By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (9 page)

‘It’s possible, yes.’

‘And that would be a fourteen-hour drive?’

Again Jarus nodded.

We decided to think about it some more. I still hadn’t given up hope of a ship, so we left Jarus and Cenk to make further enquiries. I had no idea whether Cenk had been serious about buying a bus or not, but we headed into the old city to get Turkish Delight just in case. I’d only been in Istanbul a few hours but the place was living up to everything I’d expected. We crossed a bridge where men were fishing. We wandered along narrow cobbled streets with bright red trams running along them. I saw one young kid hanging off the back, grabbing a free ride and sliding down the road on the soles of his feet.

From my hotel room the skyline was a mass of buildings - the mixture of old and new strangely beautiful, the minarets pointing skyward like lunar rockets. Even the satellite dishes didn’t look incongruous.

On the hunt for Turkish Delight, we found an old shop called Haci Bekir run by a woman called Hande. Turkish Delight is big business and Haci Bekir has a factory in Asia but some of it is still handmade at the shop. Hande’s great-grandfather had started the business there, and his original oven was still displayed instore. Hande let us sample the goods: rose flavour, pistachio, walnut . . . she explained that sweets had always been a major part of Turkish heritage, but that Turkish Delight as we know it came about in the nineteenth century when corn starch and refined sugar first became available. That’s all it is: starch, sugar, water and, of course, the flavouring; Hande told us that the Ottomans made sweets flavoured with honey and grapes, and she still sold some of the old recipes.

We bought bags of the stuff then headed deeper into the city. Passing through the old gates we found a covered bazaar, the air heavy with the smell of rich spices. Turkey is of course famous for sweets, tobacco and coffee; but it’s also well known for tea and I bought some ‘love’ tea and ‘lemon’ tea from a shopkeeper called Turgut.

Man to man, Turgut told me that in order to keep his wife happy he’d developed his very own Turkish Viagra. He claimed to have twenty-one children and he looked very contented. ‘You take a walnut,’ he said, vacuum-sealing the tea, ‘then slice a fig and press in the heart of the walnut. Twenty-five minutes later you’re feeling very happy. Go ahead and try it.’

Leaving the bazaar, we wandered into a square where old women in head scarves were sitting at wooden tables selling brightly coloured cloths. I was having a great time enjoying the sights, but my mind kept returning to our transport problems. We were all feeling pretty weary: we’d covered a vast distance in a short space of time and were anxious to know how the hell we were going to get to Georgia.

‘What about a Turkish massage?’ Russ suggested. ‘That’ll unwind us for sure.’

‘You think so?’ I remembered the massage Ewan and I had endured on our Long Way Round trip, where I had been pushed and prodded to the point where I felt violated. ‘We’ll get pummelled, beaten to a pulp and then they’ll tell us it was enjoyable.’

‘It’ll be different this time,’ Russ promised, and he turned out to be right.

We picked a traditional Turkish hamam in the Tarihi Galatasaray Hamami, one of the oldest hamami in the city. It had been in the same family for about seventy years, and although the outside had been renovated in 1962, the inside had been a hamami since 1481.

It was stunning; thick marble walls, marble sinks, marble seats and a central dais where we lay on our fronts in the steam while the masseur, a fat and genial bald guy, worked our flesh. We were soaped, pummelled gently, pulled about and then scrubbed with flannel mitts.

‘I could do this every day,’ Russ said from where he was sitting next to a basin while another guy worked him over.

I lay on my stomach with a hot towel covering me. It was actually very pleasant: the room had a wonderful ambience; the lights changing now and then to enhance the atmosphere. I lay there thinking of 1481 and all the people who must have been through here since then. The guy massaging me was a sweet soul, and not at all heavy handed. Finally he sat me down and scrubbed me with a mitt. Just as I was thinking how enjoyable it all was, he soaked me with a bowl of freezing water.

6

The Love Bus

Cenk had been serious after all. With no ship available, a bus really was our only option. He managed to persuade a guy to rent us one, and by Friday night it was all agreed that we would drive to Georgia.

The buses - or
dolmus
- are minibuses rather than coaches, and there are red signs placed by the road denoting where they stop. Basically, it’s an owner-operated, private service that takes people short distances - Cenk said about ten kilometres at most. Our destination was Hopa, near the Georgian border, 1500 km away - surely the longest route a
dolmus
had ever taken.

 

Waking up on Saturday morning I felt excited. Hopefully we’d pick up a few people along the way, offer them Turkish Delight and generate the kind of love I’d like our
dolmus
to be known for.

Even the rain - a grey blanket draped across the city - couldn’t dampen my spirits. Apparently the temperature had reached thirty degrees the day before we arrived, but since then it had been overcast and now it was chucking it down. It was Mungo’s fault: it was his birthday and it always rains on his birthday. We gave him a copy of
The Worst Case Scenario Almanac
.

‘Thanks, boys,’ he said, as we boarded the ferry. ‘Stick with me and you’ll be all right.’

We sailed up the Bosporus, which divides the two continents, towards the Black Sea, watching the eastern side of the city slip by. We leant on the rail, gazing across to the hillside where the buildings seemed to climb over each other.

‘A beaten-up old truck,’ Russ said. ‘That’s what it’ll be. And Charley driving on roads where seven hundred thousand people are involved in accidents each year.’ He shook his head grimly. ‘Not an appealing thought.’

‘It’s only a thousand,’ I said. ‘It’ll be fun, and this way we’ll get to meet more people.’

‘It’s not meeting people I’m worried about.’

We stared into the water, aware that crossing the Bosporus was a key moment in the trip: when we left Europe behind and headed into less familiar territory.

‘West to east,’ I said to Russ. ‘From Europe to Asia, Christian to Muslim . . .’

‘We left riots behind us in Belgrade,’ Russ reminded me, ‘and yesterday the Americans fired a couple of shots from a ship in the Gulf. Bit of a set-to with Iran. I hope that’s not significant, Charley.’

I stared pensively at the water again. Before we set off I’d toyed with the idea of swimming across the Strait with Lewis Gordon Pugh, who swam a kilometre at the North Pole and managed to come away with all his toes and fingers. He told me that people travel by their faces and that mine was such that it ought to keep me out of trouble. I realised now that I could never have swum across - the currents are too strong and the amount of traffic made the Grand Canal look quiet.

 

The
dolmus
was a large van - white, of course, what else when Boorman was going to be driving? GB stickers adorned the backs of the seats, contrasting with the traditional blankets the owner had thrown over them, and we’d written ‘By Any Means’ on the front. The owner was going to drive us out of the city because, as Russ said, seven hundred thousand people are injured on these roads every year. Once we were clear of the suburbs, I would take over.

‘Charley,’ Cenk said, ‘there’s a style to driving a
dolmus
- an attitude. You understand?
Every one driver
has their own style.’

‘You mean you have to drive in a certain way,’ I said. ‘Shout, swear, yell at people to give you the money, that kind of thing.’

He nodded.

‘No problem, Cenk: I’m a method actor. I can do
dolmus
.’

‘OK. Give me
dolmus
driver.’

I looked at him for a long moment and then I curled my lip. ‘Fuck you!’ I threw out a hand in disgust. ‘What is it, your mother teach you to drive, uh?’

‘Fantastic,’ Cenk said with a grin. ‘You’ll be fine.’

We were heading inland to a place called Bolu, a map pasted above the window to trace our progress. I checked to make sure the red stop light was working properly in the back window, and when the time came for me to drive I was ready with my
dolmus
attitude.

Cenk - who had long hair and a Borat-style moustache - was a fun guy to travel with. He sang (badly) and played the guitar (not quite so badly) but he kept me awake and entertained as we trundled through pastures and scrub hills, mountains capped by snow in the distance. Russ was in the back, eyes closed, and only waking up when we stopped for customers. We didn’t get many: in fact the only people who got on all day were a bunch of school kids who didn’t have any money. I gave them my best
dolmus
glower and Cenk chatted to them in Turkish, asking them what they wanted to do when they grew up. None of them knew. They should make a decision, he told them: before someone else made it for them.

I couldn’t understand why we weren’t attracting more people. There were plenty of stops along the way and although we didn’t have any cologne, we had lots of Turkish Delight. Then I realised - it was Saturday. Nobody was travelling anywhere today, they were all at home. Tomorrow was Sunday and that would be even worse.

We reached Bolu at four o’clock and stopped for a late lunch in a cafe that had trained many famous Turkish chefs. Bolu is a peaceful town, nestled into a hillside and dominated by a large minaret. The houses are white, with arched windows and red-tiled roofs. Cenk loved the area: he explained that people skied here in the winter, and hunted during the season. It was also the perfect place for white-water rafting. When the snows melted the rivers were full and there were more rapids than you could shake an oar at.

Although we weren’t attracting any customers, I was enjoying the drive - the roads were wide and clean, and clear of traffic. We were heading north-east now, back towards the coast, and we stopped for the night in Safranbolu, a town on the old Silk Road. It was hard to find a room so late, but at last we were directed to an ancient hotel in the old quarter. It was eccentric but beautiful: from the outside it looked like a fort, with windowless walls and a chimney pot for each room. The rooms were built in a quadrant around an open courtyard, with a first-floor balcony running all the way round. It was very atmospheric, especially when the call to prayer lifted from a minaret somewhere close by. The only thing that worried me was that my room was right off the quadrant, with my door opening out on to the courtyard. This was Saturday night and I had a feeling the place would be heaving.

The hotel was situated in a labyrinth of steep cobbled streets. We found a sprawling bazaar that filled one side street and sold just about everything you could imagine: food, clocks, T-shirts, leather, copperware . . . Right outside the hotel a woman wrapped from head to toe sold fruit from balsa wood boxes laid out on an ancient rug.

Sure enough when we got back from dinner the hotel was jumping; not just with diners but traditional Turkish music. It was right on top of me and it was deafening. I was exhausted but there was nothing I could do except lie on my bed and laugh. Even downstairs in my cellar bathroom the walls echoed. What was it about me and this trip? A marching band in Northern Ireland, the ding dong of a station announcer outside my hotel in Calais and here I was on the Silk Road plagued by a Turkish folk singer.

 

I wasn’t in the best of moods the following morning: I’d really hoped for a good night’s sleep but there had been no chance of that. It didn’t last long though. Cenk was so funny that no one could be in a bad mood around him: Mungo only had to look at the guy and he’d start laughing. He had our
dolmus
destination board ready: today we were aiming for Trabzon via Mengen, Yenigaga and Gerede. We left the noisy, four-hundred-year-old hotel behind and headed up the coast.

I moved the map from above the window to the dashboard and penned the route in black felt-tip. Cenk was up front beside me with Russ straddling the back seats, strumming Cenk’s guitar.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Don’t get us lost, Cenk, we have a schedule to keep.’

‘I promise, Charley. I promise not to get us lost.’

‘You did yesterday, more than once.’

‘But not today,’ he said.

I was joking. We’d taken the odd wrong turn yesterday but you could hardly call it lost. We didn’t want to lose time however, and were aiming to cover 450 km today. But it didn’t take long to realise we’d be on dirt roads a lot of the way and our speed would drop off considerably. There wasn’t much traffic about but the roads were narrow and twisting, cutting a path through domed hills, banks of wooden houses and rusting tin roofs. Russ moved up behind me and gripped the back of the seat.