Tag Archives: riding in rain

Day 295 – Grenzerfahrung

Last bit of road in Iran

Last bit of road in Iran

Writing the blog post from two days ago in the morning, with the thoughts on returning home at the end, left us in a bit of a low mood after breakfast. Thus, packing took extra long this morning. Not a big deal, though. We had only 130 km to go to the border.

Near lunch time we hit the border town of Maku. We filled up one last time with the obscenely cheap fuel and sat down along the main road through that narrow valley for lunch. It is always good to tackle a border with all primary functions tended to. Just as we were doing some last minutes preparations (I forgot to take proof of my German bike insurance which is valid and required in Turkey) Iran decided to give us a very Iranian parting gift. A guy jumped out of a taxi, shoved a melon and some bananas into my unsuspecting hands and jumped back into the taxi with a “welcome to Iran!”. Now we had bananas and a melon to declare as well – and another amazing memory of Irani hospitality.

Random gift of bananas and a honey melon. A melon?!?

Random gift of bananas and a honey melon. A melon?!?

We reached the border shortly thereafter. By the looks of it, it is only ever used by thousands of trucks or pedestrians. There is a lane for passenger vehicle crossing, but all booths are abandoned and no one was to be seen. It was relatively easy after all. Dodge the hawkers, find an official and then get led to the equivalent desk in the pedestrian terminal through back doors. Maybe 45 minutes later we stood in front of the two gates that separate Iran from Turkey with all the required stamps. Iran opened its gate for us and we called over to the Turkish guys …

… and waited. A long while. The Turkish border guards who saw us after one minute played manly man games with the Iranians and us. They left us hanging for about 20 minutes before pushing the the button that would open the gate. What a great start. Smile and wave …

Note the line of truck starting at least 6km before the actual border

Note the line of truck starting at least 6km before the actual border

We had to work around a similar way on the Turkish side. Passport immigration police guy was only available in the passenger terminal, so through some more back doors we went and met Mr. Grumpy Number two. I will never understand why some guys feel the need to underline their authority with outward rudeness. It did not get better when he saw our German passports. “Deutsche? …” sneer … then he only stamped one passport and got really annoyed when I remarked that I would like to get an entry stamp, too. Smile and wave …

Great light and dark due to the rain clouds

Great light and dark due to the rain clouds

Luckily customs guy did not know what to do, really, so our workaround regarding the insurance remained untested. I helped him with the carnet and off we went, into thick storm clouds on the horizon. We put our full rain gear on, ducked down and headed into the Kurdish town of Doĝubayazit. This grey border town had nothing to offer, neither phone shop nor ATM in sight, so we pushed on northwards along the border.

Our first sight in Turkey was the former Armenian capital of Ani. To get there, all roads lead through Kars, the regional center. En route there, I felt the strong need to answer nature’s call and we stopped on the first pass. Right then a van pulled over and four soldier type guys came out. One was a sergeant and had this way about asking what we were up to that showed suspicion hidden behind mere curiosity. We moved along.

The world appeared to end at the horizon so I, wisely, packed the camera away

The world appeared to end at the horizon so I, wisely, packed the camera away

The rain started for real beyond the pass, with lightning and thunder hitting left and right. It was cold, too, and just kept on getting colder as we got closer to Kars. The last pass went over 2300m, we were soaked and shivering by this point. Looking around there were still patches of snow on the ground…no wonder it was cold! We had done another 200 km on the Turkish side by then and stopped at a petrol station maybe 5km before the longed after hotel. The guys there took pity on us and shouted us a hot çay (tea). That got us the rest of the way through freezing rain without frostbite.

The hotel was cheap, which was the best to say about it, really. To make up for it, we went out that night to a really nice restaurant. What a treat – tablecloth, fresh bread and really good not-kebab food. Just what we needed to get the spirits back up again!

Day 127 – Raindrops on my helmet

Leaving Cilacap was not hard though the breakfast was surprisingly good. Also, we didn’t get onto the road as early as I wanted to but then, my mood seems a bit erratic because of Christmas. I’m much more prone to homesickness and missing friends terribly.

We managed to get a chunk of our task done which was get to Bandung today. Bandung is about 270km from Cilacap; not a challenge with good roads but a stretch in Indonesia. At 11am, it started raining. Getting soaked on the way into Malang wasn’t fun so we stopped for an early lunch and waited till the rain stopped. It didn’t rain much.

So we were back on the road. Thirty minutes later, it started raining for real. A bit fed up with stopping again, we instead pulled on our rain gear, tapped the panniers (heavy rain has a way of pushing in through the gap between lid and pannier) and kept going. It rained quite hard. And long. We did not get nearly as soaked as before with all our gear but it still was not the best riding experience.

Basically, we ducked down our heads and endured the rain until we were in Bandung. The thing with the rain this time was that if we had tried to avoid it, we wouldn’t have gotten very far at all.

In Bandung, we found a tiny place for the night…so tiny, that we had trouble getting all our gear in. It was cheap though. But my mood was not the best and I was quite exhausted from a hard day’s ride. Going out for food seemed like the last thing I wanted to do. I just wanted to sleep.

The only picture of the day, thanks to the rain

The only picture of the day, thanks to the rain

Flo convinced me that I needed food though so we stepped outside. Right next door was a design place that also made decals for motorcycles. Having failed so far, we asked about a sticker with the Indonesian flag. They didn’t have one but were more than happy to customize it for us. Flo went back to the hotel to grab the pannier that it was supposed to go on and we had it attached in no time. The word “Indonesia” is even made up of individual letters all sticking to the pannier. And the best thing: The owner gave it to us for free after seeing our pannier with the world map on it. Thanks so much, mangele.com!

From there, we turned one corner to get to the main street were we found a whole alley with food stalls in the more hipster street food style. It was delicious. Also I managed to get a dessert which was fried dough filled with chocolate. Cities are just the best. Not for traffic but everything else. Then I fell into bed and slept from 7pm onwards. 🙂