The Silk Road and Beyond. Ivor Whitall
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fact we were right-hand drive vehicles driving on the right-hand side of the road. However, Morrie soon got the hang of keeping us all together. He would indicate to pull out and overtake, staying on the wrong side of the road until either we’d all overtaken or a vehicle came the other way. It was an adrenaline rush as we blasted past trucks and minibuses at 60-plus mph, cabs bucking and bouncing across the rough potholed road. Anything in the cab that wasn’t secured landed in the passenger footwell!
Stopping on the outskirts of Belgrade for a bite to eat and a cuppa saw us transiting the city on Yugoslavia’s only undamaged stretch of tarmac! But this wasn’t to last long, as once we’d climbed the hill out of the capital, the road to Nis was almost as bad as the one from Zagreb. Edged at irregular but numerous intervals by religious icons commemorating the death of some unknown Turkish family, it was a concrete nightmare. Cracked and broken, many of the huge ‘plinths’ had settled and didn’t always match the height of the next one; in fact there could often be a difference of a couple of inches! Our foot to the floor driving style continued unabated, the law demanding you keep a gap of at least 100 metres from the truck in front fastidiously ignored! Morrie was on a mission and we’d better keep up or ship out . . . I was learning a new style of driving, on the job.
“Morrie was on a mission and we’d better keep up or ship out . . .”
Past Nis, our pace was forced to slow, as the E5 wound its way through the tunnels, valleys and hills of the Balkans, until eventually, at two in the morning, we arrived tired but elated at Dimitrovgrad, the Yugoslav–Bulgarian border, now a very long 1550 miles from home. We were the only vehicles there and 10 minutes saw us cleared out of Yugoslavia and moving our trucks the 50 yards or so onto Bulgarian territory. Processing the carnets didn’t take too long but acquiring Taffy’s transit visa – me and Morrie had already got ours – was a little more time-consuming, in fact one and a half hours more time-consuming! Finally, at three thirty in the morning, passport in hand and the compulsory diesel vouchers purchased, we were once more ready to roll. We were tired, but we were young and tired; a totally different exhaustion to fifty years down the road!
‘C’mon,’ said Morrie. ‘Let’s go, we’ve already wasted enough time here.’
And it was another 200 and odd mile crash, bang, wallop of a drive through dark unlit towns and villages, easing up only for the static police checkpoints that Morrie obviously knew existed. The black moonless night slowly gave way to at first a hint of grey early morning light that gradually changed through the spectrum to a yellow haze, growing in intensity until, BANG, there it was, the sun’s forehead attacking your senses as it breached the horizon, sending your hand scurrying around the dashboard in search your sunglasses, which were now with everything else in the passenger footwell! At 11 o’clock we arrived at Kapitan Andreevo and joined a small queue of trucks awaiting entry into Turkey . . . And there it was, 200 yards ahead, gateway to the mystical Orient. Entry into another ‘dimension’ and the old Ottoman Empire! For a truck driver, it’s a world as different as you could possibly imagine.
“We were all shattered, having knocked out over 600 miles on some of the worst roads I’d ever seen.”
We were all shattered, having knocked out over 600 miles on some of the worst roads I’d ever seen. After 28 hours and with only a couple of small interludes to break it up, I was now running on adrenaline. Twenty-five minutes on the Bulgarian side saw our documentation stamped and seals checked on. Then, according to Morrie we had a short wait while the sniffer dogs did their business around the trailer, including a compulsory pee up against the wheel. A quick check of the cab followed, luckily not with the dogs. I’d already heard stories that they sometimes put them in to sniff out ‘contraband’. Can’t say I’d fancy some mutt with muddy paws trampling over my bed. Another 10 minutes found us on the front row of the grid, so to speak, waiting to be called forward. Then we were there, driving through the ‘sheep dip’ into the chaos that is synonymous with Kapikule. Unbelievably, I think the Turkish authorities were concerned that we were going to transfer some contagious disease or other into their country! How incongruous is that thought? Turning left onto the dried mud track behind the shanty town of offices and chi (tea) stalls, we followed the queue of trucks wending its way onto a large open field and, parking as haphazardly as the rest, we locked our doors and went in search of our agents.
‘Bloody hell Morrie,’ exhorted Taff. ‘Wouldn’t wanna be coming on ’ere in the rainy season. Be a right mud bath I reckon.’
It transpired that all three of us were clearing with Young Turk, a very pleasant young man called Suleiman, who had the added benefit of having a father who was apparently chief of customs or similar! Something that’s not going to do your business development opportunities any harm, is it?
‘Listen,’ said Morrie earnestly, as we made our way to his office. ‘When you get your paperwork back, check it’s been stamped up correctly. Especially make sure that your passport has all the relevant details accurately entered in the ‘visa’. Any error here will only compound itself when you arrive at the exit border.’
‘What do you mean mate?’ I asked.
‘Put it this way,’ he said, in even more dramatic tones. ‘If the detail entered in your passport concerning carnet and numbers doesn’t match the actual carnets, you could well be making your way back here from Cizre, and it’s only a round trip of 1600 miles! It’s food for thought, eh?’
Sending one of his team of young assistants out to bring us chi (tea) – it’s a Turkish and generally speaking Arabic custom, chi first, business follows – Suleiman explained what paperwork he needed. Then, courteously asking us to remain with our vehicles, he made it clear that our documentation would be delivered back to us later in the day and the fee for this would be 250 Turkish Lire, around £8 each.
Time for sleep, pleeeease, it’s over 30 hours since I last clambered out of my sleeping bag. As we walked back to our trucks the sun was up and about and, even though early in the year, I know it’s going to give us grief. Of course, though overtired, sleep wasn’t going to come easily as I tossed and turned in the roasting heat.
Someone was thrashing my cab and, rolling over in a slightly dazed condition, I wound down the half-opened window.
‘OK, Mr Ivor, now you can go,’ said one of Young Turk’s lieutenants as he handed me back a pile of documents.
Remembering Morrie’s words of warning, I spent the next 10 minutes checking everything was as it should be.
‘Better get out of this bedlam and find somewhere to stop down the road,’ said Morrie. ‘It’s too easy to get blocked in, then you could be stuck here for hours.’
Somehow I managed to stay awake for the next 45 minutes or so as we navigated the narrow bridge at Edirne and bimbled our way through the town. I was so tired now that I even missed my first minaret. If they don’t pull over soon I’m gonna have to stop on my own, I thought. I’m becoming a danger to myself as my eyelids get heavier and heavier. Luckily that decision was taken out of my hands as Taffy’s indicator light winked on and, totally exhausted, having depleted our adrenaline reserve’, we pulled over onto a dirt patch and, without speaking a word to each other, pulled our curtains and fell sound asleep.
chapter nine
TURKEY, ANOTHER WORLD
Blimey, it’s 9am. How tired were we? Thirteen hours sleep, I’ve never had 13 hours sleep in my life before! There was no movement from the others, so it was kettle on for a teeth-cleaning brew. Taking one round to the lads, it was decided, well Morrie decided, to have a gentle run down to the Mocamp and spend the rest of the day relaxing round the pool. That was fine by me. A few hours to relax and gather my thoughts was an excellent idea, and by a pool!
It was a fine sunny spring morning as we pulled out onto the highway and headed expectantly for Istanbul. My first impression of this ancient, culturally rich country was distinctly disappointing. Poverty appeared to be the order of the day and it seemed as if we’d been transported back a few 100 years, to a time of fiefdom. Nothing