On September 27th, we are finally ready to leave for our big journey to Asia on our motorbike, after six weeks of waiting for our Indian visa. The visa for Pakistan and Iran are already in our passport.

Ready for Take-Off

The first day, after 1200km on the road, we spend the night in Austria, not so far from the Hungarian border. It has been a long day but the progress gives us good hope for the rest of our travel.
A little bit of bad luck on our second day, on the way our fuel hose brakes and we run out of petrol. Luckily we have an extra petrol can and the fuel hose broke on the end so we can fix it by cutting of the end and attach it back to the carburator. However, we drive about 800km to reach Bela Palanka, somewhere in the middle of Serbia.
Shortly after leaving on the third day, we are stopped by the Serbian police for speeding and overtaking where this isn't allowed. They try to take a bribe but we can talk them out of it and without any fine we can continue on our way. At the Turkish border, customs tell us we have to open all our bags which costs us quite some time as well as the search for the toll booth. Apparently this is located on the other side of the highway, as if anyone would buy a toll ticket leaving the country?!
We cross the Bosporus in the evening and still the traffic is like hell.

Bosporus Bridge

We wouldn't want to start here in the morning, knowing the traffic would be even worse so we decide to continue and look for a place to sleep further on the highway outside the area of Istanbul. Unfortunately there is no hotel to be found so we have to drive a few ours more to finally find a place to sleep, somewhere between Istanbul and Ankara. Again a long day with 1000km on the counter. Exhausted we crawl under the sheets.

Beautiful Lakeview

On the fourth and fifth day we cross almost the entire country and drive about 2000km to reach Van, on a short distance from the Iranian border. Two long days but we were happy to have reached Van so soon.

Salt Lake in Eastern Turkey

On the way we have a fine for speeding, apparently motorcycles have a speed limit of 100 km/h where cars may drive 120 km/h. This isn't shown on the road signs so bare this in mind when you're driving in Turkey.

More info on www.wijzijnweg.org