Into the Axis of Evil - Kapadokya to Aleppo, Syria

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After a well needed rest in Capadocia we set off again towards the hills. But it was only after about 3 miles when we had to stop because I had bike trouble, my rear mudguard again!!
Luckily this time we noticed the real problem - the screw holding the mudguard and the whole pannier rack was about to fall out! I had obviously not done a very good check in Cappadocia. Still that sorted we were off. Passing very interesting villages cut into the cliff sides and getting more and more remote as we climb a gentle pass east out of Cappadocia. It felt good to be cycling again. My doubts were now behind me and I had fianally relaxed again about my ability to cycle stupid distances, since you only need to get to lunchtime and then onto tea time and there is always somewhere to stay. I just need to put this new found non-worrying attitude into everyday life once I am not on a journey any more.

We got to the top of the pass to have a great veiw of a huge snowy mountain in the clear freezing blue sky and saw our road down the other side and then stretching out accross the steppe towards some more impressive looking hills- The Taurus mountains. The descent was great once we had put on loads of extra layers and double gloves however as soon as we hit the steppe the wind blasted us the other way and we realised that we were never going to get to our intended town of Develi before night fall. Still, not much we could do but struggle on at barely 8 mph into the wind and hope we could find water before it got dark. It was with great relief when a shepherd came into view and then a village and we stocked up and found a tree!! to camp beside - amazing on the steppe. That night was surprisingly pleasant as it clouded over and was not cold. The cyling onwards towards Develi and Bakirdagi was going well the next day, we were stopped at lunch time in a small village and made very welcome in the Chai house where we were given free tea and very nice pizza style bread fresh from the oven. We got to Bakirdagi at about 3pm. We knew this was the last town before 3 big passes over the Taurus mountains. The shopkeeper where we had stopped urged us to stay with him as it was too late and would be cold to go over the mountains that evening. We wondered about it, should we try to push on another hour and then have a rest day in the tent the next day before going over the tops or stay with this nice old guy- Monsieur Isak?.
The offer of a nice bed won me over and we parked our bikes in Monsier Isak's cow shed and met his very old mother at his home. We were expecting a big family as is usual in Turkey, but there was no-one there and I think Monsieur wanted the company and someone to help him in the kitchen! Mr Isak spoke to us in French and took us on a nice tour of the village just before dark. There was a beautiful river coming down from the mountians and he said he was popping back to his shop to get some cigarettes. He appeared back with an enormous carrier bag full and then took us on a tour of the very smokey tea houses. It turns out that Mr Isak does not actually do any business from his shop he just goes to the tea houses to sell his cigarettes - incidentally he does not smoke himself but I don't suppose he really needs to as Turkey's tea houses are thick with smoke. So we spent a few hours being smoked and playing cards. Quite a good experience really as long as we were by the windows and we learnt a few new card games.

We set off slightly later than planed from Mr Isak's as he wanted me to cook breakfast of fried eggs and onions. Which I happily did as he was really a good host and we had to wait for a bread delivery to arrive from Develi anyway. Then we set off up hill. I was not feeeling great, it was a bad time of the month for me and usually I would have spent the day resting but we knew snow was expected and I had been well rested that night so with determination and not thinking about it too much we kept cycling. Truck after truck passed us coming the other way down hill stopping and shouting at us that the road was closed and that we could not possibly go over with bikes. We said "but you just drove over, it can not be closed" and kept going. The wind was getting worse and worse but it would blow away the clouds for a bit and wonderful views kept opening up, but this road was obviously not a very well used one and we knew we had to get over it that day.

Finally at the first pass we could barely stand up the gusts were so bad and biting hail was stinging our faces in horizontal blasts, but we pushed our bikes over and found a village tucked in on the other side and a toilet building by the road which we sheltered in and managed to put on more layers. Robin later admitted to me that at this point he was quite worried since he knew the next pass was higher. I had stopped really thinking as was just cycling and not having a bad time as long as I kept up my doses of paracetamol and halva sweets! Now it started to snow properly, this made it actually warmer and the ridiculousness of it was making me very happy since the wind had calmed down and both Robin and I were getting a good armour of snow on us. Robin's beard had frozen solid! Then we saw the top of the highest pass for that day - it was only about 1 km ahead of us, but the snow had settled on the road and we could see rapidly filling tyre tracks leading up the last steep incline. We kept on going carefully cycling in the tyre tracks but then a bus apppeared at the top of the hill and started coming down towards us which meant we had to get well off the side into quite deep snow just in case the bus started to slide. Now my feet were wet as we waded through 7-10 cm deep snow at the roadside and there was no getting back on the bikes after the bus went past as it was too slippy so we pushed up the pass to happily see the sign informing us we were at the top of Guzbelli at 1990 metres! Fantastic we had made the second highest pass of the trip so far in a snow blizzard! We crested the top with joy to see a very heavy truck on the other side completely wheel spinning and stuck. It was really amusing to cycle past the amazed truck drivers out of the snowy mountains and down! Who said the road was shut? I think however we were the last vehicles over it for a while as it continued to snow heavily all that day and night, and we were really thankfull that we had made it. It would have been an awfull 200 km bypass through Kayseri if the pass had been closed.

I only fell off once in the snow and the white stuff made a soft landing. I would not really advise snow cycling but after a few km there was no more snow on the road and we sped on downwards. We finally left the hills and found a warm welcome in a tea shop full of very surprised locals who we told about all the snow. We were offered many lifts now to the next town but kept on the next 20 km to arrive in Tufanbeyli and a grotty hotel. The hotel was the only one in town and the room had a wood burning stove in it so we were all right and decided to stay for a rest day the next day.

We woke to a winter wonderland. The sun was shining and the place was transformed by beautiful stunning white snow. We had a nice walk around town and a good chat to a group of women who told Robin off for not equipping me with any jewlery as they proceeded to show me all their earings and rings and braclets, but then it was my turn to be told off when I told them I did not have any children they went off to fetch a very very cute baby to persuade me of my error!

I shall let the photos of our ride do the talking now - the next day was stunning and the cycling was fantastic, so exhilarating to pass through wonderful snowy and stunning but cold landscapes. It was so cold that I lost the use of my front shifter for a while as it froze up and we had to keep squeezing our brakes even on uphill sections to prevent the cables seizing with ice. The clear blue sunny sky and awesome views more than made up for it though. We found a very good cheap hotel in Goksun and the next day made it to Karaman Maras where we had to stay in a hotel since we had failed to get food early enough in the day and once we had got food we dropped out of the mountains and into very populated countryside with no cover for camping. We did manage to negotiate a nice room and a good breakfast for 40 YTL (about 16GBP) but we had really wanted to camp since we had dropped down a bit in altitude and it was not now quite so cold. So the next day we were more on the ball and got food eariler and found a national park woodland just 10km short of Gazi Antep and a great campsite with a good veiw of the city.

We decided to go to Birecik to see the Euphrates so turned east and made good progress along a busy but good road. Birecik is a very nice town with big cliffs lining the river and more women on the streets than we had seen in a month, perhaps it is because the town is Kurdish, I am not sure. Indeed the whole of the southern plain felt very different with lots more woemn visible and the first sightings of arab style headscarves on the men. Most of the people here are either Kurdish or Arabic. We luckily met Ibrahim in a supermarket in town who worked at the Bald Ibis breeding centre who said we could camp at the centre. We arrived to the centre expecting a campsite but there was not one there, but they put us up for free in a small building-shed that had just been built and painted and no-one seemed to have a purpose for yet. Robin being a Zoologist and birder had heard of the Bald Ibis - one of the world's most endangered birds, but I had not. Anyway they are really quite lovely birds with lots of colours glinting in the dark plummage and they make very weird noises. The turkish population had become extinct in the wild and the centre has a semi-capitive population that it allows out in the spring to breed on the cliffs by the river at Birecik and then catches before the birds migrate in the winter, since in the past the birds would migrate and then never come back. The Centre hope the number of birds will reach 100 next year and then maybe they can allow some to migrate again in winter and re-establish to wild population again one day.

Whilst we were at the centre we met Barrie who worked for the RSPB, he worked for International Education and was in Birecik with Doga Dernegi (www.dogadernegi.org) the Nature Society of Turkey and partner of BirdLife International for the offical opening of the education part of the visitor centre. It was really good to meet Barrie and talk conservation of Euphrates and it made me miss my work in the Uk as it was really refreshing to talk again about conservation issues with such enthusiastic people. DD is a relatively young organisation and it seems to be really sucessful at promoting the major biodiversity issues in Turkey. It has made us really want to visit Turkey again especially in spring to see all the birds, flowers and butterflies.

On Barrie's advice we took a cycle up towards Halfeti and managed to see Radde's Ascentor and Finsch's wheatear quite easily these were new birds for us and Robin also saw Eastern Rock Nuthatch. We were invited to stay with Izzet in new Halfeti. His family made us very welcome and again we had to practise our french as Izzet and his brother spoke it fluently. His family were Kurdish and it really is a very differnt language to Turkish - it sounds much more European.
New Halfeti is a purpose built town to house people moved from Halfeti which is now underwater thanks to yet another dam built on the Euphrates as part of the GAP project to dam both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Turkey in order to irrigate the desert (and interupt the flow of water to Syria and Iraq?) - displacing many kurds in the process. These dams are an ecological disaster andnot to mention the human rights issues. The World bank refused to fund them as they failed to meet even therir somewhat derisory standards but thanks to Uk and EU funding the project is well underway. DD are part of a huge legal battle to try and stop the next part of the project on the Tigris river. Please visit their website for more info and to join the campaign. Now off the soapbox and back to the story......

It is really wierd accepting hospitality from complete strangers but by now it had become almost normal and Izzet's brother was very keen to point out that in Islam we are all brothers and sisters. We set off for Syria the next day following the river. We passed large groups of coots and ducks but pressed on to the border. We managed to change all our turkish money to syrian pounds at not a bad rate in a jewellery shop which the man in the bank had directed us to.

We entered the Syrian border control and straight away felt the seriousness of it. The police were all military and the cheif guy who sat us down wanted to know what our impressions were of Syria before we had visited. We were polite, decided not to mention the axis bit and said we heard that the people were very friendly, "this is true" he said, "also Syria is a very safe country". I realise now that this soldier was just trying to be friendly and helpful as he did not get many tourists crossing at that particular border. With the paper work filled in we set off into Jarabulus and hit the middle east proper.

What a change! Motorbikes everywhere and three wheeled vans all spewing terrible exhausts, with miles of corn being dryed on the tarmac along one sode of the road. Generators also everywhere pumping Euphrates water into the well irrigated fields all about. Not a scrap of wild camping to be found anywhere. Syria defintiely felt less developed, it was not that there were not the products in the shops, but I think it was just that there was lots more air pollution.

We were stopped having bread and cheese when a guy on his motorbike stopped to speak to us. He had very smiley eyes and invited us to stay with him and his family. He was called Jasim and we were not too sure since he said his village was 10 km further on then off the main road some way, however we trusted our insticts and went with him. He would ride ahead slowly and wait for us to catch him up on our bikes. He had reasonable english and took us to a very small village and to his home. His wife looked very shocked to see us however soon his 10 children and their neighbours got over their shock at seeing us and we we treated very well, being mobbed by kids. The house was basic a long building with bare concrete walls consisting of two rooms. This was based around a courtyard which had a cowshed and some outbuildings where the kitchen was and a well. It seemed to me that they were very poor, but as Robin has pointed out, Jasim could afford to have 10 children to feed them and to have a motorbike, satelite TV and to own his house and entertain foreign guests. This was all true and the children were really happy to practice their english on us and delighted to give us an arabic lesson. It makes you redefine your defintion of poverty, this family did not have many material possessions but Jasim defintiely thought we were the poorer for not owning a house or land in Britain, perhaps he is right.
The next day after the children pleaded with us to stay for 50 days! Jasim escorted us to the main road again along a very good tarmac road that was not on our map. There are loads of roads in Syria all in very good condition and none seem to be on the maps!

We found the right road form Manbij towards Halep (Aleppo) and made very fast progress towards the city, the road was lined by trees so we did not get many veiws but managed to enjoy the very elaborately decorated vehicles. There is a big sticker culture here the favourtie one being a silouhette of Bashir Assad with 1980's style shades on. We arrived in the frantic and chaotic mess of the city that is Haleb where they were digging up all the roads at the outskirts and the traffic was chaotic and dust and fumes threatened to overpower us. Still by asking lots of people we found the centre and stumbled accross the Spring Flower hostel.

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Photos

White Out !
Crossing Guzbeli Pass at 1990m in the Taurus Mountains, in a blizzard.

Brass Monkeys
The road out of Tufanbeyli was lined with a miniature forest of ice crystals. It was so cold that gear and brake cables were freezing up.

Robin in Taurus Mountains
The day after the blizzard, after climbing a steep hill. The jumpers went back on pretty fast.....

The Firat (Euphrates) River, Birecik
You could float downstream to Baghdad....

Welcome to Syria
Erika with some of Jasim's large family, on our first night in Syria.

Syrian highway
Motorbikes and corn. Thats corn/maize drying on the tarmac before being ground inot flour.

Welcome to Syria pt. 2
This roundabout seems to serve no purpose other than to house the portraits of presidents Assad - senior and current. You are never far from either.

Comments

[Ruken]

Hello Robin, what fine you are going to Kurdistan. I am ferry happy to i can one picture see a Firat. thank you ferry mach. bye