Hitchhiking to Mordor

Since we weren't brave (or suicidal) enough to try to cross Siberia or even Ukraine in winter, first we were naturally headed south, to Turkey. With European passports, we were allowed to stay there 3 months without visas. The plan was to spend winter there (and in Iran and maybe also Georgia) and to continue east in spring, when we would decide it is warm enough we might not freeze to death.

I have hitchhiked in Turkey two or three times before, and Vojta once. It has always been the best country for traveling. Drivers have always stopped very quickly for us, they have been very patient - they have made a lot of effort to understand our broken pseudo-Turkish, and they have been incredibly hospitable. On my past journeys, we were invited for tea and a Turkish-English dictionary chat, for a meal or even for sleeping in somebody's house so many times that we never felt we had not enough social contact or a poor diet. I sometimes felt that even if our backpacks and all the money were stolen, in Turkey people just wouldn't let us be hungry or cold.

This time, though, we were starting our trip a couple of months after a military coup, in the middle of the purges among Turkish journalists, writers, professors (and soccer referees (!)), short after some terrorist attacks and in a growing tension between the government and the Kurdish separatists (or pretty much anyone whom the government designated as a Kurdish separatist).

I somehow couldn't believe that Turkey, this country I liked so much, could have lost its mind overnight and could suddenly be teaming with crazy cops arresting random hitchhikers at will. Vojta wasn't much worried either. Some of our other friends were, though. They were asking whether we were sure we wanted to cross that country. With every new terrorist attack (that happened pretty much every two weeks), a wave of purges or a government's decision to toughen the regime they were questioning our plan (and eventually our sanity) more and more. 

I was still more afraid of cold (it was kind of more material at the freezing beginning of November) than of a dictatorship, and Vojta seemed not to care at all, so we didn't change our mind. 

A slow start and a secret gathering of people going to China

When we started thumbing on a particularly cold Monday evening, the plan was clear: 

1. speed through Europe before we turn to snowpeople, and get to Turkey as soon as possible

2. ...
3. profit.

The first part showed not as easy as such, though. We were waiting on a Prague motorway petrol station for three hours, wearing our winter clothes prepared for later, jogging few meters back and forth to make our limbs a little bit warmer and staring at our backpacks covered in hoarfrost. 

When we had drunk all our tea, another hitchhiker showed up. His name was Faker and he was going from the UK home to China. Of course, there is no better place for a gathering of people hitchhiking in November to China than on the Czech D1 motorway in Prague. (Yep, it goes east.) He had been hitchhiking someplace downtown for 2 days already, with no success. Here it seemed equally vain but he was apparently very happy to have met us. 

After another hour or two, we gave up and went home, with our new colleague along. My boyfriend wasn't particularly glad we were still in Prague and there was more of us, but he was nice and didn't kick us out (it would be a sad goodbye). 

We found out that Faker was thinking of going through Pakistan or Afghanistan. I wished our friends could hear him. Compared to this, our horribly dangerous plan to go to Turkey seemed suddenly something like an afternoon walk to the park.

The next morning, we sent Faker ahead to reduce the number of hitchhikers on the road and to scare the drivers less. It probably worked because when we got back to the gas station, he was already gone.

Soon we had our portion of luck too and got to the east of the country, and then to Austria. Here, it was a bit less cold. And it was raining. The weather had probably decided to test thoroughly whether we were 100% sure this trip was a good idea.

Well, we didn't run away.

However, when we crawled into our tiny tent (big enough for one human and one dog, but light to carry, you know...) in a wet Vienna city park that night, I felt very little victorious for somebody who had finally started making something like a plan of their life happen. (Omg, have I really dreamt for 15 years about living in a tent with no shower and no wifi? And what if we fall ill? What if we get a cabin fever? What if something happens to my family when I am in the middle of nowhere? What if I miss my boyfriend too much?) And yep, there was a couple of what-have-I-dones when a stronger gust of wind or rain woke me up.

In the morning, the testing went on - we waited in the rain the whole day. I was happy we at least had all the time in the world. We eventually made it to the next petrol station after Vienna, direction Hungary, and the next day the curse seemed finally broken. However, it was still cold. I couldn't care less about the Turkish president and all his politics - I just wanted to get south.

In a few more days two Turkish businessmen gave us a ride in Bulgaria - we were finally going to Istanbul. Mehmet and Bulent (these were their names) invited us for a meal, made us a hotspot so that we could try to contact Couchsurfers, and when they learned we were traveling with only little money, even bought us subway tickets in Istanbul before we even noticed the subway. The good old Turkish hospitality seemed totally unchanged.

Snow, frost and Snow (by Orhan Pamuk)

From Istanbul, we were speeding still more east. We wanted to see the ruins of the ancient Armenian city of Ani, on the very eastern border of Turkey, before the place would become unbearably cold (which might happen very soon). I also really wanted to see the city of Kars which happened to be just next to Ani.

If you have been to Turkey, have you ever been to Kars? (And have you ever heard about it?)

In Snow, one of my favorite novels, by Orhan Pamuk, it is described as the end of civilization, a once prospering border city that turned into a decaying godforsaken hole in the middle of nowhere that nobody cares about anymore. There is some kind of poetry in it. For some reason, I'm attracted by ruins and abandoned and forlorn places. (Whereas the top tourist destinations make me feel lost.) And the fact that a novel I like is set in a particular place is a definite reason to want to go there.

So, I needed to go there.

Mentioning Kars to our Turkish drivers had a similar effect on them as mentioning Turkey to my Czech friends. They always gave us a sympathetic or suspicious look as if we had said we were going to Mordor, and told us "çok uzak!" (very far), or "çok soğuk!" (too cold). Sometimes they even told us it was dangerous, probably because it was far and cold.

But when you have been hitchhiking a few thousand kilometers for almost two weeks to see a place, you just don't back out, do you.

As we were travelling along the Black Sea cost, the stories about the dreaded cold seemed more like horror fairytales told by southerners who take on their down jackets and gloves every time the temperature drops below 30°C.

As for the new dangers of Turkey, the most suspicious thing was that we hadn't been offered free food for a week. Still no cops who would wish to arrest us, and the only person with gun we had seen so far was a friendly shepherd who dropped by our camp to say hi when we were camping (probably) on his property. He didn't even kick us out. (And then Kolya the truck driver invited us home when we had expressed our doubts about putting up our tent on the top of his truck filled with cement, so everything was normal again.) For quite a long time, we didn't meet anybody we would share a language with, and our Turkish was too poor for even a little complex conversation, so we didn't happen to discuss politics. We were only learning about new terrorist attacks and new arrests when we turned our slow internet on.

As for my other fears, everything was still ok. Also, traveling with Vojta was easier than I had expected. Last time, I was the only one to speak with drivers - Vojta only learned two words in Turkish which he then randomly mixed together, and stubbornly refused to try harder. This time, he was sedulously studying the language every day with an app, and was very quickly able to communicate.

Hitchhiking on the north coast was easy, even though a bit slow because we had to find our way through many lively cities and towns on the way. This changed as we were approaching Georgia. The coast was suddenly less crowded and sometimes it seemed that no one was going our way. Not far before the border we turned east to the mountains - and prepared for cold.

No cold was coming, though. In the mountain town of Artvin where we were camping behind a sport hall there still was no less than minus 4°C at night. 

However, that didn't change the fact that still nobody was going our way, and if so, it was only a couple of miles, which seemed like nothing on the mountain serpentines. We were becoming a bit nervous because we had managed to find a Couchsurfer to host us in Kars that day. Finally, a truck overloaded with wood stopped for us. (We had been in doubt whether to wave at it since its speed was some 40 km/h, but it was the only car that appeared in a couple of minutes.)

The truck slowed down to 20 km/h, climbed to the altitude of the tallest Czech mountain (there was snow) and broke down. After some time, the driver managed to repair it and we went on. In whole, we had made some 100 km in 4 hours. From time to time, the driver was stopping to repair the truck. We eventually learned that he was going up to Kars, but we found an excuse to get off earlier because we were worried we would show up at the Couchsurfer's house in the middle of the night. It was late in the afternoon and we found ourselves on a snowy field near the town of Arhadan (which looked as desolate as the field). The famous cold had finally reached us.

Fortunately we got a ride quite quickly and reached a Kars suburb just before dark. There was snow. (Orhan Pamuk's novel didn't lie in this.)

We dropped by a petrol station for bathroom and were immediately offered tea by the owner.

So far, Kars didn't feel much like Mordor.

We were drinking tea, maintaining a dictionary conversation (We come from the Czech Republic. We hitchhike Turkey. Turkey beautiful. Yes. Here cold. No problem. Czech Republic cold.). Our vocabulary gained a new word: snow. Meanwhile we found out that our Couchsurfing host actually was in another city that day and couldn't host us. This meant we were going to have an opportunity to get a bit more familiar, or even intimate, with the Kars cold at night and to fully enjoy it. (Thank God(/s) it was only November.)

We thanked the gas station guy for the tea and started looking for the city center. (It wasn't particularly difficult since the city wasn't too big.) The streets were covered in frozen snow and the air was acrid and full of coal mist. There were the same gloomy teahouses and the same cheese stores as in the book. So far so good. (At some point in Pamuk's novel, the roads out are blocked with snow and nobody can leave, so I hoped our experience wouldn't follow the book too much.) 

Downtown we bought bread, cheese and an English-Turkish paperback dictionary for 1,5 TL which made our life easier for the rest of our stay in Turkey (it has no battery that can go dead). We also found the historical center near the river. It was rather empty since it was outside the modern center, and mostly falling apart. (We actually didn't see any new buildings or construction sites anywhere in the city, which was quite unusual.) 

There was a couple of ruins "under preservation status" (the status probably consisted in the sign saying so). There was not a single shop selling kitschy stuff to tourists, which is very rare on places like this. Probably there really are only few people who come here just to wander around and look at the old Armenian and Russian houses. There also were no bars, barriers or booths for selling tickets, so we were free to explore anything we wanted. From the city castle (except for visitors of a restaurant on top, we were the only people there) the coal smog looked even romantic. 

We cooked our pasta there and went then camping to the historical baths on the river bank because we hoped it might be warmer in there (it was -9°C at the moment). In the baths, there was a huge frozen poo in the middle, so I immediately lost my doubts whether camping in there wasn't too rude. We put up our tent in the cleanest corner and tried to pretend the poo on the other side didn't exist. 

Hospitality at the edge of the world

The next morning, there were still no people (except some guys taking pictures of themselves on the bridge for two hours) and the area still looked romantic.

However, we quite early left for Ani. It was just 40 kilometers from Kars, but at the end of the world, so we were not sure if there would be cars to hitchhike. And our Couchsurfing contact seemed to be back in the city and agreed to meet us in the evening. 

We were lucky, though, and got there quite easily. 

I won't describe Ani much - I will just tell you it's one of the most amazing ancient sites I've ever seen, and the two weeks of hitchhiking in there were totally worth it. Plus, it's not touristy (even though there is a lonely booth for selling tickets with a lonely guy in it). And there are horses (living) and svastikas (on walls). That's it for spoilers - if you are into ancient ruins, go see it yourself. 

The place was so magical that we started caring about the way back to Kars only about one hour before nightfall. Behind Ani, which is a small village plus the ruins, there is a huge hole and behind that hole there is Armenia.

So, there were no cars going anywhere and we spent the remaining hour of daylight walking on the empty road. There was internet signal, though, so meanwhile, we were exchanging messages with Ayhan, our Couchsurfing host, and were telling him that we were only 40 minus the walked distance km from Kars.

After the night fell and we peppersprayed a couple of dogs who wanted to eat us, we arrived to a village and met a guy on the road. He was kind of disturbed by our presence and our plan to hitchhike all the two cars passing per hour. I won't reproduce our pantomime conversation in whole, but the meaning was a bit like this:

- WTF are you morons doing here?

- Hello. Here very beautiful. We go to Kars. We hitchhiking. No problem.

- Well, it IS a problem. It's dangerous and it's freezing in here and there are no cars and no buses here, only dogs and wolfs. You should take a taxi.

- No taxi, no money, no problem.

- OMG

- We friend Kars. We sleep in tent. No problem.

- You are crazy. Come for tea.

(To have a more precise picture, you can add some repetitions in your head and erase some more grammar.)

He kind of didn't let us go on, so we ended up in a house with two ladies and three little girls who were doing their homework. We were offered tea and Ayhan decided to drive all the bloody 40 km (minus the walked distance) to pick us up. Meanwhile, we were talking through our new dictionary with our hosts. The oldest girl was very smart and would always very quickly find the keyword her family wanted to tell us. We would then imagine the rest and answer with another keyword. It always took a long time, so we didn't run out of topics and there was no awkward silence (only an intellectual silence) before Ayhan came.

Ayhan actually is an archaeologist and a professor at the Kars university, and has himself done some of the excavations in Ani. He arrived with a girl called Emine. They took us to their cozy flat at the university campus, prepared dinner for us and then we spent the evening talking about excavations all around Turkey and old Russian buildings in Kars. The next day, they drove us to a good hitchhiking spot behind Kars and we managed to get back to the coast a day before snow came and blocked the mountain roads almost like in Pamuk's book.

We were still neither frozen, nor in jail.