kaleb's blog: gratitude and logistics

The Erzurum impasse lasted two weeks becoming my longest stoppage. On returning from the hitchhiked sojourn in Dıyabakir my sickness resurged, setting the scene for another few days of soup and movies. I lost a couple of kilos and eventually Laura who ran out of time to wait for me. I was lucky, as ever, to have found such generously accomodating hosts in Zey and her family. Monday brought health and Tuesday at last the Iranian visa. I left on Wednesday. The accepted cycle touring wisdom is that few riding partnerships (excepting those between the closest of friends or the intimately invested) survive long at all. The good-going of our five weeks - our eleven hundred miles - was quite an achievement and thanks in no small way to Laura's interminable patience and gracious restraint in the face of my moods and self-absorbtion. If company is comfort though, it is also of course compromise. Three days alone and my solitude is still fresh enough to relish the complete conviction afforded the completely alone; this way I'm going, here I'm resting, this I'm eating, here I'm sleeping, etcetera. But thank you, Laura, for making a simple companionship; indulging me in food and enduring my one-sided conversation. Gratitude is also due friends and family far away. It was only a stomach bug and only a couple of weeks but far from home it is easy to despair. There were so many perfectly timed emails and thoughts, texts, mixtapes, cheery photos, videos, ebooks and prayers as to make me feel perfectly silly in my self-pity. I'm on holiday afterall. But it means a lot, so thank you all.

It is expensive for British citizens to enter Iran. My month pass cost 180 pounds; 230 after the agent's fee and charges to pay her Malaysian bank. There are two more countries, Georgia and Armenia, which are easy and cheap for me to visit. I can enter Iran any time before December 31st. Pakistan isn't currently issuing visas to anybody who applies from outside their home country. There are no boats between Iran and India. The average winter low in Uzbekistan is minus 23 celsius (a foolish test of my new sleeping bag). The long and short is that I can't leave Iran overland except by heading North into Central Asia via the 5 day race of Turkmenistan's transit visa (all you can get), and that to do so too soon would commit me to that freezing Winter. Best then that I enter Iran as late as possible to get the most from my 30 day get-out-of-Winter-expensively card. Try and hit central Asia for an optimistic early Spring... Ideas on a postcard, please, for how to spend three months in or around the Caucuses! (I had considered an early Winter expedition North around the Caspian but apparently Russian visas are also difficult, if not impossible, from without one's home country... anybody know any different?)

I'd love to report that yesterday I got stoned with several sets of shepherd boys in the mountains. Alas in truth I can only recount that yesterday I got stoned by several sets of shepherd boys in the mountains; an experience with (presumably) quite the opposite effect on my nerves. This part of Turkey is famous (amongst cycle tourists) for its intimidating dogs and these rock-happy chappies; cautionary tales make all the blogs. Remembering my own boyhood delight in missles (peg-guns; crabapple pockets on the way to school) it's hard to ascribe them any particular malice. Still I found myself, for the first time, wishing I'd brought a helmet. But none of them managed to hit me, and I've not had any trouble with the dogs yet. The landscape is spectacular, great peaks and great plains, here and there a shock of birches crisp white and green. White wash little villages with shabby hay-ricks and indurated dung-brick pyramids mimicking the backdrop mountains. Hillside streaks of Autumn blaze. I'm in Ağrı, city amongst villages, perhaps a full day's ride from Doğubayazit. I detour, as usual, to see the twin peaks of the Ararat massif. Noah's Ark stopped there.

Starlings

I think they were Starlings, anyway. A great chattering as I made first camp two nights ago. In my ignorance of ornithology it was impossible not to believe that they were somehow engaging with my presence, alone and yellow-jacketed in the plateau dusk. Three or four swarms, shoal-like murmurations merging and parting, repeatedly wheeling and banking around me close enough to breeze my face. Thousands upon thousands. Sentimental, it felt a welcome-back from the Outdoors; enough to make me shout and cry.