Card 5: A Mad Dash Through Eastern Anatolia
Or, a study of the contrasts in route selection.
A note to the reader:
If you’ve been following closely, you’ll notice that I skipped writing last week. This was not intentional — I just couldn’t find the time, and hopefully this piece will showcase the reasons why. As a result, what follows is extra long, highly narrative, and probably a bit much for most readers. I hope it can convey the emotions and dilemmas encountered on the road — even when the solutions seem obvious in hindsight. Nonetheless, next week I promise I will go back to a slightly more documentary style, as these narrative pieces, while fun to write, take a lot of effort, and might not be as informative for the reader as they are cathartic for the author. Thanks for sticking with me.
“Ok, fuck it, let’s do it.”
These words, spoken to a stranger, carry so much more meaning than if they were said in quiet only to myself. It can be so easy to tip-toe around a decision, to play at accepting a compromise solution, to feign commitment while trying, deep down, to keep all the doors open. But spoken to another person, full throated, in a loud kebap restaurant — that’s a pact. And then there is no doubt, no wavering. You see it through.
Flashback — four days earlier, somewhere on the long, mostly flat highway from Kayseri to Sivas. On the road again, and alone for the first time in two weeks, deep in my own head. It’s getting dark. The sun, seemingly always ahead of schedule for its evening tryst with the horizon, is setting behind the low rolling hills, casting shadows on the pasture land and bringing a chill to the breeze. Damn it, maybe I shouldn’t have chosen to push past that town. Where the hell am I going to camp? Thankfully, I did find a roadside restaurant, closed, where the proprietor lived alone and let me camp (he also showed me how to properly cook Çorba Mantı).
Jump-cut, sweating up a climb after a bit too much köfte in Sivas. Another day, another meatball plate. The cars and trucks give me a respectful distance when they pass on this 6-lane road, but it’s not enough to quiet the roar of the diesel engines, the honks of encouragement (or are they honks of exasperation?), the voice in my head asking is this kind of riding really worth it?
Screen-wipe. Next day. Was it the next day? Or was it the one after? Sleeping in the treehouse at the restaurant tea garden beside the lake had been nice, until the stray dog and cat kept waking me up. It’s taking me everything to concentrate on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, playing in my ears to distract myself from the road surface. The latter has turned to melting asphalt, causing the bits of gravel in the shoulder to stick to my tires and get launched like tiny bullets into my shins.
Lens blur. Fade-out.
I was progressing at breakneck speed, covering ground like never before. But to see what? To go where? Repetitive highway towns, perhaps. In this region, the dirt tracks and gravel roads lead up the mountains to villages, then stop. There is no alternative route. And it’s the most efficient route from Cappadocia through the plateau and to the Northeast, or so I told myself. I also told myself that this is what I signed up for. That sometimes, I would have to have some long, boring stretches to reach my end goal.
But on such a long trip, you can’t focus on the final destination; it’s abstract. You break it up, think smaller. I had tunnel vision on the only slightly less vague concept of Georgia; Gurgistan; The Border.
I had more or less three options. I could cross the mountains and go to Artvin, at the expense of a staggering 11000m of elevation gain. This made little sense — I was trying to make up time spent in the West of the country, after all. Alternatively, I could continue along the plateau highway (which still had 5000m of elevation gain), eventually arriving at Kars. A town supposedly… “nice”, “quaint”. And undoubtedly the most efficient solution…
Then, there was a third option, a daunting option, one that I had researched before the trip: the “most dangerous road in Turkey”, over the mountains and down to the Black Sea coast. The most fun option no doubt, but harder, ultimately longer (even though it is shorter on paper in Turkey, the crossing to Georgia is a few hundred kilometers further west than the other options), and with the significant downside of having to ride on the Black Sea coast road, which is universally derided as a horrible route for cycling. Every logical argument suggested I should go via Kars. And with time seemingly in short supply, it seemed foolish not to — surely, I’d had plenty of adventure, and there would be plenty more to come. I could sacrifice a bit in the name of efficiency, right? Yet something about this route was tugging at me, nagging me. Maybe it was the call of the wild, the allure of danger. Or maybe it was the promise of variety, of new stimulus after five days of dull repetition.
I could not make up my road-blurred, sleep-deprived mind. And soon enough, I found myself at a junction 20km before Refahiye, sun setting, forced to choose between left or right.
“Hi, excuse me, are you a cycle tourist?”
This is how Tim, a tall, mulleted, earring-sporting Australian guy introduced himself when I was awkwardly looking for a shaded bench in Erzincan’s meydan (main square). As it turned out, Tim was a cycle tourist, too.
The typical exchange ensued. What direction are you going? Oh, you’re going to Georgia too? How are you getting there? Oh, you’re thinking of going through Bayburt to the coast? Well I’ve been thinking of going that way, it’s tempting but I heard the coast road is horrible. I mean, I could be interested in going that way… I’m getting pretty friggin tired of this highway…
Sometimes, the serendipity of life just never ceases to astonish and humble me. Tim could not know, when he proposed we grab lunch, that I had begrudgingly convinced myself, at that junction the night before, to steel myself in compromise and go to Kars. That I thought I had cut off all my options leading to Bayburt, to “the most dangerous road”, short of backtracking. Nor could he know that that very morning, after 30km of climbing and a sore ass, I had rued the decision, even though the low repetitive scenery of hills and pastures had given way to high mountains. He could not know that when he met me in that square in Erzincan, I was truly demoralized, perhaps for the first time in the trip so far.
And I could not know, until we had exchanged stories over Iskender doner, and compared route options and GPX files, that Tim too was demoralized, and for entirely opposite reasons. He wanted to get to Georgia quickly, without it feeling like a cop-out. He had spent the better part of a month almost exclusively on gravel roads, and learned that perhaps touring (going overland over long distance) was not for him. That he would rather do stellar, gruelling bikepacking routes and bus between them, rather than have to cover long, boring kilometers, as I was doing. He still wanted to complete his tour, but just couldn’t fathom continuing along his original planned route (more or less the option to Artvin with 11000m). I could not know that he knew of a gravel route, high in the mountains, that would get us to Bayburt without backtracking on the highway. That he too was uncertain. And finally, I could not know that it was only by continuing along the highway to Erzincan, thinking I was headed for Kars, that I would end up on one of the most epic rides of my life. Cosmic irony.
And so, we broke bread. And despite being strangers, despite having very different motivations, we said “fuck it” and off we went.
At the crack of dawn we set out from the double hotel room Tim had sorted out. We left town and almost immediately began climbing 10%-15% gradients, yet despite this we were both giddy. We felt liberated from our dilemmas and endless deliberations. We both had just needed that little extra push, that little extra motivation from someone.
Soon we climbed high into the alpine, and the mountain views behind were obscured by the ridges and cirques of the pass we were ascending. The road, thankfully, had recently been re-built (though not paved), and was actually easier than we had anticipated (it was still a 2.5 hour climb).
Eventually, we reached the top. At first, there was no view, only the gentle curve of tarmac over the crest. As we descended, however, the landscape opened up, and we were simply at a loss for words. I realized all in one go what I had been missing, in the days spent with my head down on the big road. How could I have forgotten what is was like to travel the route less taken? Yet I had forgotten, in my tunnel vision, in my haste — but it didn’t matter: I was here now, and I was elated.
The rest of that first day, we descended down the mountain on a gravel road, through the valley, past villages and sheep dogs. Weather rolled in, with dramatic thunderclaps, and sheets of rain advancing across the valley. We made it a game to outrun the storm, pushing a high tempo all the way to Bayburt (we stayed dry!). In Bayburt, we ate double, at one of the quaint lokantas along the river promenade, under the shadow of the massive medieval fortress. We were beaming, we were tired, we were sated. And by the end of this day, we certainly were not strangers anymore.
The next morning, as we set out, there was a contemplative silence between us, only broken here or there. We hadn’t run out of things to say to eachother — no, it was a silence of foreboding, of knowing the challenge that lay ahead (and also, lack of caffeine). After securing a Turkish coffee that tasted dubiously of Nescafe, passing donkeys and being passed by tractors, we encountered the first switchback.
Two hours later, we reached the top of Soğanlı pass, which should really be classed as a mountain and yet was quite well inhabited, with villages and cattle herds dotting the barren landscape above the treeline like so many ants. The muezzin’s call to prayer echoed through the bowl, a moment to contemplate a space that seemed too massive, yet that we had crossed. Quietude.
The descent began rather tamely. Then we saw the first sign of the adventure to come when the road abruptly turned to gravel. When the tableland opened onto a deep gorge we stared in awe (and took lots of photos). After, when we rounded the first switchback, we began to understand the reputation of this road. Not for it’s danger. But for it’s pure, adrenaline pumping pleasure.
Long-take, wide lens, vivid colour: Picture steep drops, a gravel doubletrack hugging the cliffside, waterfall thundering at the top of the gorge. Immense space, lush with vegetation unlike any we had seen on the arid, dry plateau for over a month. Fog hanging in the air. And vistas to future cliffsides, where villages clung to rocks, and dirt tracks zigzag, rising over 1.5km from river to mountain peak.
After carefully maneuvering down the first set of switchbacks, and stopping to bodge a replacement for my GoPro mount (which broke over a particularly vigorous patch of dirt road), we stopped for lunch and çay at a fabulously situated eatery. It was barely more than a small wooden shack balancing on stilts over the precipice. Once again, we exchanged very few words.
As we continued, the track turned back to asphalt, and the imminent danger abated — yet the scenery grew ever more unexpected. We plunged downwards, hitting warm humid air, as vertical tea plantations began to crop up, here and there, on the impossibly steep inclines. The descent was glorious. It went on forever — we barely pedaled for an hour, racing down the winding road at the very bottom of the ravine. And it kept going, going going. In less than 20km, all the climbing of the day, the week, the month, was paid back with interest. We dropped over 2 kilometers in altitude, twice the height that we had sweated to climb up for three hours earlier that day. The wind, at times balmy, by turns chilled by the cascading river, whipped through my hair and tickled my inner ears. Our lungs were full of thick jungle air, the non-descript but nonetheless fragrant scent of a thousand different plant species coating our nasal passages, where before there had only been dirt, stone, and grass. Was this still Anatolia?
Later, after struggling back up a humid climb to Uzungöl (a pretty yet overly touristy lake town that gave the impression of a Swiss ski resort set in the Vietnamese jungle), where we camped in a derelict construction yard; after descending further into a headwind strong enough to bring the bike to a standstill; and after passing through the first of many many tunnels to come, we reached the Black Sea coast. Karadeniz. We ate fish, we stared at turquoise waters. Though we hadn’t yet reached the border; though it was raining and the truck tires passing through puddles on the highway asphalt raised a cacophonous roar; though the tunnel crossings were terror-inducing and we had close-misses with cars more than once — I think a weight fell away then. We knew we had made it. And after the last kebap was eaten; the last çay offered was drunk; and when the last tunnel, jammed with a line of trucks that we had to weave around, finally opened up to a massive grey building flying a new flag, it occurred to me that every road I had followed was the right one. And I had no regrets.
***
Highlights
I forgot to include these post-script sections last week, so here you go! In no particular order:
Meeting Tim! Despite having different preferences for how to travel by bike, we work remarkably well together, and it has been a pleasure sharing the road. It’s rare to meet people that you vibe with so effortlessly, especially on the road. (I’m not just saying this because he is editing the piece).
The Bayburt-Of Yolu: Everything about taking the D915 was just magical. And I really needed the variety, after almost a month on the high plateau. Maybe, as an Island Kid, it’s not enough to “touch grass”, I need to “touch ocean” too.
Lessons Learned
Taking the Highway (for more than a few days) is ok, but don’t do it all the time: despite killing my morale, I still can’t complain too much about the highway sections. After all, I chose to take the quick route from Cappadocia. Made my bed, gotta sleep in it. It still featured some cool mid-sized cities, climbs of high passes, and brilliant vistas. I just did too much of it, with too little variety, and suffered mentally a bit for it. I don’t regret it, it got me to where I needed to be and everything worked out. But in the future, I’ll try not to take the big road more than every few days, where possible.
I don’t need to be stressed for time. This is a positive lesson. I chose to take the highway knowing that in Cappadocia, I was only half-way through the vast expanses of Anatolia, with only a third of my soft time budget left. I didn’t need to get to Georgia by the 15th of June, but I think I still had nagging doubts. Having arrived in Georgia on the 14th, I can confidently say I am not stressed now, which is a great feeling. I’m sitting in a cafe, on my third consecutive rest day in Batumi, confident in my ability to tackle mountains, long days, and go fast when necessary. I still have apprehensions about future desert crossings, but the first big hurdle has been overcome.
Don’t drink with veteran drinkers after spending a month almost dry. To the Slovak motorbikers we met in Ardeşen: your brandy is strong.
Stats
This segment featured probably the most consistent riding I’ve every done, so there’s that. Despite my initial fears, I crossed eastern Cappadocia in nine days of riding (nonstop). Cappadocia also wasn’t a break, since we gravel biked every day with huge elevation gain. But I digress…
The highway days:
Göreme to Kayseri: https://strava.app.link/i3IlrevTgUb
Kayseri to near Sivas: https://strava.app.link/FvNIRLATgUb
Near Sivas to Tödürge Gölü: https://strava.app.link/Lq1cGxCTgUb
Tödürge Gölü to Refahiye: https://strava.app.link/Nm3kFpETgUb
Refahiye to Erzincan: https://strava.app.link/pPkshAGTgUb
The adventure road days:
Erzincan to Bayburt: https://strava.app.link/n2NnsMITgUb
Bayburt to Uzungöl: https://strava.app.link/UzofVeLTgUb
Uzungöl to Ardeşen: https://strava.app.link/1QnL1dNTgUb
Ardeşen to Batumi (Georgia): https://strava.app.link/wpOPh2OTgUb
Consider this my official vote for longer, more narrative posts; my favourite one so far!