Wednesday 3 December 2008

4000 - 4500 miles: Esfehan to Lahore

As we cycled through the fumes and melee of Esfehan traffic an Iranian pulled alongside on a motorbike and began a conversation, the usual questions: where were we from?, where were we going?, was that my wife? - I was more concerned with not getting killed and hadn't noticed my lucky prayer beads fall from my handlebars. The Iranian disappeared and then reappeared through the traffic a few moments later with the beads. It was a nice touch that made being back on the bikes feel even sweeter.

We passed a giant concrete fruit on its island of green and then miles of factories and mechanics workshops and then the road stretched out before us across the flat desert, not a bend in sight. It was a vast landscape where pylons receded as far as I could see towards the point of infinity and distant trains moved slowly, like giant millipedes. It was a landscape where you could see where you would be later in the day and the views changed in hours. In the absence of any significant vegetation or buildings we found that drainage tunnels under the road made perfect toilets!

During the day the sun shone and its gentle November warmth made great cycling weather but once the sun started its descent towards the distant mountains the temerature plummeted. We got in the tent and I put on all the clothes I had (3 pairs of socks, long-johns, trousers, t-shirt, 2 long sleeved tops and 2 fleeces, hat and gloves!). The temperature got down close to freezing and we were zipped into our slepping bags like two giant pupae. It was bearable but not pleasant.

After two days we reached Na'in and were taken in by two students who advised us against staying in the tawdry place we were looking at as it was "dirty". We were amused to find their flat had a stolen roadsign and to be dirtier than the inn we had been looking at! But they were genial and amusing hosts and we all slept on their floor Iranian style.

Next day a chill east wind made the lead grey sky and flat brown landscape feel more like a winters day in The Wash than the deserts of Persia. As we cycled along the only distraction was the occaisional ruins of caravansaries, relics from the days of the silk route camel trains but now their mud bricks were slowly eroding back into the sand from where they came. To break the monotony we diverted for a look around the ancient adobe lanes and buildings of Abaq, brown, dusty and crumbling. During the night it rained softly on the tent and was still pattering in the morning - so much for desert!

We passed a family of magnifiscent Imperial Eagles by the roadside on the way into Arkadan, where I ate camel kebab for lunch. We followed the sign and asked directions for the road to ChakChak and soon found ourselves on a dirt road in a gravelly expanse of absolute nothing - apart from rubbish which once dumped in such a landscape literally blows for miles until it catches on any flimsy piece of desert scrub. After a few miles the "road" was sand and impossible to ride. We didn't see any other living thing for 10 miles. The pure silence was magical after the nearly constant stream of beeping trucks on the highway. We camped a cold night in this nothingness and unbeknown to us we were lost in the desert. This fact became apparent the following morning when after passing through drifted sand and the bleached white carcasses of a cow and camel we came across a small oasis village that was not on our map. We eventually ended up back on the highway having cycled a big loop and no closer to ChakChak.

We tried a different route and late in the afternoon cycled off the highway down a dirt road, past rocky hills glowing orange as the sun set over the desert and a beautiful full moon rose. It was a magical, tranquil place to camp the night and the kind of cycling I had dreamed of when planning this trip. In the morning the water in our bottles was frozen. We eventually found ChakChak, an importatnt Zoroastrian pilgrimage site set halfway up a cliff. We had not passed anywhere to get provisions since Arkadan and due to getting lost had been travelling an extra day, which became a bit desperate when the 25km to Karanaq turned out to be mostly uphill - we had a tin of tuna and a last handful of nuts for lunch.


It had taken us a week to reach the ancient desert city of Yazd, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. All the travellers we met felt the old part of the city was the highlight of Iran. The adobe buildings, narrow lanes and bazaars made of mud and straw are quiet and atmospheric and interspersed with blue tiled mosques. It also helps that some of the buidlings have been restored and turned into hotels that have fantastic courtyards with daybeds to sit and eat, drink tea and chat. We stayed several days, extended our expiring visa and Tracey had a couple of her teeth filled - a consequence of the middle eastern taste for all things sweet.

From Yazd we headed south-east passing through the salt desert oasis of Bafgh with its date palms and camels. A conservative place where all women wore chadors, the police called in to quizz us and I spoke to some classes of english students. The barren hills to the north-east of town are home to some of the last remaining asiatic cheetahs. The vast Iranian deserts also have populations of leopard, hyena and wolf but we were not lucky enough to see any. An incorrect map, a dispairing headwind and a balls up on my part meant that two days into the desert from Bafgh were were almost out of water with nothing but a hot sun beating on the desolation - we took the occaisonal sip from our last cupful to stave off "dry mouth". It was perhaps this that was to blame for Tracey falling off her bike on the way into Nuk and bruising her leg. We seemed to have crossed some kind of threshold. Children as young as 10 were driving around on motorbikes, pestering us like buzzing flies and people were literally coming out of their houses and shops to stare at us in silence as we passed. Women seemed to be in short supply whilst Baluchi men dominated the streets with their big beards, baggy clothes and headscarves. We were also cycling through the pistachio nut growing capital of Iran - mile after mile of nut bushes and desert. We stopped for a night in Rafsanjan and the following day, aided by a backwind for a change, rode 70 miles along the highway into the city of Kerman as the sunset turned the sky behind us into a breathtaking golden candyfloss.

Our guidebook had led us to expect Kerman to be full of nomadic types, straight out of the desert but it was a faily modern place with men dressed like they were straight out of Saturday Night Fever. To the east of Kerman lies the vast Lut Desert - one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. In summer temperatures can go above 60C and in the winter below -20C. Thankfully we were between these extremes of temperature and two Hungarian tourists invited us to join their taxi tour to see the desert and strange sandy rock formations. Beyond this desert lie the Afghan and Pakistan borders and this lawless region is where the majority of europe's heroin is smuggled through and home to the Jundollah extremists. In recent years there has been the occaisonal tourist kidnapping and terrorist acts (blowing up buses, that kind of thing) along the route from Kerman to the Pakistan border so we decided to travel by bus rather than cycle.

We had hoped to keep a low profile but when we showed up at the bus station on our bikes for the overnight trip we were completely surrounded by exciteable and curious Iranians who caused a right scene! I am a light sleeper at the best of times and hardly slept on the bus. In the freezing cold of dawn outside Zahedan bus station we warmed our hands on a burning truck tyre alongside a soldier and two young Afghan refugees.

Getting the final 70km to the border was a bizarre experience. We wanted to take a bus and were told that one left in an hour. When we went to go back into the bus station we were instead told by the soldiers to follow their motorbike on our bicycles - we assumed to another bus station. After a mile or so they met up with a police car and we were told to follow that. After another mile we met up with a different police car and were told to follow them - which we did, right through the centre of town (thus maintaining our low profile!), then out of the town altogether. Wandering what the hell was going on and fretting about missing our bus we stopped them to ask where the bus was. "What bus?" was the reply! Something had clearly been lost in translation.

We cycled on to a police checkpoint on the edge of town and from there we had to put our bikes and all our bags into the back of a police pick-up truck and were driven a couple of miles to the next police check point, where we had to unload it all. Then they stopped a random passing motorist to put our bikes and bags in his pick-up and for him to drive us 35km to the next checkpoint whilst our police escort stayed behind - quite how this was keeping us or anyone else safe was beyond us. At the next checkpoint the army took over and took our passports and we had to wait what seemed like ages in a biting cold wind in the middle of the desert for them to pursuade two random motorists with pick-ups to take us, our stuff and our soldier escort to the next ckeckpoint. We passed two recently smashed up pick-ups as we hammered along the road in typical Iranian suicide fashion. As we did so we passed a police speed check and the bloke carrying us (who was only trying to keep up with the pick-up in front that had the soldier and our stuff) got done for speding! This was completely outrageous and he was justifiably livid but got a ticket all the same - which made us feel even worse about the whole situation. At the next checkpoint we got a new soldier escort who flagged down another unsuspecting pick-up driver who finally took us to the border. Once in Pakistan we realised we had stepped into a filthier and more colorful world.
Immigration on the Pakistan side looked like a stable from the outside but inside it was a nice change to find english signs and people speaking english. We hung around for several hours waiting for a bus in the heat, amongts the dirt, swarms of flies and money changers. We watched men lay down in the dirt to go to sleep, using stones as pillows and pulling a blanket over themselves.

The bus ride to Quetta was 440 miles through barren desert running eastwards parallel to the Afghan border (which lay to the north of the dusty hills we could see). Our bikes were strapped to the sizeable load on top of the bus. Unwisely we had bought bus tickets before seeing the bus and it was a filthy vehicle with smashed windows held together with tape (they flexed in and out when the bus bounced). The bus crew and the passengers were wild looking Baluchi men with big beards, glassy eyes, baggy clothes and an assortment of headwear. They were in high spirits, joking and chatting as we bounced through the desert past camels, army check points, sand dunes and stunningly decorated red trucks. Pakistani music blared out and the sun set.


We made a toilet stop in a small village but Tracey was told to get back on the bus as she was not wearing a chador - which came as a shock having just come from Iran and was a reminder of where we were - fortunately she was not that desperate for the loo!

Sand drifts covered half the road and eventually the bouncy tarmac that made me think my teeth might fall out gave way to wildy bouncy dirt road. We stopped periodically to drop off or pick up passengers seemingly in the middle of nowhere and we passed through a couple of small towns. Through the middle of the night we were cold and uncomfortable and tried to sleep but I was mesmerised by the bus being driven like a rally car along the dirt road. We arrived on the outskirts of Quetta before dawn and tried to sleep in the bus with the crew until it was light.


The 10km cycle ride into the centre of Quetta was the most amazing 10km of cycling yet. In the freezing cold morning air we followed a bearded man in a turban who had his young son swaddled in blankets perched on his rear cycle rack. We passed a camel painted orange, herds of goats and sheep, young men sitting cross legged rolling dough for chapatis, open drains, dirt and rubbish, an assortment of weaving motorbikes, scooters, horse drawn carts, squeeking bicycles, motor-rickshaws, colourfully decorated buses and trucks and their noxious fumes. Raggedy, dirty children, sleepy faced men in turbans and women hiding under chadors were emerging from squalid looking buildings and alleyways. a chaotic mass of bedraggled humanity coming awake in a Third World city as the sun topped the surrounding mountains.

We were filthy and had hardly slept in two days and had planned to stay a night but first class seats on the train were booked well ahead. We figured if we were going to travel for 25 hours on economy seats in Pakistan then we may as well stay grubby and tired, so we boarded the not very aptly named Quetta Express to Lahore. I picked up the local paper at the station which made interesting reading: in a colmun on page 3 was the news that the day before a bomb had gone off outside Quetta court killing one and injuring several others, a suppliment informed of good progress in providing access to latrines, though it was noted that around 35% of the Pakistan population still lived without access to a toilet.

The train seemed to be going at walking pace as it wound its way down out of the mountains, stopping at small stations where passnegers had time to get out and eat food and drink tea before getting back on board. Initailly the train was uncomfortably crowded and we feared we had made a terrible decision but at one stop there was a mass disembarkation after which there was room to move around. As we passed through tunnels the train was thrown into darkness and the passengers shouted a good luck phrase. We had been travelling through dry barren mountains for over 3,000 miles and I was just thinking to myself that however beautiful it was I would be glad to never set eyes on such desolation again as long as I lived when we dropped out onto a plain that was as flat as a pancake and within a couple of hours I was wistful for any kind of hill.


We were passing south through desert with nomads camped along the tracks as they have been for millenia. Dust blew in the windows which were opened in the heat of the day and as time wore on the train carriage and its passengers grew filthier and filthier. We had managed to book one upper bunk which Tracey was able to lay out on and sleep during the night but I was upright on the bench below with all the others as we crossed the mightly Indus River. I was like a zombie, too tired to stay awake and too uncomfortable to sleep.

As we rumbled through the morning mist I could make out large trees and green fields with egrets and parakeets. The deserts of the Middle East had ended and I felt excited to be in a new and richer landscape. At one station there was a large painted goat on the platform wearing a mans jumper, its front legs through the arms. As we headed north I stood in the open doorway warming myself in the sun, drinking milky chai and watching rural Pakistan pass by. After 3 days/nights of travelling we pulled into Lahore station and fought our way off the train and out into the fantastic madness and chaos of the Indian sub-continent.

"So, what is your opinion about Iran?"

We were asked this question wherever we went. We gave a polite reply partly because we were in Iran but mainly because the answer was not so simple.


We did say that we found the Iranian people to be incredibly friendly, helpful and welcoming. On two seperate occasions in Tehran were were trying to find out where to catch a bus and not only did total strangers walk us several hundred metres to the right bus stop but they paid for our fare as well - and they weren't even getting on the bus - can you imagine that happening in many other capital cities in the world?


We also said that Iran has an amazing history of civilization with fantastic old cities, ruins and artifacts and beautiful architecture and buildings from a succession of dynasties: from the Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassinians, to the Arabs, Turks, Seljuks, Timurids and Safavids and finally the Shah's of the Qajars and Pahlavis. Some of these places are wonderfully atmospheric and it easy to imagine how things must once have been - the Shah being cooled by a breeze as he looks out over Imam Square from the Ali Qapu Palace or a remote desert caravansary bustling with hundreds of camels and robed silk route traders.


What we didn't say was that we found Iran to be a bit dull. I understood that Iran was a theocracy but until we arrived I hadn't quite realised this meant that it was a totalitarian state (you have to be slightly suspicious about any country that has national holidays called "Heart-Rending Departure of the Great Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and "Magnificent Victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran"). "We are not free" was something we were told countless times - and its true - Iranians are not allowed to dance (except at weddings), women are not allowed to sing (this is good in that you don't have to hear Britney Spears songs), there are no bars or clubs and few cafes or restaurants and no "streetscene", cinemas in regional centres close at 9pm, hip-hop is banned as is having a boyfriend/girlfriend, there is not freedom of the press, speech, expression or dress (women have to wear the hijab but outside Tehran the majority wear the chador). To the outsider the 1979 revolution looks like an anti fun crusade and Mr Grumpy's (aka Ayatolla Khomeni) stern frowning face looks down upon the masses from huge murals everywhere. Unfortunately modern Iran has not the exoticism of its past.


Iranians assured us that there is dancing and drinking and merrymaking but as this is banned it takes place in people's homes - to what extent we could not say but either way, as an outsider its very difficult to access. It is a strange and at times fascinating society - we saw teenage girls wear fake hair which they can "show" because its not their real hair, like school children testing the boundaries of school rules. Young people have secret boyfriends/ girlfriends. Satellite TV is banned but many households have it - like the rest of the world they watch American movies, football and porn, whilst the government controlled TV channels spew out anti USA/Israel and pro-Iran propoganda, religious programmes and football. Its hard not to conclude that many Iranians just want to live their lives like elsewhere.


Unsurprisingly there is widespread dissatisfaction with the Ayatollahs revolution, the majority we spoke to wanted a change. Our sample was biased towards english speakers and younger people but walking along the street one day an elderly man attempted to strike up conversation; it was difficult to understand exactly what he was saying but the gist was clear "Khomeni was an asshole who had ruined Iran.". Though I am sure if we had gone to religous cities such as Qom or Mashad we may have heard a different story. Interestingly people mainly spoke to us about wanting to leave the country rather than fighting for change.

The division of men and women in Iran does have interesting consequences for the visitor. City buses are segregated - men at the front, women at the back - and on fully rammed rushhour buses its not always possible to see your partner, which is fine if you both know where to get off but not if you don't - Tracey had to keep getting off and on the buses when they stopped to see if I had got off! There are women only carriages on the Tehran underground but this is to allow women to escape the wandering hands of sexually deprived men from groping them in the rush hour scrum (women are allowed on other carriages if they want).


Unmarried men and women are not allowed to socialise which results in gangs of "frustrated" young men hanging about all over the place. In non muslim societies this would result in carnage of epic proportions. It is a credit to their religion and society that in Iran it does not - but that is not to say that having the streets full of Beavis & Butthead stereotypes is a good thing.



The lot of women in muslim countries is well documented. We found Iranian women to be confident, well educated (65% of university students are women - though only 20% get jobs) and have the freedom to be out and about in the public realm, drive cars and have (limited) jobs - which is more than can be said for neighbouring parts of Pakistan and Turkey and came as something of a suprise. Tracey met a young woman on the train from Tabriz. She was studying for a Masters Degree but had no plans to ever work, she came from a well-off family and was supported by her father, she was engaged and once married would be supported by her husband while she raised a family - Tracey thought it seemed like a pretty good life. But on the other hand Iranian women are expected to be housewives and it is hard not to feel that their lives and freedoms are restricted by what seem to us fairly spurious rules and social taboos (eg women are not expected to ride bicycles) made up by men and the injustice inherent in this grates against what we feel to be right - even if many Iranian women lead very happy and fulfilling lives.


We left hoping that the old adage "after the revolution comes the revolution" rings true for Iran - it would then be a fantastic place to visit.

Saturday 15 November 2008

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.

Sunday 12 October 2008

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.