UK to India 2009-2010

No permanent address & no income. Yep, I'm really getting into my travelling skin now. I thought I'd put a half-decent blog entry up here since I've been telling people about this blog anyway, and I didn't think that the "Dog Toilet" placeholder picture (courtesy of my friend Christos) would cut it any longer... So here is a rough plan for my itinerary from the UK to India (and not Nepal as depicted, but I can't be bothered to re-create the picture and I didn't keep the original XCF format okay?)

My last Saturday in London was meant to be nice and relaxing... NOT!

This is how the story unfolded: After waiting for a new WP rear shock for 2 months, I was told WP are are having problems and won't deliver. Naturally they only told me that when I started getting really pushy as "I have to be on the road next week!", before that the reason for the "delay" was "extended factory holidays" and such malarkey.

This is the updated itinerary plan, with the green part already done (in 3 days nonetheless!). So the rest of it should take roughly another week, right? :-P

Unbelievable, but it actually takes 2 days on the road to reach Ancona, Italy from London.

...with no white knuckles :-(

From dict.org:

Red tape,
(a) the tape used in public offices for tying up documents,
etc. Hence,
(b) official formality and delay; excessive bureaucratic
paperwork.

Finally... after a long and bizarre list of mishaps, annoyances and other temporary roadblocks that I am tempted to, but will not go through in detail, I am ready to leave Athens and start the real trip.

Staying in Athens for this long was as difficult as I expected, but through hardship come many opportunities for unique experiences. The support of friends is always valuable; receiving it is almost shocking in simplicity and power.

First days of the trip in TurkeyBlimey! It's so good to be on the road... After the first freaky 48 hours or so, during which I was thinking "ohmygodohmygodohmygooooooooooooooooooooood what am I dooooooooooooooooooooiiing", I am officially relaxing and enjoying this. A lot.

A few more days in Turkey, before taking a relaxing week-long break in Cappadocia.Hello hello. Not too much to report (after all it's been only a couple of days since the last blog post), but it'll be at least one full week before I have the chance to blog again, so I thought I'd make the best of these last hours of sweet anticipation in Ankara to send you some pictures.

The week in Turkey with Ping-Yi in a rather more relaxed pace than usual still had a few surprises in store and certainly a lot of strong feelings.What a week. Back in Ankara, after seeing the good doctor off (sniff) and suffering my first (partial) data loss due to a crashed Internet cafe PC. But let's try to put things in order.

This week was meant to be spent with Ping-Yi doing some classic tourism in Cappadocia and not moving about too much as she's not stocked up on protective equipment for the bike through the years like I have, and we didn't want to take any chances.

Leaving the Meditteranean behind, the trip takes me to the eastern part of Turkey, approaching the border to Syria. Balances begin to be found again after the major upheaval of having a companion and then not...(warning: long and not particlarly exciting blog entry)

Spending an obscene amount of money to buy chain lubricant of questionable quality is not something I usually do. But buying two canisters? AND a chain cleaner? AND having an almost orgasmic experience doing so?

The ups and downs continue. Fantastic mornings turn into crappy afternoons and vice versa. This trip is with no pretences any longer turning into an exercise to defeat my own fears.Pushing on with how events unfolded: After Sanliurfa I visited Harran, famous for its beehive houses. There I got immediately attacked by a "tourist guide" which was quite probably a junkie. Of dogginess so infinite that he spoilt my entire mood and I thought "sod this" and left without seeing the beehive houses. I'm sure my life will be forever incomplete now.

Lots of off-roading and exploring on mountain roads, first free camping, thoughts on philosophy and another drop of the bike. Same old, same old.After stocking up on supplies in Malatya, I covered the yawn-inspiring stretch of road to Elazig and then headed north to take the Elazig-Pertek ferry. I wanted to reach the Munzur Vadisi national park, both because my map said it was of excellent natural beauty (two blue stars - can't beat that) and because the LonelyPlanet didn't even mention it. Intriguing.

After Diyarbakir (home of the illegal PKK separatist party and that's the best I can say about it), the road heads north through some as-of-yet unfound mini-Cappadocia and then onto lake Van, for lots and lots of rain and even more waiting.After not-so-exciting-for-me Diyarbakir I zoomed through Mardin, really not doing the place right, as it's a Unesco world heritage site and is thus worth a visit, but it was early in the morning and really, I'm not setup to park the bike and walk around a new city in full gear...

In one of my initial blog posts I had a planned route picture, showing a more or less straight line running through the countries I'd visit. That line for Turkey is now almost complete - it got a few extra twists, extended to almost 7,000 km and was absolutely beautiful.

Here's what the route for Turkey has been so far.

The last days of Turkey, a not-so-eventful border crossing and the first impressions of the Islamic Republic of Iran.So where were we? Ah yes, Van. Rainy Van... so after spending 5 nights in a tent under periodic heavy rainfall (quite romantic)

while being attacked by blood-sucking insects of all kinds (not so romantic), pushing my luck by carrying 3 eggs in rainy weather at night

Admiring leftovers of past grandeur, visiting stunning deserts, pondering religious propaganda, meeting the fantastic Iranians that will never give in, crossing freezing mountain passes and convincing the police I'm not a spy, here is the blog entry I chose not to publish until I got out of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

(1st installment - Tabriz)First things first. Here is the complete Turkey itinerary:

Installment III - crossing the Kavir desert and reaching the cosmopolitan Esfahan.As I mentioned in the previous post, due to the slight misunderstanding with the police, I was forced to spend the night in Semnan (the birthplace of none other than Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I hear). At this point let me note that the President in a theocracy doesn't matter that much, the Supreme Leader is calling the shots while being conveniently shielded from international publicity/exposure. He's the numero uno of the country, he is appointed FOR LIFE and is NOT elected by the public.

Iran - installment II (Caspian Sea, Tehran, Internet censorship, Semnan police incident)The day I left Tabriz I spent the night in a sleepy beach community called Gisum.

I woke up early in the morning to take some snaps of the Caspian:

Fishing still appears to be of consequence to the local economy, as a few small vessels were taking to sea at 6 in the morning:

Instalment IV of the Iranian saga - the desert town of Yazd, meeting other travellers for the first time, doing the organised tour bit, frolicking around with another biker for a change and, inevitably, getting confused.After my first (ever) failed attempt to leave a city, and recharging my batteries in Esfahan, the next morning I took the easy way to Yazd. 7am start, no (intentional) mountains, no bravado and luckily no rain. Having said that, part of the journey was spent going over a mountain pass that was "a bit nippy"...

Installment V of the Iran saga - the very super jumbo ultra fabulously fantastically beautifully splendidly exquisite (not) Shiraz.Leaving Yazd behind was a bit iffy because I thought I would never see all the lovely people I met there - Ove, Matthias, Zoe, Marc etc, but it turned out I was quite wrong. After doing the day ride from Yazd to Shiraz (most of the route is at an altitude of over 2000m - thank Allah the sun was out), I found the "camping" I had so been looking forward to...