotels since I rented rooms or houses from locals who offered to me on the street. This was at the end of the season so it was so I payed 3-400 roubles a night for a quite good room or a house. I guess this is the typical way Russian people are doing.

Safety.
I would say generally safe but Abkhazia is famous in Russia for having a lot of pickpocketers and thugs. Abkhazia is the only place where somebody have snacthed anything from me, which I will explain further below.
Keep an eye on your stuff.

Girls.
Abkhaz girls have darker features and are conservative and probably hard to pick up because everybody know everybody in Abkhazia. Your better bet would be to choose from all the Russian girls that are flooding to the beaches in summertime.
This might be a real gem to pick up Russian girls in summertime, since you will be basically the only foreigner there so you'll be exotic. I visited Abkhazia as a minitrip together with a Russian girl I met in Sochi so I didn't get the Abkhazian flag.

Sites.
Abandoned buildings, black sea coast. Hot springs, mountain climbing, caves, you name it. You can do a lot of different things here oldschool Russian excursion style.
They are also very cheap. Just sign upforyou activity and a minbus will pick you up next day. This is of course next to impossible without knowing any Russian.

My story.

After a few days of heavy rain in Sochi I decided to do a minitrip to Abkhazia together with a Russian girl I met in Sochi.
It was 6 am and rainy and windy as hell. For one minute I just wanted to stay in bed and show my middle finger to the weather gods but I pulled myself together and went up. We waited for more than an hour in the middle of the construction mess aka Adler train station for a bus that would take us to the border,but all buses were packed. The buses looked like packed chicken wagons with people. Later a guy turned up and offered to take us to the border for the double price with his Lada Niva. We didn’t hesitate a second. A Russian guy who just arrived from Stockholm shared our ride, for a few seconds I couldn’t believe my eyes and thought holy macaroni ” I’m sitting in a Lada Niva to the Abkhazian border together with Julian Assange!” He looked dangerously like him but unfortunately it wasn’t. Or maybe he have learned decent Russian? He had an strange accent.

However, the 20km ride took us more than one hour due to the insane traffic jams that are constantly going on in the Sochi area. As soon as we crossed the border there were hustlers everywhere trying to scam people as much as they could. We walked past them and went in the 45 year old bus and headed for Sukhumi. On the Abkhaz side there were no traffic jams and the road was surprisingly good, the view was awesome and I knew it will be a good week. But as soon we reached Sukhumi, there were destroyed buildings and bullet holes everywhere. Even the bus station looked abandoned.
We lived a few nights in the “New Region”. When I was standing on the balcony and looking to the left I could see a blue ocean and looking to the right I could see snow covered mountains. In between was probably the most rundown district I’ve seen in my life and trust me, I’ve been to a lot of shitholes! The line between beauty and misery was super thin.

All houses lacked central heating since they cut off the lines in the war. Only cold water was available. However, it was an interesting place.
The first day the weather was rainy and windy and a lot of thunderstorms were coming around so I just picked up my visa which took a fucking long time because nobody knew where the consular office was and the address they had given me was wrong. They had moved to a new address. Well, whatever. The weather was nice so we went to the bazaar and grabbed some interesting food and some local beer and headed to the beach. And that's were I got pickpocketed... See story below.

On the other hand I just enjoyed walking around in their capital. It was something very different from what I’ve seen before. I’m kind of attracted to abandoned, bizarre and destroyed buildings since I’m not used to see those. After Sukhumi we moved on to Novi Afon. One of my Russian friends gave me a number to a guy they knew there so we called him and he was ready to rock. He picked us up in Sukhumi with his black Volga and then we drove to his house far up in the mountains. The view was amazing. We had free access to fresh milk,cheese,honey and all kind of fruits that were growing around his house. He freaked out when I found his weapons from the war. He hid them under our bed..We stayed five days in Novi Afon,unfortunately bad weather followed us all the time but there were still things to do.

20 year of Independence celebrations in Sukhumi.

30th September was a big day in Abkhazia. 20 year anniversary celebrations were taking place since their declaration of Independence. We headed back to Sukhumi early in the morning together with a journalist from Moscow. We didn’t know what would happen but we knew it would be something huge. We arrived late and the streets were already crowded with people. Cars were driving around in the city waving with Abkhazian flags. Even teenage girls and small children had wrapped themselves in Abkhazian flags. There was something in the air..it felt like being a part of history being made.

Outside the former Parliament building were a military parade going on. The building itself is massive but totally demolished. Georgian military destroyed it in the last war so it was quite an symbolic act to have a parade on this place. They will leave the building as a memory to show future generations what “Georgian brutality” is like. However, we checked out the parade. Later low flying air planes were dropping out parachute troopers who were landing on a small target on middle of the square, that was pretty cool. Some asshole stole my headphones from the pocket on my shoulder bag meanwhile we were there. Abkhazians has by far the longest fingers of all the countries I’ve been to.,

Later we went to the seaside where a lot of big tents had popped up. Many people were buzz ling around and I had no idea what was going on. We decided to go inside some tents and what could we find?
Vodka,cognac,beer,chacha and truckloads of food and a lot of happy people. Each tent represented each region in Abkhazia. People went insane when they realised we were foreigners and toasted us so many times with vodka and chacha so I lost the count. They toasted us with things like ” Thank you for being here on our independence day” Thank you for celebrating with us” “Thank you Russia for all your help” ” God save us from any more wars and Georgian terror” and so on.
They toasted us with so much vodka and meat in the first tent so we decided to not go into the other ones. We were drunk as skunks and full of food so we moved on. We walked around the city and when it started to get dark our guy called and said he will soon leave, so if we don’t want to walk we need to join in. God knows what happened later but after a few hours the power went off and a lot of gunshots were fired in the city. I guess it was just the Abkhazian way of celebrating their independence anniversary.
We also did a shitload of sightseeing and visited beaches, mountains, waterfalls, monasteries and termal springs but that’s not very interesting so I’ll save you from writing about that.

Mugged by local thugs in Sukhumi.

I’ve always been a quite cautios person who always keep an eye on my belongings but the more I’ve travelled, the sloppier I became with time. I started to lose respect for things and people when nothing ever happened to me except some minor issues. I’ve been to so many places where people have told me to stay away from and I’ve done so many things that people told me that I shouldn’t do. I’ve been in sticky situations but I’ve always been lucky but I always knew deep inside me that this ongoing lucky strike will not last forever. I knew that someday my luck will backfire and bite my own tail. That day was the 26th of September 2013.

I was chilling together with the Russian girl at the city beach in Sukhumi in the late afternoon. I was leaning back and taking some sun. I had my shoulderbag on my left side near my head like always and everything was chill. After some time I leaned forward to have something to drink,I took some photos and I leaned back again. Then a older Russian man with red speedos started to shout ” pari, pari “. I thought he was talking to someone else but then he came closer and said that some Abkhazian guys just took my shoulderbag. I looked the left and my bag was gone…

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Only one minute without paying attention and some assholes took the opportunity to snatch my bag. I freaked out and unleashed an endless cavalcade of Finnish swearwords and doomed myself to hell how I could let this happen. I was pissed off to say the least. Our passports, my money,my credit card,my glasses, everything was gone! Thoughts started to spin around in my head how the hell I could solve this. The bureaucratic mess would be gigantic. Abkhazia is only recognized by a few countries, it has no ATM’s, no embassies, nothing. I’m in a isolated country without any foreign connections and without passport, without visa and without money. It would be impossible to return to Russia without a passport and a visa. If I would go to Georgia they would arrest me at the border and put me in prison because I’ve crossed an illegal border according to Georgian law. So how the hell could I get a new passport? I think you can understand that I had all the reasons in the world to be pissed off and worried.
However, I told my girl to hurry up. We need to do something. The Russian speedo man said that the bagsnatchers headed towards the bazaar so we went after. My girl called the Abkhazian militsa and said that we are in big trouble and we need to find my bag. Meanwhile she was talking on the phone a grey Mercedes turned over and there were three Abkhazian dudes. One of them came out and said
” what happened? Tell us what happened? What’s going on? Get in the car! ” My girl was cold as ice and still talking on the phone and asked the police if it’s normal that cars stop in Sukhumi and ask people to get inside the car. The Abkhazians freaked out when they realised she was talking to the cops and started to shout in a very threatful way. They freaked out even more and got scared when she read the number plate. I took a picture of the number plate and things went out of hand...

They were shouting and spitting like a group of venomous snakes in a cage that haven’t been fed in a long time. All of a sudden the guy in the backseat flashed with my bag and then he put it on the ground right outside the car meanwhile he was sitting on the backseat and still holding it and waving with his hand trying to get us inside the car. This smelled like a trap and I didn’t really now what to do since I knew they wanted us inside the car.
Fuck it, I walked to the car and grabbed my bag right from the hands of the looser. The bandits pushed the pedal to the metal and took off.
I opened my bag and….
- Passports, check!
- Wallet, check!
- Credit card, Check!
- Glasses, check!
Wohoo! I was happy like a little child on christmas eve to get my things back. The took 3000RUB (75€) and 30 £ but I didn’t care. We walked away and didn’t wait for the police since they probably wouldn’t show up anyway. Then a Abkhaz woman came and asked us what happend? We explained to her and she became very angry because she knew who these guys were. She told us that she was working for the TV and they would listen to her. She promised to get my money back. I didn’t have much hope for that but after 15 min she called us and she had all my money. What an amazing woman! I couldn’t thank her enough, she saved us from so much trouble. A true hero.

Later I discovered that some things were still missing. The bandits took two Abkhaz magnets and a memory stick. The magnets was worth 1€ and the memory stick a little bit more. On the memory stick I had some high quality music like Queens of the Stone Age, The Stooges, Rolling Stones, Black Keys, Kyuss and Wolfmother and the new Sabbath allbum. I really hope they enjoy it and listen to it. I’m happy to spread good music.
Anyway, even if this story had an happy ending I learned my lesson. All in the name of honesty I think this was exactly what I deserved. This had been lurking a long time around the corner. It was a good reminder to watch the fuck out and to not get too comfortable otherwise someone might steal my memory stick…

Summary.
I highly recommend visiting Abkhazia, but do it in summertime. I could go again at anytime.
It's a very pretty place and it's flooding with Russian girls in summertime and prices are very affordable. I'm not a afriad calling it a true gem if Russia/ FSU are what. You dig. But without any Russian skills it will be difficult.

As usual,feel free to contact if you need any more detailed info.
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#2

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Novi Region, Sukhumi.

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#3

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Bagsnatcher beach ,Sukhumi
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#4

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

20 years of independence celebrations in front of theold government building in Sukhumi.

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#5

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

I can't remember where I read it, but I recall reading something that Garga was more of the "party" town in Abkhazia versus Sukhumi, do you have any insight on this?
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#6

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Chaos, thanks for sharing man. Somehow I always stumble across your posts on my phone and end up wrecking my eyes reading your mini-books but it's definitely worth it. Glad you got your stuff back and great attitude shrugging your shoulders regarding the stolen music and seeing the bright side of it.
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#7

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Great report. One part had me confused -- you went to Sukumi to get your visa for Abkhazia.. but isn't Sukumi part of Abkhazia? So you were already inside the territory when you applied for a visa to be inside the territory?
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#8

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Quote: (03-09-2014 07:10 PM)Pacesetter20 Wrote:  

I can't remember where I read it, but I recall reading something that Garga was more of the "party" town in Abkhazia versus Sukhumi, do you have any insight on this?

Might be. I had only a 10 day visa so I hadn't time to check out Gagra,only passing by with bus. And then I was there in the end of September and the season had just finished so Abkhazia was almost empty of tourists.
You should check it out if you're going there next summer.
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#9

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Quote: (03-09-2014 10:44 PM)paninaro Wrote:  

Great report. One part had me confused -- you went to Sukumi to get your visa for Abkhazia.. but isn't Sukumi part of Abkhazia? So you were already inside the territory when you applied for a visa to be inside the territory?

Yes and no. Sukhumi is in Abkhazia. I applied for the visa online in advance and then they sent me with email some kind of confirmation letter which proved that I had applied for a visa. At the border I showed this paper along with my passport.
Later I picked it up at the consular office.

But this is the procedure coming from the Russian side, I don't know the details how you should do when you arecoming from the Gerorgian side.
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#10

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Nice report. I know you mentioned that the Abkhazian girls are more conservative but did you see any of the right sort? Are their looks comparable to Chechens, Georgian?

I'm curious if any college aged natives stick around or flee at the first opportunity.
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#11

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Quote: (03-10-2014 08:30 AM)Blunt Wrote:  

Nice report. I know you mentioned that the Abkhazian girls are more conservative but did you see any of the right sort? Are their looks comparable to Chechens, Georgian?

I'm curious if any college aged natives stick around or flee at the first opportunity.

I got the impression that they have darker features than Georgian and Northern caucasian people. I guess that a lot of Abkhazians are going to Russia, because that's basically the only place they can go to. ( before they get a Russian passport)
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#12

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Quote: (03-10-2014 09:23 AM)Chaos Wrote:  

Quote: (03-10-2014 08:30 AM)Blunt Wrote:  

Nice report. I know you mentioned that the Abkhazian girls are more conservative but did you see any of the right sort? Are their looks comparable to Chechens, Georgian?

I'm curious if any college aged natives stick around or flee at the first opportunity.

I got the impression that they have darker features than Georgian and Northern caucasian people. I guess that a lot of Abkhazians are going to Russia, because that's basically the only place they can go to. ( before they get a Russian passport)

Chaos, how much Russian knowledge does one need to get by in Abkhazia? I realize you were with a Russian girl so things were easier for you but would you recommend the place for someone who knows advanced Russian but has 0 local/Russian connections and does not look like a local (i have strong Scandinavian features).
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#13

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

Yes. no problem. If you know advance Russian , it will be a piece of cake for you. Don't worry about the Scandinavian features, Russians comes in many shapes.

Of course you can go to Abkhazia also without any Russian knowledge, but things will just be a pain in the ass when everything is in Russian.
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#14

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

...
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#15

Abkhazia Trip Report + Datasheet.

^ This sounds like an excellent idea in times like these.
I highly recommend Abkhazia as a place to spend the summer in, especially if you are not afraid of living a bit rough which you seem to not mind. Do this.

I did not feel danger there. However all the locals warned me from the first minute to keep an eye on my stuff because there are plenty of pickpocketers there.

I didn't take them seriously enough and that's why the incident happened. I should have kept an eye on my stuff better. Nonetheless it's nothing to be worried about.
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