Goga picked us up on the highway just outside Tbilisi, round the first corner we passed an ancient looking church and he crossed himself before putting his foot down on the accelerator. Had I have known then the speed he was about to drive at there is no doubt I would also have crossed myself and added in three “Hail Mary’s” and an “Our Father” too…

Goga’s day job was as a financial manager for Georgian railways, but somewhere inside him was the soul of Ayrton Senna struggling to get out. He turned the roads of rural Georgia into his personal formula one track as he drove to the funeral of a friend’s father as if his life depended on it.

Still having rushed from summer into winter in the space of one week in Turkey it was nice to be going back one season here. Yesterday in Tbilisi I’d read a quote from George Eliot saying that if she was a bird she would just pursue autumn, the loveliest of the seasons, around the world. And here in the Georgian valleys, as far as I could see through my fingers, was a perfect autumn day on which she would have loved to have alighted, from the carpet of red leaves on the floor to the plump orange persimmons brightening up otherwise entirely bare trees. I have been frequently amused by the sight of the persimmon ever since it was recently described to me by a retired English-Texan lady with immaculate elocution as “the most erotic of fruits.”

After Goga dropped us off the next ride was a Turkish truck driven by Jesus (actually Issa which is the Muslim version of the same name). In his truck we got our first sight of the Black Sea, the moody cousin of the Mediterranean (which the Turks know as the White Sea). I can imagine the clouds that the Mediterranean gives birth to to be the fluffy, flighty ones that breeze around carefree, whereas the Black Sea’s progeny would be the grump, heavy-set ones that do the hard-work of pouring rain all over the earth. We approached the Black Sea border at dusk along roads so rough that we were shaken about in the truck’s cabin as if we were all dancing energetically to the northern Turkish folk music on the stereo.

A Georgian guy took us to the border and arranged to meet us on the other side to drive us on into Turkey but unfortunately we didn’t make it. One of my general themes is that Turkey, in direct contrast to its popular image amongst some in the west, is filled with the most generous, gracious, and gentle people you could ever hope to meet. But, as I discovered at this border crossing, it also has a very effective screening and selection programme for its bureaucrats to make sure that no-one with any of those qualities is given a governmental job.

The border staff couldn’t understand that our visa allowed multiple visits up to a total of 90 days in every 180 day period and refused us re-entry to Turkey, leaving us stranded in Georgia. Catherine’s attempts to explain the actual visa regulations to the commanding officer were just met with repeated shouts of “exit, madam!” When she asked for his name he refused to give it, making me think “who the fuck are you, Rumpelstiltskin?”

Anyway fortunately the border staff’s ignorance of their own country’s border laws meant that they also didn’t know that you can’t get two visas in one 180 day period so they agreed to issue us a new one. It was annoying paying again as we already had a valid visa, but it was better than the alternative of being trapped in Georgia and needing to pay for expensive flights out in order to complete our final few months travel plans.

Ultimately for us the episode, while a bit stressful, was just a minor irritant. I feel, however, for the Turkish people who must have to put up with ignorant and willfully deaf authorities on a daily basis.  

Our main lift the next day, along the beautiful Black Sea coastal road, was from a Kurdish truck driver named Ramazan, who initially said he going to Ankara. He was very hospitable, buying us lentil soup at a truck stop and providing us with numerous Turkish coffees on the go from the mini kettle he kept in his cabin. Actually Catherine was pouring the coffee, I was staring it through and then I noticed that Ramazan, oblivious to the road and traffic flying around us, had taken on the role of over-seeing the whole process. Deciding that, as we were speeding along in a ten tonne truck, at least one of us should look at the road I decided to opt out of my staring duties. 

Ramazan dropped us in a dark town that had evidently never seen a tourist before, but which was very excited about its chickpeas which it advertised in every shop along the highway in the sort of huge neon signs normally found on casinos or dodgy nightclubs. Two friendly locals drove us to a cheap hotel which appeared to be a students’ hall of residence – we got a suite there for 30TL (£10) including breakfast.

On the third and final day we hitched successfully to Istanbul, via Ankara (Turkey’s capital). The most interesting lift of the day, and possibly of our whole hitch-hiking career, was with Gorkem a young Armenian. Gorkem was a member of Carsi, the Besiktas football fan group who are famous for campaigning for left-wing causes. Most of the groups leading members have been arrested after figuring very prominently in the recent anti-government protests in Istanbul.

Gorkem’s day-job, away from Carsi, was even more interesting. He worked as a war photographer and has been to both Iraq and Afghanistan. On one assignment in the latter country he was shot twice. Gorkem was now focusing on his own photography projects, making regular trips into civil-war torn Syria to photograph the persecuted Kurdish people there as a means of telling their story to the world. After all our recent experiences in Kurdish Turkey and Iraq, meeting Gorkem made this a very fitting final hitch of our journey to Istanbul.

Finally we reached the old Ottoman capital and crashed into the wall of defensive traffic which has been erected around the modern city. If only the Byzantine Empire had thought of doing the same thing back in 1453 the invading Turks would probably have got bored and gone away. Still, despite the grindingly slow traffic surrounding it there is always something exciting about arriving in Europe’s largest city. Here we were within ten minutes of the Bospherous Bridge crossing that was going to finally take us out of Asia, where we have spent the vast majority of our last five and a half years travelling. Thanks to traffic the actual crossing took closer to an hour, but it was worth the wait – there was the Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, the Blue Mosque and all lit up in lights and waiting to welcome us to the start of the European leg of our journey home…

Facts and figures from the hitch from Tbilisi to Istanbul

Total distance travelled – 1,858 km

Number of lifts – 19

% of the drivers who smoked – 100%

Origins of the drivers – 2 Georgians, 3 Kurds, 2 Laks, 10 Turks, 1 Armenian, 1 Syrian

Occupations of the drivers (were known) – financial manager, truck driver (x4), wrestler, road construction company manager, coal salesman, war photographer

Hospitality offered – free accommodation for the night (twice), 4 bowls of lentil soup, 2 salads, 2 baskets of bread, 8 glasses of tea, 4 Turkish coffees, 38 cigarettes (i.e. one each offered on every lift), a bag of hazelnuts, one pomegranate and 10 tangerines