There are two rules of thumb you should always follow on a long bike tour. 1) Do not wild camp too close to a border area. They are often monitored and being found causes problems. 2) Do not wild camp close military areas without a permission. Being found leads to problems. I managed to break the both rules a the same time.
It was 10pm in the eastern Turkey, the Black Sea coast, 40km to the Georgian border. I had been on the move for a couple of hours after sunset trying to get some distance done to make it to the capital of of Georgia, Tbilisi, on time to meet my Mom and sister. I started to look for a campsite, I was tired and hungry. I had already been on the bike for nearly 10 hours that day. However, km after km I failed to find a hidden enough spot to pitch my tent for the night.
I stopped at a mosq and knocked the door, knowing that they occasionally let cyclists to sleep on the floor inside. Nothing, nobody inside. I put a new chapter of the Moomin Pappa and the Sea audiobook on, had a Snickers, some water and got back on the bike. I will find something, eventually, I always do.
15 km later I saw an opening, exactly what I had been waiting for. Something different to the continuous green wall, the first mountain faces of the eastern Turkish highlands, which had made wild camping hard the whole previous week. I was good at this, professional really. The master of wild camping, the one who disappears to the night at sunset and appears back to the road at sunrise. The basics: Turn off the bike lights well before reaching the potential wild camping area. Done. Screen the silhouettes of the profiles of the land and obstacles of the area when your eyes get used to the darkness. Done. Get as far away as possible from any possible light sources. Done. Disappear from the road when no cars are coming and you are not seen. Done. Pitch your tent in the dark. Done, halfway.
A group of men shouting loudly 150m away from me start to walk and run across the field with flashlights. Have I been seen? Normally I would take it easy and just go to say hello, but I had been told the day before that this is the part of Turkey where every man carries a gun and here I should be extra careful when wild camping. I was nervous and instead doing the wise thing, I hid my bike and the tent in the bush and stayed low. The lights were coming right at me. Slowly but surely, they were coming to my way. It was five light and a couple of more men. I was scared. I decided that I want to see them before they get too close, to have a possibility to run away if I see something unpleasant.
I took my extremely bright bike light, took a deep breath, stood up and directed the light to the group some 50m away from me. There is this sound, that I have heard hundreds of times, but never in real life. Click – click. Five loaded machine guns were directed at me and men were shouting at me in Turkish. I had tried to pitch my camp to a training ground of military camp close to the border!
When I realised what was going on I turned my light, which was blinding the men, to my face and shouted ‘BICIKLEÇI, BICIKLEÇI, FINLANDIA, FINLANDIA!’ They kept pointing the guns at me and walked towards me singling me to go to my knees and to put hand on my head. Yes, sir, no problem. I threw the light on the ground and went slowly on my knees keeping my hands behind my head. I was soon surrounded my 7 soldiers and a guy with guy in his underwear, who appeared to be the boss who had been wakened up in this threatening moment.
They signaled me to get back on my feet and searched me while I still kept my hands behind my head. I kept repeating the only few words I knew in Turkish (cyclist!, Finland!) as an answer to the questions in Turkish I was asked ,and trying to signal for a shape of a tent and the international signal for sleeping to explain what I was doing on their training ground right next to their base. Eventually, I think they got a clue who this weird, tall guy with a long red beard was and they lowered their guns.
I was brought to the guy in his underwear, to the boss, who examined me for a while thoughtful and then shouted and signaled me to leave. I was escorted by soldiers back to the road with my bike, I said ‘tesekküler’ to the men and then cycled the remaining 25km to the Georgian border.
After the border crossing to the city of Batumi, I loaded my panniers with cheap Georgian beer and camped at the first possible spot I saw. When woke up in my tent in hangover I found out that I had been sleeping at a cemetery.
A cemetery in Batumi, Georgia.
#biketouring #wildcamping #Turkey #Batumi #Goergia
