GlobeBusters London to China Blog

Kevin and Julia Sanders from GlobeBusters continue to head east on their epic adventure to China, researching the new GlobeBusters London to China Expedition, which will take place in 2010. After exploring Turkey, the former Soviet state of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the duo have now crossed the Caspian Sea and have entered Turkmenistan. Communications are becoming less reliable but Kevin and Julia are still keeping MCN updated via mobile phone test message. Here are some updates from key moments of their journey over the last ten days.

Turkey
Istanbul is a dynamic lively city with loads of traffic to play with. Crossing the Bosporus bridges is ten lanes of traffic squeezing into 3 lanes. Lots of jostling and being cut up!  Eastern turkey is a different world. Villages are very poor but with delightful wood fire smells happy dirty children hap hazard collections of mud corrugated iron and wooden homes. A single minaret rises out of each village no matter how poor.  The back mountain roads are great riding. Single tracks over snowy passes. We try to avoid the main roads but where we have to use them it is clear a big quick and cheap road building programme is underway.  It leaves gravel on corners and at the edges.  Lethal if you are going to fast. We have feasted each night on kebabs and Turkish wine and are woken each morning by morning prayers.  Turkey has been a fascinating mix of remote riding and cultural crossover.

Georgia
The border between turkey and Georgia was huge and empty and entry was barred by electronic metal gates that we’re so rusted it was unbelievable they still worked. No money changed hands and it was efficient.  No visas are needed for Georgia. But they photo you on entry (and later on exit). We head for Tbilisi.  The main road is in an awful potholed state. Georgia is clearly much poorer. Once beautiful wooden buildings with carved balconies and intricate metalwork are now grey rusty and crumbling with age and lack of maintenance. 

Hitting the main artery into Tbilisi became the ride of near death.  There are no bikes to be seen anywhere except us. Cars normally silver Mercedes (where does the money come from?) accelerate hard pull across you slam on brakes and swerve within a breath. It is a full on job getting into the city.  

They are in their 4th day of protest here against the president. It is dwindling but riot police are still out on the main streets. We leave from Tbilisi on a small road that it its heyday was tarmac but now is reduced to a patchwork of stones gravel and mud.  Like much of the villages we go through.  There continues to be ruined castles and monasteries high of the cliff tops. One or two have been restored and are stunning.  As we approach Azerbaijan there is a countdown of signs to the border.  With 500m to go Georgia wishes you good luck in capital letters, spits you out of a brand new high tech border crossing and onto a dilapidated narrow bridge guarded at the end with a soldier carrying old AK47s. 

After two days riding on Azerbaijan, we arrived for the ferry across the Caspian Sea. We were at the port by 10 am, though no timetables are set. The word on the street is to just turn up as a few boats go every day. The docks were crumbling and centred around railway lines and train freight waits until it is shunted onto the boat. Our bikes are put on a railway car for loading, though it is after 2 pm by the time the bikes are on train and all the paperwork and formalities are done – then another five hours before we set sail. The boat is not P&O! We appear to be the only passengers and it is like being on a ghost ship setting for a horror movie. Everything on board is original, from 60 years ago and has suffered neglect since then. But they fed us meat & potato soup, gave us warm blankets for the beds and we aided our sleep with whisky.

After a smooth night crossing, the shoreline for Turkmenistan lay ahead and by 11 am we were doing the formalities for entry into another new country. We’re getting seriously back to basics in civilisation terms as we head east and although the road ahead seems challenging, it’s great to be riding in new countries, where the pace of life is different and there is more freedom to just ride.