Category: Hopa

  • Turkey/Georgia Trip 2026 : Day 7 (Bus from Hopa to Sarp on the Georgian Border)

    Turkey/Georgia Trip 2026 : Day 7 (Bus from Hopa to Sarp on the Georgian Border)

    We boarded another bus in Hopa where just three of us, myself, Jonathan and the French guy got on. I had hopes that this might be comfortable, but they were just shuttling us to another part of Hopa. I did though get 45 seconds of charging my phone up.

    The second bus was a little more rickety, but it wasn’t a long journey to the border. These buses don’t have fixed timetables, they just go when they’re full or after the driver thinks that passengers have waited long enough.

    The price list.

    This is Sarp, a small town by the Georgian border.

    The Black Sea and this is, I think, the first time that I’ve seen it. Although I’ve visited Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria, I’ve never been to the Black Sea coast of those countries.

    The large buildings on the right are border control and the Georgian town of Sarpi is visible in the background.

  • Turkey Trip 2026 : Day 7 (Bus from Erzurum Otogar to Hopa)

    Turkey Trip 2026 : Day 7 (Bus from Erzurum Otogar to Hopa)

    I’ve left my two loyal blog readers hanging on for dear life with the excitement of my last post about Erzurum Otogar. The signs didn’t show what number platform the bus (or marshrutka to be more precise) was going from, so we headed out to look for it and immediately found it.

    This wasn’t the most spacious when it filled up, but it was clean and comfortable. We went back into Erzurum to pick up some more passengers and we were aware of this, but felt more confident getting on at the original spot.

    One of the lakes that we went by near Artvin.

    The views were beautiful during the bus journey, although it was hard to take photos. This is the services near the village of Çağlıyan, with views over the nearby mountains. I have a couple of videos which might give an indication of the views, I’ll get around to posting them at some point.

    After some beautiful scenery we pulled into Hopa. We knew from instructions online that we had to find a stop near an underpass and when we saw that, we jumped out. A French guy nearby also got out at the same time and this is relevant to the story in a few posts.

    We weren’t staying in Hopa, we were looking for another bus to take us to the Georgian border, but more on this in the next instalment.