Travel Tips

We were warmly welcomed into Turkey by the bemused border police, who seemed unable to fathom why in heavens name we had come all this way with bicycles. "Problem with money?" one ventured. Problem with head, I reassured him.

The blustery breeze that had been building in Greece had now escalated to a full blown gale. A powerful headwind can be a greater hinderence to a cycle tourer than any amount of rain, cold or heat. Our speed dropped to around 9 kph / 5.5 mph as we crawled along the highway toward Istanbul. Normally this would have been regarded as nothing more than a frustrating hinderence, but we had an appointment in the capital with a very important person who was due to leave the country for Australia in a few days.

We wild camped among ferocious mosquitoes, the tent guarded by feral dogs and the following morning I had something of a tussel with my conscience. I had been determined that we cycled as much as possible of the route east, bar any detours, unless threatened by imminent death. Now, at this speed, we were at risk of missing our appointment. I concluded that to miss our appointment was the next worse thing to death so conceded to put our bikes on a bus for the final hop into the capital.

We arrived at the otogar in Istanbul, the largest multi-storey bus station in the world, off-loaded our bikes and out of the crowd bounded my old friend Ali.

Some will remember Ali from the Cairo to Cape Town journey in 2005. We had met in the Western Desert of Egypt, in a tiny oasis, and I had joined him in his Land Rover to cross the sands of the Sahara in Sudan to Ethiopia. It was fantastic to see him again.

We loaded our bikes and gear into the back of his trusty Landy, still going strong and looking ready for another great adventure, and drove across the city.

Passing over the Bosphorous I looked down into the murky waters and smiled. We had crossed Europe. It was done.

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