So Long, Asia

Yeah, it's really so, so long.

March 2025

My journey this blog...

Biga

I was tired. It was a supa biga day riding against the wind yesterday, and a lot of the time the wind was really strong. So strong in fact that it threw me and my bike right off the road and down a hill. It wasn't pretty.

When I say I was riding against the wind, I don't mean that I'm in a competition with nature, of course, or that I'm battling against the elements or anything. I try to see it as actually the opposite of that, as me just going with the flow. Which may sound strange when I'm riding against a strong and gusty wind.

But it's an energetic thing.

When you feel like you're fighting against something, it makes the whole process tougher. But when you approach it as if you're just finding the gaps, and slowly working your way forwards, it's so much much easier.

You feel like you're working with nature, not against it.

It's sort of symbolic of life really. Sometimes you have no choice but to deal with uncomfortable or difficult situations that seem to be constant, and seem to have no end. But if you can somehow surrender, a softer, lighter way always seems to appear, that enables you to get to wherever you need to get to, even if you hadn't necessarily intended to go along that particular route.

I would've stayed in Biga for another day, but I wasn't super thrilled with my digs, and decided to ride for another day, aiming to maybe get to the town of Lapseki, right across the strait from the Gelibolu Peninsula, which you probably know by its former widely used Greek name of Galipoli.

So I was already a little tired as I headed off, after seven straight days on the bike.

Above Left: The black bullet, sans moi. Aka the leg pulveriser.

Above, Centre: Another ripper intercontinental ballistic missile silo, I mean, mosque.

Above Right: Beautiful pine forest as I climbed. The whole morning was climb-ey, and the wind wasn't too bad. As usual the strong headwind really sprung into action about lunchtime.

Below Left: After awhile I stopped to eat, and to contemplate my life as a speck of cosmic dust. Olala, it's not a bad life as one of those.

By the way, the yoghurt here is divine. Same as the Greek stuff.

Below Centre: Marmarine seaside patches

Below Right: My first glimpse of the Gelibolu Peninsula. The waters between here and there are called the Dardanelles Strait, and they separate the Sea of Marmara from the Mediterranean Sea.

Above Left: Çay and juice stop.

Above Centre: Don't smoke. You'll probably get kronik bronşıt. Note, the Turkish ş is pronounced like a sh. You get the message, it's not pretty. Notice all the flavours handwritten on the packs.

Above Right: Beautiful rickety old village, and its stunning minaret.

Above Left: It was a long road. But beautiful. And, of course, bloody windy. This was the last main hill of the day, but there was still a long stretch before I reached the cute town of Lapseki.

Above Centre: See, it was windy.

Above Right: The gorgeous blossoms are out

Top Left: Rolling in to Lapseki

Too Centre: Ferries ply the strait over to the small-ish town of Gelibolu, on the peninsula.

Top Right: I assume this is the man of (all) the moments, Kemal Atatürk, but I'm not sure exactly who he's with.

Above Left: Appealing for Ramadan donations for leukaemia kids.

I was toast, but I still somehow found a tiny amount of leg power to allow me to check out the sunset behind an amazing new bridge across the strait.

The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge has the world's longest central span of a suspension bridge, with a main span of over 2km, and a total length of 4.6km. It's an incredible sight to see, even if it doesn't look so special in this pic.

It was opened two years ago, and named after the 1915 Ottoman victory over Allied forces on the Peninsula.

Just for comparison purposes, the main span of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is 1.27km, and it has a total length of 2.74km.

So this one is close to twice as big. That's really big. 4km is a bloody long bridge. From Mullum Post Office it's all the way to Uncle Tom's, for you Mullumbimbinos.

Ranzacked

If you're Australian or a Kiwi, or even if you're French or British, you probably know about the wanton waste of human lives that occurred on the Gelibolu Penisula during World War I. Allied forces landed there on April 25th, 1915, and were basically turned into machine gun fodder, and forced to retreat fully by December of that year.

The Entente powers, namely Britain, France and the Russian Empire, using their own and other colonial forces, invaded the peninsula to take control of the Dardanelles Strait from the Ottoman Empire, in order to bombard the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (Istanbul) until it fell, and allow them to ferry military supplies right through to the Black Sea.

The Entente forces included troops from the UK, Ireland, India, New Caledonia, France, Egypt, Malta, Australia and NZ, while the Ottomans were supported by soldiers from both the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empires. The Russian navy supported Entente forces.

A total of over 110,000 soldiers were killed during the campaign, spread roughly half-half between the combatants. So senseless.

In Turkey the campaign is considered a great national victory, and became the basis for the Turkish War of Independence against the Allied forces in the late 1910s and early 20s, which the newly formed Turkish Nationalist forces also won. The Allies had tried to carve up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves, but Kemal Atatürk and his forces had other ideas.

His military victories are celebrated everywhere in Turkey, seemingly all the time.

Above: My delicious dinner

Çanakkale

I decided to take a rest day. I liked my cheap hotel, and I'd been riding solid for eight days.

My version of chilling for the day was to take a local bus to Çanakkale, a larger town about 50 clicks from here, that I'd heard was good to visit.

Above Left: The mini bus was mini, and pretty empty (but not on the way back).

Above Centre: The countryside's looking very beautiful here, with green crops and blossoming pruned fruit trees. This area is definitely a food basket. I've been riding through fertile farmland for over a week now.

Above Right: Why put the dome on top of the mosque when you can lay it right on the ground?

We drove past that amazing bridge.

I went to the local bus station in Çanakkale, took another local bus, and got out in the burbs, when it looked interesting.

Above Left: Local market

Above Centre: Spinach borek and çay. Yum.

Above Right: And coffee of course.

Retail snaps

Below Left: Looks like a World War I cannon, probably used to blow Anzacs to Allah's divine home.

Below Right: I finally made my way to the seafront. Just across the waters is the Gelibolu Peninsula. The unsuspecting Anzacs landed on the other side of it, poor buggers. Poor Turks as well, who were ordered to hold out against the onslaught.

Above Left: A submarine just happened to be floating alongside the cafés and the day trippers.

I followed the crowds, finally realising that actually it was Saturday, so that's why I thought it was busy.

This isn't rural Turkey anymore. It has a much more sophisticated vibe about it. There's loads more variation in what people are wearing, many women aren't covered up from head to toe here, you can even see belly and shoulders, Allah forbid, of both men and women, and there's considerably less veiling going on.

Above Right: Lots of delicious things in here, including cold pressed olive oil, and squeezed black sesame seed oil. Now that would be a job. There were loads of dried veggies hanging around too.

Troy

One of the more interesting things about Çanakkale is the fact that it's very near the ancient city of Troy, that legendary city of Greek mythology known for the very clever way it was invaded. The legend of Troy was made famous by Homer's book, The Iliad, as well as The Odyssey, which describes the journey home of one of the heroes of the battle.

Unfortunately I was never a student of ancient history, so I missed such classics, but everyone's heard the basic story I guess.

According to the myth, the Trojan War took place around the 12th or 13th Century BC, between the Achaeans and the Spartans (now southwest Greece). Apparently the Goddess of love (and other bruises), Aphrodite, used her magic to make the Spartan Queen Helen, objectively known as the most beautiful woman in the world, fall in love with a Trojan prince called Paris. She subsequently left Sparta and her husband to hang out with him.

You can bet that went down like a lead shield with the King.

So the Spartans came to get her didn't they (and, coincidentally, to get their hands on the huge wealth of the city). They laid siege to Troy for ten years, with no success, and so, at the very clever behest of Odysseus, they constructed a huge wooden horse, secretly put a few soldiers inside, and then pretended to retreat from battle, sailed their ships away, and left the wooden horse standing there, at the city gates.

Once they were gone, the unsuspecting Trojans pulled the horse into their city, proclaiming it as a victory trophy. Then they had a massive party to celebrate, and probably drank a little too much cabernet while they were at it.

Later that night, the soldiers inside the horse, who were too Spartan to have had any drinks at all, snuck out of the horse and opened the city gates, allowing the rest of their army in, who'd secretly sailed back to the shore under cover of darkness and their foes' loud drunken partying.

The Spartans quickly overwhelmed the Trojans and took the city.

And then they completely destroyed it.

I never quite understood that last bit, but they did that sort of thing a lot in those days.

Keen archaeologists have now found the remains of the actual city of Troy, but the exact story of the horse itself is probably just a good yarn.

Below Left, Centre: So this isn't the real Trojan horse, but actually it's the real Trojan horse that was used in the 2004 movie, "Troy," starring Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and Diane Kruger, who played Helen.

Brad Pitt played Achilles, the most famous of all Greek warriors, who slayed the Trojan prince outside the city walls. I tried to find some evidence of Brad around the sculpture, something for me to take home like maybe one of his old hairs or a tiny scrape of fingernail, or even a little scab from a cut, but I couldn't find anything. It'd probably all been snatched up by fans years ago and auctioned off for ridiculous money.

Anyway the horse is impressive, quite a striking work of art, and definitely big enough for a few Hollywood superstars to hide in.

Top Right: I noticed people buying red and white plastic model jets at caravans that had been set up around the place, and wondered what it was all about. I found out soon enough.

Bottom Centre, Right: I was sitting here drinking another little coffee (as usual), and then suddenly five bright red airforce jets zoomed past at a huge speed, leaving thick red and white vapour trails as they passed. They looked just like the models on sale at the caravans.

Everyone ran outside to watch.

I didn't.

I could see the jets pass overhead every now and then, as the roof was open, doing their posey stunts, demonstrating all their power and technology to the oooohs and aaaaahs of the masses out on the streets and along the seafront.

Their final aeriel stunt was to make a huge loveheart out of their vapor trails, which, if you ask me, is the ultimate bad taste, given that these machines are designed to hate, not to love, and to blast the shit out of other humans or their houses or infrastructure.

Whether it's for revenge or not is completely irrelevant to me.

But at least I made a statement by being disinterested in the whole hoohaa. People definitely noticed me, a foreign anti-nationalist heathen. Well I hope they did anyway, because while it's good to be proud of your country, rampant nationalism causes wars, in my opinion.

Above Left: The coffee was so good, as usual

Above Centre: This was a really delicious veggie krep.

Above Right: Poster for a 1971 Turkish superhero movie

Above: I was just minding my own business and then suddenly all these extra people appeared. I think they'd all been hiding in the horse.

Above Centre: There's loads of billboards and other ads for this type of stuff here at the moment, as March 18th is an important day, being the anniversary of the Ottoman naval victory against the Allied fleets in the Dardanelles. This year is the 110th anniversary, and the President will be marking the occasion with speeches and, no doubt, with endless hoohah.

Above: And by the way, it was 26 degrees today! How nice! Sorry to tell you that if you're currently still wintering somewhere really cold.

But freezing weather's coming here as well, apparently.

Late night snack attacks

Dardanelling

The next morn Black Bewdy, my trusty bike, and I took the ferry over to Gelibolu.

On the boat I was lucky enough to meet Suleiman, a super nice ship engineer who could speak good English, and who used to work on massive ships as a young man, travelling to many countries in the world. Well, at least to many port cities in the world.

Now he works for the regional ferry company, which he's happy about, as he doesn't need to be away from home so much.

When he was in his early 20s Suleiman spontaneously decided to jumped ship while docked in the US, and then stayed there, working as an undocumented migrant for five years. He worked hard, and was earning pretty good money.

He had a girlfriend, an Italian woman who was also an American citizen, and was settled, but his parents rang him in America once a week for the whole five years, trying to convince him to come back to his family in Turkey, where they said he belonged.

He held out for a long time, until they finally enticed him with the ultimate fat carrot - they announced to him that they'd found a nice Turkish girl, and she was beautiful, and was all ready and waiting for him to come home and marry her and live happily ever after.

Yeah it's true.

So he went back, and actually says he's been happily married ever since. He, like many Turks I've spoken with, can't really comprehend why someone like me is travelling alone around the world, actually by choice, when really I should be at home with my family, just like everyone else.

And I must say that that sentiment isn't at all restricted to Turks, but to Asians generally, where families always stick together, physically and emotionally.

Well yeah I get that.

I explained to him that for me of course it's also important to keep that emotional family connection happening, I guess that's obvious, but now is a good time for me to be travelling, while my kids don't really need me around in the same way so much.

Maybe they will if they themselves have kids one day, who knows. But now is a good window for me, personally. I do seriously miss my daughters though, and would love to be there for them all the time, so sometimes feel a little torn by that.

Anyway, so once I crossed the Strait I rode up the Gelibolu peninsula. It was a pretty uneventful day in a way, just consisting of me pedalling against a strong wind pretty much all day, but not as strong as it's been on other days lately.

Above Right: Bunker, and not for golfing unfortunately.

Above Left: Finally a sign to my destination. I'm heading to Yunanistan, which is the Turkish word for Greece. Probably evolved from the word Ionian, I guess.

Above Right: The Golden Arches

Above Centre: Derelict fuel station

Above Right: I don't know what this march was about, unfortunately, but all the cars that passed beeped their horns and offered support for the marchers.

Below: I stopped for the night in a town called Keşan, and had this incredible feast, which is absolutely the best thing for me to eat after a long day's cycling.

The next morning I headed to the Turkish-Greek border.

I started out on some rural back roads, because I really wanted to give the ravenous gangs of Turkish dogs another chance to kill me. And they tried, of course.

But here I still am.

I guess they'll have to pass the drooling smelly baton on to their Balkan cousins.

Below Right: The Turkish frontier, aka, the end of Asia.

And then I was across. It took me a whole 10 easy minutes, and I was suddenly in the Republic of Greece, back in Europe, but with my bike this time.

So Long, Asia

So I guess that's that then.

I've actually ridden my little bicycle the whole way across Asia, all the way from Bali in Indonesia, to the far west of Turkey, and now into Europe.

Well, besides a couple of necessary train/bus trips in Asia and two short flights for visa reasons that is. And a road trip in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But I've cycled the whole of the rest of the way across.

This is an extremely rough and dodgy sketch of the way I came:

It's sorta cool really. When I first left Oz in Dec 2022 I wanted to ride towards Europe, and see how it felt, and if I liked it. I didn't really have a fixed plan, and definitely wanted to remain open to whatever came up.

Like friends or family coming to visit me, or me visiting them, for example.

And now I'm still on my bike.

I've ridden through nearly every country in Southeast Asia, through the tropics, along the beaches, through plains, farmland, fruit orchards, palm oil plantations, tiny villages, large towns, huge international cities, over massively steep and high mountain ranges, along lakes and huge rivers like the Mekong, through deltas, wastelands, industrial zones, and have ridden on the crappiest (and the best) roads known to bicycle wheels.

I've ridden right through southwestern and northwestern China, crossed mountains and long gruelling windy deserts there, visited some of the most incredible Buddhist art sites on the planet, and then ridden through the steppe and mountains of Central Asia and then the Caucasus, and through a third of the large country of Turkey.

And now here I am suddenly. Riding in Europe.

Ha! It's so funny!

I've spent a good bit of time off the bike too, and during that time travelled as well, through a large part of India and Nepal, and through a chunk of Europe and the UK and even a bit of northern Africa.

So I can't say that I'm particularly proud of myself for making it across Asia with my bike, because there's nothing really to be proud of. I've only done it because it's been such an incredible and inspiring journey, and as a result have been really motivated to keep going.

If I didn't like it I'd just stop and do something else.

But having said that, it hasn't always been easy.

There's definitely been times when I've needed to push through fear, or huge physical struggles, and I learnt somewhere along the way that breaking that fear or difficulty down into little steps, and just working through those steps one at a time, was the way to work my way through the whole mental barrier that fear or pain is.

And I've learnt that fear is normally a completely irrational mental barrier, at least for me.

We're Good Here

The most incredible and inspiring insight I've had on this whole journey is undoubtably that all of us, as humans, all over the world, are the most beautiful, deep, loving, warm and generous beings. All we need to do is trust each other, to connect, to listen, (properly listen), to speak, and to be open with each other, and then automatically we can give and receive the most incredible gift - that feeling that we really are together on this planet, no matter where we live, or what culture we're living in.

We're all the same, really.

We're all brothers and sisters, and just feeling that connection with each other even just once makes our world a massively better place. Not just for us, but for everyone we connect with afterwards.

It's hard for me to describe in words how powerful that feeling is.

Or how good it feels.

And for me, when you're moving around like I'm doing, and meeting so many people from so many different places, all the time, that feeling of togetherness is there so often. It just gets reinforced over and over and over, until now I've realised that, actually, this is really the way the world is.

It's not, as you may be inclined to suspect, just my optimism about the world, or a bunch of lucky experiences and nice people I've met.

No.

It's happened too often. It can't be a coincidence.

This is really what the world is, actually.

And by the way I'm not talking about every single person on the planet.

For example, I'm not talking about many global political and business leaders, many people who have huge amounts of power and influence. Unfortunately a disproportionate number of those people appear to be megalomaniacs, psychopaths, misogynists, are insatiably greedy, and have countless other psychological problems.

Their purpose in life appears to be nothing more than to amass ridiculous amounts of wealth for themselves, their families and their supporters, and to become more and more powerful, in order to serve their own personal interests.

And I would say that many of them do this because they feel so totally inadequate personally, and are unable to connect with people in a normal, loving way. Many of these people have had traumatic childhoods.

But not all.

Unfortunately, because of the actions of this incredibly small group of people, many people on the planet believe that all humans are intrinsically evil, and it's impossible that the world will ever live in peace and harmony.

Well that's really a crock of shit, according to my ongoing and extensive study.

In my opinion, after such long research, which has so far taken me over two years, and into the lives of thousands of human subjects, I think I've now proven my theory about the intrinsic goodness of humanity.

It's actually true.

When you open up to people, they'll open up to you. They'll treat you incredibly well. Offer you real and practical help. Material things. And endless good wishes.

It's not that I could ever really prove my theory to be actually true, travelling around like this.

And it's not that my research has ended either.

No way.

For my long human study is now simply moving into its next long phase.

Europe beckons again.❤️

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