I headed North parallel to the Turkish border with Armenia. My goal was to reach the mountainous Black Forest region, with a stop at the Ani ruins on the way.

The day began well with a spectacular view of Mount Ararat as I headed out of Tatvan. The scenery was barren, rocky, and at times volcanic, with generally good empty roads. As ever, there were hilltop military positions and checkpoints in all the towns - one even had a soviet era BTR APC, which was the first I had seen.

The good start changed dramatically during a 30km shortcut along a road that was under construction. The surface was a mixture of dirt and gravel, but nothing too challenging.

I passed a construction truck in a cloud of blinding dust, probably at around 25kmph. The road had virtually no traffic and so, although I could not see through the dust cloud, the truck was going so slowly I thought the maneuver was going to be OK. Imagine my surprise when I cleared the dust cloud and discovered 6 goot pile of dirt in the middle of the road.

I had no time to react, and certainly not to brake. My life flashed in front of my eyes. This was going to be hurt…

Except it didn’t. The bike went down and so did I, both of us ploughing into the dirt… which turned out to be as soft as hitting a matress. Aside from being covered head to foot in grey dirt, I was unhurt. Even more importantly so was the bike, which was now grey, not red.

This led to an interesting challenge - how to pick it up? The right side of the bike was now embedded in soft dirt… I began by removing the left pannier and top box to shed some weight. Then, after positioning my butt on the seat, I was able to walk backwards and get the GS into an upright position. Just like in my training!

I definitely had a lucky break. If it had been a pile of rocks in the road and not dirt, I could have been seriously hurt. Lesson learned - don’t overtake unless you can see what’s around the vehicle!

The Heed crash bars did their job - they lost some surface finish, but had not moved or bent. The right side Cleawater light and its mounting bar had moved, but twisted back into position without damage (although the light protective cover was slightly scratched, and so this turned out to be a great purchase). The right indicator had popped out of its mount, but popped back in again.

I plucked up my courage and continued along the road to the 10th century ruined city of Ani, which turned out to be interesting and impressive. It was originally Armenian, and at one time one of the world’s largest cities. It is well worth a visit.

After Ani, I stopped at a gas station to use their air compressor to blow the bike clean of all the grey dust. And there was a LOT of it,

For the rest of the day I was rewarded with a great ride through winding mountain, forest and valley roads. Definitely some of the best scenery of the entire trip. The Black Forest gets a BIG thumbs up.

To nitpick, there was a lot of fresh tarmac and grit that sandblasted the bike. When I reached my overnight stop in the mountains, I actually washed it. I managed to get the rest of the dust off, but not the fresh layer of tar.

The stop in Velikoy was great. A cabin, kofte, (praise the lord) and (with Google translate) conversation with an Istanbul motorcycle cop who was on vacation. In particular we laughed over the thrashings of Fenerbahce and Besiktas by Manchester United and Liverpool.

In summary, an action packed day with a happy ending!!

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After my stay in the Black Forest, I headed northwest, down from the mountains to the Black Sea coast.

The coast road is boring and fast. A four lane, well surfaced highway, with the Sea on the right, and a succession of coastal towns on the left. My average speed approached 110kmph. I would recommend the road if you want a fast trip to the East or West through Turkey.

I stayed overnight in Trabzon, then cut slightly inland to Amasya. I stayed in small but pleasant “butik” hotels both nights, after averaging 6 hours riding a day.

I had a quick stroll around both towns, but my goal was to get north of Istanbul and within striking distance of the border with Bulgaria. Having picked up a slightly queasy stomach, I defaulted to potato chips and chocolate to keep me going .. hey, it works for me!

So it was that on my third day of riding, I negotiated the urban sprawl of the Turkish capital and reached Luleburgaz, about 90 minutes from the border. I had been concerned about the traffic I might encounter, but it was fine. So, if you are riding around Istanbul, Sunday is a good choice. If you are going north across the border, Monday works well.

The border crossing was interesting in that the customs officials examined my US bike title - the first time of the whole trip. On every other occasion the registration document had been sufficient. Ironically I had given them a high quality photocopy and had the original title safely stowed in my panniers. They even held it up to the light to look for a watermark! The “forgery” held up. I suspect that they really did not know what they were looking at.

Anyway, with a grateful sigh, I (re) entered Bulgaria.

And so it was that the California to Turkey trip came to an end .. 3 ½ months, 17 countries and 18,000 km.

I deposited the GS at Moto Camp Bulgaria, who are storing it for me until next April, when Part 2 of this story will begin: “California to the Stan and Beyond..”

48 hours later I flew out of Sofia to San Francisco via Milan. Middle seat, 12 hours, nice (avoid cheapoair.com).

I have learned a LOT on this trip, and I will finish by making a couple more posts on those learnings. Watch this space.

Great stuff! Thanks, I enjoyed following your trip every day!

It has been an interesting trip to follow. I hadn't twigged that you were going to be returning next year but it makes sense.

Thanks for the reports.

Hi Steve,


I enjoyed reading your travel story and I am looking forward to read about your next trip. Maybe with some more photo's ?

__________________
Jan Krijtenburg

My bikes are a Honda GoldWing GL1200 and a BMW R1200GS

My personal homepage with trip reports: https://www.krijtenburg.nl/
YouTube channel (that I do together with one of my sons): motormobilist.nl

This is the first of several posts on the journey I made from California to Turkey, that will help in the planning of my next trip. The GS is waiting for me in Bulgaria ..

I will start by considering what I will do differently. I had hours on the bike to think about this.

First, I will take camping gear. Yes it will help save money. Just as important, it will give greater flexibility in where I can stay. I will not be restricted to hotels and AirBnBs, and towns that have them. I also like the idea of eating out less as it became a little boring, and taking a camping stove will help with that.

Second, I will book fewer places in advance, and very few FAR in advance. Again, this helps keep the route flexible. If I like a place, I can stay longer. If not, time to move on.

Third, I will be “reconfiguring” the GS:

I will be switching to soft luggage. Although the Vario panniers worked well and are more theft proof, soft luggage will crash better and will less damaging to my legs in a fall. I like the look of the Mosko Moto Reckless 80. I will probably find a pannier rack from a GSA to help keep the bags away from the exhaust.

I will be removing the Givi top box, as the mounts did not last well, and will use a bag mounted on the passenger seat. Given that I will be taking a tent, sleeping bag, stove, and sleeping mat, I will gain back some space by dramatically reducing my camera gear to the Sony A6000 with just the 16-50 lens. There is a new 6500 replacement on the horizon, so I will definitely look at that as an upgrade, although it is not really necessary.

The reconfiguration also entails switching out some after market gear for factory. If it breaks, I can at least hope to get spares. So, the Givi screen will be removed. A factory GPS mount will be added.

Reconfiguration means switching to 50-50 tires. Probably Heidenau K60 Scout. This will improve my confidence in off road sections and give me the most flexibility in the routes I choose from day to day.

Fourth, and finally for this post, I will plan spares and maintenance better.

I was pretty happy with my tool selection for the Turkey trip, but having a dedicated tool container would be great. I am not sure where to fit one on the GS, especially after the move to soft luggage.

I will have a location for a tire change locked down. I will also carry a spare oil filter and 1l of oil to top up the bike.

OK, those are the big ticket changes. In the next post, I will look back at what went well in the trip, and what did not ….

This post will help me prepare for my next trip - to the “Stans” - by pointing out things to change and things NOT to change..

Let’s start with the positives:

First, my 2005 GS, which ran like a champ. No issues and it even survived a crash no worse for wear. It uses 1l of oil every 6,000 miles. It finished the 11,000 mile trip trip with a little more than 40,000 miles on the odometer.

Second, my mindset. I was positive, kept my sense of humour, and except for a few mild cases of boredom, held up well. I rode 3 months alone and two weeks with my wife, so it was a pretty good mental test. I think it would have been nice to have ridden with other bikes for some of the trip, but this has downsides - in particular having to ride at someone else’s pace.

Third, using phone-based GPS instead of the Garmin I started out with. True it meant buying multiple SIM cards. But they were cheap and easily found. With the phone, I had much more precise navigation - particularly when finding addresses in cities. I also had integration with route planning software such as Google Maps and maps.me.

Fourth, the Sony A6000 performed brilliantly. Excellent image quality in a very compact package. It represents great value compared to the 6400 and 6500. I edited on my 2016 iPad Pro with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, both of which are powerful and easy to use.

Finally, a combination of Travelocity, AirBnB, Booking.com made finding accommodation a painless task, even when booking with less than 24 hours till arrival.

And now, the negatives

I pre-booked too much of my accommodation and did not leave enough time for “exploring”. I could also have used 50-50 road/off road tires, which would have allowed me to be more adventurous in my route selection. Heidenau K60 Scouts will be used when my journey resumes.

I spent too much time in big cities. This is a double edged sword, as I got a lot of good street photography opportunities. But I could have been more balanced in searching out great scenery off the beaten track.

I could have sought out more local contact, by being more outgoing. Now, I met a lot of people and did make some good new friends, but I will only give myself a 6/10 here.

I did not exercise or read enough during the trip. Both had been my pre trip goals. I had enough time, but did too much web browsing instead. This is down to a lack of mental discipline. I lost 2lb in weight, probably down to eating nothing between meals, and (unfortunately) not drinking too much alcohol. I did manage to eat healthily, with lots of fruit and vegetables. I had a slight cold for two days, and a slightly queasy stomach for three - not bad!

That’s it for what went well and less well. I hope this was useful!