22-Aug-08: Café Mozart
Azerbaijan: Baku – Travel (Waiting) Day
After a nightmare of a day yesterday sitting in the dusty and hot conditions at the ferry port to no avail, today all bar a few refused to leave the comfort of the hotel and other locations until we received word by mobile that the ferry was actually leaving.
Accordingly we ended up spending 7 hours straight in Café Mozart in the old town of Baku whilst we ate breakfast and used their free wi-fi connection until lunch rolled around and soon enough 4pm. The staff at the cafe did not seem to mind us staying put and using their facilities, which included air-conditioning, and so we made no attempt to move on anywhere else until we had cause to.
However, by the time 4pm ticked over we had exhausted our internet needs and decided to head down to the ferry port just to make an appearance and get the latest story on the pending departure time if any. Not surprisingly the ferry was not going to depart today either…and the latest TDA news was that we were to wait another couple of days at the least before considering the option of flying. And so we returned to the hotel in the old town to stay yet another night before the prospect of waiting yet another day for the ferry to depart.
23-Aug-08: Goodbye Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan: Baku – Travel (Waiting) Day
After a bit of a sleep in and wandering aimlessly around the city looking for somewhere different to go for breakfast, we returned to Café Mozart hot and sweaty and resigned that we had managed to stumble upon one of the only decent restaurants in Baku and that we should not have taken its existence for granted. After another breakfast and a couple more hours of internet use we finally got the call at about 10am to get ourselves down to the dock asap as the ferry was leaving…for real this time! Whoo-hoo!
The remainder of the day’s schedule went a bit like this…
1.30pm-3.30pm: We go through the customs procedure of passport checks, baggage scanning and payment of a small bribe to a customs official to allow our bikes through, despite our already having paid for 2 tickets per person in payment for the bikes…gotta love the way things work in this part of the world.
3.30pm-7.00pm: We sit aboard the ferry after having been very rudely welcomed by a lady loudly barking instructions at us regarding our passports and tickets…she is dubbed from this moment onwards as ‘the crazy lady’ and continues her antics for the duration of the trip. We are shown to our cabins which are not anywhere near as bad as we had anticipated given the write up on the ferry in the Lonely Planet guidebook…although we may have been ‘lucky’ to get one of the better ferries, which FINALLY departs at 7pm.
At 9pm the onboard kitchen opens up for meal service. Dinner costs US$2 and is served on a you-will-get-what-you-are-given-and-like-it-and-please-return-the-plate-and-cutlery-when-you-are-done basis…chicken and rice…hard to complain really, especially considering that we were not expecting food service of any kind onboard. So far so good.
My solo attempt to sleep inside the cabin, whilst all my roommates opted for the cooler option of sleeping on the roof deck, started out badly and ended even more badly. Despite the strong wind outside, only a small and intermitted amount of breeze managed to make its way through the cabin porthole window and as a consequence the room was oppressively hot. As I lay there in my underwear, in a lather of sweat my cabin door bursts open and the captain (who had introduced himself earlier as we boarded) and his second mate poke their heads through asking for ‘Paul’…one of our fellow riders who spent the night helping the captain consume a few bottles of vodka!…needless to say I was not impressed by the intrusion on my privacy and I told them to leave in no uncertain terms, although their lack of English and drunken state probably meant they did not get the point. So, after they did it again about 5 minutes later, this time with a torch, I decided that I would be more comfortable and safer up with the others on the roof deck.
And so I took my mat and my scarf (the only ‘sheet’ I had accessible) and headed up to the roof, where I spent the balance of the night getting snippets of sleep whilst battling the cold wind huddled up behind an engine stack as a wind break…the degree of cold was less than the degree of hot inside the cabin, but was not exactly comfortable either.
24-Aug-08: Adrift at sea…
Turkmenistan: Caspian Sea – Travel (Waiting) Day
The Lonely Planet guidebook states that the Caspian Sea crossing can take anywhere between 12 and 30 hours depending on how long the ferry has to wait for a free berth to dock in Turkmenbashi. After a restless night at sea we cruise on and land comes into view by 9am and with it the hope that this nightmare will come to an end sooner rather than later. No such luck. The ferry drops anchor and proceeds to wait for a free berth in Turkmenbashi…and the day continues…
…and continues. As the hours pass, the sun rises higher in the sky and intensifies and we move around the ferry from one shady spot to another in a failing attempt to escape the unbearable heat, which now that we are no longer moving is reflecting off every concrete and steel surface on the vessel, turning the whole machine into a floating oven. By mid afternoon most people had depleted any food and water resources they had brought aboard with them and the kitchen has only offered up lunch, being a repetition of dinner the night before and served in shifts so that we did not eat it until 2pm. I start to develop real empathy for the plight of refugees, particularly those ‘boat people’ that are processed off-shore of Australia.
Most of our group spend most of the afternoon in a particular shady spot on board and so our presence attracts a bit of attention, if it had not already. Our position was directly outside the ‘crazy lady’s’ cabin who spent the afternoon leaning halfway out her porthole window to observe us, grinning with her gold toothed smile and dropping cigarette ash onto us and occasionally making an appearance on deck to hang out new laundry for drying and chastising Paul as she walked by for having caused trouble with the captain the night before.
By 7pm the dreaded news is delivered that we will not be going ashore tonight and that we will spend at least one more night adrift. We start to worry about our food and water supplies but are not too perturbed by the prospect of another night aboard, as we have now all accessed our luggage in the hold and have proper camping equipment sufficient for a comfortable night on the roof deck…and we know that the alternative is to spend the night in the ‘worst hotel in central Asia’ in Turkmenbashi, so none of us are particularly keen to experience that either. After purifying a 5L communal water supply from the on-board tap water and having dinner of chicken and pasta, we set up our beds under the beautiful starry sky and manage to get a reasonable night of sleep.
25-Aug-08: Customs Nightmare
Turkmenistan: Caspian Sea – Turkmenbashi
We awoke at 6.30am to the sound of the anchor being hauled in and all thought this to be a good sign that there may be some truth to the crazy lady’s claim that we would ‘arrive’ before lunchtime. By 8.00am we were docked…by 11am it became clear that this would be a long day and we joked that we could be here all day getting through Customs…little did we know that would be the reality. We spent 3 hours sitting on board the docked ferry waiting for it to be cleared by customs…and a further 5 hours in the baking hot dockyards waiting to simply enter the customs hall. There were in the order of 100 other passengers who all pushed and shunted their way in an attempt to get through customs faster. At one stage we thought there was going to be a riot as air and emotional temperatures rose.
In the first hours the customs guards would not allow us to sit anywhere in the shade as the few shady spots were too close to customs buildings…in the end we ignored instructions and sat in the shade…the risk of arrest the lesser evil to potentially dying of exposure as the temperature was easily 45 degrees in the shade and simply unbearable in the sun. To once again quote the Lonely Planet guidebook “only the insane or deeply unfortunate find themselves in Turkmenistan in the months of July and August”…we deemed all the locals to be certifiably insane and ourselves to be deeply unfortunate!
Miles our chef and official tour leader, after having driven our support van through Iran, has been sitting in Turkmenbashi for 5 days waiting for our pending arrival and thankfully arranged for water to be passed over the customs barrier to us so that we would not die of dehydration. But no food was allowed to pass through to us at any stage. So by 4pm when we were finally allowed to enter the customs hall we were ravenous…but still not allowed any food until we had been processed by customs.
The visa process was as equally backwards as everything seems to have been so far in this process. The immigration officer did the visa paperwork and issued us with an invoice at one booth…at another booth the cashier took our money and issued us with a receipt, which involved filling out 3 receipt books and us signing 11 copies as the carbon paper in the books did not work…we then returned with our receipt to the immigration window where our visa was inserted into our passport. Visa in hand we were allowed to pass with our bags through the security checkpoint and finally through to where Miles was waiting for us on the other side with food.
For those of us at the end of the queue it was a long process…and for the last of us, ie. ME it was a nightmare…my day ended at 6.30pm with a Tuna sandwich and a 4km ride to the ‘worst hotel in central asia’, which despite the threadbare to the point of non-existent carpet (which I wore shoes on at all times), sagging mattress, cold shower and bucket flush toilet, does have air-conditioning and so in our minds surpasses the velodrome hotel in Baku and as such is not the worst on our list.
To re-cap the Travel Schedule of the past few days:
23-Aug-08, 1.30pm-3.30pm: Departure Customs
23-Aug-08, 3.30pm-7.00pm: On Ferry, in dock, Departure Formalities
23/24-Aug-08, 7.00pm-9.00am: Caspian Sea Crossing
24/25-Aug-08, 9.00am-6.30am: Anchored and Waiting
25-Aug-08, 6.30am-8.00am: Docking
25-Aug-08, 8.00am-11.00am: On Ferry, in dock, Arrival Formalities
25-Aug-08, 11.00am-4.00pm: On Shore waiting to enter Customs Hall
25-Aug-08, 4.00pm-6.30pm: Visa & Customs Processing
Total Time Wasted Trying to Get into Turkmenistan: 53 hours!!!
PLUS the 2.5 days we sat waiting for the ferry to depart!
We are now well behind schedule and will spend tomorrow on a bus to Ashgabat to get us back on schedule and back on our bikes…hopefully until we reach Beijing now!!!
26-Aug-08: Last Long Haul
Turkmenistan: Turkmenbashi to Ashgabat
11.5h bus time
The fact that today started with no running water in the hotel surprised no one as our expectations lower with each passing day. We rose to our first ‘breakfast ala Miles’ in over 2 weeks and were pleased to have cereal of any variety back on the menu. As we ate breakfast on the front steps of the hotel we saw a decrepit looking bus which clearly had no air-conditioning parked out on the street and lamented over the painful day we were about to endure. 10 minutes later and much to our relief a modern air-conditioned coach pulls up out the front of our hotel and things begin to not look so bad after all.
We are now all accustomed to amusing ourselves for long haul transportation journey’s and get on with the business of enduring the day long bus ride ahead of us. As we cross through the country I for one am pleased that of all places that this is the one we are skipping ride time in…the place is completely desolate…flat, hot, barren and desolate desert…in the space of 500km we only passed through one town and by a handful of roadside cafes, one of which we stopped at for lunch and in the absence of anything else had the usual chicken ‘shysh’ kebab. The temperature rose to easily in the mid to high 40’s and the thought of the upcoming prospect of riding in such conditions is nauseating…and camping in them even more so.
On our right was the Balkan mountain range, on the other side of which lies Iran. To our left for as far as the eye could see was nothing…to have seen a windswept tumble of hay or dust tornado would have been fitting. We did pass by quite a few Arabian camels grazing on what little burnt grasses covered the ground but other than that the signs of vegetation or habitation of any kind were nonexistent.
Since our entry into Turkmenistan we have been constantly under the watchful eye of police…they are to track us for our entire time here to ensure we don’t do anything we are not supposed to do. Accordingly we had a police escort the entire way from Turkmenbashi to Ashgabat with the lead car changing over at each police checkpoint at the border of each province we passed through. The police rule in this country is oppressive…and it is prohibited to take photos in the presence of a police officer without first asking permission or risk having your camera confiscated and being fined. There is an 11pm curfew, after which if found on the streets you will be asked to explain yourself and if in the company of a woman she will be assumed to be a prostitute.
As we drive within the vicinity of the capital the environment starts to change dramatically. Trees start to appear lining the highway and the road surface, which had been bumpy the whole way, becomes smooth tarmac. We pass by extravagantly decorated mosques and other public monuments and are once again aghast at how such polarisation can exist within one country. From the worst hotel in central asia we are treated for the next 2 nights to what must be one of the best. With grand staircases, chandeliers, lifts and porters we see this as the turning point in the journey…beyond which things can only go down in quality. Hotel Nessa in Ashgabat has all the presence of a 5 star hotel for the price of a 2 star one…the rate is somehow subsidised by the government…and our explanation is to ensure all foreigners stay here and can therefore be easily tracked. On checking in to the hotel we had to undergo registration of our presence in the country, which involved handing over our passports and 2 passport photos. Did I mention the police rule is oppressive? After settling in to our room we decided to go to a walk down town to find something to eat…
We walked to the corner intersection outside the hotel and went to cross the road which had traffic lights like any other, but the pedestrian crossing signals were not working and there was a police officer in the centre of the intersection directing traffic to move in every which way despite what the signals were saying. So we stood for a few minutes deciding upon the safest way to cross, after which we were approached by a well dressed man (an officer of some kind perhaps) and told that we could not stand there, ie. loiter, and told to cross, so we did. About 200m beyond the intersection we walked past a military soldier and 10m beyond him a man who looked like a security guard, who both tried to direct us from our intended path and up a driveway into the forecourt of a nearby building…at which point we decided walking anywhere after dark all too hard and turned around and hightailed it back to the hotel. Where as it turns out is the best Italian restaurant in town and so we indulged in some ‘normal’ food and went to bed, leaving the task of sightseeing for the daylight hours!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Implications of War in Georgia
11-Aug-08 to 16-Aug-08: War Evasion Mission
Turkey/Azerbaijan: Kars to Ankara to Istanbul to Baku to Saki
26.5h bus time, 4h flight time, 7h airport lounge time!
Well, where to start…the past week has been a whole different kind of adventure and a lesson in what happens when a war breaks out in a country you are about to enter on tour!
11-08-08: Kars – Rest Day: The whole purpose for us being in Kars is due to it being a larger town with greater facilities required to secure alternative transportation arrangements, to transport us and all our luggage around Georgia and avoid being caught in the war crossfire. Accordingly, this morning we packed our bikes into one of our support vans for their journey to Ankara and we all purchased our flights from Ankara, Turkey to Baku, Azerbaijan.
The afternoon in Kars was spent on an excursion to the ruins of the ancient city of Ani, which was founded in the bronze age and at some point in history used to be the capital of Armenia…obviously the Turks won it back at some point because it is now located about 1km inside the Turkish border. It was a good way to kill an afternoon but they were not exaggerating when they said they were ‘ruins’…there wasn’t a great deal left and what was left could not hold my attention over and above my desire to escape the baking afternoon heat, so I took a quick wander about and spent the rest of our time there sitting in the shade!
12-08-08: Kars to Ankara, 18.5h bus time!: We were on the move again at 6am this morning…or at least that was the plan…our charter bus was late to arrive and then we spent a good half hour shuffling 20 people, 4 bikes and 40 (800kg of) bags around the luggage holds and seats in a 30 seat bus so that the rear axle was not under too much strain and we all had somewhere to sit! We finally found the right balance which resulted in a tangle of bikes and wheels in the luggage hold and the majority of bags taking up the last 4 rows of seating from floor to ceiling on the bus!
And then the fun started…18.5 hours on a bus…there was no doubt in my mind by the end of the ride about why I am so vehemently opposed to bus touring! We spent the whole day and half of the night squirming about on bus seats trying to find a comfortable position. Every 3 hours or so we stopped at a service station to visit the bathroom and pick up more chips, chocolate and jube lollies to fuel all the exercise we were getting . We finally arrived into Ankara at about 1.30am in the morning and after driving around lost down narrow backstreets we piled out and checked into the Best Western Hotel and went straight to bed.
13-08-08: Ankara – Rest Day: After a well deserved sleep in, time today quickly evaporated as we visited a couple of bike shops and wandered the shopping district in the hope of finding new and mould free water bottles…in the end I settled for a clean 750ml bottle rather than the 1 litre I was hoping to find. In the evening we met with Henry, the company founder, who had come to join us until we got back on track and laid out what he knew of our upcoming plans.
14-08-08: Ankara – Rest Day: After another meeting to advise us of specifics regarding airport transfers for tomorrow, we spent some time wandering through the dynamic and lively food markets in the ‘old town’ and went to see the latest Batman movie. The evening was spent boxing up bicycles in preparation for our flight to Azerbaijan.
15-08-08 to 16-08-08: Ankara to Baku to Saki 4h flight time, 7h airport lounge time, 8h bus time: Friday morning was whiled away just making to most of a 1pm checkout at the hotel and getting ready for our departure to the airport. Despite all holding a booking for the same flight we decided to break up our arrival to the airport into 3 timeslots in an attempt to get an earlier flight so that all our luggage and bikes had a greater chance of making the transition between planes in Istanbul…the gamble paid off, with 14 of us managing to check on to a 7pm flight and 6 catching the originally scheduled 9pm flight into Istanbul.
Check-in was an entertaining chaos of 6 people, 6 bikes, 12 bags and 1 English speaking Turkish Airlines check-in staff member, and could only have benefitted from us arriving in groups of 6 rather than all at once! In the end and despite an alternative baggage policy, contradicting prior advice from the airline and failed attempts to charge some and not others, we all ended up paying no excess for our baggage and a fixed 30 Euro charge for each of our bikes.
After sitting around in 2 airports and catching 2 flights all night long, we finally arrived into Baku, Azerbaijan at about 6am, sleep deprived and starving. We were then given about an hour to rearrange our bags in the carpark of a hotel so that we had one bag to last us 3 days and another to leave at the hotel to which we will return to in a few days. After repacking we loaded all our bikes and 1 bag each onto another bus…a 50 seater this time…and spent another 8 hours driving west, towards the border of Georgia and Azerbaijan to resume our cycling itinerary in the ancient town of Saki.
From the moment we entered the airport terminal it was very clear that somewhere between Kars in Turkey and Baku in Azerbaijan we crossed into a less civilized world. Granted it is still has elements of a big city, but what we have seen of Baku has much more of a 3rd world feel than anything we have seen so far…and it is dirty…there is rubbish carelessly strewn everywhere and the air is so full of dust that the simple act of breathing is hampered by a dry, scratching sensation at the back of your throat.
As we drove west through Azerbaijan the lower standard of living was very obvious. The roads are in bad repair, to the point where it took the bus 8 hours to travel just over 300km and most small towns we passed through felt like not much more than shanty towns, with the ancient town of Saki being an exception. Saki is located at the foothills of the Caucasus mountain ranges and is a well preserved ‘old town’ which is a popular destination for tourism, particularly that of other Azerbaijanis on their summer holidays at this time of year. On arrival into Saki we sat about for about 1.5 hours (in a beautiful old restored building which we would have stayed at if the booking had been confirmed) waiting for further instruction as to where we would be staying.
At about 5pm we were finally instructed to unload the bus and pack our bikes and bags into a smaller truck as we were going to walk to a nearby homestay at the top of a steep cobblestone street which the bus would not make it up. We were accommodated over a number of rooms and over a variety of beds, lounges, cots, etc. and had access a cold shower downstairs, a few hideously smelling squat toilets and a hot shower down the street and around the corner in the basement of the ‘sister’s’ house where the giggling little children turned off the light while you were in the shower! Overall better than camping and a place to assemble bikes and get some much needed sleep after a long haul of travelling, but no Sheridan hotel…
17-Aug-08: On the Road Again
Azerbaijan: Saki (pron. Shecki) to Gabala
91km, 4h 45min ride time
Having driven the majority of today’s route on our bus trip west, we departed this morning pleased to be on our bikes rather than another bus and with high hopes for a mostly downhill run…unfortunately they turned out to be false hopes built on an incorrect perception of the lay of the land. Despite a couple of good downhill runs totaling about 16km, the majority of the day was spent gradually climbing so that by the end we had done a total ascent of 750m and finished at an elevation of 2000m, higher than where we started! Comparatively, the day should have been quite an easy one, but combine temperatures in the 40’s with general weakness resulting from a couple of days of battling a stomach bug and it was quite hard enough…that it ended 25km shorter than advised was a very welcome error of calculation.
The people in Azerbaijan appear just as friendly as those in Turkey and we have been excitedly honked and waved at by most cars passing us today and the children also run out to say ‘hello’. Differences noted are that the country is not so visibly dominated by the Muslim religion, the presence of English is noticeably less and that intrigue that we are regarded with is more likened to that of an alien than that of a slightly different and interesting cycle tourist.
We are camping under shady trees and adjacent to a hotel/restaurant, 2 rooms of which provide us with showers and toilets. The challenge for TDA staff at present is to find a source of food for us, as our chef Miles is currently driving our primary support vehicle (equipped with kitchen and water storage) about 2000kms from Kars in Turkey to Turkmenistan via Iran and will rejoin us in a few days on the other side of our Caspian Sea crossing. So, we are currently being fed by restaurants near to where we are staying…so the food has been pretty ordinary and on the whole extremely insufficient…I for one can’t wait to have Miles back in our midst!
18-Aug-08: Second Impressions
Azerbaijan: Gabala to Shemkha
95km, 5h 14min ride time
Writing these entries is quite a time consuming task and one which is becoming increasingly difficult as our access to power and internet becomes more infrequent…as does our spare time as the cycling days stretch out late into the afternoon. As we are still without Miles our chef, our days have been starting later, dictated by the earliest time at which the hotel is prepared to serve breakfast…and so we tend to not start riding until at least 8am which means we are not arriving at our destination until 3-4pm, leaving little time to clean up and rest up let alone complete all the other ‘necessary’ tasks. But I hope that my persistence will pay off in the end by providing a good record of my travels.
And further to that thought is my acknowledgement of how the time that has passed between my experiences and the time at which I get the opportunity to recount them effects my perception. My record on events recalled with the benefit of a ‘cooling off’ period tend to differ markedly from those that I report whilst the emotion is still fresh…I am yet to conclude which scenario provides for more enthralling reading but I am nervous that a negative state of mind can cloud my recall of positive experiences…on that note I will try and recall the next few days with a balanced view…I will try…
Today started with departing our homestay accommodation with the knowledge and mindset that we were in for a day of climbing. In trying to recall the outstanding details of the day I am conscious that I have made little mention lately of the environment, vegetation wise, that we are riding through...on giving it some thought this is perhaps because it has had little impact on me comparatively speaking. We have seen some spectacular scenery over the past couple of months and it seems that the more prominent issues now are the increasing heat and the declining standard of living.
However, as tends to always be the case, climbing does result in great vantage points and today was no different. We are riding through reasonably desolate landscapes scattered with shanty like built environments. ‘Markets’ which are our only corner store equivalent and source of water and snacks are becoming few and far between and there are no longer the proliferation of roadside spring water sources that became life savers on a few occasions in Turkey.
It is common to ride down a straight stretch of road and pass numerous young boys and old men every 100m…they see you coming and race out from under a shady tree to thrust a plastic bag full of hazelnuts almost in your path in the hope that you will buy their half day’s work for the equivalent of $1…their fingers are stained a brownish-green from the task of removing the soft outer coating from the hazelnut to reveal the shelled nut inside.
Shade is also becoming more difficult to find and so we are getting a taste of the desert landscapes to come as we make our way further east. The sun is baking hot and being out in it is like being under a sandwich grill…the temperatures in the sun have hit 50 degrees! The hardest part of being in temperatures of this extreme is that there is just no respite in any respect…even the water in our drink bottles heats up to temperatures warmer than most our showers in the space of 5 minutes. Today’s route included a number of climbs, the hardest two being at the end of the day and in the peak of the heat. The final climb took us up 500m over only 5km…but I think the worst part of it was seeing it in the distance ahead of us as we rode over the peak of the penultimate climb!
Our destination for the day was a hotel/restaurant that we had stopped at on our way west in the bus…our first impression was that it was a filthy dirty roadhouse with chickens running about randomly everywhere and no one noticed the hotel. Impression on our second visit was that we were a bit harsh the first time around…we seem to have gotten over our initial shock of arriving in Azerbaijan. There were still chickens running around everywhere, we only had one shower between 20 and the squat toilets still had a smell in them ‘that will outlast religion’ (source: ‘Kenny’ the movie), but by comparison even to the homestay of the previous night, the place was not all too bad. An insight that proves how prior experience can influence perception!
Another insight gained today was how an act of ill will by just one person can undo the good will built up by the acts of a dozen others. Overall, in Azerbaijan we have had kindness displayed towards us…not as overwhelming as that of Turkey, but kindness even blended with intrigue and a degree of cautiousness is still kindness. Unfortunately my opinion was marred by two acts of ill will today…the first being a car load of hoons thinking it was funning to drive their car directly towards me whilst I was climbing my way up a steep incline and unable to move quickly…the second being a young guy in the back of a moving truck hurling a handful of gravel at us as we rode by! I remind myself of similar incidents that happen back home and am trying to not let the minority ruin my perception of the majority…
19-Aug-08: Why?
Azerbaijan: Shemakha to Baku
119km, 6h 40min ride time
Today was a day that left me asking myself and others ‘why would anybody in their right mind choose to live in this country!?’…by the end of our riding day I was convinced that Azerbaijan had little to recommend it...
Our route took us through the most desert like country we have seen so far…hot, dry, dusty and barren. The roads were in terrible condition, much of which was ‘under reconstruction’ to some degree or another, which resulted in air thick with dust for kilometers on end. Temperatures soared very quickly to 50 degrees in the sun…combine this with a seemingly continuous upwards gradient and we knew we were in for a long day. We had mistakenly assumed that as we were starting out at an elevation of about 1700m and heading towards the Caspian Sea that we would be heading downhill for the majority of the day…by the end of the day it became apparent that the Caspian Sea, being an inland water body, is not at sea level and whilst we did ultimately loose 500m of elevation, we climbed over 1000m over the course of the day!
20 kilometers out of Baku we all grouped together and rode in a long and tedious convoy into town in an attempt to be ‘safer’…on a road with no real demarcations, only one lane in each direction and seemingly no road rules I am not sure how successful the convoy was at minimising the risk! As we blocked an entire lane we had cars controlled by aggravated drivers pushing and shunting to get through in any way they could. But we made it finally and I for one was completely exhausted by the time we did! The heat is really starting to take its toll and on top of battling a stomach virus for the past few days I am now preaching my anticipation of colder weather…something very out of character for someone who also does not cope well in cold weather either!
We are staying in a dump of a hotel in the outer slum-like suburbs of Baku, next to the outdoor cycling velodrome. The hotel has no airconditioning, no toilet paper, no towels, no curtains, sheets which are too small for the bed, cigarette butts between the mattress and the wall, suspicious looking brown substance on the toilet seat…need I go on...but apparently it is in an easy to get to location. Without hesitation at least half a dozen people headed off to find alternative accommodation in the centre of town…had I not been completely shattered I would have done the same. But tiredness won out and I braved one night in the hotel…but only one…
20-Aug-08: Renewed Opinion
Azerbaijan: Baku – Rest Day
After a night of trying to sleep in a lather of sweat, minimised only by the efforts of one pedestal fan which was missing its front safety cage and sounded as though it was about to explode, I had already vowed that I was not staying another night in the velodrome hotel. So, the discovery that we also had no power and no water on waking up did not dissuade me one bit!
Our first task to attend to this morning in our un-showered state was to meet with Henry et al for the latest round of jumping through the Chinese Visa hoops…the final verdict is to be advised but is not far off…to actually get a visa issued after all the obstacles that have been put forward will be a miracle.
After we arranged the necessary task of laundry we headed off into the Baku town centre to find breakfast, a pharmacy and the DHL office to collect a ‘care package’ sent to Dan from home. The first two tasks were relatively painless…the latter was a shambles of misdirection complicated further by a very bad city map and made unbearable by the baking heat. After too much walking in every direction we were finally rescued by a local who spoke perfect English and who walked past us trying to ask a Taxi driver for directions and could see we were in distress. The local made a few phonecalls for us and put us into a taxi with precise direction and 10 minutes and 5 Manat (=$6) later we finally found the courier office…halleluiah! The saving grace for my having spent valuable rest time taking part in the expedition was that the DHL office was airconditioned…and that later in the evening (ie. as I write this) I have opted out of the laundry collection expedition in lieu…so the karma evened itself out eventually.
After a morning of running about we returned to the hotel from hell to pack an overnight bag to take with us on our return mission to our alternative hotel for the evening…35 Manat each (=$45) bought us comfortable and clean beds, airconditioning, cable tv, a shower screen, a kitchenette, fitted sheets, etc etc…and a location right in the centre of the ‘old town’ which is a beautiful area and so far has saved Azerbaijan from my earlier opinion of it having nothing to recommend it. Contrary to its title which is in reference to the age of the buildings, the old town area is very modern (complete with Armani store) and a world away from the slums only 4 metro stops, and 11 Manat cents, away…
And so I am back up to date with our current position…we are to spend much of the next 48 hours enduring the process that is the ferry crossing from Baku, Azerbaijan to Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea…and no doubt will have some stories to tell from the experience.
21-Aug-08: Limbo Land
Azerbaijan: Baku – Travel Day
What a day…it started with us rising bright and early to ensure we left plenty of time to transfer between our old town hotel back to the velodrome hotel to make our 8am bag loading deadline and our 9am convoy ride to the ferry terminal…lies, all lies. We arrived back at the hotel in plenty of time and proceeded to sit around waiting for the following 4 hours…whispers were that one minute we were riding to the terminal, the next we weren’t but none of the staff really knew what was going on either!....eventually our local support arrived with a 50 seater bus into which we were expected to pack our bikes and bags and us for the 8km downhill journey to the ferry terminal. We all thought it ludicrous that we had waited about all morning and were now being told that the traffic was too bad to ride through…there was not a stitch of traffic on the roads at 8am when we were all sitting about!
We were told to change because we weren’t riding…then as we loaded the bus it became obvious that not all bikes and bags were going to fit and the bikes were having to remove wheels and seats to do so anyway…what a palaver over a 8km ride! In the end one person decided they had had enough of the circus and were going to ride anyway, many others joined him and the rest of us would have loved to ride but now did not have the choice as our cycle shoes and bikes were buried on the bus. So half the group rode in a convoy as originally planned and the rest of us sat on the bus…and we all arrived at the same time. We are told the ride was simple and still no one can understand why it would be deemed unsafe for us to do as it was no worse than many situations we have encountered before. Not happy Jan!
So after 4 hours of sitting about at the hotel waiting to leave we finally arrived at the ferry terminal at 11am and proceeded to sit about in the dusty unwelcoming ferry port carpark and occasionally escape to surrounding restaurants and supermarkets fuelling up and buying supplies whilst waiting for the ferry to leave. After trying to escape the baking heat all day and now tired, dirty, sun burnt and irritated it became obvious to many of us that there was not even a hint that the ferry was going to leave any time soon…and it became exasperatingly frustrating to see that no effort was being made to contact our local support and find out what was going on. Finally at about 8pm our local support showed up and it became obvious that it had been confirmed that the ferry was not going to leave today and further investigation revealed that it had not left for the past 3 days…all the cargo that it ships has been held up due to the war in Georgia and they ferry does not leave until it is full.
We then proceeded to sit about for another hour with little more information other than the obvious fact that the ferry was not going anywhere. TDA staff were off trying to make arrangements for accommodation and luggage storage etc…which as it turns out were issues both solved by members among the group anyway and would have been solved much faster had we been consulted in the process! A few very kindly volunteered to camp at the ferry stop and guard our luggage and bikes whilst the rest of us caught a taxi back to the hotel in the old town which TDA had booked us into…knowing full well that they would have had a revolt on their hands had they attempted to send us back to the velodrome hotel.
Back at the hotel there was some confusion as to how many people they could accommodate but after some shuffling of foldaway beds and redirection of some people to a partner hotel everyone could finally get to bed at about 11pm. Tomorrow holds promise of another day of waiting about for the ferry to potentially leave, failing which we will resort to plan B which is to abandon the ferry crossing and try and fly from Baku to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan…meaning we will skip a further 4 riding days…this war in Georgia has had knock on effects that no one had anticipated!
Chinese Visa Update
Some good news in all the drama that has been unfolding over the past couple of weeks is that we managed to get a Chinese Visa…of sorts. We are told that we have been issued with a group visa…which is good to get us in at the same time, but technically we are all supposed to leave at the same time which could prove a problem. But we figure getting out has got to be a smaller hurdle than getting in so we will deal with it once we are in. The unsettling part is that we have nothing to show for our US$100…no indication in our passports whatsoever that we have a visa, just some alleged document floating about that none of us have seen or have a great deal of faith in…but we will see.
Turkey/Azerbaijan: Kars to Ankara to Istanbul to Baku to Saki
26.5h bus time, 4h flight time, 7h airport lounge time!
Well, where to start…the past week has been a whole different kind of adventure and a lesson in what happens when a war breaks out in a country you are about to enter on tour!
11-08-08: Kars – Rest Day: The whole purpose for us being in Kars is due to it being a larger town with greater facilities required to secure alternative transportation arrangements, to transport us and all our luggage around Georgia and avoid being caught in the war crossfire. Accordingly, this morning we packed our bikes into one of our support vans for their journey to Ankara and we all purchased our flights from Ankara, Turkey to Baku, Azerbaijan.
The afternoon in Kars was spent on an excursion to the ruins of the ancient city of Ani, which was founded in the bronze age and at some point in history used to be the capital of Armenia…obviously the Turks won it back at some point because it is now located about 1km inside the Turkish border. It was a good way to kill an afternoon but they were not exaggerating when they said they were ‘ruins’…there wasn’t a great deal left and what was left could not hold my attention over and above my desire to escape the baking afternoon heat, so I took a quick wander about and spent the rest of our time there sitting in the shade!
12-08-08: Kars to Ankara, 18.5h bus time!: We were on the move again at 6am this morning…or at least that was the plan…our charter bus was late to arrive and then we spent a good half hour shuffling 20 people, 4 bikes and 40 (800kg of) bags around the luggage holds and seats in a 30 seat bus so that the rear axle was not under too much strain and we all had somewhere to sit! We finally found the right balance which resulted in a tangle of bikes and wheels in the luggage hold and the majority of bags taking up the last 4 rows of seating from floor to ceiling on the bus!
And then the fun started…18.5 hours on a bus…there was no doubt in my mind by the end of the ride about why I am so vehemently opposed to bus touring! We spent the whole day and half of the night squirming about on bus seats trying to find a comfortable position. Every 3 hours or so we stopped at a service station to visit the bathroom and pick up more chips, chocolate and jube lollies to fuel all the exercise we were getting . We finally arrived into Ankara at about 1.30am in the morning and after driving around lost down narrow backstreets we piled out and checked into the Best Western Hotel and went straight to bed.
13-08-08: Ankara – Rest Day: After a well deserved sleep in, time today quickly evaporated as we visited a couple of bike shops and wandered the shopping district in the hope of finding new and mould free water bottles…in the end I settled for a clean 750ml bottle rather than the 1 litre I was hoping to find. In the evening we met with Henry, the company founder, who had come to join us until we got back on track and laid out what he knew of our upcoming plans.
14-08-08: Ankara – Rest Day: After another meeting to advise us of specifics regarding airport transfers for tomorrow, we spent some time wandering through the dynamic and lively food markets in the ‘old town’ and went to see the latest Batman movie. The evening was spent boxing up bicycles in preparation for our flight to Azerbaijan.
15-08-08 to 16-08-08: Ankara to Baku to Saki 4h flight time, 7h airport lounge time, 8h bus time: Friday morning was whiled away just making to most of a 1pm checkout at the hotel and getting ready for our departure to the airport. Despite all holding a booking for the same flight we decided to break up our arrival to the airport into 3 timeslots in an attempt to get an earlier flight so that all our luggage and bikes had a greater chance of making the transition between planes in Istanbul…the gamble paid off, with 14 of us managing to check on to a 7pm flight and 6 catching the originally scheduled 9pm flight into Istanbul.
Check-in was an entertaining chaos of 6 people, 6 bikes, 12 bags and 1 English speaking Turkish Airlines check-in staff member, and could only have benefitted from us arriving in groups of 6 rather than all at once! In the end and despite an alternative baggage policy, contradicting prior advice from the airline and failed attempts to charge some and not others, we all ended up paying no excess for our baggage and a fixed 30 Euro charge for each of our bikes.
After sitting around in 2 airports and catching 2 flights all night long, we finally arrived into Baku, Azerbaijan at about 6am, sleep deprived and starving. We were then given about an hour to rearrange our bags in the carpark of a hotel so that we had one bag to last us 3 days and another to leave at the hotel to which we will return to in a few days. After repacking we loaded all our bikes and 1 bag each onto another bus…a 50 seater this time…and spent another 8 hours driving west, towards the border of Georgia and Azerbaijan to resume our cycling itinerary in the ancient town of Saki.
From the moment we entered the airport terminal it was very clear that somewhere between Kars in Turkey and Baku in Azerbaijan we crossed into a less civilized world. Granted it is still has elements of a big city, but what we have seen of Baku has much more of a 3rd world feel than anything we have seen so far…and it is dirty…there is rubbish carelessly strewn everywhere and the air is so full of dust that the simple act of breathing is hampered by a dry, scratching sensation at the back of your throat.
As we drove west through Azerbaijan the lower standard of living was very obvious. The roads are in bad repair, to the point where it took the bus 8 hours to travel just over 300km and most small towns we passed through felt like not much more than shanty towns, with the ancient town of Saki being an exception. Saki is located at the foothills of the Caucasus mountain ranges and is a well preserved ‘old town’ which is a popular destination for tourism, particularly that of other Azerbaijanis on their summer holidays at this time of year. On arrival into Saki we sat about for about 1.5 hours (in a beautiful old restored building which we would have stayed at if the booking had been confirmed) waiting for further instruction as to where we would be staying.
At about 5pm we were finally instructed to unload the bus and pack our bikes and bags into a smaller truck as we were going to walk to a nearby homestay at the top of a steep cobblestone street which the bus would not make it up. We were accommodated over a number of rooms and over a variety of beds, lounges, cots, etc. and had access a cold shower downstairs, a few hideously smelling squat toilets and a hot shower down the street and around the corner in the basement of the ‘sister’s’ house where the giggling little children turned off the light while you were in the shower! Overall better than camping and a place to assemble bikes and get some much needed sleep after a long haul of travelling, but no Sheridan hotel…
17-Aug-08: On the Road Again
Azerbaijan: Saki (pron. Shecki) to Gabala
91km, 4h 45min ride time
Having driven the majority of today’s route on our bus trip west, we departed this morning pleased to be on our bikes rather than another bus and with high hopes for a mostly downhill run…unfortunately they turned out to be false hopes built on an incorrect perception of the lay of the land. Despite a couple of good downhill runs totaling about 16km, the majority of the day was spent gradually climbing so that by the end we had done a total ascent of 750m and finished at an elevation of 2000m, higher than where we started! Comparatively, the day should have been quite an easy one, but combine temperatures in the 40’s with general weakness resulting from a couple of days of battling a stomach bug and it was quite hard enough…that it ended 25km shorter than advised was a very welcome error of calculation.
The people in Azerbaijan appear just as friendly as those in Turkey and we have been excitedly honked and waved at by most cars passing us today and the children also run out to say ‘hello’. Differences noted are that the country is not so visibly dominated by the Muslim religion, the presence of English is noticeably less and that intrigue that we are regarded with is more likened to that of an alien than that of a slightly different and interesting cycle tourist.
We are camping under shady trees and adjacent to a hotel/restaurant, 2 rooms of which provide us with showers and toilets. The challenge for TDA staff at present is to find a source of food for us, as our chef Miles is currently driving our primary support vehicle (equipped with kitchen and water storage) about 2000kms from Kars in Turkey to Turkmenistan via Iran and will rejoin us in a few days on the other side of our Caspian Sea crossing. So, we are currently being fed by restaurants near to where we are staying…so the food has been pretty ordinary and on the whole extremely insufficient…I for one can’t wait to have Miles back in our midst!
18-Aug-08: Second Impressions
Azerbaijan: Gabala to Shemkha
95km, 5h 14min ride time
Writing these entries is quite a time consuming task and one which is becoming increasingly difficult as our access to power and internet becomes more infrequent…as does our spare time as the cycling days stretch out late into the afternoon. As we are still without Miles our chef, our days have been starting later, dictated by the earliest time at which the hotel is prepared to serve breakfast…and so we tend to not start riding until at least 8am which means we are not arriving at our destination until 3-4pm, leaving little time to clean up and rest up let alone complete all the other ‘necessary’ tasks. But I hope that my persistence will pay off in the end by providing a good record of my travels.
And further to that thought is my acknowledgement of how the time that has passed between my experiences and the time at which I get the opportunity to recount them effects my perception. My record on events recalled with the benefit of a ‘cooling off’ period tend to differ markedly from those that I report whilst the emotion is still fresh…I am yet to conclude which scenario provides for more enthralling reading but I am nervous that a negative state of mind can cloud my recall of positive experiences…on that note I will try and recall the next few days with a balanced view…I will try…
Today started with departing our homestay accommodation with the knowledge and mindset that we were in for a day of climbing. In trying to recall the outstanding details of the day I am conscious that I have made little mention lately of the environment, vegetation wise, that we are riding through...on giving it some thought this is perhaps because it has had little impact on me comparatively speaking. We have seen some spectacular scenery over the past couple of months and it seems that the more prominent issues now are the increasing heat and the declining standard of living.
However, as tends to always be the case, climbing does result in great vantage points and today was no different. We are riding through reasonably desolate landscapes scattered with shanty like built environments. ‘Markets’ which are our only corner store equivalent and source of water and snacks are becoming few and far between and there are no longer the proliferation of roadside spring water sources that became life savers on a few occasions in Turkey.
It is common to ride down a straight stretch of road and pass numerous young boys and old men every 100m…they see you coming and race out from under a shady tree to thrust a plastic bag full of hazelnuts almost in your path in the hope that you will buy their half day’s work for the equivalent of $1…their fingers are stained a brownish-green from the task of removing the soft outer coating from the hazelnut to reveal the shelled nut inside.
Shade is also becoming more difficult to find and so we are getting a taste of the desert landscapes to come as we make our way further east. The sun is baking hot and being out in it is like being under a sandwich grill…the temperatures in the sun have hit 50 degrees! The hardest part of being in temperatures of this extreme is that there is just no respite in any respect…even the water in our drink bottles heats up to temperatures warmer than most our showers in the space of 5 minutes. Today’s route included a number of climbs, the hardest two being at the end of the day and in the peak of the heat. The final climb took us up 500m over only 5km…but I think the worst part of it was seeing it in the distance ahead of us as we rode over the peak of the penultimate climb!
Our destination for the day was a hotel/restaurant that we had stopped at on our way west in the bus…our first impression was that it was a filthy dirty roadhouse with chickens running about randomly everywhere and no one noticed the hotel. Impression on our second visit was that we were a bit harsh the first time around…we seem to have gotten over our initial shock of arriving in Azerbaijan. There were still chickens running around everywhere, we only had one shower between 20 and the squat toilets still had a smell in them ‘that will outlast religion’ (source: ‘Kenny’ the movie), but by comparison even to the homestay of the previous night, the place was not all too bad. An insight that proves how prior experience can influence perception!
Another insight gained today was how an act of ill will by just one person can undo the good will built up by the acts of a dozen others. Overall, in Azerbaijan we have had kindness displayed towards us…not as overwhelming as that of Turkey, but kindness even blended with intrigue and a degree of cautiousness is still kindness. Unfortunately my opinion was marred by two acts of ill will today…the first being a car load of hoons thinking it was funning to drive their car directly towards me whilst I was climbing my way up a steep incline and unable to move quickly…the second being a young guy in the back of a moving truck hurling a handful of gravel at us as we rode by! I remind myself of similar incidents that happen back home and am trying to not let the minority ruin my perception of the majority…
19-Aug-08: Why?
Azerbaijan: Shemakha to Baku
119km, 6h 40min ride time
Today was a day that left me asking myself and others ‘why would anybody in their right mind choose to live in this country!?’…by the end of our riding day I was convinced that Azerbaijan had little to recommend it...
Our route took us through the most desert like country we have seen so far…hot, dry, dusty and barren. The roads were in terrible condition, much of which was ‘under reconstruction’ to some degree or another, which resulted in air thick with dust for kilometers on end. Temperatures soared very quickly to 50 degrees in the sun…combine this with a seemingly continuous upwards gradient and we knew we were in for a long day. We had mistakenly assumed that as we were starting out at an elevation of about 1700m and heading towards the Caspian Sea that we would be heading downhill for the majority of the day…by the end of the day it became apparent that the Caspian Sea, being an inland water body, is not at sea level and whilst we did ultimately loose 500m of elevation, we climbed over 1000m over the course of the day!
20 kilometers out of Baku we all grouped together and rode in a long and tedious convoy into town in an attempt to be ‘safer’…on a road with no real demarcations, only one lane in each direction and seemingly no road rules I am not sure how successful the convoy was at minimising the risk! As we blocked an entire lane we had cars controlled by aggravated drivers pushing and shunting to get through in any way they could. But we made it finally and I for one was completely exhausted by the time we did! The heat is really starting to take its toll and on top of battling a stomach virus for the past few days I am now preaching my anticipation of colder weather…something very out of character for someone who also does not cope well in cold weather either!
We are staying in a dump of a hotel in the outer slum-like suburbs of Baku, next to the outdoor cycling velodrome. The hotel has no airconditioning, no toilet paper, no towels, no curtains, sheets which are too small for the bed, cigarette butts between the mattress and the wall, suspicious looking brown substance on the toilet seat…need I go on...but apparently it is in an easy to get to location. Without hesitation at least half a dozen people headed off to find alternative accommodation in the centre of town…had I not been completely shattered I would have done the same. But tiredness won out and I braved one night in the hotel…but only one…
20-Aug-08: Renewed Opinion
Azerbaijan: Baku – Rest Day
After a night of trying to sleep in a lather of sweat, minimised only by the efforts of one pedestal fan which was missing its front safety cage and sounded as though it was about to explode, I had already vowed that I was not staying another night in the velodrome hotel. So, the discovery that we also had no power and no water on waking up did not dissuade me one bit!
Our first task to attend to this morning in our un-showered state was to meet with Henry et al for the latest round of jumping through the Chinese Visa hoops…the final verdict is to be advised but is not far off…to actually get a visa issued after all the obstacles that have been put forward will be a miracle.
After we arranged the necessary task of laundry we headed off into the Baku town centre to find breakfast, a pharmacy and the DHL office to collect a ‘care package’ sent to Dan from home. The first two tasks were relatively painless…the latter was a shambles of misdirection complicated further by a very bad city map and made unbearable by the baking heat. After too much walking in every direction we were finally rescued by a local who spoke perfect English and who walked past us trying to ask a Taxi driver for directions and could see we were in distress. The local made a few phonecalls for us and put us into a taxi with precise direction and 10 minutes and 5 Manat (=$6) later we finally found the courier office…halleluiah! The saving grace for my having spent valuable rest time taking part in the expedition was that the DHL office was airconditioned…and that later in the evening (ie. as I write this) I have opted out of the laundry collection expedition in lieu…so the karma evened itself out eventually.
After a morning of running about we returned to the hotel from hell to pack an overnight bag to take with us on our return mission to our alternative hotel for the evening…35 Manat each (=$45) bought us comfortable and clean beds, airconditioning, cable tv, a shower screen, a kitchenette, fitted sheets, etc etc…and a location right in the centre of the ‘old town’ which is a beautiful area and so far has saved Azerbaijan from my earlier opinion of it having nothing to recommend it. Contrary to its title which is in reference to the age of the buildings, the old town area is very modern (complete with Armani store) and a world away from the slums only 4 metro stops, and 11 Manat cents, away…
And so I am back up to date with our current position…we are to spend much of the next 48 hours enduring the process that is the ferry crossing from Baku, Azerbaijan to Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea…and no doubt will have some stories to tell from the experience.
21-Aug-08: Limbo Land
Azerbaijan: Baku – Travel Day
What a day…it started with us rising bright and early to ensure we left plenty of time to transfer between our old town hotel back to the velodrome hotel to make our 8am bag loading deadline and our 9am convoy ride to the ferry terminal…lies, all lies. We arrived back at the hotel in plenty of time and proceeded to sit around waiting for the following 4 hours…whispers were that one minute we were riding to the terminal, the next we weren’t but none of the staff really knew what was going on either!....eventually our local support arrived with a 50 seater bus into which we were expected to pack our bikes and bags and us for the 8km downhill journey to the ferry terminal. We all thought it ludicrous that we had waited about all morning and were now being told that the traffic was too bad to ride through…there was not a stitch of traffic on the roads at 8am when we were all sitting about!
We were told to change because we weren’t riding…then as we loaded the bus it became obvious that not all bikes and bags were going to fit and the bikes were having to remove wheels and seats to do so anyway…what a palaver over a 8km ride! In the end one person decided they had had enough of the circus and were going to ride anyway, many others joined him and the rest of us would have loved to ride but now did not have the choice as our cycle shoes and bikes were buried on the bus. So half the group rode in a convoy as originally planned and the rest of us sat on the bus…and we all arrived at the same time. We are told the ride was simple and still no one can understand why it would be deemed unsafe for us to do as it was no worse than many situations we have encountered before. Not happy Jan!
So after 4 hours of sitting about at the hotel waiting to leave we finally arrived at the ferry terminal at 11am and proceeded to sit about in the dusty unwelcoming ferry port carpark and occasionally escape to surrounding restaurants and supermarkets fuelling up and buying supplies whilst waiting for the ferry to leave. After trying to escape the baking heat all day and now tired, dirty, sun burnt and irritated it became obvious to many of us that there was not even a hint that the ferry was going to leave any time soon…and it became exasperatingly frustrating to see that no effort was being made to contact our local support and find out what was going on. Finally at about 8pm our local support showed up and it became obvious that it had been confirmed that the ferry was not going to leave today and further investigation revealed that it had not left for the past 3 days…all the cargo that it ships has been held up due to the war in Georgia and they ferry does not leave until it is full.
We then proceeded to sit about for another hour with little more information other than the obvious fact that the ferry was not going anywhere. TDA staff were off trying to make arrangements for accommodation and luggage storage etc…which as it turns out were issues both solved by members among the group anyway and would have been solved much faster had we been consulted in the process! A few very kindly volunteered to camp at the ferry stop and guard our luggage and bikes whilst the rest of us caught a taxi back to the hotel in the old town which TDA had booked us into…knowing full well that they would have had a revolt on their hands had they attempted to send us back to the velodrome hotel.
Back at the hotel there was some confusion as to how many people they could accommodate but after some shuffling of foldaway beds and redirection of some people to a partner hotel everyone could finally get to bed at about 11pm. Tomorrow holds promise of another day of waiting about for the ferry to potentially leave, failing which we will resort to plan B which is to abandon the ferry crossing and try and fly from Baku to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan…meaning we will skip a further 4 riding days…this war in Georgia has had knock on effects that no one had anticipated!
Chinese Visa Update
Some good news in all the drama that has been unfolding over the past couple of weeks is that we managed to get a Chinese Visa…of sorts. We are told that we have been issued with a group visa…which is good to get us in at the same time, but technically we are all supposed to leave at the same time which could prove a problem. But we figure getting out has got to be a smaller hurdle than getting in so we will deal with it once we are in. The unsettling part is that we have nothing to show for our US$100…no indication in our passports whatsoever that we have a visa, just some alleged document floating about that none of us have seen or have a great deal of faith in…but we will see.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Playing It Safe
09-Aug-08: Day From Hell
Turkey: Yusufeli to Gole
126km, 8h 13min ride time
Today dished up nightmare conditions…hills, headwinds, bad roads, heat…did I mention the hills? Such that I am writing this blog in retrospect as I simply did not have the energy left to write it last night after rolling into camp at 5.30pm. The last 25km took us 3.5 hours to cover…temperatures hit the mid forties and the road surface was non-existent and a succession of loose gravel, crusher dust, wet crusher dust (which acts like quick sand) and loose rocky and sandy surfaces…each of which was a nightmare to ride on and horrendously slow going. Add that to the fact that we were riding continuously in an upwards direction and into a headwind…we rode to sheer exhaustion and questioned how we ever thought this could be fun…
Amidst the hellish conditions some things en-route did register their presence…we are now heading further east and the atmosphere has noticeably changed and not for the better. The children now say ‘hello, hello…money, money’ and some throw things at you if you do not give it to them…and the towns feel like ghetto neighborhoods on the edge of a riot. We passed by a gypsy village consisting of shelters that were little more than caves built out of river stone and perched precariously right on the edge of the water…it looked like something from a fairytale, only in the fairytale the occupants of the shelters would be beavers and water rats. We have clearly entered the poorer region of Turkey and as a foreigner I feel less welcome than I did a few days ago.
After somehow surviving the ride from hell, which incidentally ended up being 5km further than expected…not a happy discovery when you are on the edge of collapse and around each corner is another climb and no campsite! On arriving into camp I found my bag and sat crossed legged next to it with my still helmet clad head on it and sobbed solidly for about 15 minutes…the fun is draining rapidly away from this journey.
For the past day or so we have been aware of unrest in Georgia and TDA has been monitoring the situation…almost as if to answer my prayers for some relief from the relentless cycling program, we found out this evening that Russia has invaded Georgia and that we will not be entering Georgia for safety reasons. This change of plan has ensured us at least 6 days of rest…and it could not have come at a better time, physically or geographically…we are now to miss more climbing and the worst roads of the trip, which were to be in Georgia. Yes, we do miss Georgia and now have a break in the continuum of our journey, but this change of plan is just an alternative journey and one which I am happy to see the positives in.
10-Aug-08: Credit Where Credit is Due
Turkey: Gole to Kars
83km, 5h 13min ride time
Despite my gripes to date with the lack of responsiveness of the Silk Route staff I am more than willing to give credit where credit is due…I have been quite impressed at the staff’s response to the change of plans as a consequence of the Georgian situation…Miles in particular has stepped up to the mark and has seemingly played a lead role in implementing a new route for today, finding us new accommodation and laying down plans for our onward journey to Azerbaijan…
We set about on an alternative riding route today, which in lieu of riding 135km further east towards the Georgian border has taken us south-east to the larger city of Kars, which is to be the starting point of our onwards journey. From Kars we are to catch a bus back to Ankara and from Ankara we will fly to Baku in Azerbaijan (via Istanbul!) to recommence the tour on August 16th.
The ride today felt very much like the day we rode into Istanbul as the last day of the Orient Express tour…like an unofficial ending point. But unlike the ride into Istanbul, this one was not easy! We started the day with a climb lasting 45km and into the mother of all headwinds…it took us 3.5 hours to cover the first 45km and if it were not for the following 15km of downhill to lunch I am not sure my energy levels would have made it through the day.
So here I am now in the city of Kars awaiting further instruction on our little war avoidance sub tour. Unfortunately, we are each personally responsible for the cost of the flight, 2 nights accommodation and baggage excess associated with getting from Ankara to Baku…all of which I have just found out is not covered by my travel insurance due to an overriding blanket exclusion for all losses incurred as a direct or indirect consequence of invasion, war, etc…brilliant!
I will keep you posted…
Turkey: Yusufeli to Gole
126km, 8h 13min ride time
Today dished up nightmare conditions…hills, headwinds, bad roads, heat…did I mention the hills? Such that I am writing this blog in retrospect as I simply did not have the energy left to write it last night after rolling into camp at 5.30pm. The last 25km took us 3.5 hours to cover…temperatures hit the mid forties and the road surface was non-existent and a succession of loose gravel, crusher dust, wet crusher dust (which acts like quick sand) and loose rocky and sandy surfaces…each of which was a nightmare to ride on and horrendously slow going. Add that to the fact that we were riding continuously in an upwards direction and into a headwind…we rode to sheer exhaustion and questioned how we ever thought this could be fun…
Amidst the hellish conditions some things en-route did register their presence…we are now heading further east and the atmosphere has noticeably changed and not for the better. The children now say ‘hello, hello…money, money’ and some throw things at you if you do not give it to them…and the towns feel like ghetto neighborhoods on the edge of a riot. We passed by a gypsy village consisting of shelters that were little more than caves built out of river stone and perched precariously right on the edge of the water…it looked like something from a fairytale, only in the fairytale the occupants of the shelters would be beavers and water rats. We have clearly entered the poorer region of Turkey and as a foreigner I feel less welcome than I did a few days ago.
After somehow surviving the ride from hell, which incidentally ended up being 5km further than expected…not a happy discovery when you are on the edge of collapse and around each corner is another climb and no campsite! On arriving into camp I found my bag and sat crossed legged next to it with my still helmet clad head on it and sobbed solidly for about 15 minutes…the fun is draining rapidly away from this journey.
For the past day or so we have been aware of unrest in Georgia and TDA has been monitoring the situation…almost as if to answer my prayers for some relief from the relentless cycling program, we found out this evening that Russia has invaded Georgia and that we will not be entering Georgia for safety reasons. This change of plan has ensured us at least 6 days of rest…and it could not have come at a better time, physically or geographically…we are now to miss more climbing and the worst roads of the trip, which were to be in Georgia. Yes, we do miss Georgia and now have a break in the continuum of our journey, but this change of plan is just an alternative journey and one which I am happy to see the positives in.
10-Aug-08: Credit Where Credit is Due
Turkey: Gole to Kars
83km, 5h 13min ride time
Despite my gripes to date with the lack of responsiveness of the Silk Route staff I am more than willing to give credit where credit is due…I have been quite impressed at the staff’s response to the change of plans as a consequence of the Georgian situation…Miles in particular has stepped up to the mark and has seemingly played a lead role in implementing a new route for today, finding us new accommodation and laying down plans for our onward journey to Azerbaijan…
We set about on an alternative riding route today, which in lieu of riding 135km further east towards the Georgian border has taken us south-east to the larger city of Kars, which is to be the starting point of our onwards journey. From Kars we are to catch a bus back to Ankara and from Ankara we will fly to Baku in Azerbaijan (via Istanbul!) to recommence the tour on August 16th.
The ride today felt very much like the day we rode into Istanbul as the last day of the Orient Express tour…like an unofficial ending point. But unlike the ride into Istanbul, this one was not easy! We started the day with a climb lasting 45km and into the mother of all headwinds…it took us 3.5 hours to cover the first 45km and if it were not for the following 15km of downhill to lunch I am not sure my energy levels would have made it through the day.
So here I am now in the city of Kars awaiting further instruction on our little war avoidance sub tour. Unfortunately, we are each personally responsible for the cost of the flight, 2 nights accommodation and baggage excess associated with getting from Ankara to Baku…all of which I have just found out is not covered by my travel insurance due to an overriding blanket exclusion for all losses incurred as a direct or indirect consequence of invasion, war, etc…brilliant!
I will keep you posted…
Friday, August 8, 2008
Holding Together
05-Aug-08: A Long Way From Home
Turkey: Sebinkarahisar to Kelkit
120km, 6h 10min ride time
I woke this morning feeling a long way from home…much more than most days. And I could not really say why I felt that way on today rather than any other…I just did. But it did not take long to forget the homesick feeling as I hurried about as per usual getting ready for the day ahead.
Breakfast provided by the hotel consisted of 1 boiled egg, 3 olives, half a slice of tomato and 2 slices of cucumber…combined with a copious amount of white bread, butter and honey…not really the most nutritious start to the day in preparation for cycling in excess of 100km. But I have started to take matters into my own hands and now carry a backup supply of muesli with me, which I put to good use this morning. But I do have to say, which I may have already done so, that Miles has been cooking up a storm dinner wise…just so that I don’t skew the picture too badly!
The day started out with breathtaking scenery…I felt like Frodo Baggins trekking my way into Mordor?…we were being dwarfed by rugged rocky mountain faces towering above us on one side and a deep rocky ravine on the other. The climbing stared quickly today and gave no concession for cold morning legs…and we continued to climb repeatedly for the first half of the day. After about 25km Dan managed to get his chain completely stuck so that there was no easy way of recovering from the situation…we ended up having to break the chain and reconnect it. Actually it is comforting to know that across all the riders we probably have most skills necessary to recover from most mechanical issues that happen en-route.
The scenery after lunch was traditional farming land with wide open fields of hay and families out with hand tools cutting and gathering the hay. The roads went from climbing steeply to gradually ascending and the surface changed from nice smooth bitumen to rough asphalt, the vibration of which resulted in numb hands and very tired legs…and the weather turned from cool to hot. Having said that we really can’t complain as we have been very lucky weather wise…last year the riders were battling temperatures in the early 50’s…10 degrees hotter than we have had it at its worst.
We are camping tonight beneath the branches of a small woodland beside an open field…we have a ground water pump which has served as a shower and provided essential water for me to finally get around to washing my bike properly for only the second time since leaving Paris! I have had a pretty good run as my chain is still in good condition and I am still rolling along on the same tires and tubes that I left Paris with…not a single puncture in over 5,000km. Touch wood.
We are entering a more traditional region of Turkey now and are attracting even more attention than before, if that is possible…and it seems we are also entering the region of ratbag kids as I had one spit at me yesterday and another throw rocks at me today. It may have something to do with the way I am dressed, or it may not, but it is hard to tell and our historian Paul assures us that they give concession to western women dressing differently and that provided with are with others we won’t be taking any unnecessary risks dressing in traditional biking attire. It has been suggested though that we do start dressing more conservatively off the bike for our own comfort.
06-Aug-08: Sitting Ducks
Turkey: Kelkit to ‘Windy Peaks’
117km, 5h 46min ride time
Where to start…well I am sitting in the back of the support van on a rolled up sleeping mat because it is the only place I can find that is not in the blazing sun or gale force wind! I have spent in excess of an hour erecting and reinforcing my tent against ridiculously strong winds…my tent is a 4 season tent and should be able to withstand such conditions, however add to the wind the inability to secure pegs in the rock hard ground and the task gets a little more complicated. The campsite is on the highest point around where we could not be more exposed to the elements if we tried, but granted we are next to running water in a cow trough which did mean we could wash ourselves!
The riding today started out in wide open farming and agricultural land with little vegetation aside from the wheat growing in the fields and the pretty purple wildflowers by the roadside which are infested with a plague of grasshoppers. With little change in scenery or terrain and little respite from the sun, the day took its toll quickly and by lunch at 10.30am we were exhausted. After lunch the road stayed much the same for a further 20km and Mother Nature threw in a headwind just to test our limits.
Thankfully the scenery started to change as we headed into the mountains once again…the amount of vegetation increased and accordingly so did opportunity to rest in the shade. The last 15km of the day were the most interesting and renewed our energy somewhat as the scenery became picturesque and the terrain became undulating. We stopped at a corner store in a very small town (with about 5 buildings) on our way to camp to buy an ice cream and a cold drink…we became the source of entertainment for 4 local boys who were very interested in how my shoes clipped to my pedals and what all the numbers on my GPS meant.
And so I return to how we came to be perched on the top of a mountain like sitting ducks just waiting for a massive storm to blow in and obliterate us…I hope for everyone’s sake that does not happen! Admittedly there should be a beautiful sunset and sunrise from here…and we certainly have a loo with a view…there is a photo of the ‘bush camp’ toilet system, which involves 2 shovels (for hole digging and absence of which is the indication of occupancy), a lighter (for toilet paper burning) and a collection of rocks (for marking pre-loved territory).
07-Aug-08: Digging Deep
Turkey: ‘Windy Peaks’ to Yusufeli
135km, 7h 57min ride time
For me, and overall, today was one of those riding days that remind me of why I came on this trip…the scenery was spectacular and the climbs, headwinds and road conditions all came together in a perfect blend of interest and challenge. My body cooperated and I felt strong all day, despite the length of it.
I spent the day keeping Dan company who has fallen victim to a nasty stomach virus and has been suffering the usual effects of such an infection…not a happy state to be in while riding a bike in any condition and today certainly delivered every condition short of driving rain! So we rode slowly but surely as he dug deep to find whatever strength he could to get through the day…having committed to achieving EFI status does have its drawbacks when your body starts to fight your mind against the desire to get on the support van. But we made it eventually and in the end rolled in within minutes of 80% of riders, which says something about how much the terrain and general conditions slowed everyone down.
Upholding another of my personal ‘comfort commitments’ to ensure I stay in a hotel on rest days was quite easy on this occasion, with a hotel being within 100m walk of the campsite we were supposed to be staying at…air-conditioning, wi-fi, hot water, dinner and breakfast all included…happy days!
08-Aug-08: Uploading
Turkey: Yusufeli – Rest Day
I slept well last night in my air-conditioned room at Hotel Barcelona…we are in the town of Yusufeli about 2 days ride away from the Georgian border and the home of white water rafting, and seemingly not a great deal else.
As there were no rooms available at Hotel Barcelona I will spend tonight in a little cabin style room at the campsite tonight…no air-conditioning but all other facilities for a fraction of the price, so can’t really complain.
And as per usual today has been spent updating my blog…whilst sitting in a small restaurant at the campground watching the Olympics opening ceremony with Turkish commentary. There are now a whole host of new photos from Turkey to see…images 82 onwards are the newest additions. I have also uploaded some new GPS detail for the past week…there appears to be a glitch in the file settings so that they are appearing in imperial measurements by default…I think you can change the settings from your end on a per view basis but am working on it from this end!
Turkey: Sebinkarahisar to Kelkit
120km, 6h 10min ride time
I woke this morning feeling a long way from home…much more than most days. And I could not really say why I felt that way on today rather than any other…I just did. But it did not take long to forget the homesick feeling as I hurried about as per usual getting ready for the day ahead.
Breakfast provided by the hotel consisted of 1 boiled egg, 3 olives, half a slice of tomato and 2 slices of cucumber…combined with a copious amount of white bread, butter and honey…not really the most nutritious start to the day in preparation for cycling in excess of 100km. But I have started to take matters into my own hands and now carry a backup supply of muesli with me, which I put to good use this morning. But I do have to say, which I may have already done so, that Miles has been cooking up a storm dinner wise…just so that I don’t skew the picture too badly!
The day started out with breathtaking scenery…I felt like Frodo Baggins trekking my way into Mordor?…we were being dwarfed by rugged rocky mountain faces towering above us on one side and a deep rocky ravine on the other. The climbing stared quickly today and gave no concession for cold morning legs…and we continued to climb repeatedly for the first half of the day. After about 25km Dan managed to get his chain completely stuck so that there was no easy way of recovering from the situation…we ended up having to break the chain and reconnect it. Actually it is comforting to know that across all the riders we probably have most skills necessary to recover from most mechanical issues that happen en-route.
The scenery after lunch was traditional farming land with wide open fields of hay and families out with hand tools cutting and gathering the hay. The roads went from climbing steeply to gradually ascending and the surface changed from nice smooth bitumen to rough asphalt, the vibration of which resulted in numb hands and very tired legs…and the weather turned from cool to hot. Having said that we really can’t complain as we have been very lucky weather wise…last year the riders were battling temperatures in the early 50’s…10 degrees hotter than we have had it at its worst.
We are camping tonight beneath the branches of a small woodland beside an open field…we have a ground water pump which has served as a shower and provided essential water for me to finally get around to washing my bike properly for only the second time since leaving Paris! I have had a pretty good run as my chain is still in good condition and I am still rolling along on the same tires and tubes that I left Paris with…not a single puncture in over 5,000km. Touch wood.
We are entering a more traditional region of Turkey now and are attracting even more attention than before, if that is possible…and it seems we are also entering the region of ratbag kids as I had one spit at me yesterday and another throw rocks at me today. It may have something to do with the way I am dressed, or it may not, but it is hard to tell and our historian Paul assures us that they give concession to western women dressing differently and that provided with are with others we won’t be taking any unnecessary risks dressing in traditional biking attire. It has been suggested though that we do start dressing more conservatively off the bike for our own comfort.
06-Aug-08: Sitting Ducks
Turkey: Kelkit to ‘Windy Peaks’
117km, 5h 46min ride time
Where to start…well I am sitting in the back of the support van on a rolled up sleeping mat because it is the only place I can find that is not in the blazing sun or gale force wind! I have spent in excess of an hour erecting and reinforcing my tent against ridiculously strong winds…my tent is a 4 season tent and should be able to withstand such conditions, however add to the wind the inability to secure pegs in the rock hard ground and the task gets a little more complicated. The campsite is on the highest point around where we could not be more exposed to the elements if we tried, but granted we are next to running water in a cow trough which did mean we could wash ourselves!
The riding today started out in wide open farming and agricultural land with little vegetation aside from the wheat growing in the fields and the pretty purple wildflowers by the roadside which are infested with a plague of grasshoppers. With little change in scenery or terrain and little respite from the sun, the day took its toll quickly and by lunch at 10.30am we were exhausted. After lunch the road stayed much the same for a further 20km and Mother Nature threw in a headwind just to test our limits.
Thankfully the scenery started to change as we headed into the mountains once again…the amount of vegetation increased and accordingly so did opportunity to rest in the shade. The last 15km of the day were the most interesting and renewed our energy somewhat as the scenery became picturesque and the terrain became undulating. We stopped at a corner store in a very small town (with about 5 buildings) on our way to camp to buy an ice cream and a cold drink…we became the source of entertainment for 4 local boys who were very interested in how my shoes clipped to my pedals and what all the numbers on my GPS meant.
And so I return to how we came to be perched on the top of a mountain like sitting ducks just waiting for a massive storm to blow in and obliterate us…I hope for everyone’s sake that does not happen! Admittedly there should be a beautiful sunset and sunrise from here…and we certainly have a loo with a view…there is a photo of the ‘bush camp’ toilet system, which involves 2 shovels (for hole digging and absence of which is the indication of occupancy), a lighter (for toilet paper burning) and a collection of rocks (for marking pre-loved territory).
07-Aug-08: Digging Deep
Turkey: ‘Windy Peaks’ to Yusufeli
135km, 7h 57min ride time
For me, and overall, today was one of those riding days that remind me of why I came on this trip…the scenery was spectacular and the climbs, headwinds and road conditions all came together in a perfect blend of interest and challenge. My body cooperated and I felt strong all day, despite the length of it.
I spent the day keeping Dan company who has fallen victim to a nasty stomach virus and has been suffering the usual effects of such an infection…not a happy state to be in while riding a bike in any condition and today certainly delivered every condition short of driving rain! So we rode slowly but surely as he dug deep to find whatever strength he could to get through the day…having committed to achieving EFI status does have its drawbacks when your body starts to fight your mind against the desire to get on the support van. But we made it eventually and in the end rolled in within minutes of 80% of riders, which says something about how much the terrain and general conditions slowed everyone down.
Upholding another of my personal ‘comfort commitments’ to ensure I stay in a hotel on rest days was quite easy on this occasion, with a hotel being within 100m walk of the campsite we were supposed to be staying at…air-conditioning, wi-fi, hot water, dinner and breakfast all included…happy days!
08-Aug-08: Uploading
Turkey: Yusufeli – Rest Day
I slept well last night in my air-conditioned room at Hotel Barcelona…we are in the town of Yusufeli about 2 days ride away from the Georgian border and the home of white water rafting, and seemingly not a great deal else.
As there were no rooms available at Hotel Barcelona I will spend tonight in a little cabin style room at the campsite tonight…no air-conditioning but all other facilities for a fraction of the price, so can’t really complain.
And as per usual today has been spent updating my blog…whilst sitting in a small restaurant at the campground watching the Olympics opening ceremony with Turkish commentary. There are now a whole host of new photos from Turkey to see…images 82 onwards are the newest additions. I have also uploaded some new GPS detail for the past week…there appears to be a glitch in the file settings so that they are appearing in imperial measurements by default…I think you can change the settings from your end on a per view basis but am working on it from this end!
Monday, August 4, 2008
A New Outlook
01-Aug-08: A Welcome Change of Plan
Turkey: Osmancik to Amasya
115km, 5h 12min ride time
Breakfast was served from the carpark of the teachers hostel as per frequent practice if the accommodation does not provide breakfast. Also in the carpark was the white board on which are written our route instructions and other relevant information for the day…today the news was not well received…camping, on a rest day! I was unhappy to say the least as one of the few things holding me together over the past week has been the knowledge (or so I thought) that at least I could rest up in a hotel on the upcoming rest day. The news that we would be camping broke my spirit.
The upside of now being upset and angry, asking myself and others where my money is actually being spent on this tour, was that I had an abundance of excess angry energy to exert through the pedals to help me get through the last day of riding before the rest day. Today my first focus was finishing the day as quickly as I could rather than stopping and dragging the day out…my second focus was to find a hotel on arrival into town.
We had nice roads and good terrain for riding with just enough ups to create some sufficient downs to maintain the momentum and bolster the spirits. We did have to battle some fairly strong and fickled wind which could not decide if it was a cross, head or tail wind so gave us a reasonably balanced combination of all three to tackled throughout the day.
Riding into the town of Amasya was quite breathtaking. The town is nestled at the base junction of a group of mountains which tower protectively above and around the city. Amasya is a very beautiful town and one of Turkey’s historic jewels, being home to a myriad of ancient sites…one of which being a cluster of ancient king’s tombs carved into the side of a mountain above the town which do have a very regal presence just by virtue of their dominance in the landscape.
On arrival at ‘camp’ we were redirected on to a hotel due to complications with the camping arrangements…I don’t know what the story was, nor do I care…we were now staying in a hotel and a very nice one at that and recovery on the first rest day of the Silk Route was now looking promising…my only reservation was the possibility that our entire hotel budget has now been blown and we will be camping for the rest of the trip!
In order to continue meeting my personal ‘must have/do’ rest day list the first thing I did on arrival at the hotel was to arrange a visit to a Turkish bath so I could get a massage. And at 3pm myself and Dan and Max (my 2 bodyguards…who wanted to see the bath themselves), my chauffer (hotel driver) and interpreter (hotel staff member) drove to the ‘Hamami’…with all the ado I thought we must have been taking a long excursion well out of town, but after 5 minutes in the car and well within walking distance of the hotel we arrived at the bath.
During the hours of 10-5 the bath is for women only and at all other times for men only…on entering it was obvious why…many women in various states of undress were milling about the entry vestibule and myself and my interpreter were greeted by a rather well endowed woman wearing only her knickers. My interpreter explained what I was after to the woman and vaguely explained the process to me and left me to it. After which I was guided into the changeroom where I was to remove all my clothes and wrap a sarong around me and then enter the bath area with my soap and scrubbing mit.
The bath area felt ancient almost to the point that I could imagine ladies bathing themselves thousands of years ago in exactly the same manner. The whole room in addition to being noticeably balmy is made of marble with a domed vaulted ceiling and evenly spaced around the circular room are round marble basins which fill with water from taps above them and beside each basin are two seating areas. I was guided to a seating area and removed my sarong…I figured I was never going to see any of these women again in my life…and was counting myself lucky that no one I knew wanted to come with me!
A young woman wearing a tiger skin patterned bra and rainbow coloured knickers motioned for me to use the plastic dish which was housing my soap and scrubbing mit to pour water over myself…I must have been to slow because she took the dish from me and used it to pour water over me at such a rate I thought I was going to drown as I could not even draw breath between the deluges. I then soaped myself up and was helped again to wash the suds off before being led to the sauna room which was so hot that I only managed about 30 seconds before motioning time out and leaving the room. Then as if to lead by example the young girl pointed at the round marble slab in the centre of the room and lay down on it…so I did the same…it was nice and warm and obviously heated from below in some manner.
After a few minutes on the hot slab I was then treated to another drowning before being led into the massage room and told to lay down on the cold marble table. I was then scrubbed down with my exfoliating mit…I could hardly believe how much dead skin was coming off my arms and legs, it was disgusting. As I sat there on the table in all my glory facing the young woman as she scrubbed my arms an elderly lady walked over from bathing herself and patted the underside of my chin while saying something in Turkish…I have no idea what, but something along the lines of ‘don’t look so worried dear’ would have been apt.
After my scrubbing I was drowned for the 3rd time and led into the room between the bath and the entry vestibule, which was nice and cool. It was at this point that I realised I was being led out before having had my massage and so motioned that I was still to get a massage…the young girl looked a little put out and led me back into the massage room and lay me back on the table with a hot water bottle filled with water as a pillow. I was soaped up and given a half hearted rub down by comparison to what the lady on the table next to me was getting and so was a little disappointed as it was the massage that I was most looking forward to. In hindsight though I think I was perhaps lucky to have gotten a softer treatment as the other girls went the following day and most came back with raw patches of skin after having received a very rough scrub down! Manon even had her breasts groped by another bath goer in the sauna!
02-Aug-08: Cliffside Scrambling
Turkey: Amasya – Rest Day
I am yet to figure out how locals ever get a proper sleep in Turkey…the Muslim calls to prayer echo from loud speakers multiple times throughout the day, the last being at about 10pm and the first being at about 4.30am. It seems that no matter where you are you are within earshot of a loud speaker and so unable to avoid being woken up by the chanting which can range from being quite melodic through to sounding more like Tarzan being strangled (to use Dan’s wording). Each call lasts at least 5 minutes, which when trying to get back to sleep early in the morning can seem like 5 hours!
I did manage to get back to sleep this morning and was quite rested after a good night sleep…ready for a morning hike up to visit the rock tombs. After hiking up quite a few stairs, which are never a tired cyclists best friend, we were disappointed that the impressive looking tombs in the rocky face of the mountain were no better viewed up close due to being fenced off from public access. The path between them was quite treacherous with loose rubble and slippery stone surfaces…a litigation nightmare in any western country, but clearly not a concern in this part of the world.
Speaking of litigation nightmares…Louise would be owed some nice compensation in any western society after having her bike slip from under her whilst riding into town over some slippery cobblestone tiles. She was thrown from her bike and knocked out cold when entering town last night. She woke when the ambulance arrived but refused to go with them to be checked out…she has very bad bruising on her upper right thigh and now needs a new helmet!
I spent the balance of the rest day in my nice air-conditioned hotel room doing my tax return and updating my blog with GPS data, which can now be found via the ‘Detailed Cycling Data’ link from my home page.
03-08-08: Longest Day to Date
Turkey: Amasya to Resadiye
158km, 6h 53min ride time
After another good night of sleep I awoke in a pretty good frame of mind to tackle our longest riding day to date…an expected 157km. With little to inspire scenery wise it was just as well the day went by quickly, with the first half being predominantly downhill. Perhaps we are just getting fussy, but relatively speaking the scenery has become a bit uninspiring for the past couple of days. Almost as if to compensate though, we have benefited from cloudy sky to keep the baking hot sun and temperatures at bay.
As you would expect even on good terrain 158km is a long way and by the 120km point I was getting pretty tired and was looking forward to our water/snack stop. About 500m from the snack stop a local standing by the side of the road held out some peaches for us as we rolled by…the peaches in Turkey are one of its many treasures…beautiful and juicy, especially for a tired and hungry cyclist.
After the snack stop my legs regained some strength and I was able to make it into camp in relative comfort…I have certainly have many harder days despite them being shorter…in the end it all just depends on how you feel on the day.
Camp was at the top of a hill in a picnic ground, not really a campground, and as such had very few flat areas to pitch a tent…the one flat patch of dirt I did find had to be swept down to remove the broken shards of glass from what was once a beer bottle before pitching my tent.
04-08-08: Insane
Turkey: Resadiye to Sebinkarahisar
115km, 6h 45min ride time
The brief today was 110km, much the same as the past few days…yeah right!
The morning was much the same as the past few days with the first 55km taking us about 2.5 hours to complete. The afternoon however was a nightmare taking us 4.25 hours to cover the same distance! The blog from last years tour referenced some tough days in Turkey as tough, tougher, toughest and insane…I think today must have been the insane day. We climbed 2/3rds of the total 2100m ascent for the day in the last third of the distance…which pretty much resulted in non-stop and steep climbing all afternoon. And to make matters worse the sun came out and the temperature rose to 40 degrees almost instantly!
With 25km left to ride I found myself with only 2 mouthfuls of water left and started to worry…we had been given no warning of the climbing to expect and no warning that there was nowhere on our route to stop and buy food or water…and the lunch truck did not stop when I tried to flag it down to re-fill my water…I can tell you I was not impressed and very worried about how I was going to get through the rest of the day without water.
Luckily, we came upon a cow trough being filled from an underground water spring to refill our bottles…it was a lifesaver as I went on to consume 5 litres of water in the last 55km and only had the ability to carry 2 litres on me. There was a gross miscalculation on someone’s part for not warning us of the conditions today and it will be interesting to see if we get an apology for the fact at dinner tonight. Today was exactly the kind of day, if it weren’t for the cow troughs, that could have easily killed any one of us through dehydration!
Upon our long awaited arrival at the service station hotel I was ravenous having not been given warning enough to pack an appropriate amount of food for the day….the hotel is intended for use by truck drivers and I am hoping that it does not turn out to be a brothel! I have a nice view of pump 7 from the window of my room and can hear all the comings and goings at the pump so am not too hopeful for a quiet night’s sleep.
We have just had a meeting and only got an apology for the lack of information because we complained...C’est la vie. We have also just been briefed on our upcoming accommodation situation which is now going to be much more camping and mostly bush camping with no facilities and a ration of only 1 water bottle for showering...it was expected to come eventually and just requires a different mindset. But it also means less internet access and so less frequent news for my blog in all likelihood.
Oh, and I almost forgot...at lunch today we had 2 plain clothed police officers ask to see all our passports...as Theresa went to the truck to get hers she discovered that her bag containing her credit cards, passport and camera equipment had been stolen from the front seat of the van...it is pretty much certain that it was taken by a group of gypsies that were milling around the area. So the police were given a new and unexpected task of taking the theft report and promptly forgot about needing our passports!
Turkey: Osmancik to Amasya
115km, 5h 12min ride time
Breakfast was served from the carpark of the teachers hostel as per frequent practice if the accommodation does not provide breakfast. Also in the carpark was the white board on which are written our route instructions and other relevant information for the day…today the news was not well received…camping, on a rest day! I was unhappy to say the least as one of the few things holding me together over the past week has been the knowledge (or so I thought) that at least I could rest up in a hotel on the upcoming rest day. The news that we would be camping broke my spirit.
The upside of now being upset and angry, asking myself and others where my money is actually being spent on this tour, was that I had an abundance of excess angry energy to exert through the pedals to help me get through the last day of riding before the rest day. Today my first focus was finishing the day as quickly as I could rather than stopping and dragging the day out…my second focus was to find a hotel on arrival into town.
We had nice roads and good terrain for riding with just enough ups to create some sufficient downs to maintain the momentum and bolster the spirits. We did have to battle some fairly strong and fickled wind which could not decide if it was a cross, head or tail wind so gave us a reasonably balanced combination of all three to tackled throughout the day.
Riding into the town of Amasya was quite breathtaking. The town is nestled at the base junction of a group of mountains which tower protectively above and around the city. Amasya is a very beautiful town and one of Turkey’s historic jewels, being home to a myriad of ancient sites…one of which being a cluster of ancient king’s tombs carved into the side of a mountain above the town which do have a very regal presence just by virtue of their dominance in the landscape.
On arrival at ‘camp’ we were redirected on to a hotel due to complications with the camping arrangements…I don’t know what the story was, nor do I care…we were now staying in a hotel and a very nice one at that and recovery on the first rest day of the Silk Route was now looking promising…my only reservation was the possibility that our entire hotel budget has now been blown and we will be camping for the rest of the trip!
In order to continue meeting my personal ‘must have/do’ rest day list the first thing I did on arrival at the hotel was to arrange a visit to a Turkish bath so I could get a massage. And at 3pm myself and Dan and Max (my 2 bodyguards…who wanted to see the bath themselves), my chauffer (hotel driver) and interpreter (hotel staff member) drove to the ‘Hamami’…with all the ado I thought we must have been taking a long excursion well out of town, but after 5 minutes in the car and well within walking distance of the hotel we arrived at the bath.
During the hours of 10-5 the bath is for women only and at all other times for men only…on entering it was obvious why…many women in various states of undress were milling about the entry vestibule and myself and my interpreter were greeted by a rather well endowed woman wearing only her knickers. My interpreter explained what I was after to the woman and vaguely explained the process to me and left me to it. After which I was guided into the changeroom where I was to remove all my clothes and wrap a sarong around me and then enter the bath area with my soap and scrubbing mit.
The bath area felt ancient almost to the point that I could imagine ladies bathing themselves thousands of years ago in exactly the same manner. The whole room in addition to being noticeably balmy is made of marble with a domed vaulted ceiling and evenly spaced around the circular room are round marble basins which fill with water from taps above them and beside each basin are two seating areas. I was guided to a seating area and removed my sarong…I figured I was never going to see any of these women again in my life…and was counting myself lucky that no one I knew wanted to come with me!
A young woman wearing a tiger skin patterned bra and rainbow coloured knickers motioned for me to use the plastic dish which was housing my soap and scrubbing mit to pour water over myself…I must have been to slow because she took the dish from me and used it to pour water over me at such a rate I thought I was going to drown as I could not even draw breath between the deluges. I then soaped myself up and was helped again to wash the suds off before being led to the sauna room which was so hot that I only managed about 30 seconds before motioning time out and leaving the room. Then as if to lead by example the young girl pointed at the round marble slab in the centre of the room and lay down on it…so I did the same…it was nice and warm and obviously heated from below in some manner.
After a few minutes on the hot slab I was then treated to another drowning before being led into the massage room and told to lay down on the cold marble table. I was then scrubbed down with my exfoliating mit…I could hardly believe how much dead skin was coming off my arms and legs, it was disgusting. As I sat there on the table in all my glory facing the young woman as she scrubbed my arms an elderly lady walked over from bathing herself and patted the underside of my chin while saying something in Turkish…I have no idea what, but something along the lines of ‘don’t look so worried dear’ would have been apt.
After my scrubbing I was drowned for the 3rd time and led into the room between the bath and the entry vestibule, which was nice and cool. It was at this point that I realised I was being led out before having had my massage and so motioned that I was still to get a massage…the young girl looked a little put out and led me back into the massage room and lay me back on the table with a hot water bottle filled with water as a pillow. I was soaped up and given a half hearted rub down by comparison to what the lady on the table next to me was getting and so was a little disappointed as it was the massage that I was most looking forward to. In hindsight though I think I was perhaps lucky to have gotten a softer treatment as the other girls went the following day and most came back with raw patches of skin after having received a very rough scrub down! Manon even had her breasts groped by another bath goer in the sauna!
02-Aug-08: Cliffside Scrambling
Turkey: Amasya – Rest Day
I am yet to figure out how locals ever get a proper sleep in Turkey…the Muslim calls to prayer echo from loud speakers multiple times throughout the day, the last being at about 10pm and the first being at about 4.30am. It seems that no matter where you are you are within earshot of a loud speaker and so unable to avoid being woken up by the chanting which can range from being quite melodic through to sounding more like Tarzan being strangled (to use Dan’s wording). Each call lasts at least 5 minutes, which when trying to get back to sleep early in the morning can seem like 5 hours!
I did manage to get back to sleep this morning and was quite rested after a good night sleep…ready for a morning hike up to visit the rock tombs. After hiking up quite a few stairs, which are never a tired cyclists best friend, we were disappointed that the impressive looking tombs in the rocky face of the mountain were no better viewed up close due to being fenced off from public access. The path between them was quite treacherous with loose rubble and slippery stone surfaces…a litigation nightmare in any western country, but clearly not a concern in this part of the world.
Speaking of litigation nightmares…Louise would be owed some nice compensation in any western society after having her bike slip from under her whilst riding into town over some slippery cobblestone tiles. She was thrown from her bike and knocked out cold when entering town last night. She woke when the ambulance arrived but refused to go with them to be checked out…she has very bad bruising on her upper right thigh and now needs a new helmet!
I spent the balance of the rest day in my nice air-conditioned hotel room doing my tax return and updating my blog with GPS data, which can now be found via the ‘Detailed Cycling Data’ link from my home page.
03-08-08: Longest Day to Date
Turkey: Amasya to Resadiye
158km, 6h 53min ride time
After another good night of sleep I awoke in a pretty good frame of mind to tackle our longest riding day to date…an expected 157km. With little to inspire scenery wise it was just as well the day went by quickly, with the first half being predominantly downhill. Perhaps we are just getting fussy, but relatively speaking the scenery has become a bit uninspiring for the past couple of days. Almost as if to compensate though, we have benefited from cloudy sky to keep the baking hot sun and temperatures at bay.
As you would expect even on good terrain 158km is a long way and by the 120km point I was getting pretty tired and was looking forward to our water/snack stop. About 500m from the snack stop a local standing by the side of the road held out some peaches for us as we rolled by…the peaches in Turkey are one of its many treasures…beautiful and juicy, especially for a tired and hungry cyclist.
After the snack stop my legs regained some strength and I was able to make it into camp in relative comfort…I have certainly have many harder days despite them being shorter…in the end it all just depends on how you feel on the day.
Camp was at the top of a hill in a picnic ground, not really a campground, and as such had very few flat areas to pitch a tent…the one flat patch of dirt I did find had to be swept down to remove the broken shards of glass from what was once a beer bottle before pitching my tent.
04-08-08: Insane
Turkey: Resadiye to Sebinkarahisar
115km, 6h 45min ride time
The brief today was 110km, much the same as the past few days…yeah right!
The morning was much the same as the past few days with the first 55km taking us about 2.5 hours to complete. The afternoon however was a nightmare taking us 4.25 hours to cover the same distance! The blog from last years tour referenced some tough days in Turkey as tough, tougher, toughest and insane…I think today must have been the insane day. We climbed 2/3rds of the total 2100m ascent for the day in the last third of the distance…which pretty much resulted in non-stop and steep climbing all afternoon. And to make matters worse the sun came out and the temperature rose to 40 degrees almost instantly!
With 25km left to ride I found myself with only 2 mouthfuls of water left and started to worry…we had been given no warning of the climbing to expect and no warning that there was nowhere on our route to stop and buy food or water…and the lunch truck did not stop when I tried to flag it down to re-fill my water…I can tell you I was not impressed and very worried about how I was going to get through the rest of the day without water.
Luckily, we came upon a cow trough being filled from an underground water spring to refill our bottles…it was a lifesaver as I went on to consume 5 litres of water in the last 55km and only had the ability to carry 2 litres on me. There was a gross miscalculation on someone’s part for not warning us of the conditions today and it will be interesting to see if we get an apology for the fact at dinner tonight. Today was exactly the kind of day, if it weren’t for the cow troughs, that could have easily killed any one of us through dehydration!
Upon our long awaited arrival at the service station hotel I was ravenous having not been given warning enough to pack an appropriate amount of food for the day….the hotel is intended for use by truck drivers and I am hoping that it does not turn out to be a brothel! I have a nice view of pump 7 from the window of my room and can hear all the comings and goings at the pump so am not too hopeful for a quiet night’s sleep.
We have just had a meeting and only got an apology for the lack of information because we complained...C’est la vie. We have also just been briefed on our upcoming accommodation situation which is now going to be much more camping and mostly bush camping with no facilities and a ration of only 1 water bottle for showering...it was expected to come eventually and just requires a different mindset. But it also means less internet access and so less frequent news for my blog in all likelihood.
Oh, and I almost forgot...at lunch today we had 2 plain clothed police officers ask to see all our passports...as Theresa went to the truck to get hers she discovered that her bag containing her credit cards, passport and camera equipment had been stolen from the front seat of the van...it is pretty much certain that it was taken by a group of gypsies that were milling around the area. So the police were given a new and unexpected task of taking the theft report and promptly forgot about needing our passports!
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