This is the second in a series of articles documenting Cycling Silk, A year-long research expedition across Asia.
Turkey, at least the thin strip of the country we’ve been biking, is made like its tea only served cold: steep, intensely dark and concentrated, with a lot of water poured on top. The Turkish adventure began with an epicurean week in Istanbul with two new and now dear friends, Diarmuid and Berna O’Donovan, who generously hosted us during our stay in the city. After bulking up on baklava and other delicious Turkish fare, we packed the bikes, boarded a ferry in Europe, then set sail for Asian shores. The ferry let us off near the outlet of the Bosphorus strait into the Black Sea, and from there the grind against gravity began.
The Black Sea region is infamous among cyclists for the kind of nose-gratingly steep hills that tie knots in your lungs, knots which slacken on the brief descents, only to cinch tighter yet on the next climb. Dense parabolas of pain define the contours of the coastline, relentlessly, though often spectacularly. On this trip we’re lugging an obscene amount of gear for documentary purposes (heavy photography and filmmaking equipment), amounting to over 100 pounds each strapped on our sturdy Seven Expat Ss. And while our bikes – who we have affectionately dubbed Marco (mine) and Polo (Mel’s) – didn’t flinch at the load or the grade, our legs sure did. We only made it 10km that first day, and I wish I could claim it was only because we got off to a late start.
Then there’s the winter weather. Nothing we weren’t warned about, everything we secretly prayed was exaggerated. So far the only borderland we’ve explored on this expedition is the territory between rain and hail, and all consistencies of wet and cold contained therein. Once a fluke beam of sunshine made it through a brief yawn in the clouds. I was so startled by the sudden light I thought a big truck with its high beams on must be bearing down on me, so I swerved sharply into the gutter. Then I realized it was just the sun, a pale asterisk in the sky referring to a footnote at the bottom of the world that reads, in very small print, ‘shines hotly in theory’. But thanks to Turkey’s rather harsh initiation to this bike trip, we have fast become fit and finely tuned to beauty: the merest scrap of light prompts unabashed rapture. If only we were always so exquisitely calibrated.
But the unfailing light of Turkey so far has been its people. I don’t know where to begin recounting the daily kindnesses and generosities we’ve encountered along the way. If we stop at a gas station for petrol, the attendants bring us tea and snacks, once they get over their bafflement about why, with bikes, we are buying gas in the first place. We try to explain that the fuel is for our campstove, but they scrutinize our Sevens anyway, looking for the motor they are convinced must be there. Other days we’ll wash up in a village chai house, soaked and shivering, looking like flotsam from some foreign shipwreck in the Black Sea. When we ask about camping possibilities nearby, the next thing we know we’re invited to spend the night with a family, who stuff us with so much delicious food that if we weren’t biking almost every hour of every day, we’d be as round and marbled with fat as the rotating kebab meat that’s ubiquitous here.
One such homestay involved a birthday party for Hande, who was turning ten. At the end of the party, she insisted on painting our nails with hot pink polish. Who can say no to a birthday girl? More accurately, who can say “no” in Turkish, period? At that point, not us. But at least the nail polish conveniently hides the grit under our fingernails, a redeeming layer of glam disguising grime.
Another time we were biking along when out of nowhere a Turkish cyclist appeared, wearing a bike jersey and helmet, riding hardtail in soft-soled shoes. Turns out this was the Turkish incarnation of Danny MacAskill, and he rode with us for the next 30 kilometers, pulling wheelies and bunnyhopping and landing all sorts of tricks as we panted alongside, totally amazed.
Mel and have now learned some very rudimentary Turkish, including ‘no’, but we’ve also become fairly pro at faking fluency. People tend to ask the same set of questions over and over, so even if we can’t glean what a particular question is, chances are they want to know one of the following: What country are you from? Where are you going? Where did you start? Are you sisters? Are you married? So we toss out answers at random, figuring we’ll hit on the right one eventually: Canada! India! Istanbul! Not sisters, friends! Married, yes, to Osman (Kate) and Mustafa (Mel), our hefty kebab-loving Turkish truck driver husbands, they are following us on our bikes, look here they come now! <point to random truck>. We were coached into giving this last answer by Fuat, our Turkish friend from Samsun, who assures us it is a failsafe insurance policy for travel in Turkey. See mom and dad, you have absolutely nothing to worry about!
But to get back to the weather, the meteorology of mind is also worthy of report. After years of dreaming, saving, and longing for this adventure, here we so incontrovertibly are, finally living it. Some days this fact mugs me with astonishment; luckily I wear a helmet most of the time. The past few weeks our heads have been scrambling to catch up with our bodies. It takes a long while to leave the world behind. Departure is easy: step out of the door, into the wind of your life. Direction is simple: forward is whatever way you fancy pointing your bike, which in Turkey means up or down. The tough part is not looking back, not measuring gain or loss by lapsed time, or aching legs, or the leering mile markers of ambition. You are finally on your way when you realize that creak you hear is not your wheels, not your head, but the sound of the planet, turning.
Rainy nights in the tent, I’ve been reading a lot of Rumi, a 12th-century mystic Sufi poet who was born in Afghanistan, then migrated west to avoid Genghis Khan’s approaching hordes. He finally settled in Turkey, in the city of Konya, where even today his whirling dervish disciples live out his teachings. When Rumi died, religious leaders of all faiths attended his funeral; he was a dissolver of borders. In many ways Rumi’s spirit of approach is perfect for this expedition: we want to celebrate, as we bike, the ecstatic core of existence, in all its wildness and wonder, with full awareness of its heartbreaks and its joys.
Every day, whatever the weather, we wring a bit of each out of the ride. Joy is the sound of birds pecking sweet holes in silence; or devouring baklava and gulping chai next to a woodstove when you are stupefied with cold and hunger. Heartbreak, in a few of its milder iterations, is how the road, I swear it!, the road only goes up; or waking up to the morse of freezing rain pounding its mean code on the tent. “The only rule is,” says Rumi, “suffer the pain.” And so we ride, wheels and heads whirling like dervishes, toward a closer acquaintance with the wildness at the heart of our life. And the world.
We are over a thousand kilometers into this adventure now, with many thousands more to go. Although the seashore folds much charm into its mists and meanders, and the people are surpassingly wonderful, in so many ways, I’m a wilderness pilgrim to my ecstatic core. Everything in me pulls toward the less populated mountains and deserts ahead, those transboundary conservation areas we want to celebrate as much as study. Out of irrational hope, I keep mistaking clouds massed on the sea’s horizon for mountains. Light and water piled high either way, you could argue, but I can’t wait for that twist in the road that reveals the mirage as real, as solid as rock and rime. Time to go inland, starting with the Kars region, where we’ll be exploring transboundary conservation initiatives between Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. So wilderness across borders here we come, one pedal stroke at a time, steady as the rain – with Osman and Mustafa closely in tow.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.-Rumi
