The Long Road Home

Trabzon was actually much nicer than I think I made it sound. I took a DAY OFF there and got new brake blocks. Cobbles, cafes, handsome old houses painted pink yellow green blue all the colours you could want, which in bright sunshine and with red tiled roofs to unify everything works perfectly. Gulls crying and the sea at the bottom of the road. Aya Sofya greek orthodox church with pine trees around it.

I rode along the coast for a few days with sound of waves and smell of salt and seaweed on hot rocks on shore.

The nicest place was the little fishing port of Tirebolu, with a little castle on a promontory, and steep quiet streets where people were vaguely playing football on the cobbles, calling from balconies, leaning out. There were little clothes shops with a few skirts hanging and grocers shops with bread in cupboards. The shopkeepers sit ouside in the road on stools and stare at the street.

There was a tiny guesthouse in an old row of buildings next to the mosque, with 6 rooms. Noone was there when I arrived. Some children fetched a man who knew someone who had a key. The building had rooms with ceilings of diffeent heights. There was a sort of shower room under the attic, but even I was too tall to stand up in it. You had to climb into the attic to turn on the gas. I showered sitting on the floor under a tap at about knee height.

Ordu and Unye were both nice seaside towns with parks on the shore where you could get tost. I was hoping for toast with butter and maybe strawberry jam or something, but tost turned out to be enormous toasted cheese sandwiches.

It was my birthday and I had one of these tosts, and then later when I was boiling up some water sitting on some rocks by the sea, I was invited by two brothers to have tea at their garage. So I had birthday tea with them on stools outside the little Secmenler Otomotiv showroom with the Secmenler brothers, and ten various cousins and uncles who walked by and joined in, and
acted out the presenttion of a cake and candles.

The coast road was in parts really narrow and I was driven off the carriage way onto the gravel verge quite a lot when big container lorries were trying to squeeze past me. It was quite scary and dangerous, so I decided to head inland to find quieter roads.

I turned south at Carsamba towards Amasya, about 100km inland. First of all it was OK, willow trees and nice sunny fields of sweetcorn and a long calm reservoir. But then my plan went a bit wrong because the nice scenic little road to Amasya marked on the map didn’t really exist. Several cars had stopped earlier to talk with me. Everyone said there was no road through to Amasya.

But now I was on this plan, I didn’t have much choice but to carry on.

I camped south of Ayvacik, a small village. It was really hard to find a place because at just the time I wanted to stop and camp - sunset 2 hrs etc - I found myself on a mountain climb where the terrain was so steep at either side you’d have needed one of those terrigying-looking hanging tents that I’ve seen mountaineers use on tv. Not at all suitable for my little green terra nova. Finally I managed to find a spot in a flattish corner of a sloping hazelnut grove. At dusk the old lady who owned the grove and her son came up and showed me how to disconnect up a hose at the top of the grove and get water. And gave me a fistful of hazelnuts which I wasn’t sure what to do with.

In the morning I got up, and started out. It was really hard-going, as the steep road was covered in loose gravel, all scrabbly and slippery. As I struggled along, a 4×4truck came by. The truck belonged to a nice guy who was a surveyor making maps of the area, and was delivering concrete posts to use as triangulation points. I realised my only chance of getting thru to Amasya was to hitch, and it was very lucky a truck came along. We put the bike in the back with the concrete posts, and then battled along tracks through deep mountainous forests. We took a detour to wildly remote villages deep in oak woodland to deliver trangulation posts, accessible only by a newly cut dirt track. There were old shepherds wearing waistcoats and with grey bindings round their lower legs like spats to protect them from brambles. We drank ayran salty yoghurt with a family at their yayla highland pasture hut=
.. It was lovely, but I really must NOT try any more roads that on my map are coloured white and edged with green, as they are too difficult. I should know by now.

He dropped me off in Tasova, the first place on the other side f the mountains. We ate large plates of koefte meatballs and salad.

I stayed at a minuscule guesthouse just a doorway off the street and a few rooms above a grocers shop. There were four men in vests sitting in a sort of reception room-cum-office, watching horseracing. They invited me for tea and then dinner and fussed like mad making sure I had a towel (someone went to find one) and providing newspaper to assist wiith drying my washed clothes - not quite sure how I was supposed to use it.

So I then rode from Tasova through dry yellow hills, with sweet-smelling pines to Amasya.

Amasya was gorgeous, a little brown and white town of wood and stone ottoman houses along a river. I stayed at a lovely hotel smeeling of wood polish and lemon. It was hot nearly 40 degrees again, so I went very slowly up yhe steps behind the town to look at the 4th c bc tombs of the pontic kings who used to have their capital here. I went to see the 14th c mosques and hamam turkish baths, and had cherry juice listening to music students play those mandolin-type guitars and sing in a 14c hopsital where apparently music was used for the first time to cure mad people. The students were playing beautifully and I felt I was probably at least a bit cured.

I still have not seen any foreign tourists in Turkey. This is very different from what I expected. I thought there would be foreign tourists everywhere. Two immaculately equipped Japanese people appeared this morning and said hello but then disappeared again to find a nicer place. I would love to meet some tourists and am aiming for Safranbolu which I think is on the Beaten Track. It’ll take me about five days from here, I think.

This might be a bit boring, but in case you are interested, this is what it’s like on a typical day on my trip riding a bike across Europe and Asia.

My watch alarm goes at 6.30. Here in eastern turkey it’s been horribly hot and the only part of the day I don’t feel hot is from about 5.30am to 9.00.

If I’m in a guest house etc I check chargers and make sure at least mobile and blackberry are charged up before I leave a safe place with electricity etc.

I get up and eat bread and tea and honey or choc in the room if it’s a cheapo place with no breakfast. I bought a dangerous boiler element when in Azerbaijan which heats water in about 2 minutes.

I pack my two rear panniers and two front. This takes ages for some reason, always. I put on my two money belts under my clothes. All my valuable docs etc are in these. I wear cycling bib-shorts under some loose blue shorts. I take a GPS reading and i write down previous day’s mileage. I wash my two water bottles and fill them, and I wash my shades which always somehow get dirty. I get everything downstairs - this takes two trips, one with bags, one with bike. If I’ve been staying in a guesthouse etc, I say goodbye to the people. If I’m camping I strike the tent and make a quick tea and eat bread before setting off.

I get on the road between 8 and 10am. Ride 20-30 km and then either brew tea and eat by road or stop at cafe or petrol station or something, if there is one.

I’m doing about 18kph on ordinary roads, down to 10kph if uphill. Dreadfully slow but if I just sit on the bike and don’t give up, I still get a decent mileage done. If it’s steep I weave zig zags to avoid having to walk, as walking cuts even my lowest on-the-bike pace by half immediately and ends up more tiring than riding. On steep uphill rubble tracks I have to walk, I can’t manage to ride. In turkey I stop at water fountains of which there are loads on minor roads, and refill bottles and make myself drink. In other places I’ve had to buy bottled water a lot. I’ve got sick from drinking water from people’s cottages e.g. in Kazakhstan.

People wave from fields and cars and house doorsteps and upstairs balconies and from the roadside and call out hello. In turkey merhaba. In Georgia gamerjobu. In Azerbaijan salam aleykum. In Kazakhstan was often ’sportsman’, and then ‘atkuda?’ which I think means where are you from?’ In the cities e.g. Baku etc I’ve met a few westerners. On the road for weeks in between cities, I’ve only met a handful of westerners the whole journey so far. About 6 other people cycling, a few in guesthouses in towns.

I might eat lunch at a cafe if there is one. Often I sit with people and chat. Sometimes even if I sit alone, someone pays for me. They just smile and point at some man, and wave me away when I ask for the bill. People have been incredibly kind. Or I brew tea and have bread and cheese at a river or hill top. Brewing up tea makes it feel more like a proper stop and the humming stove is kind of companionable.

I look out for birds all the way, scanning wires and rocky hilltops and sky all the time. Ikve got binoculars in back pocket and stop as soon as I see something interesting. I’m rubbish and never stop for small brown birds so despite the fact the yakre probably really interesting I have not observed or identified really any. Big, blue, yellow, etc only. Not a proper birder at all.

When I stop to ask the way or get water, people ask me if I’m really alone. I’m getting a bit tired of this. They normally ask if I’m married. I’m getting very tired of that. Do they ask solo men the same? Then they normally say "it’s dangerous". So I ask what kind of danger they know of - specifically - in their area. If they say wolves, I ask when they actually last saw a wolf. I try and find out any specific and likely dangers and risks e.g. road washed away by floods etc, as this is obviously useful information. They often ask if I can mend punctures. They are amazed when I say yes.

Most people are very nice and mean well, but to have to face ten times every day ‘are you alone?’ and incredulity that a woman more or less is managing to muddle along alone is a bit wearing. I’m thinking of bringing back my up-the-road husband to save the effort of explanation again. I ditched him after Azerbaijan but he might be useful again here. I have tried turning things round, and asking back the men whether THEY are married but that has rather backfired on a couple of occasions if they are not, as they interpreted it as an invitation that we resolve the whole problem by getting married ourselves. And then I have to get myself out of that.

I’m normally tired after 60Km and looking a lot at the mileometer, which doesn’t help anything so I try to avoid it. I look as hard as I can at things around me to remember them for later.

If I’m camping I look for a good place 2hrs before sunset so I have time to make a mistake and find a second place if the first is not good. I fill up water bottles plus an extra water bag or bottle for washing. I look for a place hidden from the road, villages, and houses etc, with good windbreaks e.g. trees, and hopefully near water so I can wash more easily. I pitch the tent, wash if I can, and boil up water for noodles or soup. It’s dark by 7.30 here so I might read a bit by torchlight but mostly don’t use torch as it makes the tent light up like a lantern and I’m worried people see it. I look at the stars or the moon and listen to the river or wind etc. Sometimes to listen to BBC world service on my SW radio(THANKYOU rico, dan, ayako, polly, fidelia, helena, vincent, and the LabCi boys for this present amongst others)

I normally ride between 70 and 110km per day.

If I’m going to a village or town with a guesthouse then I can be on the road longer here with sunset around 7.15, I can ride to about 6pm if necessary.

If I’m staying in a guesthouse etc, I pick a decent- looking place and try and bring my bike right up into my room so I know it’s safe. About half the places don’t mind. I wash my clothes straight away as I only have two sets of stuff and wash every day. I shower and then go out to get food. Normally I’m so tired I drop into the first place I see and get whatever they have. I try and drink another 1.5 litres water to make sure I’m not dehydrated… I do stretches to avoid knee problems (hopefully) and spend about an hour writing. Some days I’m too tired. I check birds I’ve seen in a field guide… I read up where I’m going the next day and study the map. I send a text to Vincent and Tara in Hong Kong (and now London) so they know I’m ok and don’t call the police (thanks to the people in Kenneth’s brilliant Reuters HongKong team especially VINCENT and TARA with whom i have a "heartbeat" safety system). I sleep as early as possible between 9 and 10 is best. If I stay up later, then I wake up tired, and the next day is really hard. I guess the rest isn’t very normal, but that part is just like normal life.

Well, after a bit of a slog through the heat of the Coruh River Valley and then rough roads of the Black Sea Mountains, I’ve finally reached TRABZON and the BLACK SEA. I rode down into Trabzon early this afternoon, really hoping to get a lovely romatic view of the sea from some scenic high lonely peak etc, but in the end what happened was it was raining and the road down to the sea out of the mountains had various quarry works at each side, and then furniture warehouses and a Scandia car showroom, and lots of petrol stations. And then I punctured about 5Km from the city, and got very dirty mending that. I hadn’t seen the sea at all until finally I swung up a flyover and there it was, grey and flat and quite boring, with a few ordinary ships and jetties and port offices. Not really a good place to cry out “thalassa thalassa”; and think of classical history. I can’t really do that anyway, as I don’t really know any, but I got a very nice email from my dad a week or so ago, telling the story of Xenophon leading the Greeks back home through the Caucasus, and have been thinking about them as I rode through the same mountains, looking forward too to see the sea.

I seem to have been in the north east of Turkey for ages. Actually I’ve been riding hard, without a rest day since I left Tbilisi on 6th August. It’s lovely, but very hard country, remote, hilly, winding roads. And without really meaning to, I seem to have picked one of the toughest wildest routes.

My plan for the last bit into Trabzon was to go over the Black Sea Mountains through the Altindere National Park, and thereby see the famous abandoned Greek Orthodox monastery at Sumela kind of efficiently on the way down into Trabzon. It looked straightforward on the map, a single road, one junction, and all encouragingly edged with green, which means “landschaftlich besonders schoene Strecke” on my Euromap. Well, it WAS beautiful. But hard. I slogged metre by metre up the Kostandagi Pass, on wretched slippy gravel, walking, pushing the bike. The wind over the top was blasting so hard that the metal sign for the pass was shaking and rattling. There was a vast beautiful empty landscape below, bare hills, clefts, valleys. And there was a fork in the road. No sign, no car, nothing. Just rolling lovely hills and rolling clouds and rain starting to fall. Hmmm. I waited for about 20 mins but noone came. Noise of wind. No car to be heard. Time going on. So I decided to go right. I think that was wrong but I don’t really know, as there were then lots more confusing tracks and turns and no signs. I just kept rolling downhill. After about 10km, a car came by and an old man who spoke German said I should go left, which was back uphill. Another long hard stony climb. Oh. I’d obviously gone badly wrong. And they said Sumela was still 30km away. I would have to walk pushing the bike and so it was probably going to take another 6 hours. Oh. I put out of my mind the fond idea I’d had all day of reaching TOURISTY Sumela with the nice wood bungalows I’d read were there, and cheered myself thinking of my cosy tent and cooking up some soup on my stove. Hmmm. Difficult. I’d really been looking forward to fluffy towels and nice sheets. Going wrong and getting lost is really annoying. And quite scary on the mountains alone.

Well, I battled on thinking I’d do another hour then camp, but what happened next was that a huge 4×4 came along, and stopped. There were three men in it, a big boot, and an empty seat. And they were going to Sumela. So I accepted a lift, put my bike in the boot, and took the empty seat. They were Trabzon people, coming down from a mountain festival near Uzungol. It was cold. You could see odd people in headscarves and brown jackets bringing cattle across the empty hillsides. It turned out the men in the 4×4 were hungry, and one of them had a cousin who had a yayla summer pasture mountain cabin not far away. So suddenly we all went there and had a big dinner of sac kavurma which was a kind of hotpot fondue, aryan, a yoghurt drink, and wild rocket. The wood cabin had an iron stove and we all sat round and ate hot roasted chestnuts and drank black tea.

Then they turned on the generator, banged the TV and watched Trabzonspor football team play Gaziantepspor. Trabzonspor lost, and it all got very late, so we all stayed the night in little gabled rooms in the roof. So, finally this morning, they drove me across fabulously beautiful mountain pastures down into pine forest, and to the turn for Sumela. So I did make it to the monastery, and then finally to the sea. Thanks a lot to Serkan, Sait, Ayhan, who were in the 4×4, and Hasan, whose very nice hut it was. Up till this point when I got lost in the Black Sea Mountains, my plan had been going ok.

I came down from the high Anatolian steppe then along Imerhavi valley through Savsat to Ardanuc. There was an eerie gorge, with ruined castles, and black and white Egyptian vultures flapping up from the rocks.

In Ardanuc, there were men playing backgammon at tables under the trees. I went to the post office to send home some stuff, and it took ages because they’d lost some important piece of paper you apparently need to do international mail, so people were banging cupboards and shaking files, and they invited me into the back and gave me tea while I waited.

After Ardanuc, I came to the Coruh River, which is, I read, one of the world’s wildest places for white water rafting. It was fiercely hot, 45 degrees every day. I thought my eyes might dry out with hot wind blowing over them. Is that possible? I was putting my head under taps at water troughs everywhere to try and keep cool. Roads empty, tiny winding lanes, dirt tracks. In the towns and villages, lots of women are in full chador (not sure spelling), black or white, sort of gliding along the hot roads in the villages.

Butterflies everywhere, meadow browns (I think - not v good at butterflies), copper coloured ones, tiny blue and brown ones in pairs, big swallowtail types, white and yellow and red. Very few birds. Is it too hot? I sometimes saw crows in big flocks, a few magpies in quiet villages, some jays and blue rollers again, a few buzzards.

I went up to the astonishing abandoned Georgian orthodox church at Dort Kilise. It was built in the 11th c but abandoned during the Crimean war (I think) and is now a huge ruin high in the hills, covered in grass, with fallen
masonry and rubble inside, empty niches, fading frescoes.

I’ve stopped for the night in some lovely places. A tree house by the river in Yusufeli. A house high above the village of Arzular at the foot of the Black Sea Mountains, where the local bus driver and his wife invited me to stay. I gave my bike horn to their son Suleyman and I could hear him blowing it as I rode away across the valley. A pension house all red rugs and cushions where very sadly a man had just been killed rolling his car off the road, so there were lots of women weeping and I was in the middle of it not sure what to do, shaking hands with all sorts of upset people. And I camped out by the Coruh river in a poplar wood with frogs croaking.

I’m trying out Turkish sweets. In Bayburt some old men showed me to a proper pastanasi sweet shop and I had nut chocolate tart. I had a earthenware pot of cold sutlac rice pudding at Sumela. I had kadayif shredded wheat with honey and nuts in Ardahan. Tonight I’ve bought little slices of sticky stuff called mebrume from the grocer opposite here in Trabzon. It’s made with pistachio nuts, I think.

Well, here in Trabzon I’m leaving behind the remote bit of northeast Turkey that used to be part of the mediaeval kingdom of Georgia, with its castles and ruined orthodox Christian churches, and I’m now in places where the Pontic greeks lived and Xenophon came. Trabzon is the end of the silk road (maybe? not quite sure), but amazingly - to me, after slogging it by bike - I keep finding that these Anatolian towns here are places Mongol warlords came through, and destroyed, in the 14th c. Can hardly believe that Timurlane, who died at Otrar the ruined desert city which I went to, way way back in southern Kazakhstan, came so far. But I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised, at least they had horses. Might be easier than cycling, actually.

Thanks a lot to all the Reuters Caucasus team who welcomed me so warmly to the Rueters Tbilisi office. Our driver in Tbilisi is a former cycling track sprint star - you can see he’s not nervous to jump on a bike, even a small battered one covered in mud from Azerbaijan. Whilst I was there, senior correspondent Margarita Antidze and the team called up Georgian tv channel rustavi-2, and I spent half a day with the tv people, and then appeared on national tv that evening. Thanks again Margarita and all the team for the terrific welcome.

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Sheltering under a bridge from the rain. What a great opportunity to record a podcast

 

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Sometimes on this trip I have really missed having another person with me, especially when I reach a lovely place. It’s the first time I’ve done a long trip on my own. A few days ago, I climbed a pass from the bare north Anatolian steppe out of the Ardahan valley west into the mountains. Just after the summit there was the most BEAUTIFUL view over green alpine meadows with pine trees and the rocky Kackar mountains which lie now between me here and the Black Sea. So I brewed up some tea and was drinking it alone on the stony verge when a car came by and two men and two women got out. They smiled a lot and waved their arms at the view, said by hand gestures something like ‘you’re having tea up here - wonderful’, and then suddenly went and turned up the car stereo so that opera music filled the air. We all listened for a moment, looking at the view, then they gave me some pears, shook hands with me, and drove off. So I didn’t have a friend with me but total strangers were suddenly very nice company. Things like that happen much more often than I imagined.

These roads in Northeast Anatolia are utterly beautiful but very tough to ride.

I climbed up from Posof near the Georgian border through oak and conifer forests, pine cones on the verges. There were villages dotted across the valley, each with minarets; calls to prayer were blowing across the air sometimes louder sometimes fading to nothing.

Through hay fields with men lifting forks of hay with pitchforks onto wagons. Men cutting hay with scythes, three in a row swinging scythes in synch. Straw hats. Dust and grassy bits in the wind.

I was aiming for the Ilgardagi Pass. There was silence except for crickets buzzing, bees in the clover, wind in grass, tiny thin cheeps of brown unidentifiable birds, far away man calling cattle, or a stream over stones. And my knees creaking.

There were buzzards soaring, or suddenly huge right near me on a telephone wire, they stare at me then lift off.

Up above the tree-line, there were green meadows with wild grasses, rosebay willow herb and blue vetch and purple thistles and white thistledown and yellow dandelions. Herds of brown lean cattle, one cowherd leaning on stick looking at me, waving.

I saw a long-legged buzzard on a rock, russet chest, pale head twisting this way and that in the wind. A new species, pretty sure I got it right.

There were trenches up the hills for the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and I passed a big white pumping station with accommodation blocks and big fences and a helipad. Thought from a distance it was a nice cafe with cold drinks and seats, maybe, but…

The road winds high high up from one horizon to another long uphill stretch. There was a mountain spring where a man was praying on a carpet. Delicious ice cold water. Dusty green mountain peaks far below, and above the bare yellow rock smooth peak of Mt Cicek.

I struggle last few miles to the top of the pass against a wind, but then over the top reach the beautiful high Anatolian steppe, endless bare pale green hills, no trees, no fences, sun getting lower over huge huge open land. I do 60kph down long looping curves into the valley, not braking at all.

I stopped at a little poor village called Damal. Old men in frayed brown tweed jackets, dark flat caps, gold teeth, rosary.

Wheelbarrows, tractors, horses and carts.  Men drive over cobbles clattering on horse-drawn machines with huge metal wheels taller than the man, who sits on a seat over metal combs. Can’t remember what these are called. Someone said there was a hotel in the village and took me to a building below the main street, but it was locked and had one of those signs on the door that say you should wear a hard hat and protective boots when going in. Didn’t seem right at all. Finally I found a room over the local petrol station across the hill from the village.  Four eleven-year old boys walk there with me in the dusk, trying to teach me Turkish, miming, pointing, grinning, showing me off to their school teacher who was walking with a friend to the village.

In the quiet morning, I rode south over the high steppe.  Huge tangles of flowers in the verges, sweeps of flowers over the fields, bees buzzing. Dark blue spikes like lupins, blue flowers on spiky stalks like I saw by my tent in Kazakhstan, purple thistles, yellow ragwort, purple vetch, white meadow sweet. Distant hills pale green pale blue. It’s just beautiful. Dark swifts with arc wings curve all over the place high in the air then dive close to me. Their shadows keep passing across the road as I ride along.

Pale white gold fields, deep brown gold fields, green gold fields. Smell of hay and dust.

I saw a couple of ruined castles on little knolls.

It seems very poor here. People’s homes in the villages are made of piled dry stones, some plastered and whitewashed, others just bare stone. Grass on roof, chimney smoking, tiny windows, family outside, with toddlers stumbling after footballs etc. Women in long brown smocks, hedscarves, aprons, carrying buckets. Washing on the line, and a big hayrick with wooden ladders propped against it, and piles of cut turf for the fire. By the villages are little flocks of white geese, and horses and foals by rivers.

The next day I climbed up the Cam Pass leaving bheind Ardahan and the dry high steppe, and dropping down into bright green valleys, with wooden cabins and pine trees, and little streams and buzzards crying. It was at the top of the pass looking down into this landscape that I had my tea, and the car with opera music people appeared.

Anyway, just wanted to say that thanks to Ben, a whole bunch of new pod recordings are now coming up… There are all sorts of things coming, from western China right through Central Asia, horns playing in Buddhist monasteries, Chinese Muslim calls to prayer, a Tibetan dance party, a thunderstorm heard from under a bridge near the Kyrgyz border, birds in the rafters of a 12th c mausoleum in Kazakhstan, a Kyrgyz man playing a clay flute… Hope you like them. And thanks again Ben for looking after this site.

Market day recording in a town along the silk road.

 

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This afternoon I crossed into TURKEY at a quiet border post in the mountains between georgia and north eastern anatolia.
I saw my first western Europeans yesterday - a REAL FRENCH CAR! so I’ve finally reached places where the farthest-flung European tourists reach, a family who’d driven to the Caucasus from Clermont Ferrand (hello patricia, thierry, leo and lu) And then there were three Italians on motorbikes near the turkish border today.

Goodbye to the Caucasus! Actually I realised today that for a few days now there are no more hoopoes flapping out of the yellow grass, no more bee-eaters on the wires, or blue rollers doing fancy flying, or Egyptian vultures over yellow hills. I guess these steppe birds are over. Now in these mountains on the border of Georgia and Turkey, I’ve got wood and field birds like flycatchers, magpies, woodpeckers, and harriers and buzzards.

>From Borjomi where I wrote the last post, I rode through the Lesser Caucasus mountains up a glorious valley of pine trees and oak trees and birch trees all ruslting and rattling in a gale from the east ie TAILwind for me. There was a green river going quickly over pebbles, cattle grazing by it with bells (even), nice green meadows, birch trees and ash with bright yellow leaves. There must be almost nothing more enjoyable than riding along a road like that, warm sun, wind loud in the trees and blowing your hair etc etc. I’ve had plenty of rough days; this finally was a totally easy day and a gloriously lovely road to enjoy.

Then there was a castle high on a crag, a good proper one with tower and walls, and a small town below. After that the valley suddenly changed from green to yellow, and the hills became bare and the sun was in my eyes and hot reflecting off golden brown rock walls at the roadside. I dropped into Akhalsiche, the last town in Georgia before the Turkish border. Actually Akhaltsiche was apparently an Ottoman regional capital from the 17th C ruled over by a pasha. Then it was captured by the Russians in 1828. It’s got a great castle, wooden houses with overhanging balconies with fancy carving, and a weird big Russian music hall or something, classical columns.

In the villages around here half the buildings are derelict. Empty soviet blocks of flats with blank windows, abandoned wooden villas with the grape vines going mad pulling the wooden verandahS down, big old mansions that used to be pink with stone lintels above the doors but the doors are hanging off and the pink is going green as the trees get thick around them. There are shops with wood shleves and an old glass counter but with a single tube of toothpaste and a few packs of biscuits and a couple of cigarette lighters and an old man vaguely running it. You see lots of cars with the bonnets up and big women inside waiting while a man tries to fix it. Lots of cars being towed, minibuses being towed, groups of men people pushing cars by hand. Donkey carts. Ox carts. Beaten up old buses that are all different colours, blue roof, a brown strip on one side, some yellow panels, all patched together.

Today I found out that the reason the road to the Turkish border from Akhaltsikhe is printed as a track on my map, is because it IS a track. I battled 20km uphill through rough stones and gravel slipping and falling off and having to be very patieent not to get fed up. It was all uphill, and it’s really hard climbing uphill in stony gravel because the back wheel skids if you get out of the saddle and stand on the pedals. There were a couple of donkey carts struggling up with men shouting at the donkeys, and massive Turkish container lorries in little convoys grinding and crunching through. It seemed odd to have container lorries on small dirt tracks. It’s 35 degrees still and sweat was dripping down my face. Quite hard. The lorries were as slow as me.
The drivers helped me get a visa when I finally reached the border. The Turkish border guards here didn’t do any singing but all honked the bike horn. This horn has been very useful purely for amusing people. Not quite sure why a horn should be so amusing but it clearly is to lots of people.

Suddenly on the Turkish side of the border everything went green, there was intense green grass like a lush golf course with trees and a thick oak forest above. The road was lovely smooth tarmac. But it was still uphill and I climbed on and on above a green wide valley with blue mountains beyond to the south in georgia. This is part of North Eastern Anatolia is lovely lovely scenery but I was dead tired. I stopped at Posof a village and ate pide hot bread from a charcoal oven at a little restaurant. There was a huge full yellow moon and crows cawing and calls to prayer from the mosque. There was also a power cut so I’m writing this by torchlight.

Here I am in a little internet cafe again, in the town of Borjomi in the mountains of western Georgia. About a week ago, I had my last black tea in a glass at a cafe in Azerbaijan. Then I crossed into Georgia close to Lagodekhi, at a quiet little border gate in woodland with horses and foals running wild. The border guards all sang some song with a bit in it that goes ‘oh Susanna’. I don’t know really what they were singing and nobody seemed to quite know the tune properly, but anyway, I got through into Georgia with no problem.

Suddenly there were villas with tall louvre shutters, shady trellises, grape vines, and cottage gardens full of roses, red hot poker and Black-eyed Susan. The fields were yellow stubble with the blue mountains of the Great Caucasus behind.

I turned south across the Alazani valley towards Tsnori, very weary over a bumpy road, where donkeys were pulling haycarts with clattering metal wheels, and then I hauled 10km up a zigzag climb to the little town of Sighnaghi. THis place was fortified in the 18th C and is a lovely place of cobbled strees and old houses with balconies. I stayed with the family of a huge lady called Manana. They had a brown wooden living room, with a dining table always laden with food, and a dresser in which were kept white cheese, a glass dish of preserved cherries, honey in a bowl, bread, teacups and plates. Manana had three big sons working on the local hotel refurbishment, who came home all dusty. There was a tiny granny with a white bun who went here and there to the dresser and back and outside to the kitchen folding things and carrying things. There was a huge view over to the mountains. There was a study with books in Russian and Georgian, and wooden crucifixes, and in the hall, a big radio on legs on which you could tune to Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev. There were power cuts so we all sat in the dark, and the phone needed to be banged and then you shouted into it.

In the town square, I met a local criminal police officer, and was then was rather surprisingly adopted the Kakheti regional criminal branch. They seemed underemployed (fortunately). An officer with a gun in a leather holster took me for coffee in a cafe in the square, and then to Bodbe MOnastery where St Nino is buried. People were kissing her grave, and boys were being dipped in the holy well. We walked round the old town walls and watchtowers, and picked blackberries and apples and wild plums.

From Signhaghi, I rode west to Tbilisi through long dry yellow hills and fields. There were castles on the hill tops. Container lorries from Turkey were driving east.

In Tbilisi, I had a sulphur bath (smelly, some suntan came off, but not much).

I met up with the lovely Reuters Tbilisi Caucasus bureau team, who arranged for me to be on Rustavi-2 TV… So I spent the next morning with a cheery film crew, riding round the city and talking about the trip.

And when I set out from Tbilisi the following day, I found people were waving and shouting from their cars “Good luck - you’re the one cycling to England!” and so on, in Russian, German, English etc. Everyone of whom I asked the way said “hey you’re the person who was on TV!” It was rather incredible that one TV news item could have such an impact. I stopped in Mtskheta to look at the 11th C churches there, and even walking quietly round the back of a church, people recognised me and came up to say they’d seen me on TV, and welcomed me to their town. It’s interesting to be recognized, and fine when I’m breezing along looking good on easy bits doing a nice 25kph, but I’m sure the people who see me in bad moments - when I’m struggling up a climb or battling to get the bike up steps or just plain exhausted somewhere, think it just can’t be true that I really rode from Hong Kong.

Anyway, I cycled on the back roads from Mtskheta to Gori, hot dusty tracks with just a few cattle and donkeys staring at me lazily and then going back to nibbling dry grass. I went to the ruins of the city of Uplistsikhe, founded in the bronze age and finally destroyed by Tamerlane. There were cave temples, a ruined stone theatre, a hall, a ruined apothecary shop. Lots of lizards and a small group of Italians who sat with me on the remains of the theatre stage and chatted about Damiano Cunego, Marco Pantani and the Tour de France.

I’m eating white flat bread which you tear with your hands, and round warm mchada cornflower breads, and a thing called lobi which is a beans and walnuts, lovely white cheeses, khachapuri cheese pies, khinkali meat dumplings (like oversized CHinese xiaolong bao), and chebureki stuffed meat pancake turnovers. And finally proper COFFEE! thick grainy Turkish coffee in little espresso cups. Thanks a lot to Vladımır and Stephanie for ıntroducıng me to Georgıan food beyond khachapurı.

I stayed in the Inturist Hotel on Stalin Avenue in Gori, the town where Stalin was born, and then rode here to Borjomi, along roads lined with huge lime trees and verges covered in yellow leaves. I turned south for Borjomi up a beautiful green gorge with a green river and a tiny single-track mountain railway below me. Borjomi is a mineral water resort town, that was fashionable in the 18th C, apparently. Now it’s a bit down at heel, and just got a few roundabouts and swings in the Mineral Water Park, and people walking children, eating ice creams.

Tomorrow I plan to cross the border from Georgia into Turkey in the mountains near Posof, and start heading through Anatolia. Off now to have a coffee.

Children in a Muslim village near Lanzhou singing “let the world know that we are ALL Chinese people”…

 

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