Turkey …. Part1: welcome to Asia

Turkey has a real border making clear that you are leaving the EC countries. Sneaking by the line of trucks there was, however, no major issue or wait. The highway is a bit rough at first but the way towards Istanbul is well used and maintained overall. I quickly realized that there are not many other roads than this main one, just some small branches going straight to the next village changing into dirt tracks immediately after. So my first night, still in the European side of Turkey, I spent on a harvested potato field hidden between some trees. In fact this was a common issue throughout the trip and quite often I ended up going even without tracks straight through the harvested fields and countryside (thanks to the UNIversal MOtor Geraet) aiming to find a spot to hide and make camp for the night.

Plan in Turkey was to head pretty straight to “Asia” towards the black sea coast and East into the mountains. On the way I visited Safranbolu a Unesco world heritage site with a beautifully preserved old city center in the Ottoman style. Life as well seems much the same as in old times with people bartering over livestock, drinking tea and lingering in the shade of the little squares, and the blacksmiths forging the axes by hand. The backcountry east thereof revealed a beautiful landscape in autumn colors in the valleys and dense pine forests in the mountains. Also here, once after some offroading through the woods I was sure to have found a quiet spot - but all wrong, an old man on a quad “found” me. He was really friendly and after having invited him for a coffee he even showed me a more beautiful spot with a panorama view to stand for the night. Turkey again gave me the feeling that every other hour of driving the landscape changes character significantly: topography, colors, vegetation, agricultural styles and that makes travelling across the country really pleasant. The final crossing through the mountains towards the black sea brought me a heavy thunderstorm at nightfall. So I was creeping through hail and lightning storm at night with full lights on and counting on the Faraday effect of my steel box….

The Black sea was lying heavy and idle the next day reflecting the thunderstorm clouds like an old, dirty mirror. The coast is more populated than I anticipated and unfortunately is also quite industrial and polluted. Going further east along the coast a little feeling of the old Eastern Block was creeping in and manifesting itself subtly with the old shipyards, abandoned trawlers with Cyrillic names, and the trucks with Georgian license plates racing along…