1. Intro
2. Recap of week 52 to 58
3. The long haul and test of perseverance
4. Turks and the picnic
5. Biking through military checkpoints in Southeast Turkey
6. Mount Ararat and Noah's Ark
7. Seeing the Black Sea again
8. Chasing dreams on a bike
9. The Caucasus Mountains are up next

I’m once again looking out over the ocean from the Black Sea coast. The mountains of Southeast Turkey have been conquered. I looped around Lake Van, gazed upon the towering Mount Ararat in the extreme east of Turkey and hugged the Armenian border biking north. I followed the Chorokhi river and reached Hopa, located close to the border of Georgia. The border has been crossed and I’ve cruised into Batumi - a city looking a bit like mini Miami.

Last blog ended in the region of Cappadocia. The travel week counter at that time read 52 and announced a travel anniversary. It also marked a halfway point on my cross country tour of Turkey. Lots have happened since then.

After a long flat stretch on the Konya plain, I was going to head into some mountains on the next part of my route. Many elevation meters and increasing summer heat didn’t concern me that much. The prospect of getting to experience mountain nature again was a huge motivational driver. Shortly after leaving Cappadocia I was biking in and out of valleys and on roller coaster roads along hillsides. I passed Tufanbeyli situated on a sloping plateau near the Taurus mountains. Continued onwards to Malatya where I took a break and abandoned my idea of going over Mount Nemrut. On a direct route to Lake Van I visited Elazığ and started to notice the increasing military presence. At least once a day, I would go through a military checkpoint. A few times, they checked my passport, but mostly they only asked where I was headed before waving me on. After reaching Lake Van, I looped around it on the southern side and made it to the extreme east of Turkey where I could gaze upon the towering Mount Ararat. From here, there was no more biking east which meant that I had successfully biked the length of Turkey. To my south was Iran and to my east Armenia.

I changed my compass direction from east to north and hugged the Armenian border until I stood at the foot of the Black Sea Mountains. For a couple of hundred kilometers I wriggled my way down to the ocean along fjord looking landscapes carved deep in between high cliffs with intense green vegetation. Going from treeless mountains of central Turkey to what slightly reminded me of the Amazon jungle was a big and dramatic change. The weather also went from crisp dryness to humid and rainy days. I reached the ocean and the city of Hopa before doing the last 18 km of Turkish roads. On a rainy day I crossed the border to Georgia and landed in Batumi, a city of progressive architecture which had created a beachfront of interesting skyscrapers.

It is now travel week 58 and I am sitting at a café sipping coffee and planning my touring route in Georgia.

I got a taste of multi-day touring grinding before reaching Cappadocia. This would only get more intense as I aimed for Lake Van and Mount Ararat. I couldn’t shake off the idea of being on a visa clock. For a Danish passport holder, I get 3 months visa free travels. For any experienced bike tourer this is a piece of cake. Loads of time available to make it to the other side in due time. I’ve been on the bike for some time but I was never really challenged through the relatively small countries I traveled through in Europe. Besides being small enough distance wise to complete in a couple of weeks, I had no visa requirements in the European Union. So upon entering Turkey I got my first real challenge to bike a big country within a given time frame. Roughly calculated, my cross country tour in Turkey would amount to the same as me traversing the entire European continent almost all the way down to Gibraltar with Copenhagen as my starting point.

It actually first really occurred to me when I entered the plateau where I would see the town of Tufanbeyli. I had climbed over a mountain and looked in awe over a small part of the Taurus mountains. Here I had many possibilities to zigzag my route on side roads to explore the area. The elevation meters and the increasing summer heat was actually making me struggle. I readjusted my daily mileage goal to 60km and with that I also fixed my focus on reaching the far east of Turkey which by all means was a serious detour from the most direct route I could have taken to Georgia along the Black Sea coast. “It’s about detours, not destinations” is one of my favorite quotes. As adventurous as that might sound and be, I abandoned any ideas to start circling around or going on scenic mountain roads. Any in-depth exploration of the places I passed or got near to was off the table. The routes I took followed for the most main roads with smooth and fast asphalt with wide shoulders. These were often also the most direct path towards my goal in the east. Though this may sound like the less scenic routes, I felt I was well treated with good views of mountains and valley landscapes as I biked towards Malatya. I reached Malatya after 8 days straight road-days, which for me is a long period without any breaks. I’ve heard many mention Mount Nemrut as a must-do mountain pass but I think I subconsciously already had decided to skip this long ago. I wanted to save my legs and keep my eyes on the prize: Lake Van and Mount Ararat. Having in mind that Turkey was my biggest challenge yet, and taking a conservative approach to the visa deadline, I decided that it would be a big success for me and an even bigger achievement to just cross the country with a loop around Lake Van. This was not the time to be greedy on detours. The views I would get along a direct route following main roads needed to suffice.

Touring grinding is stressing your physical abilities to ride a bike day after day. I did have some slight pain in my thighs and knees after pushing it in Bulgaria. It followed me for a month in Turkey - all the way to Cappadocia. Here I managed to get rid of the pain and get my good riding legs back. I was therefore well aware of the wear and tear on the body which comes with long distances on the bike. Besides this very obvious aspect of long distance riding there is the equal toll on your mental stamina. Biking through a big country taking months to complete means that you will more or less encounter the same culture, same language, same people for thousands and thousands of kilometers. There is not a big variation and it struck me that it was starting to get a bit monotone. The sensational and adventurous feeling of a new country had worn off after some time. Something that had given me so much energy and drive at first. I travel to experience new things and now this source of motivation was sort of gone. I was still having a very good time on the roads but this was certainly a challenge. On top of this, very few people in Turkey speak English so you are feeling a bit isolated with every conversation relying on Google Translate. Dealing with this for longer periods just adds more to the challenge. I guess I’m still learning about new aspects of bike touring. Having arrived in Malatya and well on my way to Lake Van, I felt comfortable dealing with the challenge of long haul biking and welcomed my first real test of perseverance for the weeks to follow.

I plotted the most direct route I could to Tatvan, which would be the first city on the shores of Lake Van. On the way I biked through Elazığ, Bingöl, Solhan and Muş. The cities were not very interesting and I mostly just biked through them. Mountain nature was the big attraction here. From green covered round mountains with few scattered small tree bushes, allowing me to see the wavy shapes of hills that flowed downwards from the mountain tops, to naked and rugged mountains with dramatic ridge lines. The scenery only took breaks from being amazing as I entered and left the cities on my way. After Solhan I was given a bit of flat roads before I would climb the last part up to Tatvan where I was greeted with the view of Lake Van. It truly is a big lake. I couldn’t see to the other end and the lake even had a ferry transport for the container trains. The containers would be offloaded in Tatvan and transported to Van over the lake where they would be loaded onto trains again.

It had been a long time since I camped at an official campsite and when another bike touring couple told me about a campsite just off Tatvan, I followed their wheel tracks and joined them for an evening at the campsite with night time beers and the sound of a wedding party nearby. Campsites in Turkey are a bit peculiar. In my experience they are catered for pic-nics where you can stay overnight in your tent if you want. I arrived in Tatvan on a Saturday which is a peak day of the week for an outing. And Turkish people really do take this opportunity to leave their home and flock to pic-nic areas where you will have covered pavilions and barbecues grills at your disposal. They go all in! I saw men in kitchen aprons preparing the barbecue skewers, women arranging the salad and kids running around having a good time. They bring tablecloths and dinner plates. In the meantime others are frantically waving and airing the grill charcoal to get them at their optimal heating level at just the correct moment aiming for that ideal timing. Sure I’ve seen and done barbecuing before but always within a domestic frame. Sure I’ve seen pic-nics before but always with prepared sandwiches and food. Turkish people take this to another level. And it is just not at these official pic-nic areas they would flock to. Biking along the road, you would see cars parked along the road with the trunk open and, next to the car, a camping table with chairs and a big dinner on the table. Turkish people have an ability to do pic-nics everywhere it seems. What a great thing.

That night at the campsite/pic-nic area I would not prepare dinner at all. Me and the dutch bike touring couple would get so much food offered from our neighbors that we hardly could eat it all. They would give us salad, main dishes, deserts, sweets, soda and tea. Their generosity and hospitality shines brighter than anything I’ve experienced before.

The best thing about Tatvan was their campsite. Unfortunately, Tatvan does not have the infrastructure to be a tourist place. Their lakeshore stretch is underdeveloped but they still act as if they were a top tourist destination with the classic tourist rip-off price scheme. I was asked to pay triple price for a soup and that just underlined the vibe I got from this city. Therefore, I didn’t mind much to give up a couple of resting days and immediately start my southern loop around Lake Van.

Gradually after leaving Malatya and with an increasing rate after Tatvan, the military presence increased. I had to go through daily military checkpoints. Mostly I just answered where I was headed and got offered tea. Heavy military vehicles often passed me on the roads. Wild camping in these areas can come with some surprises. One night, I camped on top of a hill just outside of Bingöl. I woke up early in the morning hearing footsteps outside of my tent. Then the sound of a camera shutter. I peaked my head out and saw two soldiers on footpatrol. They asked where I was from and after I replied they said “no problem” and motioned for me to stay. As it was early morning before 5, I went back to sleep. When I got back on the road again after packing down camp, I only biked for 15 minutes before two heavy armored vehicles passed me and stopped further up the road. They waved me over and I had a scared feeling I had done something wrong. It turned out they just wanted to invite me for tea and take selfies. However friendly the military was and however safe I felt, they are here for a reason. Terrorist attacks do occur in the region.

After looping around Lake Van I headed for Doğubeyazıt which is the last frontier before entering Iran. Doğubeyazıt also lies at the foot of majestic Mount Ararat. The roads here get very close to the Iranian border. At times I could see the border which ran along a mountain ridge top. I could spot a road running along the mountain ridge with frequent watch towers spread out over the entire ridge length. I guess the road is there for the Turkish army to quickly mobilize military personnel and weapons to protect the border. In every little village and town I passed, there would be a military installation of some sort. On almost every hilltop with a vantage point you would see military watchtowers and compounds. It was here, they started to ask to see my passport when I went through their checkpoints.

Just before arriving in Çaldıran, a car with a local doctor stopped and greeted us. At this time I had the pleasure of company from a German bike touring couple. We told him we were on a long distance tour and that we would sleep in our tents. He advised us against it saying it was dangerous to camp. We didn’t ask what kind of danger he was referring to. We stopped in Çaldıran for lunch and were pestered by young Syrian refugee kids. We agreed to bike onwards from the city and would start to look for a camp spot well away from any town and villages to at least avoid snooping refugee kids. We passed some doable spots but agreed that we would go for a gas station up the road and ask if we could camp there. The next gas station turned out to be 24 hours serviced and they instantly agreed to let us camp on a grassy pitch next to their ground. But we didn’t get far setting up camp. As we were parking our bikes and settling for a spot, two soldiers approached us and wanted to hear what we were doing. They were very polite, shook our hands and said hello. We told them that the gas station had given us permission to sleep there. Regardless, the two soldiers wanted to clear that with their high command. They checked our passports and called a guy who spoke perfect english. He said that he just wanted to make sure the military night patrol was OK with us sleeping there so we would avoid any problems. After a minute, the guy on the phone gave us the green light. We gathered some experience from all of this: It’s a good idea to make your presence known in the area before setting up camp so it can be cleared by relevant people.

Touring along the Iranian border to the city of Doğubeyazıt is a special experience. Not only because of the heavy military presence. The landscape also sees less presence of civilization which is something I had longed for the entire trip through central Turkey. A sense of remoteness emerged and I appreciated every moment of it even though it only lasted for a day. Before Doğubeyazıt there is a climb up a road through a volcanic landscape. It looks like a volcano erupted and left a stream of lava rocks. I could see a clear division between the green vegetation on the hillsides and the more blackish looking volcanic rock. It looked different from anything I had seen in Turkey and it was an amazing sight. On the other side of the climb, you get to see the grand view of Mount Ararat as you cruise down one of the most scenic downhills I’ve had in Turkey. The scenery here is so remote, isolated and diverse. Different colored mountain rocks made a spectacular foreground to the snow capped Mount Ararat in the distance.

Not only is Mount Ararat a jaw dropping sight, it also merits an interesting history - at least according to a team of evangelical Christian explorers. They claim to have found the remains of Noah's ark beneath snow and volcanic debris. Some Christians believe this mountain is the final resting place of Noah's ark, which the Bible says protected Noah and a pair of every animal species on Earth during a severe flood that wiped out most of humanity. The team of explorers have found seven large wooden compartments, about 4800 years old, buried near the peak which they apparently believe resembles historical accounts of the ark. If you want to believe this is the famed ark or not is entirely up to you.

Dwelling on the claim that I would actually get close to Noah's ark, I descended to the plateau and biked the last kilometers to Doğubeyazıt which would mark the finishing point for my cross country tour. Iran is to the south and Armenia to the south. From here on, I couldn’t bike any further east. From here on I could only head north to reach the Black Sea Coast and to finish up the third and last part of my tour in Turkey.

I landed in Doğubeyazıt in the runup to Bayram which is a holiday celebrated world wide by Muslims. It marks the end of the month-long dawn to sunset fasting of Ramadan. The hustle and bustle of the main street made Istanbul look like a calm and peaceful place (which it absolutely is not). Finding a vacant room took some time and it was equally difficult to find some peace of mind to recuperate from being on the roads for almost two weeks straight. On the first day of Bayram I woke up to a silence I didn’t expect. I looked out the window onto the shopping street below me - there were no people. It was like a post apocalyptic event had occurred and wiped out the human race. Perhaps this indeed was the place of Noah’s ark! This opportunity would not be wasted so I took to the streets and explored the area and marveled over mighty Mount Ararat. I spent the days of Bayram in the city and recharged fully before I loaded the bike and pointed my wheels north towards the Black Sea.

It was a highlight to bike along the foot of this dormant volcano of a mountain which appeared to have a constant ring of clouds covering its peak making it a mysterious unknown. The next many days I could see into Armenia. On a few occasions I was not even a kilometer away from the Armenian border. Few people lived here. The ones who did were actively gathering grass from all around. Even steeper hillsides were not a showstopper for the tractors that went up and down to collect winter food for their livestock. Many houses here are made of stones and they all had walls of bricks of cow dung in front of their houses drying in the heat. This is how they heat up during winter I assume. Winters high up in the mountains must be brutal and I admired the people living and surviving here on such primitive means.

This last part of Turkey, from Mount Ararat to the Black Sea was “only” 500 km - but it felt so long. I guess I already had the finish line in sight and was more than ready to reach it. The feeling of entering the Black Sea Mountains was as if I entered another world. Fjord looking valleys in between steep cliffs. Intense green vegetation made it feel like a rainforest in comparison to the barren mountain landscapes I had seen the last several weeks. The sound of birds made the area come alive. It was some tough kilometers constantly going up and down as I biked the cliff sides of the area. This beauty propelled me forward.

Turkey was a test of perseverance - a test I passed. My biggest country so far. Biking the Black Sea Mountains felt like a reward. A medal for my achievement. It was some cloudy and rainy days but it didn’t stop me from arriving in Hopa at the ocean coast again with a big smile on my face. The border of Georgia was only 18 km away and I celebrated my arrival in Hopa as the successful completion of my Turkish touring adventure.

One big dream was achieved in Cappadocia when I woke up to the soaring hot air balloons. Another dream was born as I reached Hopa finishing up my biggest challenge so far which was to reach the border of Georgia. Passing this test of perseverance showed me that I can take on big distances and now I want to realize a dream of going to the far East. Plans about reaching Vietnam are in the making. I’ve proven to myself that I can do this. I am getting serious about chasing dreams on a bike. I fully agree with Eleanor Roosevelt; The future truly belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

The next three weeks will take me to the north of Georgia and along the Caucasus Mountains before I dip down south to Tbilisi which would be my last stop before entering Armenia. It will be some challenging 700km with over 10k elevation meters. I have been warned about the bad road quality in Georgia so I am preparing myself for some slow and aggravating days but I am sure the stellar mountain views will make all my struggles worthwhile.

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