I crossed Serbia in two days. Immediately after crossing the border I exchanged 40 Euros into Serbian dinars. It's a lot of money in Serbia. I followed the road along Drina river, that creates a natural border between Serbia and Bosnia. Both sides of the river were covered with mountains, and on my side tall cliffs were overhanging the road creating a cool shadow. It was such a relief after exposed Bosnian steppe. And there was almost no traffic. Another difference is that Serbian road network is more extensive than in Bosnia and resembles a network of small interconnected capillaries; in Bosnia there is a single straight road that crosses a country in the direction of my travel. Serbian landscape is hilly, the roads are twisty and the air is clean. In other words, Serbia is the most interesting country to cross by bicycle. Add to this abundance of bakeries, high quality juices, I ranked Serbian juices second only to Turkish, and some similarly sounding words shared by Serbian and Russian languages - when I was buying something I always spoke in Russian and they appeared to know what I was talking about. I could not say that I understood Serbian, but it sounded very familiar.
In about two hours of riding the sun rose high enough and I lost my shadow protection. The heat was amplified by narrow gorges through which the road was going and there was no wind. I stopped at every store to buy a bottle of water and an ice-cream - at least once an hour. If I didn't leave my bike in the shadow, when I stopped, iPhone, attached to the handlebar, would overheat immediately and stop working displaying a temperature warning. It would come back to life after I resume riding and the air flow would cool it.
I crossed many hills in Serbia and by the evening I was on a flat E-80 highway leading to Bulgaria. The heat was off by that time, and at night this road was not busy, so I could make a good time. I tried to avoid highways on a hot days and only used them at nights. When the night fell, I thought that maybe I can get some sleep, I found a park in one of the towns along the road and decided to camp without tent. I inflated mattress and wrapped a National Geographic fleece blanket around me, backpack as a pillow. It was much better than lying inside the tent. Finally, I found a sleeping solution! This peace didn't last long, however. The day's heavy eating had some unpleasant consequences when the food finally completes its lifecycle. And it was very urgent, and the park wasn't the most convenient place. My sleep was ruined. I jumped and raced for the next gas station, the door was closed but someone was inside and he let me in. My immediate problem was resolved but I could not go back to sleep - good sleeping places are hard to find. So another night and a full day of riding and I arrived at the Bulgarian border. Some 50 km before I got there, I stopped at the service area with a mini-market and a store clerk asked me if I was going to Istanbul. "Yes, I am". He told me that three days ago a group of other Transcontinental riders passed here. It looked like all of us were coming together onto the same road in the last 2 days of the race, but I was far behind.
In Bulgaria I stopped for the night in hotel Dragoman, which is 15 km from the border. In the room I laid out and repackaged all of my gear, so that my backpack was empty. Tomorrow I intended to go fast and finish this race in one last push to Istanbul, which was 650 km away. Chili macaroni was eaten and tea drank.
I set out for Istanbul at 6 AM. Just one last ride. I was not alone, I spotted two other cyclists in black, packing their bags at the roadside shop (Transcontinental Specialized Team - Recep Yesil and Erik Nohlin) and we exchanged greetings. In the first four hours I had covered more than 100 km and then stopped for breakfast. I was prepared to be baked and roasted in the next 7 hours, until 5 PM, which marks the point when the sun drops down a little and the shadows start to grow. I must add that I still was living in my own time zone which was fixed at London time, so all my references to time should be corrected by one and then two hours. I was living in a time warp and it was not a fiction.
I kept riding through the night and was lucky to have company of another Transcontinental rider - Colin from Scotland. Although I was resolved to ride that night, as soon as it was dark I was struggling with sleep again. This was my first night on the road since that night in Croatia when I was sleepwalking and hallucinating. I wouldn't be able to go through this again, and besides, there was some traffic on this road, so any irregular unconscious movements are best to be avoided - it was a main highway to Turkey, and not some backcountry road in Croatia. So I was glad that we rode together for some time, not sure for how long actually, because my time perception was rather vague. Conversation and frequent accelerations kept me awake. We parted ways at one of the gas stations, Colin was in a racing mood and pushing hard, I thought that the worst part of the night was behind and stopped for refreshments. Later, while riding in the morning twilight I started to fall asleep again and had to lie down in the grass for about half an hour. No sleep, but I knew it would help. Sun was up in the sky when I stopped at the Turkish border. A little over 250 km to the finish.
Day 14
With some delays to get visa, I finally was on the wide and perfect road on the Turkish side. But I was only half way through border control, there was another invisible line across the road that was guarded by watchful steppe dwellers. My intrusion was immediately detected by two huge monsters, that looked like a cross between the Hound of the Baskervilles and pygmy musk ox. The ugliest dogs I had ever seen, they certainly identified me as a pack donkey loaded with bags and not a human and attacked me. Speed was my only defense. I thought about all those creatures roaming deserted roads and plains all the way to Istanbul.
My route through Turkey followed D-020 highway that goes mainly to the north-east and enters Istanbul from the north. This is not a direct and the shortest way, but because of this, it's virtually traffic-free. And it passes through many towns and villages, which makes traveling more interesting. As soon as I turned onto D-020 I found myself against very stiff headwind, blowing from the highlands in front of me. For the next 50 km the road was dead straight and climbing up most of the time. My average speed on this stretch was 10 km/h, and on many occasions walking was faster than riding. After 5 hours of fighting the wind I rode into town of Kirklareli. I hoped for a short respite - the road out of town turned south-east and was going down. Instead I was caught in the crosswinds and now was pushed off the road. To balance out the force of the wind blowing into my left side I had to lean into the wind as if I was wind-serfing. But when the wind died down for a moment or changed direction the bike would suddenly dive to the left and I had to quickly pull it back to keep it straight. The same thing happened when a car passed me, blocking the wind, and, all of a sudden, I was falling into a car (or a truck). That was even worse than riding straight into headwind. Fortunately, the traffic was very light.
Now I was crawling along and the wind swept across this vast plain all the way from Black Sea. I started to walk uphill again. The sign on the road read - Istanbul, 175 km. While I was walking a fellow on a scooter stopped and asked me where I was going, and then offered his back seat. I thanked him, we shook hands and he wished me well. Certainly, I could cover this distance in the next 24 hours.
Two hours had passed and another 25 km done. It was getting darker and, surprisingly, the wind disappeared. Suddenly it was calm. Another night of riding and I will be in Istanbul in the morning, but most likely I won't survive this night without sleep. I descended into a small town of Vize, a "home of many historical monuments" and a small Trak Otel, where I spent the night.
Day 15
After good eat-as-much-as-you-can turkish breakfast with eggs and cheese I was ready to go. To my disappointment the wind was already raging in the streets and when I was leaving town I rode into a swirling cloud of dust and sand. But now I was going downhill. Of course, after 100 km of climbing yesterday, the road had to go down. So after many long descents and a few short climbs, the scenery around me changed and the rocky plains were replaced with green thick groves. The wind never retreated, but now it became entangled in the high tops of the trees and couldn't get at me.
Two hours later, when I came to a small rest stop with a bench and a table, I was unable to hold myself back from cookies that I had in my backpack and a sour cherry (visne) juice. This juice immediately became my favorite, it can only be found in Turkey, and out of several varieties Tropicana is the best. Turkish cookies come in endless forms and flavors. In just less than two days I went through 3 boxes of ulker cokoprens - round double biscuits with chocolate cream inside; several bags of Hanimeller cookies - assorted, shortbreads with sesame seeds; and a box of kurabiye. After Bulgaria with its sandwiches, being in Turkey was a dream come true.
And another thing that came to mind when I was 100 km from my goal was that I didn't want to end it. I didn't feel like I had just ridden over 3000 km, it was more like I went for a short 4 hour ride in the morning. Why wasn't this finish line somewhere in China?
Istanbul was quickly approaching. Many military training camps along the road, two policemen flagged me down and studied my passport.
The wooded area soon ended, and once again I started climbing into the hills and wind hit me with revenge. There was a big road construction going on, some sections weren't completed yet, and all the traffic was squeezed into two lanes with a line of road cones separating two opposite directions. And so for some time I found myself in a tight spot between a barrier and a line of speeding trucks who couldn't move over because of the road cones. It was very uncomfortable, I could have touched them as they passed me.
The last portion of the ride, just before Istanbul, is a park to the north of the city with Ataturk Arboretum atop the central hill. And then a long descent to the Bosphorus strait. I had reached the end of Europe. And here my navigation equipment failed. The dynamo cache battery wouldn't charge iPhone anymore, I had 10 km to go, and iPhone was at 12% already. At first, I blamed heat for this. When I was in Serbia I noticed that as heat increased during the day, iPhone charge dropped to 85 percent, then at night it would come back to 100 percent, and each day this would happen again. But when I got home I discovered that the problem was with the iPhone Wahoo case - its micro USB connector was broken and pushed inside.
So I raced to the finish as hard as I could, I had about 10 minutes left before iPhone dies, and when this happened I wanted to be as close as possible to the end. And I rode past the finish line. Well, actually there was no finish line. The race ended at Rumeli Hisari fortress, but I didn't know the exact location. I realized my mistake ten minutes later, and turned right, into the streets, then I became lost, and, as another hour passed, I managed to return to my previous location before the finish. I rode slowly this time and, finally, found it. My GPS didn't die, but it was hanging by a hair.
I spent very little time in Istanbul. After the night party I rode to the airport and several hours later was boarding my plane.
And here are all the photos http://flic.kr/s/aHsjHK57Ax