Distance: 126km
Elevation: 992m
Yusufeli: https://maps.app.goo.gl/g5T9cGxvufNnaNYZ9?g_st=ic
After a good night of sleep and a delicious breakfast, I packed up Rosinante. When I was loading her in the lobby, I noticed that Germany had won against Curaçao 7:1 and that two other bicycles parked there. I went back up to the breakfast room on the fourth floor to look for their owners. No luck. Too bad. I would have liked to meet more fellow cyclists.
On the way out of Erzurum, I tried to buy sunscreen. Three shops did not carry any. I will probably have to wait until the coast. Tourists there will create enough demand.
The first forty kilometers were mostly uphill climbing up to almost 2.100m. Almost at the top, I heard a squeaky sound coming from the front of the bike. I stopped and found that the rack system for my panniers had come loose. To fix it, I had to remove the front wheel. I did this next to a fountain, which was convenient for washing up afterwards.
Next to the fountain was a small restaurant. I went in and tried to order something. I was not entirely sure what I was getting. It turned out to be fish. Small ones, the kind that in German we call Forelle, which is trout. I normally avoid fish because of the bones. But I have to say this was the most delicious baked fish I have eaten in a very long time. I left the restaurant with renewed energy.
I completed the climb and then the longest descent in the history of descents began. Two hundred kilometers in which the road drops from 2,100 meters down to sea level at the Black Sea. The route followed a canyon, or rather a system of canyons, heading north. It was spectacular.
I have used the word „spectacular“ before on this trip. I want to be more precise here. There were moments in that canyon where I had to stop the bike. Not because I was tired. Not because I needed water. I stopped because I could not continue. I just stood there with my hands on the handlebars and stared. My jaw did what jaws do in those situations. The canyon walls rose up on both sides, and the rock was not one color but many. Deep reds and burnt oranges and pale yellows and streaks of almost purple where the minerals had run through over millions of years. The light did things I cannot fully explain. Shadows fell across the walls in sharp lines, and where the sun hit directly, the colors became almost violent in their intensity. And then the scale of it. The sheer size. The wildness. There are no words that actually fit. You can say “vast” and “immense” and “breathtaking” and none of them land with the right weight. You have to stand in it. You have to feel how small you are next to something that has been there for an unimaginable length of time and will be there long after you are gone. I stood at the side of the road several times and just looked. There was nothing else to do.
In the afternoon, during a break, I met Michael from Zittau. He was touring the Caucasus on an Africa Twin, a large adventure motorcycle. I remembered having seen his bike the day before in Tercan. He had just retired. We sat together over chai and traded travel stories. We exchanged contact details and agreed to look each other up in Tbilisi. Maybe our paths will cross again.
I continued down into the canyon. In the late afternoon, a strong headwind hit me head-on. Almost a storm. It was coming up through the valley from below. My guess is that the sun heats the ground, the ground heats the air, and the air rises up through the canyon like a chimney. It made for very hard cycling.
I stopped at a roadside restaurant for an early dinner and filled up my water supplies. Then I set off to cover the remaining distance.
What I had not anticipated was a series of tunnels. Twelve kilometers in total. Tunnels are uncomfortable for cyclists. Not because of the darkness, but because of the acoustics and the narrow space. When a truck comes from behind, the sound is massive. It fills the whole tunnel. Even when the driver keeps as much distance as possible, it feels like something enormous is about to roll over you. You get used to it, but it takes a while.
The infrastructure here is impressive. The quality of the tunnels, the lighting, the tarmac laid through the heart of a canyon — it is genuinely fascinating. At one point, a tunnel ended in a valley where two other tunnels began in different directions, all connected by a bridge. A masterpiece of Turkish engineering.
At another point, a bridge was temporarily closed. There was construction work on the mountainside, and the road was blocked to protect against falling rocks. Cars had to wait fifty minutes. I used the time to look for a campsite. The problem with a canyon is that there is almost no flat ground. It is vertical walls, the road, and the water underneath. Nothing else.
When the bridge opened again, I crossed and pushed on through another tunnel. Between the end of one tunnel and the start of the next, a gravel path led off into the mountains. From a distance, I saw something on that path. It was dog-sized with pointed ears and long legs. Unlike the Kangal dogs that roam around here. When it spotted me, it ran away. A wolf perhaps, or a jackal.
As usual, I had asked upstairs for a sign about where to camp that night. I took this as one. I followed the gravel path up into the hills. It led me to a flat, open area with good solid ground and a remarkable view over the canyon. Literally in the middle of nowhere.
I set up camp, showered, had nuts and a warm beer for dinner, and sat for a while with the view. No five-star hotel in the world can give you this feeling. At half past eight, it got dark. The stars came out. I went to bed.
There were sounds of falling rocks somewhere in the distance. Some frogs. Despite all of it, I slept very well.
In the middle of the night I needed to pee. The sky was pitch black and full of stars and the Milky Way was visible crystal clearly. Wow.
Learnings of the day:
Ask for signs and you shall receive them. Sometimes in the form of a unknown animal that runs away from you. I have no idea what it was. But it pointed me toward the best campsite I have had in this tour. Sometimes a higher power tells you what to do. You just have to be paying attention to the signs.