The border crossing didn’t start too well, with the Turkish police telling me women aren’t allowed to drive a motorcycle in Iran. This misunderstanding was resolved quickly but I still felt uncomfortable, stressing about my headscarf and feeling very exposed in a world of men. The women gave me a warm welcome though, they invited me to sit with them and one even hugged me out of sheer happiness that I was visiting her country.

Van, in Turkey’s far east, is the last major town before the Iranian border. We spend an extra day here to prepare ourselves, as we need to do some administration, have a helmet microphone soldered in the bazaar, update the website and so on. An also buys a headscarf to comply with Irans hajib or dresscode, and is taught how to put it on by two enthusiastic girls, who seem to find it very funny.

We’re staying two nights in a very nice cave room, hewn out of a mountain in Urgup, Capadoccia. In the nearby village of Mazi we meet Ihsan, wearing jeans and brown leather shoes, who turns out to be the local Indiana Jones. After some tea he guides us around a huge underground city, which is not your average tourist sight. Ihsan hands us both a LED-light and we climb up and down many floors through dusty old shafts, and only see the daylight again after an hour or so.

Turkey has, in my opinion, some of the best sweets in the world. My favourites are definitely the baklava, made of filo-dough, pistachio or walnut and soaked in honey. Anneke is starting to like these delicious little pastries too, as well as the long rolls in the top of the photo, made of grenade apple and pistachio and covered with coconut flakes.

My connection with Istanbul is a special one. Eight years ago it was the starting point of The Wander Year, my first long-term travels in Asia. I’ve been wandering a lot since then and even though this is my third visit to the city on the Bosphorus, I still enjoy it.

While in Istanbul, we’ve also applied for a visa to Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, it’s not the most helpful consulate here, nor the fastest. Processing time is one week. A bit long, so we’ve asked to forward our application to Tehran where we should be passing through in the next week or so.

Although we’d like to visit the Balkans some day, we’d decided to take a south bound ferry from Venice straight to Greece. It took twenty six hours to sail across the Adriatic Sea to the town of Igoumenitsa, which is actually quite nice to stay for a night. The seafront is lined with fancy restaurants and bars, there’s a long promenade and also a beach. And after sleeping in a chair between snoring truckers last night, a comfy bed was nice too!

Sun is shining, weather is nice, and Venice is not too crowded at this time of year. We spent two days in the floating city, splurging on tasty Italian food and wine in charming osterie. It was our first time in Venice, and we truly enjoyed it.

During the first few days, with so much on our minds, it was nice not having to think about the route much. Simply immer geradeaus on the German autobahn! But once in the Austrian Alps, we took the more scenic secondary roads to Italy.

Note that Anneke is still getting used to being squeezed between her luggage :)

Traveling to Kathmandu on a motorbike has been a long time dream of mine. Following the old hippy trail of the seventies, from Europe to Istanbul and on to Iran, Pakistan and India. Even Afghanistan was still on the map in those days, being a favourite traveller hangout thanks to its hospitable people and cheap supply of the worlds best hash. A true adventure, in times without internet or mobile phones.

Today, politics, terrorist activity and a lot of red tape make traveling through this volatile region difficult. In planning our route a lot of constraints had to be taken into account. Most importantly, we wanted to avoid the dangerous province of Balochistan in western Pakistan, where kidnappings and bomb attacks are daily reality. Secondly, rumour has it that due to the elections in June, the Iranian border might be closed to foreigners. So we wanted to be able to skip Iran if necessary. The resulting route will be longer, more costly and require even more red tape, but it’ll make for a very interesting detour via the silk roads of Central Asia and China, and over the Karakoram Highway into eastern Pakistan.

We plan to reach the Himalaya in June, just in time for the mountain passes to Ladakh to open. After India, we’ll continue to Nepal, where our journey will come to an end in the great city of Kathmandu.