6.00 pm local time, enter Bulgaria.

Romania was dreadful, continuous tracks instead of roads. And in result of this - my average speed was 40mph. Blinking Awful! I’m still hoping to reach Turkey Today.

I then entered Bulgaria through a very impressive bridge across the river at around 1pm, following E85 apparently should take me to Turkey.

Entering Bulgaria

Again the roads in Bulgaria was not much different to Romanians, constant Track traffic slow speed, no progress. as my navigation system did not cover Bulgaria I had to make my own plans and try and find destination in these primitive roads with poor signage, the other problem was the road signs were all in Bulgarian alphabet until very near to borders where they become modern alphabet too.

After about 2 hours I had to stop to refuel, again I met some more Turkish truck drivers, had something to eat again I asked for the best route, it was suggested that I should follow the route svilengrad which should take me to Turkey, again the crossing was very slow and painful, I was not making any progress, it actually took me all day and night to get to Turkey.

It was a relief to see sign post showing Turkey

At one stage I took a signpost showing svilengrad, followed it for about 1 hour, it was taking me through woodland with no sign of life and total darkness, during this period I came across a barrier with 3 man popped out of their cabin, it actually reminded me of the Bosnian war times I spent in Sarajevo during early 90’s where people used to pop out of barriers to control, I was not sure what I was suppose to be doing, I told them I was heading for svilengrad, we could not communicate and they let me through, I went for a little bit more and the road surface became unsuitable for the bike, I could not go on further as I had no spare tyres or a repair kit, I took the decision to return back to main road and try my luck again, by now the time was getting on to 3am in the morning, tired and agitated, I just did not want to get lost, it later turned out that I was on the shortcut route which would have got me to svilengrad but road surface was not suitable,

After returning to a main road I suddenly noticed couple of Turkish Trucks, facing the direction they were I assumed they can only be heading for Turkey, I then started following them and thank god we arrived to Turkey at 6 am Thursday morning after non stop Continuous riding.

Looking at a mirror after arriving to Turkey was a little shock, I was totally black with sunburns, this must have only happened in Bulgaria where I had my head and face gear off, from here onwards I had no option but to cover my face and head totally as it was hurting from the burning.

After discovering my burnt face I had to hide from the sunshine plus the large insects kept going in to my mouth.

Here I had to have some rest but before I could, I had to go through the normal Turkish beaurocracy paperwork chase, in order to enter Turkey I had to show a log book for the bike, obtain compulsory Green card and the bike gets registered in your passport so that you make sure you take it back when you return, no other country asks any thing of this nature or even a question, I m not sure why a country like Turkey still applying 50 years old unnecessary regulations at a stage where they are trying to enter EEC.

After about an hour of queuing and providing paper work at 6 am in the morning, I managed to get away to a nice road side rest area where I thought a couple of hours of sleep before I get to do another 1000 km was well deserved.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 6:00 pm and is filed under The Journey There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.