Tamam
October 7, 2008 at 6:43 pm | Trip | 3 comments
‘Terrorist! Big Problem!’
‘Hiyur problem, tamam, tamam’
‘Tell him we only want to stay for one night’
‘Uhh… Bir… Night… Tamam?’
‘Hiyur! Big Problem! Terrorists!’
Camping near Chatac in SE Turkey was proving difficult.
‘It’d be a shame to move, such a beautiful spot’
Unfortunately we were unable to persuade the military personnel that they were really making a big fuss over nothing and were convinced to pack up our tents and follow them to ‘Teacher House’.
Chatac was not a pretty town, though in a pretty setting, the concept of keeping streets tidy hasn’t quite caught on in Eastern Turkey, which makes the towns appear somewhat downtrodden, despite the beautiful surroundings.
We rolled up to the teacher house and once checked in (no cost, except our passport details!) were escorted to the Jandarma (Police Station) to park our bikes.
‘Chai?’
‘Never say no to chai!’ replied Chris.
‘Passports please’
‘Interpol?’ Wez joked.
‘Interpol’ The police officer nodded gravely.
We sat down outside the police station and chatted to one of the local traffic officers, who knew a fair amount of English from living in Istanbul previously.
‘So what are you doing out here?’
“Well, it’s the way it goes sometimes, they needed police officers out in the east so they sent me’
It struck me that all the professionals, Police Officers, Teachers, Military etc all seemed to be migrated Turkish whereas all the locals, shopkeepers, farmers etc, all seemed to be Kurdish.
We discovered later that the military were understandably twitchy as 15 members of the Turkish army had been killed that day in a pitched gun battle with the PKK (Kurdish ‘Freedom Fighters’) about 150km or so away from where we were.
Local kids were friendly! (as usual)
This way? Yes, this way…
Fruit sellers in town.
Highstreet, not pictured: mounds of rubbish.
The previous day we were driving through the moutains (lot of mountains in the east of Turkey!) and stopped for the night in a local town.
Three Europeans on heavy bikes always attract attention round here and soon we were surrounded by the usual gathering of kids (the record so far being 30, who subsequently threw stones at us!)
Fortunately we were shortly rescued by their teacher, who spoke excellent English.
‘You need a place to stay?’
‘Do we ever!’
‘You can stay at the teacher house’ (see a pattern?) ‘It’s only 12 lira a night’
‘Excellent!’
Our new best friend proudly showed us round his school, which continued the Kurdish construction technique of making one step a foot high, the next 3 and the next half an inch.
‘This is my classroom, the First Class!’ he beamed proudly.
‘Holy crap, it’s got a projector in it!’
‘Yes, only First Class has projector’
All in all the school was pretty damn impressive for a village of only a few thousand people in the middle of nowhere with roads leading up to it that you could have used to grate cheese.
Wez showed me, our Turkish Teacher Friend (TTF) and Stephan Australian football, by the magic of the web; it looked a helluva lot more interesting that regular football, but more like a riot than any sport I’d ever seen!
The next day we set off again, with the eventual goal of getting to Van Gülü.
Who needs the alps?
Admiring the view…
Down in the valley
Surprisingly difficult to take photos of Stephan on his F800!
Riding along in the sunshine, admiring the scenery, trying not to succumb to death-by-target-fixation due to a lack of barriers between us and perilously high drops combined with unpredictable patches of loose gravel, it was easy to forget that we were a mere few hundred kilometres from the Iraqi border.
That was set to change however, when we hit our first checkpoint!
‘Passports’ This was set to become a common sound over the next few days.
We handed over our passports and were promptly given them back.
‘Register’ He said, pointing up the road?
‘Where?’ Chris queried.
‘Jandarma’
Seeing we still weren’t quite convinced one of the army men jumped on the back of Chris’ bike and off Chris wobbled, ancient sub-machinegun knocking his knee as the bike bounced over the lumpy road.
Me, Wez and Stephan were left to chat to the remainder of the squad at the checkpoint.
‘Chai?’
‘Evet, Teshekur!’
Two rounds of tea and some Turkish desert (not to mention innumerable photos of me taken with the bike and various Turkish Privates (steady, watch the capitalisation) Chris returned with our passports.
We weren’t yet on our way however as a car rolled up and we were hailed in English.
‘Hello! Where have you come from?’
“Australia, England, Belgique’
‘No no, I mean in Turkey’
‘Aaah, Nemrut’
Aaah, Nemrut, one of the more popular tourist attractions in Turkey (outside Istanbul and the coast obviously) is a mountain, not the highest in Turkey by any stretch of the imagination, but the interesting part is the fact that it has a false summit created artificially hundreds of years ago to cover the burial chamber of the current king.
Adorning the site are a number of carvings of the heads of Persian gods
(on a related note I learned the Turkish word for sun is Ganesh), but although these were quite spectactular, once the cloud had cleared the sight that capture my attention was the view was the view from the top.
Althought Nemrut is not that high, the contrast between it and the surrounding land is incredible.
I still have the image burned into my mind from sitting on the steps of the ceremonial platform, chin resting on upturned palms, staring rapt at the view for nearly half an hour: In the foreground the undulating terrain surrounding the summit, descending sharply into a hidden valley to rise again 10km later in a sharp range of jagged mountains encircling the area, to the glittering lakes in the far distance, arable land dotted in between the winding network of roads that picked its way through the lakes and streams.
Not far away there was a fantastic Roman bridge that we road over (I’ll have to get the video off Chris).
Anyway, you’re probably all wondering who Wez and Chris are!
Out on a day trip with Stefan we had stopped fro some chai and saw a bike ride past with two guys, alu panniers and a GB sticker, I waved but they didn’t see me.
We rode on, thought no more of it until in a village not far up the road we saw the bike parked by the side of the rode, owners nowhere in sight.
*scribble* ‘Hi guys, fellow English overlanding, staying in Goreme, send me an email if you want to grab a beer’
The next day I was walking around Goreme hunting the wild durum (aka the cheap durum in tourist area) and lo and behold saw the bike and finally its seat-fodder.
Turns out Wez and Chris are actually two Australian guys doing the UK-Aus trip on a Honda CB500.
We were going in the same direction (namely Nemrut) and decided to ride there the next day.
I showed them the Pension I was staying in, seven lira a night, not to mention Jimi Hendrix stayed in the room (or so the plaque on the door proudly boasts) and as it was Ramadam, when they broke fast they served us all with beans, rice, meat and some whiteish nutty dessert I adore but can’t find again!
We’ve been riding together ever since and it’s been great fun, I’ve only spent 8 pound ninety a day since I’ve been with them, including accomodation and food but excluding petrol.
Except today, today was a bit different.
For the past few days my batterys negative terminal has been in a bad way; when I fitted all my electrical add-ons (cigarette adaptor, heated gloves, horn, etc) I added a longer but smaller bolt, and in subsequent tightening and retightening the nut ate into the flesh of the negative terminal and eventually snapped the top of it off.
I was able to keep going by swapping it for a larger bolt I had in my spares bag but with the shaking the bike was receiving it was not a permanent solution and finally in Dogubayasit (Doggy Biscuit as it’s fondly nicknamed)….
‘Holy shit my bike’s smoking!’
The bike stalls and I leap off and dive into my tool kit and remove the bodywork.
‘Christ, the terminal’s melted’ I exclaimed, holding up a blob of metal like a rather unappetizing sweet.
‘Good job there’s a bike shop up the road’ Wez pointed out.
Batteries they had, but of insufficient amperage, however the owner made urgent motions, telling me to follow him and bring the battery and for someone else to follow on a bike.
I got into the shop owners car, Chris following along behind wondering where our destination might be.
‘Oto Elektrik’ The sign proclaimed.
An hour later my battery was topped up with electrolyte, recharged and had a cable with a suitable connector soldered onto it to so I could hook it back up to the bike.
I hopped on the back of the CB500 and rode pillion back to where I’d broken down.
*rrrnnn rnnnn PHUT PHUT WHUMUMUMUMUMUMUM*
‘Wooohooo!’
All for 10 Lira, job’s a good’un!
Bad roads, nice terrorists.
October 19, 2008 at 6:18 pm | Trip | 4 comments
Where to begin.
On reflection I should have made a blog post before I left Turkey.
‘Oh, I’ll do one when I cross the border’
Little did I know the Iranian internet infrastructure was slightly lacking capacity.
I’m writing from the first internet cafe that has speeds above 56k per computer, which means I can get on to wordpress, yay!
Downside is I didn’t expect this, so the only photos available are those that I uploaded before I left Turkey.
Aaanyway.
After leaving DoggyBiscuit Stefan had to go back down south so we bade him faretheewell and as 2 bikes and three men headed north for Ani.
We stopped briefly at Diyadin for their famous hot spring baths, in the process locating a hotel for 5 lira a night each (approximately 2 pound fifty).
‘Twenty Lira’
‘But we were told 1 lira!’
‘Twenty Lira private bath!’
‘Well lads, let’s be sociable!’
We stripped to the undies (undies and swimming trunks in my case as I’d taken to wearing swimming trunks rather than trousers under my leathers in the hotter weather) and climbed in with everyone else.
‘Aaah, this is the life’ I said to no-one in particular as I stretched my arms along the edge of the pool, sitting comfortably on the wide shelf just under the water.
First bath (as opposed to shower) I’ve had since leaving England. Beautiful!
We woke the next morning properly refreshed and headed once more in the direction of Ani.
‘Get there tonight, stay somewhere close by, visit the site in the morning’ I suggested.
‘Sounds good’ Chris agreed.
Little did we know three nights would pass before we would actually make it to Ani…
We took a right off the main road onto an ‘important link road’ (as classified by the map) that cut around 250kms off the main road’s path, and based on previous experience, roads of this classification were generally 100km an hour roads.
The road was OK to start off with, lumpy tarmac, but reasonably well maintained.
Soon though the road started to become pitted with potholes, then degenerated to massive roadworks which left only a narrow path for the bikes, a car would have had to turn around.
But we soldiered on, even when the road turned to mud and the poor CB’s road tyres clogged with mud and took Wez and Chris for a tumble.
Eventually the road came to a little village, where the surface finally turned into the same consistency of mud as potters use as ’slip’.
And slip we did, Wez and Chris landed right next to a locals car, who immediately came out and pointed angrily at the rust patches and paint cracks on it, as if somehow caused by us…
As the bike had landed on Chris’ foot, this was the last thing on his mind and he rightly ignored the opportunistic local and stood the bike up and gingerly rode out of the mud.
Immediately after the village the road forked, and the direction marked on the map went uphill and showed no signs of improving, whereas the unmarked road started off paved and went on the flat.
According to a local…
… A rather eccentric local, the paved road would take us out onto the main road in fairly short order.
Meanwhile Wez and Chris stop to take off the mudguard on the CB, which is acting as a perfect ‘mud distributer’ and liberally caking the wheel with fresh mud each time they clean it.
Pretty cool vista I must say…
We soldiered along the road, and after coming over the top of some spectacular mountains, picked our way carefully down a seemingly endless series of alpine style hairpins covered in gravel.
After getting to the valley floor we rode through a small forest, me leading and I very nearly binned the bike into the hedge when suddenly a massive Armoured Personell Carrier came charging round the corner, gun barrel pointed directly at us and rumbled on past oblivious.
Eventually we came to a small village, modest, though large enough for a chai shop, where we gratefully stopped after our ordeal.
‘Oh great, here come the Jandarma’
Usual rigmarole, follow me, passports please.
Except this time it took longer than usual, and they were rather more pleased to see us.
Wez made noises about being hungry and we were promptly sat in front of an omlette and a can of coca cola each.
‘Cor, so this is where our tax money goes!’
Muuch better! We headed off again to stop at Digor, a tiny town which when we rolled up and asked for directions to ‘otel…
‘No otel’
‘No otel?!?’
‘No otel..’
‘Balls..’
*psst*
We whipped round and saw a mustachioed gentleman who made signs that said we could sleep in his house.
His ‘house’ as it turned out was in fact the middle-floor of a bakery, and after getting settled in he queried.
‘Efes?’
Efes being the Turkish Beer of choice we nodded vigorously and were shown the ‘back’ of a local chai shop.
*Some time/beer later..*
#Onsi fan dari don… Neden#
‘Neden!’ The three of us chorused, being unable to remember the rest of the oft-repeated lyric fragment.
Our mustachioed amigo sat up in his chair, pulled out his mobile phone, played with the buttons for a while and passed it to me.
In front of me was a picture of him holding a submachine gun in full camoflague gear.
I handed it to Wez and Chris slightly concerned.
He pointed to himself, and then to his two friends who were drinking with us.
‘Peh Keh Keh, Peh Keh Keh, Peh Keh Keh’
‘I think they’re part of the PKK…’
The tone was still jovial, and we spent the rest of the night drinking, learned what the Kurdistani flag looked like, and went to sleep in the bakery.
A few hours later I was woken by the sharp squeak of a walkie talkie end-call tone.
I half opened an eye to see an armed figure standing in the middle of the three beds, Chris and Wez were standing up.
Somehow my sleep-addled brain thought this unworthy of waking up for, and I immediately put my head back down and went back to sleep.
Chris related in the morning that at about midnight the Polis burst in in an armed squad of 20 and demanded to see passports.
Fortunately there only being two bikes outside, they didn’t notice me and I was left undisturbed!
We spent that day visiting a nearby Armenian church, which, while locationally impressive (why you’d bother to build a church on such an inaccessible outcrop of rock I’ll never know) was not especially beautiful, and personally I was thinking only of Ani.
After another night spent at the PKK bakery we set off in the morning for Ani.
According to our map (a familiar phrase!) the road to Ani was half way between Kars and Digor.
Well, there was only one road in the right direction even approximately halfway between Kars and Digor, so we took it.
Beautiful bit of road, all the better for not being sealed.
Striking countryside, though the road has now turned into a tractor trail that’s mostly invisible.
At the bottom of this valley is a river crossing, which both bikes deal with with panache.
http://toukakoukan.smugmug.com/photos/392991849_2kpdv-M.jpg
Having got to the other side, we now have to climb up the hill.
Oh come on lads, this is ridiculous!
Getting the bike from the bottom left hand side of the picture to the top right was far more difficult than it might appear.
Having crested the hill I was simply happy not to end up like the guy in the foreground.
We found the gravelly broken road to Ani and set off.
By the time we arrived the place was about to close (it was getting dark) so we attacked the local grocers shop (which had only 4 eggs) and were promptly invited to stay the night with a family of Turkish farmers, which we whiled away teaching each other card games (with varied degrees of success)
The next morning we stormed Ani.
Being an ex-UT geek I found ‘The Church of The Redeemer’ hilarious and a place of worship simultaneously.
From the inside.
The inside of another church, nearer the canyon that is the natural border between Turkey and Armenia.
The ceiling of the same.
Broken steps.
Another little Chapel.
Perilously close to the edge!
Quite an effective natural border I’d say!
Some of the patterns feel almost Celtic.
The minaret of the oldest-mosque-in-the-area-now-known-as-Turkey (named for factual accuracy) which me and Chris climbed to the top of before noticing the ‘Do not climb minaret’ sign round the side…
What’s the best thing to do with graffiti on your ancient Armenianchurch?
Why whitewash it of course! Historical conservation, Turkish style!
This blog post has taken a surprising amount of effort to write, I’d hoped to be able to write about Iran while I have a reasonably fast internet connection but I’ve run out of time.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to update next so apologies if it’s a long time!
If you really get desperate for an update I’ve got an Iranian mobile now, the number of which is…
+98 937 093 6325
Guli Guli! (or the farsi equivilent!)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
October 27, 2008 at 12:23 pm | Bike, Trip | 3 comments
‘I think… I think… It was a cat’ I replied, tenatively prodding the gelatinous lump on my plate that seemed to be staring at me eyelessly.
‘Don’t think about it, just eat it’ Ben said firmly.
I’d met Ben and his brother Sascha almost immediately after crossing the border into Iran, as they were simply passing through the town I’d holed up in when they saw my bike and came to investigate.
The first meal we all had in Iran wasn’t exactly appetising, none of us spoke any farsi so we simply communicated ‘Whatever you have’ to the restauranteer and sat down at our table.
We really wished we hadn’t…
Unless of course anybody is able to enlighten me as to a domesticated (and edible) animal with vertebrae approximately 3/4 inch in length…
Ben and Sascha were driving from Germany to the UAE where Ben was working, and wow what a schedule!
They’d got from Germany to Iran in 11 days and were due to get to Bandar-e-Bas (south of Iran) to catch a boat a week after I met them next to Turkey.
The next day the three of us took the roundabout route to Tabriz, going via the Azerbaijani border.
By and large the scenery so far in Iran was much similar to Turkey, so I didn’t bother taking many photos.
Many dusty and warm (in comparison to Turkey anyway!) hours later we stopped for our first petrol fill-up with our new Iranian petrol cards.
We zipped to the front of the queue (being the arrogant tourists we were!), which was surprisingly long for a country that extracts and refines its own oil, and I was selected to try and figure out the pump.
Simple enough, put the card in, wait, start pumping.
Wait.. 14 litres.. surely no—
*SPLASH*
“Holy shit!”
Err yeah, lesson one, not all Iranian fuel pumps have auto-shut-off switches…
Drenched in fuel I sheepishly pushed my bike to one side and let Ben and Sascha fill up, with somewhat less embarassing results.
Tabriz is a big place, and despite more road-signs in English than we’d expected, we still fail to find the centre of town.
At one point we tried to do a u-turn (which involved slowing down in the fast lane) which nearly got Ben killed as the car behind him screeched in a cloud of tyre smoke to a halt mere inches from his rear wheel.
Eventually we stopped by the side of the road and Ben wandered off to ask about a hotel and came back with a friendly Iranian chap to give us directions.
At about this point a lady came up to us and asked in English.
‘Are you looking for a hotel?’
‘Yes, do you know of one?’
‘No no no, you should come and stay with my family!’
After the traditional three-time-mock-denial we followed her at a walking pace back to her home.
It must have made quite a sight, three heavily-laden bikes, larger than anything allowed in Iran, following a lady at a walking pace down the highstreet.
As it turned out the entire family, of which our saviour was the mother, spoke wonderful English, and their hospitality surpassed anything we could have expected.
In researching my trip, I’d read many times that people are always surprised by how incredibly friendly and generous people in Iran are, and good god I have not been dissapointed.
I honestly think you would have to rugby tackle an Iranian to stop him from paying for a meal at a restaurant, I always offer three times (at least!) but they always refuse and almost seem insulted! Pushing my wallet back into my pocket and frowning at me.
As I’d was suffering a recurrance of a dodgy stomached I’d contracted from unpasturised milk in the last few days before I left Turkey, I was more than glad to accept their hospitality and slept for most of the next two days.
In between my mammoth sleeps I said goodbye to Ben and Sascha, who had to continue pell-mell south through Iran, and spoke at length about England and Iran with my hosts.
As it turns out Iran is a much more ‘liberal’ country than I’d expected.
Having lived in Saudi, the women dressed in black Abyahs (not sure what the Farsi word is for the shawl) and headscarves came as no surprise, but what was shocking was the beauty the women could convey through their faces alone.
I don’t know whether Iranian women are unnaturally blessed with beautiful eyes or whether their dress simply focuses the mind, but call me crazy I could almost start to think dressing in this manner a good idea!
Western music is technically banned in Iran, but you’ll hear it played openly in taxis, and blaring out the windows of ‘the kids’ cars, and if you turn on PersiaTV, an Iranian Music channel, you will see scantily clad ladies (comparable to music videos in the west) singing the latest Iranian pop music, which sounds indistinguishable from western pop music barring being in Farsi.
At the same time of course, there’s a lot of opression going on, for example I’ve been told that a woman riding a bicycle down the street in Tabriz would likely be stopped and warned by the police for ‘Abnormal Behaviour’.
Having spent two days with my faultless hosts in Tabriz, I journeyed on by their reccomendation to Orumiyeh, a city next to the second saltiest lake in the world.
A bridge is currently under construction over this lake, but as it’s only about 20% completed I opted to take the ferry.
On this ferry I met Professor Mohammadi, a lecturer and researcher of Animal Genetics at the university of Ahvaz, who invited me to stay at his home for a few days.
‘Sounds excellent! I’ll see you in three days time!’ I said, thinking to myself
‘How far can the south coast be?’
1,300KM that’s how far!
Orumiyeh didn’t fulfill my expectations of a lakeside town, and I embarassingly spent my entire time there without actually going down to visit the lake.
I had to continue my journey south through the mountains.
A water trough in the middle of the mountains trickled softly as I stopped and ate my bounty of fresh dates (which since discovering I’ve been eating by the kilo)
It’s not all mountains round there!
A local bus thunders past, unfortunately I haven’t got any photos of the beautiful bright-blue pickups that are so common around these parts.
A photo of my home made radiator guard made from 25cm of free chicken-wire!
I’ll post the rest tomorrow or soon after I think! My heart’s not in blogging today 
Thus Spoke Zarathustra