The Long Road Home

Call to prayer in Kyrgyzstan

This was recorded on the slopes of a hill called Babur’s House above the town of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan

 

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Here I am in a cafe in Amasra, which is a small fishing port about 500km east of Istanbul. Have been going on and on hard day after hard day, and finally have ground to a bit of a halt here. Cannot face another hill, even little flights of steps seem a challenge. I went up to the citadel walls, built by the Romans, and then "rented", apparently, by Genoese traders, and had to rest with the grannies and their shopping bags halfway up.

After Amasya - the place that was 40 degrees C with Pontic tombs high in the rocks - I suddenly decided to change my plan. The interior was all too hot too yellow too dry. There were dusty brickyards and boring dusty long low hills and convoys of container lorries driving north from Iran. I suddenly wanted to see the sea, and be somewhere cooler, damper, greener.

So I got my map out at a petrol station flapping everywehre, and picked a new route up over the mountains north to coast. Very carefully checked the road although small was ASPHALT and so on, no more getting lost on tracks high on the yayla mountain pastures.

Well I got everything I wanted, wet, cool, etc. More actually.

I did about a 20km climb through green valleys with old men in checked shirts taking cows here and there, and women and children picking blackberries in the hedges, and then up into empty quiet pine forests. A huge wind was blowing wet clouds over the road and I was thinking how nice. It was COOL. Over the pass it was thick fog, cars appearing out of nowhere with headlamps on, and then heavy rain all down the other side. Feeling cold was pleasantly novel, for a very short time. I was freezing cold shivering like on those wet mountain days in south west china in spring. I skidded off on a corner rather alarmingly. That’s not happened before. Tyres are more worn than I thought.

Finally I got down to a wet grey fishing village called Ayancik. on the way into the village the road was newly tarred, and I got tar everywhere, sticky black spatters all over legs, even in my hair. I used a lot of petrol from my MSR stove to get it off. Didn’t smell good but quite effective.

Ayancik was a nice homely place. In the wet morning, people in three cardigans were eating steaming bowls of soup. After a lot of embarrassed shuffling around, an old lady in all sorts of scarves and shawls managed to sit opposite me with her husband. I offered her my honey and cheese, and she refused like mad, then ate one tiny bit rather hopelessly with a fork, and then got really into it with a big spoon and went at my cheese too, and offered it all to her husband too. She did all kinds of sign language and nods and smiles about something, seemed to be quite happy about me after all.

The coast of the Black Sea here was nothing like the eastern part, near Trabzon, near Georgia. No more beaches, shady tea gardens, lorries and restaurants, not a beach cafe in sight. No tost. This was now wild wild empty coast where rough mountains come straight down to the sea, and a narrow road pitches up and down along its fringe.

There were tiny villages where people grow little patches of sweetcorn and tomatoes and beans, and make their living on honey and hazelnuts and maybe fishing, but they said mostly the rocky coast was too dangerous. There was a village where a landslip had carried the mosque and a few houses down the hill. The mosque dome etc was still more or less intact but lying all tipped sideways and with smashed windows so you could see patterned tiles inside.

There were pines trees with pinecones, shiny black elderberries, red blackberries, bright red apples, apricots, groves of dusty hazelnuts Maple trees with dangling fruit, sweet chestnut trees, bay trees in the hedges. Little sturdy oaks, a few rhododendrons, something lilke broom with long black dry pods.  There are orange berries of something like cotoneaster bushes, green bracken turning orange and yellow, briar roses dotted with orange red hips. On everything there are mounds of white old man’s beard. 

Mostly it’s been sunny, blue sky and really yellow sun. Then sudden rain squalls, grey mist blows over, and then intense blue sky and warm yellow sun again.

It’s so quiet I can hear individual dry leaves blow and scrape up the road, and unseen lizards scuttling off somewhere. Small brown birds (unidentified) go from one side of road to other. Some jays alarm calls as I come. One or two birds of prey, a few gulls flying, cormorants sitting on rocks.

I saw a thin black snake wiggle across in front of me with its head up like a periscope.

I saw a tortoise crossing the road. I even saw dolphins - can it have been? Curved backs and fins, quite close to the shore. Don’t know the difference between sharks and dolphins, don’t think I’ve ever really seen either before.

Lovely lovely. But very very hard. The road never stops going up and down, winding up to each headland high over the rocks, huge views up and down the coast etc, and then diving back down to sea level, and then up again. And again, and again. I’m averaging between 12 and 13 kph, long long cranking up the climbs at 7kph then momentary bursts of speed down descents at 30kph, then back to hard slog in bottom gear at 7kph again. Hard.

The sea is fabulous rich turquoise, deep blue further out, with patches of grey blurred rain.
There was a sweet tiny lighthouse. There are wooden clapboard ottoman houses in villages, faded stained wood blue. Green, sash windows, red tiles.

Stayed in tiny guesthouses. One in a village in room above cafe where retired men sit in flat caps and play backgammon rattling dice or banging down tiles playing okey, which looks a bit like mahjong. Bakery and little gorcers with tins of cooking oil and trays of eggs.

People have been lovely. Men have bought me almost all my glasses of tea. A car stopped when I was brewing up somewhere at the roadside, and a man gave me tomatoes and pears. Elsewhere another car stopped and a lady appeared with a whole bowl of plums, and I was thinking how amazing and about to say thankyou when she said ‘gute reise’ and put them on the back seat and disappeared.

There’s been drums and dancing in the villages becasue it was Victory Day on 30th August, apparently commemorating when the turks beat the greeks in the 1920s. In the little town of Boyabat people did serious ceremonies with speeches and military men in green uniform and there were huge sheets painted with Ataturk’s face hanging from town hall windows. In the villages, people got out brown wood drums and pipes and did chaotic jigs in the street.

Tomorrow I’m starting the last few 100k to Istanbul where I should see some lovely folks from sponsors ADM Capital who happen to be on business there, and even my PARENTS who are doing a holiday in Istanbul at just the right moment. It will be BRILLIANT to see people I know, it’s been superb but a huge long quite lonely and hard ride, this leg through the Caucasus and Turkey to Istanbul.