Cheating isn't Easy

Flight from Ankara (Turkey) to Baku (Azerbaijan)
Bus from Baku to Saki
August 15th & 16th

I'll combine two days into this single blog entry since I didn't get to sleep in between. It was a long day.

Left the hotel in Ankara at 2:30pm for the airport. Turkish Airlines only charged us US$50 per bike and they didn't charge us for our other excess luggage. (Technically, they charged me but I refused to pay...on the basis that no one else had been charged.)

Flew to Baku via Istanbul, which was strange for me because I had flown into the same airport from Moscow 3 weeks ago. The trip changed a lot in those three weeks: daily distances were 100km and became 120km, daily climbing increased from 960m to 2135m, and we started riding for 5 day stretches instead of 3. Sickness took a lot out of me and we've started bush camping with no facilities. It really is a completely different trip.

After long waits in both Ankara and Istanbul, we finally arrived in Baku at 4am...6am local Baku time. After leaving the airport, Ben collected all the passports to send off for China Visa applications. Hopefully that works out for us.

Next, we hopped on a charter bus for an 8 hour bus ride to Saki. Saki is where we should have spent our first night in Azerbaijan, so we'll get to ride the entire way across the country, except for the 100km between the border and Saki. All told, we missed about 700km of cycling because of the Georgia detour...just less than 5% of the total trip distance.

Re-assembled my bike in Saki - not easy after an all-nighter! Quick dinner with little conversation before a night in a “home stay”. I got my own bed and little else mattered.

All told, we were awake for 36 hours straight...and “in transit” between hotels for 24 of those! Cycling the distance from Kars would definitely have been an easier option.