by Paul Archer
Driving in Istanbul was an experience, easing us into the erratic driving styles of the East. The sun was out and the windows were down as we weaved between the dense traffic to the large bridge that crosses the Bosphorus Strait. Passing over the small sailboats in the bay, we landed on the other side of the city and into the continent of Asia.
It was refreshing to once again be in a country larger than a few hundred miles across and the drive down the Mediterranean coast pleasantly surprised us all. The scenery of rolling green hills was perfectly offset by the agreeable warm temperature and nearly all the roads were either brand-new smooth blacktop or in the process of being upgraded. Every time we stopped for fuel – diesel for the car, and fizzy drinks and kebabs for the occupants – the pump-attendants, cashiers or waiters were effortlessly friendly and any language barriers just seemed to fizzle away. At one point we attracted the attention of a local scooter gang who, after saying hello and admiring the car, disappeared before returning with gifts of a single bottle of Efes beer, a packet of uncooked pasta and a loaf of bread.
Our week of freedom was absolute bliss. Instead of stuffy tents or cramped triple rooms we enjoyed four-star out-of-seasonbargain luxury and did nothing more taxing than sitting around the pool or walking along the beach. Although we were all sad to see the girls go, by the time the week was over we were surprised to find that we were all itching to get back on the road again. We were still living our dream and we were raring to start the next section of the trip: the Middle Eastern leg.
Ever since we had changed the route to avoid Libya we had been constantly discussing the new path through the Middle East. The simplest route would be to drive across southern Turkey and into Iran, back on to the original line down to Pakistan. However, I was very keen to try to make it down to Jordan through Syria to see the famous rock-cut city at Petra. Leigh and Paul weren't so enthusiastic about crossing through shaky Syria due to the intermittent demonstrations that were breaking out in the major cities and our differences in opinion had been a constant source of simmering tension.
Although the mainstream media was reporting violent demonstrations and advising all foreign nationals to leave, there were still reports from independent travellers on Internet forums and from Couchsurfers saying that there was no problem, assuming you took sensible precautions like staying away from large gatherings within the cities. The discussion was still very much unresolved when we all reconvened and left Bodrum; Paul assumed I was being reckless with our plans, and I felt that Paul was being unduly influenced by his friends and family who had been reading the news reports. Leigh was sitting on the fence.
All we could agree on was to head over east in the general direction of Australia and try to make a decision in the near future based on better information.
CHAPTER 16
GALMAJUICE
A 20-year-old taxi that has been completely stripped and rebuilt with homemade modifications by amateur mechanics needs constant love and attention. On the road south we had noticed that the suspension, already famously uncomfortable, felt particularly weird. Upon closer investigation Leigh had discovered the problem. Although we had rebuilt the suspension with brand-new double-strength springs, these springs were still attached to the original early 1990s fittings and one of them had actually snapped its lower mounting, meaning that the slightest bump would start us pogoing around with a cringey 'pet-aaaang' sound.
We needed a very specific, very small and seemingly insignificant part. The closest we could find was back in England and would take days, and an extortionate courier fee, to arrive, so we chanced the drive over to the national park region of Cappadocia.
Cappadocia had been recommended to us by almost every person we'd met in Turkey and we could soon see why. The landscape was filled with amazing rock formations that formed phallic-looking 'fairy chimneys' and the area was peppered with underground cave cities. We found a cheap hotel, partially built into one of the termite-mound-like formations and caught up on the news. Our visa agent in Iran had emailed and told us that we'd have to wait another two weeks for our visas. Our spare part was due to arrive the following day so we were left with an unexpected chunk of time to fill.
Syria and Jordan had just closed their borders, removing one avenue of adventure, so we started to look further afield. We had met a Glaswegian Red Cross volunteer called Annaka who was living in Armenia and who had invited us to visit, but because of the various border politics we would have to enter Armenia through Georgia. All we knew about Georgia was that it was exSoviet and they had recently had a war with Russia. It didn't sound great, and none of us fancied braving Russian-style authorities again so we were pondering what to do out loud.
'Georgia?' chipped in an American girl who was frantically packing her bags in the dorm.
'Yeah, the country,' we explained, presumptuously expecting her to be talking about the American state.
'Oh, yeah… It's great.'
'Oh, you've been?' I asked, surprised.
'Yeah! I got there, and within two hours I was shitfaced drunk on homemade spirits, in a small village, shooting AK-47s!'
The room erupted into a whirlwind of packing – Georgia sounded like our kind of place.
We arrived in the country's capital, Tbilisi, a few days later, and went to meet our Couchsurfer host at his workplace. We made our way to his apartment, crisscrossing through the rush-hour traffic and between decaying facades of once glorious town houses. The city appeared to be in the midst of a momentous renovation project in the aftermath of the 2008 war, every building either falling apart or being rebuilt – yet nothing seemed quite finished yet.
It was impossible not to warm to George, and he immediately made us feel at home in his flat. He had an oversized mischievous grin permanently attached to his face, a face that seemed to be stolen from a much larger man. He appeared to have an aversion to wearing a top when inside his house, the tattoo of a cannabis leaf (which I assumed was the result of a rash decision in his youth) always on show just above his navel. His apartment fell into the pre-renovation category of Tbilisi buildings, on the third storey of an almost Dickensian block of flats that oozed as much soul as it did woodworm and rot. It had the air of a squat: it was clean, but the higgledy-piggledy furniture from various generations, lit by a dim bulb hanging from a chandelier mounting, gave the impression that at any time an aristocratic family may return from their summer retreat to reclaim it. Either that, or the whole place would be transferred and opened as a hipster bar in Shoreditch. The walls were covered with drunken marker-pen graffiti and framed paintings done by his friends; some were impressive works by talented artists, some destined to go no further than George's wall.
The Lonely Planet guide to Georgia basically says the most important thing to do there is experience the local hospitality, from which I inferred that they are a bit boring. However, it turned out to be code for 'get drunk with the locals', which is indeed the best thing to do in Georgia. We soon learned that 'galmajuice' means both 'hello' and 'cheers', which perhaps says more about the Georgian culture than the attempts of any book.
George returned from work with a few litres of beer, a bottle of homemade wine and a water bottle full of unidentified spirit.
'Now, we get drunk.'
Some of his friends came round and we spent the evening enjoying Georgian 'hospitality'. It turns out the spirit, called cha-cha and derived from wine, ranges from 40 per cent up to 70 per cent ABV and is famous for turning people blind (but 'only temporarily' apparently). After one shot each, it was decided that now we were able to say we had enjoyed this Georgian speciality. One was enough.
By the end of the night, we retired to our respective sofas and George disappeared into his room with one of the girls from the party.
We spent the next day climbing a hill overlooking Tbilisi and discovered a half-built theme park at the top, with signs promising new rides coming in 2008 to provide 'new levels of excitement'. Using our basic knowledge of recent
history, we calculated that this was just about the time the Russians invaded the country, understandably slowing general theme park construction.
We returned to find George in his room with a girl – a different one from the night before – so, taking the unspoken hint that we should make ourselves scarce (it was a small apartment), we headed out for dinner. I felt a tad rough and the last thing I wanted to do was go out drinking, and the lads agreed, so we were going to grab a bite to eat, let George do his thing, then retire for an early Thursday night.
This was our plan of action until I found myself in a shipping container in the car park of George's place, holding something that looked suspiciously like a ram's horn filled with liquid. We never made it to get food.
The next morning another Couchsurfer who happened to be a local TV presenter wanted to interview us on his show. We had found it quite funny that the first guy who offered to host us in Georgia was named George but it was just getting kind of strange when we found out that the presenter was also a George. Were all Georgian men called George? Was that the reason for the country's name?
After the filming, Georgian George the Second invited us along to a local wine festival. We had been repeatedly told that the Georgians invented wine and that Georgian wine was the best in the world. The festival was set in a tranquil wooded park overlooking the city and essentially consisted of many small tents set up in the forest clearings, each hosting an independent vineyard that wanted to prove they had the best wine by giving away as much as possible. We arrived fairly late so stocks were running low, but we discovered that it was impossible to have an empty glass for any significant period of time in Georgia, and soon we were sharing bottles with groups of families who were singing traditional chants and forcing yet more barbecued food down us.
I'm not sure what the conclusions on the primacy of Georgian wine were but we definitely did our fair share of field research.
Georgia is like no place I, or my liver, have experienced before. One of the guys from the shipping-container party had told us that the reason they drink from a horn is because you can't put it down until it's empty. This, along with their 'galmajuice' greeting, seemed to summarise Georgians perfectly. Four days in Georgia is enough to drive someone to move to a dry country for the next two months just to recover.
Which, incidentally, was exactly what we did.
CHAPTER 17
STEPANTSKY-WHATEVER
With a bit of time to kill while we waited for our Iranian visas, we decided to visit Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where we would meet Annaka. Ever since coming up with idea for the trip we had wanted to get a charity involved and to use the publicity from the record attempt to try to raise money and awareness for a good cause. The British Red Cross presented itself as an obvious choice; we had seen the enormous amount of valuable work that it carried out both in the UK and throughout the rest of the world. From our point of view, the Red Cross could also provide a lot of international support and expertise, and advise us on some of the more adventurous areas of the route.
After setting a fundraising target of £20,000, based on the mileage we thought we would be covering at that time, we became more heavily involved with the Red Cross, which culminated in a trip to their London headquarters for a planning session with their security consultant. Along with a book with the worrying title How to Stay Alive, she gave us some helpful advice on parts of the route we should avoid.
'Hmmm, Pakistan,' she had said, looking at our detailed route printout, 'you should be alright as long as you avoid the Baluchistan region. You're not going to Baluchistan are you?'
We shuffled uncomfortably. 'Erm, yeah, we kind of have to cross through that area, it's the only open border.'
She let out a loud exhale and looked at us over her glasses. 'OK, I'll get you some more copies of that book.'
The journey of around 200 miles between the neighbouring capitals was a slow one, particularly after we asked some Georgian farmers for directions to Armenia not far from the border and then blindly followed their advice.
Four bumpy hours later we reached the tiny border post, announced by a hand-painted sign at the end of a heavily potholed single-track road. We thought back to those bloody farmers, who gave us the wrong directions, and pictured them sitting down laughing at the gullible Westerners in the silly car (probably while sharing some cha-cha).
The day only got worse as we found that to temporarily import the car would cost us over £65 in fees; a steep price for less than a week in the country, especially on our shoestring budget. We thoroughly considered turning around and returning to Tbilisi but we couldn't stomach the thought of returning along that terrible farmers' track; plus we had arranged the date to meet Annaka, and we also had a passenger in tow – a German hitchhiker named Felix who was thumbing a lift from Georgia to Yerevan.
After some negotiation we knocked down the price slightly and eventually gave in, paid the fees and tried to make it to the city sometime before midnight. Unfortunately the Armenian roads were the worst we had yet encountered. Wherever small potholes had occurred, a giant chunk of the road had been dug out, ready to be refilled with fresh Tarmac, but the vast majority were unfilled. To make the day a little worse still, at some point during a driver changeover, I lost my iPod and headphones. Somewhere in northern Armenia a shepherd is probably sitting, watching his flocks by night, listening to Avril Lavigne.
When we arrived at Lilly and Annaka's lovely flat, we spent a couple of days catching up on the mountain of paperwork that comes with driving a car around the world; filling in more Pakistani visa applications; calculating visa requirements for plan Bs; filling in form after form and sending photographs of the vehicle from every angle to enter China; and watching two seasons of Battlestar Galactica (well, in Leigh's case).
Leigh and I were never granted Pakistan visas. Johno, being a filthy Yorkshireman, lived in a different consulate constituency to us where they are more willing to issue visas, but only just, so even after numerous visits to the embassy before we left, and then even more by a team of exceptionally patient friends of ours back home with our second passports, we were still visaless. The real problem we had lay in the fact that the car was registered in my name, so I had to be with it at all borders, and Guinness stated that two people must be in the car at all times for the world record. This meant that Leigh and I couldn't simply fly over Pakistan and meet Johno and Hannah in India. This left us with three options:
1. Persevere to get the visas and drive through Pakistan as one big happy family (complicated by Pakistan being a bit of a warzone, a kidnap hotspot and the scene of the killing of Osama Bin Laden a few weeks earlier).
2. Drive north out of Iran into the 'Stans' and enter China from there (missing India, Nepal and Tibet).
3. Pop the cab on a ship, parting with £2,000 we didn't have, and ship it to India.
We were in limbo – the whole expedition was hanging in the balance.
I was keen to go through the 'Stans' – it wasn't the most fun route but it meant the expedition was more likely to succeed and reach Sydney. Leigh and Johno were adamant about going through India and the Himalayas – more risky, but also more interesting.
So we waited on a final Pakistan visa attempt, and worried.
A few days after we arrived in Yerevan, we were told that the Iranian visas were ready for collection, two weeks earlier than promised.
We duly set off back towards Turkey, heading north into Georgia before hitting the turning for the Georgian Military Highway.
Supposedly one of the most impressive roads you could drive, it cuts deep into the Caucasus mountains and is closed for half the year due to snow.
The road climbed around switchbacks and past ancient monasteries. We stopped to explore an abandoned castle and even found an old ski resort close to the top of the pass, but the road kept on going. It had turned into an unpaved track that spent half its time beneath concrete avalanche tunnels, not large enough for trucks, but
just big enough for a taxi. Deeply rutted, this inside road was occasionally lit by a shard of light where the concrete cocoon had split. We emerged at the end to find a queue of trucks waiting for the road up around the tunnels to be cleared of snow and rockfall from the winter. They had been there for days or longer and the road looked far from being clear, so their wait would continue.
Looking at the satnav we decided to make instead for the only name nearby, presumably a town nestled on the other side of the pass called Stepantsminda. We descended from the high mountains to a flat, grassy plain, walled on either side by high cliffs and hills, passing a small town. It was getting dark and, although now paved, the road made its way into a tight ravine, clinging precariously to the side of a cliff. We arrived at another queue of lorries where a raging torrent of a river looped around the road.
From out of nowhere, a chap in black robes and an unusual hat appeared and started to speak to us in broken, but proficient English. We explained why there was a London black cab parked in the middle of the Georgian wilds, enquired as to what the checkpoint ahead was for and asked him how much further. He told us he was a monk, that the checkpoint was in fact Chechnya and that Stepantsky-whatever was ten miles behind us.