The Silk Road and Beyond. Ivor Whitall
diesel, which more than pleased the garage owner, who reciprocated with free chi all round.
As it was late, tonight’s speciality was going to be the ubiquitous ‘truckers stew’, the recipe of which varied from driver to driver and usually depended on what was available. Tonight’s effort consisted of beans, peas, luncheon meat, chicken curry, beef curry, Irish stew, carrots, and oxtail soup, all thickened up with a generous helping of instant mash powder and cooked in two saucepans. Eat your heart out Robert Carrier!
It must be me, I’m invariably the first to get up, I don’t know why. I always feel as if I’ve got to be doing something, and lying in isn’t doing anything. It was seven o’clock and the sun was already making inroads into the day, and I could tell it’s going to be a hot one.
Collecting four steaming cups of chi from the garage owner, I knocked the lads up, grumpy, ungrateful toe rags they were as well.
‘I know it’s you Ivor. Give us a break, for crying out loud,’ moaned Taff. ‘Bloody hell man, it’s only seven o’clock.’
Offering to pay for the tea, our new-found friend wouldn’t hear of it, but in Turkey, there’s always an alternative form of payment . . . Western cigarettes. Most Turks can’t afford them and usually smoke something called Bafra, and at 2p for ten you can imagine the quality. It’s almost like compacted straw, with a hint that that straw might have been involved in a rumination process first! A packet of Marlboro was always going to put you in a good light.
1975. Up in the Taurus mountains of southern Turkey heading for Adana on the way to Saudi Arabia. Once again, well over 6000-ft high and having yet another brew before the challenging 40-mile descent to the Mediterranean coast.
Diverted off-road at Nusaybin, Turkey, destination Baghdad.
1975. South of Aksaray, again aiming for Baghdad, with the Taurus mountains looming in the distance. Believe it or not, this was the main road to Saudi Arabia and most of the other Gulf countries!
By nine o’clock I’d managed to corral everyone and the five of us were on our way south to Adana, 300 miles distant. The road was not too bad, but with a well gritted and patchy tarmac surface, it was never going to be smooth. Going to have to wait till we’re in Saudi and the ‘Tapline’ for that luxury.
This is an arid dry landscape and generally speaking the vegetation, unless alongside a stream or river, looks sparse and threadbare. We were crossing the vast elevated plain of Central Anatolia now. It’s part of the huge mountain, valley and plateaux monolith that make up the majority of the land mass in this part of Turkey and Iran. This run down to Adana, though about 2000 ft above sea level, is pretty flat, the real mountains are off to the west, with Tarsus in the south yet to come. The sun was really pushing out the heat and most probably nudging 85°F as we passed the salt marshes at the top end of Lake Tuz. A salt lake, it’s vast, well over half the size of Lancashire, and is what’s known as hypersaline, making it a good source of income for the regions inhabitants. At no more than 5 ft deep, it’s one of the shallowest lakes on earth.
“The road was not too bad, but with a well gritted and patchy tarmac surface, it was never going to be smooth.”
Pulling onto a hard-packed dirt area, backed by a building with a large Restoran sign on the roof, Morrie decided that as his stomach was rumbling, we were all hungry. Among the numerous Tonkas parked up, Taff spotted two artics with English registration plates. Mick and Don, the two drivers, were sitting quietly on their own when our overenthusiastic waiter dragged an extra table and chairs across, so us Ingilis could sit together! After slightly embarrassed introductions, it turned out this was their first trip as well. While the rest got to know each other over chilled Coke, me and Mick, who seemed to hit it off straight away, wandered over to the counter to see what food was available.
‘Blimey,’ I said, ‘I think that’s the same sort of meat I had in the Mocamp. Tasty it was, too.’
Mick didn’t know what to order as everything was in Turkish.
‘Tell you what,’ I said bravely, ‘let’s order seven of these with rice. I reckon most of us will like it, not sure about Bert though.’
And so it worked out; everyone thought it was delicious, except for Bert.
‘I’m not eating that muck,’ he moaned.
‘It’s not muck, you heathen, it’s really nice,’ encouraged Don. ‘What else you gonna eat then, how’s your Turkish?’
‘Eeeurgh,’ Bert responded squeamishly. ‘How can you eat that stuff? It’s been lying about, most probably covered in fly spit and who knows what. You’ll all die of food poisoning!’
‘Stop moaning Bert,’ scowled Morrie. ‘Fish and chips ain’t a local speciality round here. Tell you what mate, you’re gonna end up a lot slimmer when you get home if all you’re gonna do is complain about the grub. It’s a long time before we’re back in England. Go on give it a bloody try.’ With that, Bert picked up a lump of meat and gingerly chewed a bit off the end. He must have liked it, as within minutes he’d scoffed the lot; rice, vegetables and all. It’s amazing what a few hunger pangs can do!
‘I suppose it wasn’t too bad,’ he admitted, as we all lobbed bits of rice at him.
We’d now got a convoy of seven, with Morrie as our lead driver. His plan was to stop overnight at a town called Ceyhan, 25 miles the other side of Adana, but first we’d got to cross the Taurus mountain range that separates Anatolia from the Mediterranean. With the pass at around 7000 ft, it was going to be another long slow climb and it wasn’t much more than an hour before we could see the hazy outline of the mountains rising almost vertically out of the plateau in the distance. The closer we got, the taller and more formidable they looked, and this was taking into account we were already a good 2500 ft above sea level! As we passed through the village of Ulukişla, the road suddenly sharpened up and we were dropping right down the gearbox into a steady climb. The plateau we’d only recently left behind was rapidly shrinking into the distance below, giving us a spectacular view across the arid plain. This wasn’t a climb like Bolu, where the road was nice and wide. Nor was it like anything I’d ever come across back home. This was a road with millennia of history, a road that Paul of Tarsus might have walked 2000 years ago. It seemed to cling to the mountainside and was almost too narrow in places for trucks to safely pass. Other than the occasional marker post and tree holding on for dear life at the edge of the precipice, there was zero protection. The slightest error could easily end in disaster, and it was a very, very long way down!
The climb seemed never-ending and must have taken the best part of an hour and a half. Eventually we started to level out and pass the odd inhabited shack before entering the village of Pozanti. This is a place I definitely wouldn’t want to live. I mean, the village butcher was an open roadside stall, with meat hanging out for the passing trade. Can you imagine what that would be like with your two veg? The flavouring coming from the constant flow of heavy vehicles exhausting their diesel and petrol fumes, combined with the incessant dust and added fly flavour; that’s going to have a very individual taste!
“The climb seemed never-ending and must have taken the best part of an hour and a half.”
The drop down the other side took even longer. It’s a 70 km continual descent and with a heavy load, and drum brakes, too much braking would see the shoes glazed in next to no time. I was learning a whole new driving strategy on how to negotiate real mountains. Not a trip up Shap, however difficult that might be. This driving was so different to anything I could relate to. Low gear, frequent use of the feeble exhaust brake plus judicious use of the foot brake finally