2nd September at dawn, departure from Istanbul
airport. As arrive in Van the driver takes me straight to the Ararat mountain
(Agri Dagi in Turkish), after living the bicycle at the hotel in Doguyarzibit.
Walk to base camp while a mule carries my 35 lts. backpack (I’m very short in
equipment; basically I carried a good
sleeping bag). At 3 p.m. I arrive there to meet 13 Lebanese, one polish
and one Brit. There were some last minute changes on the timings of the groups
so I am placed together with the Lebanese (big mistake) while the Brit wisely escapes
to camp 1. Rocks on base camp reveal last July’s presence of the Turkish PKK
and Syrian EPG (the pro independence Kurdish rebels). Next day arrived in camp
1 in 1:50 minutes as the Welsh guy (he says «Dog-you-are-biscuits» for
Doguyarzibit city) comes down from the summit. No need to start before 2 a.m.
otherwise you get to the summit before sunrise and it’s freezing cold, he said.
Some Lebanese took over 5 hours to get to camp 1!? Never seen such noisy, disrespectful
and slow people on a mountain (the Lebanese)! I called one guy the ‘megaphone’
(always talking) and another the ‘Christmas tree’ (carried all sort of brand
and flashy gadgets). Had to get away from them!
Mehmet, the guide, ignores the Noa’s Arc episode but
he is fast to shout “slovi, slovi” (meaning ‘slowly, slowly’). On day 4 he
wants to start at 1 a.m. after sleeping on camp 1. I make my time to start
later but finally leave the tent at 1:20, and catch up with the group 15 minutes
later: after 5 minutes one girl needs to pee and the whole group stops; after
10 minutes another girl needs to pee; 30 minutes later the first Lebanese give
up and walk down with the second guide (these had left the camp at 12
something); and so on…My body feels cold. Why? Because it can’t warm up as we
progress so slow. We step on the snow at around 4 a.m. The shepherd dog plays
on it as if altitude means nothing to him! The sun light starts to show and
make the path visible, and I get a clear sense of the way to the top. Start
climbing on my own rhythm. Bye Lebanese! No cold as I make summit at 15 past 5,
right when the sun rises behind the mountain. Beautiful pictures! After half an
hour I start going down, and down… At 11 a.m. I back at base camp. That same
afternoon (after having some tee with local Kurds) I would be at the hotel
preparing the bicycle for the next day’s departure.
6th September: first day biking (at mid-day)
after abandoning the boots (as well as a shirt, goggles and gloves) outside the
hotel, and some morning shopping and a lot of stops for cargo adjustments (had
not fully tested it before). As the road was going slightly up and the wind was
against I’ve pedaled only 65 km, not enough to arrive at any hotel. Stopped at
a road café in Tasliçay and met Zeynep. She gets me a bed at a dirty side room
(room for travelers, they said) next to the family house.
Starting on the 7th, my new routine for
many days (29 in total) would be waking up before 7 a.m. start biking at 7:30
(an average of 103 km per day), and look for a place to sleep around 5 p.m. This
day I´ve arrived at a dirty room in Horosan (croissant, as I remembered it),
after 133 km (to compensate the 30 less of the previous day) on ‘500 sorts’ of different
asphalt, and climbing once to the altitude of 2.210 meters. Felt pain all over:
legs, wrists, butt, kidneys, trapeze (what else?). The next day I’ve crossed with
3 German guys biking to Thailand! And I got the news that the killing of 13
policemen in Igdir by the PKK rebels forced authorities to close the access to
the mount Ararat. On the 3rd day I’ve arrived at Erzurum and the Turks
were gathering on the streets to show their nationalism. This was the first big
city and had the opportunity to get my portable stove and bike ‘km-counter’ repaired,
and also to visit the Madrasias (old
Ottoman castle and ‘mesquitas’).
Often I saw military vehicles on the road, and garrisons
everywhere! Strange names for Turkish cities: Van, Silvan, Tercan,
Tatuan, Batman, Kayak, Cáguisman (na verdade, Kagizman), Croissant (na verdade,
Horosan), Samsun…
Photos: first glance of the Ararat; crater just before Van; military convoy; the impressive Ararat; Ararat camp 1; Ararat base camp with PKK/EPG marks; tee with kurdish family; carpets; giant cabbages; reflexes on dam; clock tower at Sorgun; Iznik lake.
From Ararat
to Athos: 3.000 km across Turkey on a bicycle – part 2
30 days on the bicycle separating two summits: I’ve made summit on Mount Ararat on the 5th September and Mount Athos on the 5th October. In between… well, a lot of stories and leg work!
Terjan has a very nice looking bridge connecting the 2 parts of the town divided by the main road, but nobody uses it: no one walks up the stairs and instead everybody crosses right through the middle of the road!
Besides my mate ‘Sharon Carbon’ (the bicycle: the older the better), that never lets me down (although had a broken spoke for more than 1.000 km), my other allied were the gas stations: regardless of the brand, there was always one when I most needed it, providing shade, water and sodas.
One afternoon I rode together with an American couple for some 40 km. The next day, after a long and sweaty stage I was desperate to jump in the water of the lake ahead but… I should’ve seen it coming: it was a salted lake (Tuz gölü, below, means salt lake)!
Turks are totally dependent on smart phones (even that Kurdish guy on the base of Ararat, that loved and wished for my cheap sunglasses, he had 2 on that empty house room; I have none!).
The picture that most represents the paradox of actual Turkey (above): rural (all the interior of Turkey is a huge barn; all crops no trees until the longitude of Ankara-Bursa) against ‘development’. Turkey is on the move: a lot of building going on; lots of trucks on the road (every road).
The Turks are quite filthy (and I don’t refer to personal hygiene), they have good notion of esthetics, but no environmental sensibility; they’re a bit ‘cavernícola’ and even brute: the side of the road is disgusting, and they behave like animals behind the wheel (many exceptions of course). They are also willful, quite nationalists and superb (more than Andalucians), but are interested, curious and have a great hart: 4 times I was preparing to sleep on the open air and always a couch appeared out of nowhere (only on the fifth attempt I did sleep outside); I also got some 40 invitations for tea (accepted the half). Also, they produce good products (from mattresses to cookies) and were not invaded by the Chinese yet! As ones approaches the west, you start seeing more toilettes the western type, but the sympathy diminishes and so the quality of the fruit (hotel prices go up).
Turks have a strange relation with… shoes! People south of the Sahara worship them (the shoes), even sell them without the pair; Turks abandon them in unlikely places (on the roads). Also animal corpses are not removed and you find them (all sorts) everywhere.
Superb
the Turks, arrogant the Greeks! More than relaxed with the cleaning the Turk,
careless with information the Greek. You get out of one country in which you
understand the alphabet but don’t understand one word they say to enter another
where you don’t understand what they say nor the alphabet. Luckily many Greeks
speak English while no Turk does (some ex-emigrants spoke German).
Arrived at Dionisios monastery (had booked one night). So many questions… Diplomatically I have suggested I did not want to assist the church mass (one at 5 p.m. and the second at 3 a.m.): “Ok, if you are not an orthodox…”. Uff! But I missed dinner, because the mass ended up earlier!?! So, I did not bother to wake up for breakfast because perhaps I would be up at 4 a.m. and would lose it anyway! In fact I was awake at that hour, looking for the time to leave the monastery and start climbing on the good weather (forecast was not so favorable for later that day). Wanted to leave at 5 a.m. “Not wise”, someone religious said: wolfs and jackals in the darkness; “5 jackals would attack you and you are skinny, they would eat you in no time”. While I reflected on what to do, the issue got solved by itself: the gate of the monastery only opens at 7 a.m. We were grounded and secluded! In the end it took me almost 4 hours to reach the top of Mount Athos (not the 7 hours someone suggested). From there, down to Nea skiti (passed Aghia Anna) and to the house of monk Gregorio, right next to the village tower, once the local monastery was kind of full. My legs like jelly!
The 70 years old monk told me he didn’t like the course mankind is rambling and what is happening to human relations (more fragile); he felt something was about to happen (maybe he meant the Armageddon or the Apocalypse). I contested that half the population of the ‘civilized’ countries is bored and eager to find external entertainment and the other half is obsessed with their jobs, so we have a lot of unbalanced people, unable to remember we are all in the same boat, or dedicate time to others.
So, objectives accomplished, while adding another 2 lakes and 4 islands to my list!
Data and curiosities:
- Days on
the bicycle: 30- Total kilometers covered: 2.998
- Maximum distance in one day: 145 (twice)
- Higher altitudes crossed: 2.210; 2.190; 2.160 (only on the 5th day I got below 1.400 meters)
- Total flat tyers: 4 (two in the same day)
- Days on foot on the mountain: 5
- Total meters ascended on foot: 5.200
- Total days to cross Turkey: 22 (2.385 km)
- Total nights sleeping out of a bed: 11 (of which 4 on a couch; 3 outside, on the sand; 3 on a tent, on the mountain; 1 on the airport benches)
- Total hitchhikes: 11 (holding on to the trailer of tractors; once, 3 times on the same day; totaling some 16 km)
- Abandoned items: 15 (shirt, goggles, gloves x 2, boots, tennis shoes, tyre, mattress x 2, underwear, biking shorts, elastic band x 2, bottle, sun cap)
- Weight of bicycle with cargo in the beginning / end of the trip: 32 kg / 23 kg
- Body weight loss: ?
- Offers received: 2 (not counting the tea: chocolate and water bottle)
- Maximum price of a hotel (Otel): 85 TL (some 25 euros)
- Number of Turks seen playing sports outside: 4 (2 in Çanakkale; 3 were cyclists)
- World Patrimony sites visited: 2 (Troia and Mount Athos)
- Total number of photos / short-videos madeon this: 1850 / 120
