Dogubayazit to Esfehan (including Shiraz)

After a week hobbling around the dusty border town of Dogubayazit watching Al Jazeera News we were getting cabin fever and it was becoming clear that Tracey's knee was more seriously damaged than we first thought. We had no choice but to start making our way to Tehran so we could get some decent medical advice. We hired a taxi van to drive us across the Iranian border and on to the city of Tabriz as the logistics of transporting 2 bicycles, 9 bags and a girlfriend with a damaged leg through four changes of vehicle was too much to contemplate.

Having cycled so far we were both absolutely gutted to be transported over the border. It was a strange feeling to be entering a country we were both really excited about seeing and which was immediately different but to feel so low about it. I also wasn't used to travelling 250 miles in a day and my head was swimming trying to take in the rugged scenery, truly terrifying driving, the women in black chadors, giant concrete fruit, queues for the daily ration of petrol, people carrying bricks of cash, Tracey in a headscarf, eating a strange lunch sitting cross legged without shoes on a day bed and the Farsi language we could neither read, speak or decipher.


In Tabriz we found ourselves staying in the same place as Rob and Julie, Australian cyclists who were also a doctor and physiotherapist! The good news was they thought that there was no fracture or serious ligament damage to Tracey's knee (but that we should get an x-ray to check) , the bad news was that they felt it could be another 3 weeks before she should ride again.

Not to be outdone I ate a boiled sugar beet with a maggot in it and next morning collapsed whilst pissing in the communal squat toilet - anyone familiar with Iranian toilets or incontinence will know this was not a good move. There followed a spell of vomiting and feeling like death and both of us spent most of the day in bed - the sick and the wounded!

Once recovered Tabriz was pleasant for a large city: the weather was warm and sunny, there is a fantastically large and atmospheric bazaar (though Tracey did not appreciate having her bum slapped by a lecherous butcher selling sheep's arse) and a museum with interesting Iranian artifacts from some of the earliest civilisations. The people were amazingly friendly - stopping us in the street to welcome us to Iran/Tabriz and ask where we were from - something which has continued throughout the country.

From Tabriz we took the 1st class sleeper train to Tehran (15 hours, 400 miles), though the bikes left several hours later on the 2nd class train. We passed flaring oil refineries and the flat plain of Orumiyeh salt lake as darkness fell and once again felt excited to be travelling but disappointed not to be cycling - a feeling that would be with us for the next few weeks.

Tehran is perversely the dullest, friendliest, most dangerous and polluted capital city I have had the misfortune to spend a week in. Dull because the religious hardliners seem to want to close any public place where young people might possibly meet and flirt. In a city of 15 million there is hardly a cafe to sit in (and of course no bars, clubs, etc). The parks are pleasant but what the hell do you do of an evening or when its cold? There is little to do but talk to friendly students and paup the streets from museum to museum past giant murals of the Ayatollahs, martys from the Iran-Iraq war and anti USA slogans and put your life in someone else's hands crossing the roads through the choking din of the traffic clogged streets.

The roads are 4-6 lanes wide, solid with moving cars, buses and motorbikes and there are no pedestrian crossings - you literally have to make an act of faith and step out into the moving traffic whereupon vehicles either swerve around you, slow down or stop as you shuffle between the lanes and surely only Chaos Theory can explain how each time you get to the other side safely. This IS a terrifying experience for the first couple of days after which it starts to seem normal! The traffic and pollution is horrendous and driving terrible - we saw two accidents. In the tranquil oasis of the Iranian Artists Forum there was an excellent exhibition of anti-traffic images that could not have been more fitting.


The first snows of winter dusted the mountains that overlook the city and Tracey had her knee X-rayed at the hospital which showed no fracture. We spent an unfortunate amount of time tooing and froing between the British, Pakistan and Indian embassies applying for visas and waiting around for them to be granted. During this time I started to lose the will to live and convinced Tracey that an overnight trip out of the smog to get some mountain air and relax in a thermal spa was what was needed. I had not factored in rain/snow and the cold of being over 2500m high. We couldn't see the highest mountain in central Asia (Mt Damavand,5671m) due to being in the cloud, in fact we could barely see the ends of our noses, but this did not seem to trouble the taxi driver who sped around wet, rock strewn hairpin bends on the mountain road up to the muddy spa village of Ab Kharm. We couldn't afford the spa hotels and found ourselves in a fairly bleak freezing cold room sleeping in the traditional style (a thin mattress on the floor). The sulphurous volcanic water was too hot to sit in and it was pouring outside. We were so desperate we made our own backgammon game with nuts and raisins as markers. We had reached a low point on the trip. Back in Tehran we found that the hotel staff had been through the entire contents of both our bags - though we are still unsure if anything was stolen.

I was so glad to be taking the sleeper train from Tehran south to Esfehan (8hrs, 300 miles). We had been told to arrive 2 hours early to book the bikes into "cargo" whereupon they would arrive 3-4 days after us. However when we got to the station "cargo" was shut! We saw the station manager who was brilliant and got our bikes on the train with us at no cost. We shared a 6 birth cabin with two young Iranian couples and I amused Tracey by causing a musical chairs scenario through my failure to grasp seating etiquette between men and women.


After Tehran, Esfehan seemed wonderful and it is one of the great cities for Muslim architecture. We spent some days sightseeing mosques, palaces, bridges, temples, bazaars, bathouses and tearooms around the famous Immam Square. We agreed to help out Ali an Iranian english teacher and visited his language school to speak with three classes of young women, which I enjoyed and found quite revealing. Ali also helped show us around the city and sample the many flavours of non-alcoholic beer - pomegranate was the best!


We had hoped to continue on bikes but Tracey's knee was still not 100% so we took a 7hr bus ride south to Shiraz and sped through high desert plateaus where the Zagros mountains reared straight up from the flat valleys in steep rocky cliffs. Alas the shiraz wine that inspired some of Irans most famous poets is no longer to be found. To distract Tracey from this fact we visited more mosques, bazaars, shrines, palaces and gardens and took a tour to Persepolis, one of the world's great ancient sites - a huge complex of ruined palaces and tombs from the Archemenid empire (550-350BC). It is hugely impressive, the kind of place that still has you imaging and thinking about it days later.

We took the bus back to Esfehan and Tracey's knee finally felt well enough to ride. Four weeks after her accident we were around a 1000 miles further on and glad to back on the bikes heading out into the desert, the wind through our wooly hat/headscarf, the trucks blasting in our ears and the world below our wheels.

On the Yol in Turkey

Çay
Originally uploaded by james_littlewood

After 1,500 very hilly miles and 2 months on the roads of Turkey I wanted to blog about some of the many memorable aspects of Turkish society as experienced from a bicycle!

Turkish Generosity & Hospitality
We have been totally humbled and in awe of Turkish hospitality and generosity. I have never known anything like it and it has left a huge impression on me. Throughout Turkey people have been giving us free food and drink and offering their help at almost every turn. As an example, we stopped one afternoon for a drink and an old timer came over and bought us tea, while we were drinking the tea a man selling simits (a popular bread snack) gave us each a free simit. An hour of cycling later we stopped by the roadside to eat the simits and a man dashed into his house and came out and gave us 2 ayrans each (a type of yogurt drink)!

On countless occasions we trıed to buy food and drink only to be given it free. When camping rough, farmers would come over and give us their produce - sometimes to comic effect - twice we were given 4 melons, impossible to carry on the bikes and resulting in bloated melon bellies.

Whenever we have paused to look at the map drivers have stopped to check we are ok and when cycling up mountains truck drivers have pulled over to offer us a lift over the top. Even the Jandarma (army police) have offered us lifts and given us food and drink!

We have been most touched by the hospitality shown us by the kurdish families on whose doors we knocked on in the dark asking for a place to pitch the tent - who invited us into their homes and gave us food and drink and a place to stay (and even a wash) - and did so with such pleasure and asked for nothing in return.

Beep Beep! BEEEEEP! Beepedy Bloody Beepedy Beep Beep!!!
Our presence on the roads of Turkey caused much excitement amongst the Turks. On our way into Istanbul we were beeped as a friendly gesture by 86 vehicles in 50 miles. This did not include the 'get out of the way before I run you off the road' beeps which were probably equal in number, or the people shouting greetings or waving from vehicles or the roadside. We estimated that someone was beeping or shouting at us every 2 minutes. This is a fantastically positive experience for the first hour of the first day but regrettably wears thin very quickly - especially truck drivers blasting their horns in our ears at a range of 2 feet. Out east it is a rarity when a driver does not beep at us and we also have whole villages full of children rushing down to the road to wave and shout at us (and throw the odd stone!). After 2 months of constant beeping there have been days when T has been about ready to do the next 'beeper' in. So much for quiet roads!!!

Call to Prayer
The 5 times a day call to prayer belted out through tanoy systems on the minarets and mosques almost becomes a soundtrack for travelling in the muslim world. Depending on the situation it has felt exotic, romantic, soulful, a raucous din, intimidating and nearly always atmospheric (except at 5am when you are trying to sleep!).

The Shame of Turkey's Rivers
I have never known a nation turn its back on its rivers and waterways like the Turks. I have never before seen rivers that run black, that you can smell a long way before you can see them, rivers that are full of plastic bags and dumped rubbish. I don't mean one or two rivers - I mean nearly every river we saw except those in the mountains that had not yet had the chance to be abused. Apparently 75% of industrial waste goes straight into Turkey's waterways untreated.

The real insanity is that all the industrial and domestic pollutants and rubbish are all flowing into the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas and will eventually wash up on Turkish beaches destroying the tourist industry that is so important to them economically. Perhaps only then will they do something.

The Turks love their nation and sometimes that is justified but they should be ashamed of what they are doing to their waterways.

Çay (pronounced chai) - Tea
Çay is the national drink. Turks drink it everywhere and at all times. In some places it seems that the men do nothing but sit around in huddles on tiny stools drinking tea all day. It is served black in a small tulip shaped glass on a small saucer and drunk sweet (2 sugar cubes is common). The Kurds put the sugar cube in their mouths and then drink the tea.

As we have cycled along it feels like we've been beckoned over to every shop, restaurant, petrol station, tea room, workers hut, picnic and roadside stall to drink tea - very often given free. If we had accepted even half these offers we would still be on our way to Istanbul!

Drinking çay is a social experience and we have enjoyed the interaction it has given us with local men and honed Tracey's pictionary skills as we tried to communicate with them. In this respect Ramadam was a major blow as no-one could eat or drink during daylight hours (when we were cycling through) there was no çay to be had and no social interaction - we would buy food and drink and then cycle out of town to consume them out of sight.

The Rubbish Dilemma
Turks do not see litter - at least not in the way Europeans do. Rubbish is thus dumped everywhere. Many (most!) small towns and villages do not have a proper rubbish dump and instead it is just dumped in a strip along the main road into town and periodically set fire to. Something you might not notice too much ıf whizzing past in a car but something which seems quite terrible and interminable when going 3mph up a hill in the heat of summer. As you might imagine the wind scatters plastic bags (for which the Turks have a mania) across the countryside for miles around. Some dumps seem strategically placed to facilitate this process (ie on sides of windy hills)!

Our dilemma was thus: We would camp out in the countryside and diligently collect every tiny piece of non-biodegradable waste we produced and take it away with us to put in the bin in the first town we came to - whereupon it would be carted back to the countryside to be blown around.

Roadworks Rant
Please allow me a rant. Turkish roadworks have been doing my head in for 2 months. It has to be fair to say that when it comes to roadworks the Turks are not completer/finishers. At times its felt like half the nations roads are undergoing 'improvements' - widening to 4 lanes, resurfaced or diverted to a new road - yet we didn't see a single traffic jam outside Istanbul or Ankara and many roads had less traffic than a quiet country road back home.

My gripe is that the roads are dug up for huge stretches (eg 100 miles) and the traffic is expected to drive through the roadworks - negotiating miles of mud, potholes, loose aggregates and huge construction vehicles is not much bother in a car but is a nightmare on a bicycle, when in addition you have to deal with aggregates vehicles thundering past, covering you in dust and blasting their horns in greeting! Many a good days ride was ruined by having to cycle for hours through what was effectively a construction site. The maddening thing is that they seem to have no intention of finishing the improvements, which are surely just employment schemes. On one 150km stretch of works there was only one tarmac vehicle and on another there were small bushes growing out of the 'improvement' it had been waiting so long to be surfaced!

Güzel!!
The Turks have a great expression for indicating if something is good - they touch all fingers and thumb together and raise the hand which is then shaken - if they are within speaking distance this is accompanied by the phrase for good, 'güzel'. Turkey is always referred to this way. On good days when the weather has been fine and we have been cruising along drivers have waved the 'guzel' gesture at us as they passed to show their appreciation of our efforts. However they also have another hand gesture which is the hand held flat with the palm raised upwards and the hand moved up - this seems to mean 'what the hell are you doing you crazy lunatics' and is most commonly seen when we are half way up some enormous mountain in the rain as darkness approaches!!

Attaturk
Attaturk or 'father turk' (real name Mustafa Kemal) was the founder of the modern Turkish state and is revered in Turkey in a way that I have not seen anywhere else. There is not a town or village that does not have an Attaturk statue or road or school named after him. There is not a tea room or office that does not have a picture of him looking down upon you (often with an Attaturk quote). But unlike other dictatorships the Turks seem to have a genuine love and respect for this national hero. Cycling through Turkey his image is everywhere and one that seems to define the country in some way.

It's a Man's World

I will probably say more about women in muslim society once i've left the muslim world! For now its suffice to say it has been weird, especially in Eastern Turkey. To walk down a seemingly normal pedestrian street with hundreds of people about and then realise that there is not one woman among them - I can only try to imagine how Tracey must feel in a society where the public realm is almost entirely male. When we stop for supplies I go into the shop and when I come out Tracey is usually surrounded by an inquisitive group of about 10 males of all ages, which interestingly often seems to disperse once I reappear!!

2700 - 4000 miles: Istanbul to Doğubayazıt (Iran border)

We had no desire to repeat the ordeal we'd had cycling into Istanbul so we took a ferry boat up the Bosphorous towards the Black Sea and the NE suburbs of the city. It was in itself a great journey with dolphins and shearwaters in the channel as we passed under two huge suspension bridges that connect Europe to Asia, as well as ruined castles and the beautiful seafront homes of the rich. By contrast to our journey in, on the way out (armed wıth our newly purchased Turkey Road Map) we left on hilly country roads and were suprised to find small rural (and conservatively muslim) villages almost as soon as we left the city.

We were headed for the Black Sea coast where we planned to give ourselves a rest and a beach holiday. Instead what we found was some of the most strenuous and demoralising cyclıng of the trip so far - steeply up and down valleys wıthout even a pause for breath at the top - knackering.

There were beaches and campsites and the area was (as yet) not ruined by mass tourism but the market was for less affluent Turks and we failed to find a place we really liked that had clean toilets/showers, shade for the tent and a clean beach for a tenner a night - which didn't seem too much to ask for? So we cycled along the coast in search of a holiday, camping on beaches and cooling off ın the sea alongside fully clothed women and sweating up and down hills past Turks harvesting hazelnuts. After 100 miles we admitted defeat and still feeling jaded headed inland towards Ankara.

We set off at dawn to beat the heat and had a great 60 mile ride through the hills, finishing the day at a thermal spa - which was one of those fantastic moments in life when you get just what you really want at exactly the moment you most need it - the hot soak was bliss.


We were then faced wıth the most significant mountain range since the Alps, but compared to the coast we enjoyed cycling higher and higher wıth fantastic views, changing scenery and small villages - though the stench from the battery chicken farms that the area is famous for was hardly fresh mountain air! In Mudurnu we treated ourselves to a night in a restored Ottoman house (now functioning as a hotel), so restored to character that the toilet is still in a cupboard in the room! There has been an Ottoman revıval goıng on ın Turkey with old buildings being restored as hotels, restaurants, museums, etc or simply as houses. Partly as a tourist draw but also as a heritage movement - some of the buildings are fantastıc and in places such as Mudurnu and Beypazari (which we passed through a few days later) there are so many Ottoman buildings that the towns have a real character - in contrast to the modern brightly painted houses and apartment blocks that have shot up in such huge numbers in nearly every town across the country in the past 25 years.


We camped one night at 1200masl at the top of a mountain pass with amazing views. When we sped down the other side we were completely wowed. The landscape opened up before us wıth huge vistas over mountainous desert-like scenery with rocks of red, grey, yellow and green - reminiscent of SW USA - it was quite wild and amazing. As we broke camp one morning vultures circled and we were visited by 3 Turkish sheep dogs - which are about as big and scary as lions and their man-trap like wolf collars only adds to the effect - though they were as soft as lambs with us, as if to prove a point they charged off for a proper dog fight with the pack in the valley below. We had definitely left Europe!

After a weeks cycling we reached Ankara but our Iran visa had still not come through. We paused long enough to eat baked potatoes and marvel at uncovered women in what is Turkey's most secular and modern city but then pressed on to Cappadocia, 200 miles to the south-east. We cycled into a village one morning to get a drink and supplies and were bemused to find there was no tea to be had and therefore lots of old men sitting around with nothing to do. It was explained to us that the fasting month of Ramadam had begun - pants!! Not only was it awkward to eat/drink during daylight hours but everytime we slept anywhere near a mosque then not only were we woken by the dawn call to prayer but also by tuneless banging of drums at 4am to raise people so they could eat before sunrise.


Three days out of Ankara we were hit by our second and more debilitating bout of 'Turkish Tummy'. Tracey exploded from both orifices in spectacular fashion but recovered quickly. I was slow to catch on and cycled for two days at a slow pace in searing heat feeling dreadful. On the edge of Cappadocia we stopped late one evening to explore some troglodyte dwellings in a rockface. It was such a magical spot that we decided to re-occupy a cave house for the night. Apart from thoughts of what might crawl/scurry in during the night and whether I might poo in my sleeping bag it was one of the highlights of the trip so far.

Cappadocia is a fantastic place with a Star Wars landscape and we found the holiday we had been searching for - a lovely campsite with great views, swimming pool, excellent toilets and hot water for a tenner a night! But the real pleasure was that every other lunatic making a long distance journey by bicycle/motorbike also stopped in there and we had a great time sharing drinks, stories and laughs with other travellers from around the world.

After a week our Iranian visas were confirmed so we took a bus back to Ankara to collect them (a journey of 5 hours rather than the 5 days by bike). This took a couple of days and involved Tracey being photographed with a headscarf on. Visas in hand we bused back to the bicycles and gear that we had stored in Cappadocia.

From there we headed out into the wilds of eastern Turkey. The landscape was stunning and otherwordly - volcanic peaks 4km high falling steeply to flat treeless plains and salt lakes. The vıews were vast and the mountain climbs brutal. We granny geared up to a pass and at 1700masl the strain 'popped' Tracey's knee - we're not sure what 'popped' but she was in pain - so we made camp at nearly 2km high where it was very cold and we suffered mild effects of altitude. In the morning clouds and golden eagles drifted past the tent in the mountain silence and we seemed to be a long way from anywhere.

Tracey's knee recovered enough for us to cycle slowly over the pass before a tremendous downhill that took us past villages where houses were made of mud, rock and wood, cow dung was used as fuel (could this be the answer to the oil shortage?) and donkeys were beasts of burden. We stopped in the village of Ganbeyli for supplies and the men were all wearing traditional trousers (baggy crotch and legs tight from the knee down) and a variety of hat styles. One old man gave me his rosary beads in exchange for a look through my binoculars - something he may still be regretting as he pointed them straight at the sun!

Our route was taking us up over high passes and down into valleys on quiet mountain roads. We rarely dropped below 1km asl and the weather closed in on us. At times it was a cold, open, bleak and intimidating landscape and there was hardly a woman to be seen in the towns and villages where we stopped for supplies. Groups of children ran after us like we were pied pipers, shouting 'heylo, heylo'. As we approached the regional centre of Malatya and some civilisation we realised we had not sat in a chair for a week - our backs were killing us and our joints ached.


Typically, on our day off in Malatya the sky had been cloudless but halfway through the following day, as we started a dismaying ascent of a never ending mountain it started to rain - we took shelter under our tarpaulin and a succession of kindly truck drivers offered to take us and our bikes over the mountain - what possessed us to decline these offers I will never know. Several hours later, as it was getting dark we found ourselves at a pass of 1900m asl in the clouds, wet and cold and the road deserted due to Ramadam. We descended until it was dark and pitched the tent on a slither of flat mud near the road. When we departed next morning we found ourselves cycling above the clouds in the valley below.

We slogged our way up mountain roads in the rain heading further into the hills. As we sped down a valley we found ourselves in the centre of a huge storm with crashing thunder, lightening and torrential rain. Soaked and freezing cold we found refuge as the only guests at a restaurant/hostel with intermittent electricity next to a crashing mountain stream. Next day the storm had cleared and we committed cycle touring suicide by pedalling (mainly pushing on my part) to the top of Mount Nemrut at 2,200m asl and the location of the famous statues and burial mound of King Antiochus I Epiphanes, dated to 38BC. It took us 5 hours to travel 8 miles - it was a folly nearly as mad as the ancient kings statues and we would have been broken mentally and physically had we not been totally overawed by the views from the top and the discovery that we could get the bikes past the summit and get down on a road on the other side rather than going back the way we had come. The biggest blow was the discovery that Tracey had somehow lost her only pair of trousers on the way up - there was no way we were going back for them!


We wore out a set of brake pads on the way down and then crossed the Euphrates River by ferry into ancient Mesopotamia (a place that sounds more exotic than it is) where the land was covered by rocks as far as the eye could see. We had entered the kurdish area of Turkey and things got instantly rougher and poorer. After a nights rain we pedalled into the town of Siverek. Rubbish was dumped in the muddy streets, a girl was putting cow dung fuel bricks out to dry, the shops were shuttered, people were dressed in their best clothes and on the move and gangs of boys were running around with replica pellet guns shooting anything that moved, ie us!! The final day of Ramadam and start of Şeker Bayrami and the tradition of 'trick or treat' giving of sweets had warped into armed hold-ups for money. It was like being in a war zone - we got supplies and legged it to a real war zone - Diyabakir, the kurdish centre of Turkey.


You will probably be aware of the kurdish separatist movement and ongoing terrorist activity in Turkey. The Turkish army is currently bombing kurdish terrorists in northern Iraq and the bombings in Istanbul earlier in the summer were carried out by the kurds. So it wasn't a suprise to see police patrolling in armoured vehicles with guns pointing out the top. The shops were closed and the people in happy holiday mode. (A week after we left a Kurdish terrorist opened fire on a police bus in Diyarbakır killing several and wounding many more).

Whether it was the warnings we had been given, the exposed landscape, the near absence of women or the Jandarma (army type police) stations bristling with guns and tanks but we didn't feel safe as we headed north-east, climbing up to Lake Van. The first night out of Dıyabakir we found ourselves in the dark with no safe place to pitch the tent, so we knocked on the door of the nearest farm house to ask if we could camp in their grounds. To our amazement/amusement (and theirs) a couple of Italian cycle tourists had done exactly the same thing sometime before us! We were shown fantastic kurdish hospitality and fed home made buffalo yogurt and tea.

A couple of nights later we found ourselves in a mountain gorge as night approached. We stopped in a small village to ask if we could camp on any available flat land and were told we would have to ask the Jandarma, based around the corner. Swarming with armed soldiers they told us that it was not safe for us to camp there or anywhere in the valley due to the risk of us getting shot either by terrorists or the Jandarma patrols mistaking us for terrorists - they also told us it was not safe for us to be on the road after dark and advised us to go to a hotel in Bitlis, 15 miles away uphill. We explained this would take 3 hours and it would be dark in 20 minutes - they advised us to find a bus or truck and put the bikes on it. We had not been refusing free offers of lifts for the past 1000 miles to give in now. So assuming the army to be brainwashed into thinking every Kurd was a terrorist we placed our faith in the goodness of the local populace and cycled off. It was dark by the time we reached the next village, perched up on the mountainside. As we pushed our bikes up the rough dirt track in the blackness it did occur to us that we could be about to knock on the door of Kurdish terrorists and hand ourselves over to kidnappers. So it was with much relief that the house we called on was mainly female and after some shouting amongst themselves we were taken to another house and given a floor to sleep on and once again shown fantastic hospitality. Though a good nights sleep was ruined by Tracey laying stiff as a board worrying that gunmen would arrive and kidnap us.


After cycling uphill for a day and a half we crested the pass and sped down to beautiful Lake Van at 1700m asl. The next day we had a Michael Palin type of adventure and crossed the lake by the ferry, which carries train carriages (bound for Iran) - we were the only passengers and after a 4 hour delay were greeted by the captain, shown the engine room by crazily mustachioed mechanics and fed food and tea. After all the hard graft by bicycle it was such a joy to spend 5 hours crossing the lake and marvelling at the stunning scenery of snow capped mountains. We docked in Van, a friendly city where we rested our aching joınts, explored the spectacular remains of the castle and prepared for Iran.

The 3 day 110 mile ride from Van to Dogubayazit was not without incident. After a nice days ride taking in more mountains and the eastern side of Lake Van we asked a local family if we could camp in their garden - whereupon it seemed like half the villages children turned up to watch us pitch the tent and cook - have you ever chopped an onion with an audience? They gave us a big blanket and cushions for the cold, which we needed as it was barely above freezing during the night. The next morning we paused at a waterfall picnic site before climbing up into some impressive mountain scenery with kurds living a mainly pastoral existence. We kept going up and it got very cold as late afternoon approached (it is dark here at 5.45pm due to Turkey operating on one time zone) - we made the sensible decision for once and opted to ask if we could camp in a village rather than attempt to make the summit before nightfall. We were really grateful that the family we asked invited us to sleep in their home as it was bitterly cold. The family was huge (40 people living in three houses!) and fantastic at making us welcome and feeding us and the women even gave Tracey two headscarves when we left, though the bed bugs were less welcome!

The next morning we reached the highest point on our trip so far, 2644 metres above sea level. As we descended it was sunny and very cold with spectacular views of kurdish mountain villages and the snowcapped 5km high Mount Ararat (reputedly the resting place of Noah's Ark after the flood). It was all going swimmingly as we descended towards Dogubayazit. As we approached a village, as usual a gang of young boys spotted us and ran to the road to have a look/beg, unfortunately one of them tried to snatch a ribbon from Tracey's bike as she passed which just pulled her handlebars and threw her from her bike. She fell heavily on her knees in some pain. Soon we were surrounded by local women offering to try and patch her up while the little imp responsible ran for the hills before I could give him a good beating. After some commotion and a bandage Tracey got back on her bike and we limped slowly into town. Her knee has swollen and we are stuck in this border town 20 miles from Iran and over a mile above sea level until her leg is well enough to cycle again.

1800 - 2700 miles: Belgrade to Istanbul

Inevitably, after posting a blog about the weather being too hot, we left Belgrade in the rain being sprayed by speeding traffic. We went in search of the Danube Cycle Trail dreamed up by the Germans but found no trace of it for 200 miles, so made it up ourselves.

Wet, cold and hungry we found refuge in the Hotel Grad in Kovin, after discovering that the campsite shown on our map did not exist. The Grad was built during communist times and was still functionıng as such, a genuine throwback and worth a stay if ever you find yourself stranded in Kovin. The cleaners stared at us through their fog of cigarette smoke as we trudged our wet gear up to the room (which was designed to look like a student room from the 1980's). Confusion ensued when we attempted to order drinks wıth our meal rather than at the bar beforehand (how silly of us). There was no menu so we plumped for what was offered - fish from the river wıth chips. Further confusion ensued, involving the chef, the waitress and the lad on reception (who was the only english speaker) and after a while he explained that the fish were not very big and did we want two fısh each. Imagining some kind of minnow we agreed. We got four normal sized trout, wıth salad. The waitress sat at the table opposite smoking fags and drinking coffee while we ate, only rising to clear the plates when she had finished her smoke.

Rural Serbia had not been inspiring so we pinned our hopes on the Romanian side of the Danube. We paused for lunch ın the Serbian town of Kaludervo before crossing the border. It appeared to be some kind of holiday place for fishermen but looked more like somewhere you got sent for hard labour. And so we passed into the land of plenty (the EU) and it started tipping it down as we hauled ourselves up a bloody great hill for half an hour. We were wet, cold, hungry and had no Romanian currency as we sped down the other side into the most desperate place we had yet seen. Under a lead grey sky the crumbling reinforced concrete apartments of Moldova Nova wıth ıts roamıng packs of stray dogs, dumped rubbish in puddles of rain, set off against an enormous semi-derelict industrial building half-way up a hillside were about as depressing as it gets. It was glaringly obvious why Romanians would want to migrate to elsewhere in the EU.

The River Danube itself was swollen like a giant lake due to the hydro-electric dam 100 miles downstream. It was impressive as it forced its way through a range of hills with national parks on both sides of the river, creating some inspiring natural scenery, and we shared the road wıth horse and carts. The villages along the way were desperate places wıth hardly any good fresh food to be had. The whole area was overrun with stray dogs as rubbish is dumped everywhere and a dog tried to bite Tracey as we cycled past, fortunately only getting her top tied to her bike.

Travelling without a useful guidebook has often meant that we have no idea of what to expect of places and has often left us surprised at what we have stumbled across and so it was as we rounded a bend of the river and saw a giant face four storeys high carved into the rock face.

We camped on some waste ground next to the river one night (with permission from some locals) and were asked to show our documents by passing Border Patrol Police trying to stop illegal immigrants gettıng into the EU. It rained some more, the communist architecture didn't improve, the dogs and the rubbish persisted, so after a fairly terrifying stretch of highway where a variety of international truck drivers did their best to force us off the road, we took the first opportunity to get the hell out of Romania and cycled back to the comparative civilisation of Serbia over the top of the hydro-electric dam.

We continued followıng the Danube through Serbia and into Bulgaria, land of the horse/mule and cart. It took us just nine days of cycling to get from the north-east of the country to the border with Turkey. It was blisteringly hot all the way and the minor roads were more pothole than surface. We continued along the Danube for four days which became an up and down epic with incredible panoramic views over the river and Romanian plain to the north and across the Bulgarian plain to the south with some desperate communist era towns in between. We camped rough every night, sweating in the tent under clear starry sky's to the sounds of thousands of chirpıng crickets and during the day we were accompanied by flocks of bee-eaters, rollers and golden orioles.

We stopped for shade and lunch one day on a beach on the Danube where we washed in water that we had knowingly crapped in several times upstream (floating nightclubs, restaurants and cafes along the Danube all have toilets that flush straight into the river), not to mention the nuclear power station, numerous ageing factories and foul smelling sewage works. The fact that we felt much cleaner for the wash perhaps best indicates how hot and grubby we were!

We were sad to leave our watery companion when we finally turned south. We had been following the Danube for 400 miles and before that her tributary the River Sava and the Sava's tributary the Krka, in total some 800 miles - perhaps not remarkable for people who live on large continents but for inhabitants of a small island it seemed quite amazing.

We paused a day in the medieval city of Velike Tarnovo and were fortunate enough to catch the 13th International Folklore Festival. It was brilliant, in a Eurovision kind of way (which appeared to be lost on most of the Bulgarians) and we plan to make our fortunes on our return by touring it around the student bars of the UK. Romanians slapping their boots, you can't beat it.

Beyond Velike Tarnovo lay the Balkan Mountains, a very hard slog in the heat and not helped when the nice tarmac road we were on turned to rubble and my confident prediction that the road couldn't go straıght over the top of a mountain and that there would be a pass somewhere proved unfounded. Nevertheless we camped near the top wıth fantastic views of the wooded hills as the sun set and the air cooled and despite how far we could see there was not a light ın sight at night, which ıs fairly remarkable in this crowded world we live in.

On the other side the land was scorched brown and dry as we crossed a plaın of intensive agriculture, mining and power stations and where we found it hard to find any fresh food ın the village shops - in one place the sum total for the three shops in the town was three potatoes - we suspect that the 5-a-day campaign might not yet have reached these parts!

We then climbed up again, fairly steeply to the top of a range of hills that gave panoramic views of the plains and hills of Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey - from where we swooped down into a valley and onto the Turkish border.

Upon leaving Bulgaria we passed through four exit checkpoints before entering no-mans land. When we reached the Turkish checkpoint they would not let us through without the visa we had to buy for 10 pounds. We had saved 20 pounds worth of Bulgarian currency to pay for the visa and so went over to a group of small white cabins to buy our visas. However the grumpy visa man would not accept Bulgarian currency, neither would the unhelpful bank man ın the cabin next-door change our money to pounds or euros or cash any travellers cheques. Tracey happened to have a fiver she had forgotten to change when we left the UK but that was it. So we were stranded in no-mans land in the midday sun in the chaos of the construction works going on and the half-mile queues of traffic trying to get into Bulgaria. Tracey was close to tears and it looked like our only hope was to go up and down the lınes of cars asking if anyone would change our Bulgarian currency. However, seeing a woman ın distress was too much for a kindly customs official (its true, they do exist) who took Tracey over to another booth and more or less ordered the person to change our money. Problem solved we were able to buy our vısa and enter Turkey. We were so hot when we arrived in Edirne that I drank two cans of ice cold Sprite in four gulps.

I had some sympathy with the Balkan countries, their strategic location has meant that their history ıs one of being conquered and crushed as various tribes and armies since the dawn of civilisation have passed through between Europe and Asia. Belgrade is one of the oldest cities ın Europe but it has apparently been razed to the ground over forty times and the oldest buildıngs only date back to the 19th century. To top it all off they had the communists inflict thier charming concrete architecture. The result is that compared to the rest of Europe their cities, towns and villages seemed unattractive and without charm, with few buildings of interest to the tourist. Across the Turkısh border ın Edirne it became clear who had been doing the sacking. As the former capital of the Ottoman Empire the town was awash with amazing mosques ın a variety of styles dating back to the start of the 15th century. It really was a very different country to the Balkan villages we had been passing through and we rejoiced at being able to eat delicious fresh fruit again.

We pressed on to Istanbul in order to make our date wıth Tracey's friend Gill who was coming out to visit us there. It was 150 terrible miles of up and down into a head wind in the scorching sun over an intensively farmed and industrial landscape on the hard shoulder of a main road - a bit like cycling 150 miles into London along the A1, except hotter and hillier wıth the hard shoulder periodically disappearing or going to dirt. The first sight of the Sea of Marmara cheered our spirits and we camped on top of a grassy hill with a sea view and I was chased by an owl (which was scarier than you think).

We had hoped to camp by the sea for a rest before heading into Istanbul but the campsite on our map didn't exist and instead we found ourselves on a 5 lane highway in the thick of Sunday trippers to the beaches on their way back into the city. Perhaps the best way to describe the terrifying ordeal that ensued is to imagine cycling down the M1 into London without a hard shoulder and as you reach the junctıon for the M25 and traffic is turning left at 70mph to join the motorway but you want to cycle straight ahead and ıts hot, there is a strong side wind making you unstable and you have already cycled 40 miles. I have never been so scared cycling in my life. It was a terrıble white knuckle adrenaline ride that I was glad to get out of alive. Needless to say that by the time we had discovered the campsite we aimed to stay ın Istanbul no longer existed it was dark so we sought refuge in the nearest hotel and a stiff drink.

We stayed in Istanbul for a week and had a great time, wıth Gill staying for the week-end. I would recommend anyone who likes cities to spend a few days there. It's a huge modern city of 12 million people with some amazing buildings dating back to the Roman era, bustling bazaars, busy waterfronts and it has a fantastic setting, built on hills overlooking the shores of the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorous Channel linking it to the Black Sea. One side of the city lies in Europe and the other in Asia. We had crossed Europe in 85 days, ahead of us was a different story.