Getting into Adventure Green

BENEATH THE SURFACE
TRAVELLING BY BIKE CAN SOMETIMES BE DANGEROUS AND CONFRONTING.
THAT’S THE REALITY OF IT. WE HEAR FROM RICHARD FIELD ABOUT HIS TIME
IN TURKEY DURING THE RECENT UPRISING OF ISIS
I’d taken a dozen or so short
rides on the continent over
the years and, after my wife
died, two longer group-rides in
India. In early 2015, at the age of
63, I set off on my first Big Trip
and my first solo journey outside
Europe. In many ways it was a
new experience. It took me further
outside my comfort zone than I’d
ever ventured before, and it gave
me a much deeper insight into the
world around me.
There was no question about how
I would travel. I had long ago
discovered that how you arrive
at a place and how you journey
through it has a profound effect on
what you experience. Travelling
by motorcycle gives you a unique
viewpoint. It also allows you an
exceptional ease of movement.
Without Felix, my Suzuki DR650, I
would never have had the freedom
to explore Turkey’s Iraqi/Syrian
borderlands.
It was along this border, in the
town of Şirnak that I sat one
surreal evening drinking tea with
some new friends on the porch
of my hotel. We sat in a haze of
silvery light from the headlamps
of the huge Tomor water-cannon
parked at the head of the street.
We were nine: Cȋhan, Seurat and
Baran, five more Kurdish men, and
me, a lone Englishman, 3,000 miles
from home. Felix had recently
been lifted onto the porch with us
for safety.
“I HADN’T
PLANNED TO GET
STUCK IN THE
MIDDLE OF A
CIVIL WAR”
Ten minutes earlier, a homemade
bomb had bounced off
an armoured car and exploded
in the road nearby. A unit of
armed police appeared and began
combing the adjacent streets. The
Tomor manoeuvred to bring us
more directly into the beam of its
headlight. In the narrow, winding
streets of the upper town, bombs
detonated every few minutes,
answered by the telltale rattle of
Kalashnikov fire. I relaxed and
drank my tea with the others,
cocooned in a magic circle of
Kurdish defiance.
I hadn’t planned to get stuck in the
middle of a civil war. But, as I look
back, I realise I hadn’t planned not
to either. My initial aim had been
to ride through the Balkans, Turkey
and the Caucasus, then as far east
as I could get before winter came.
The Turks I met, though, fired
my curiosity, and I’d spent weeks
listening to their stories and their
concerns. I was mindful, too, of one
of the world’s forgotten tragedies,
the persecution of the Kurds in the
south-east of the country.
It seemed inevitable that I would
eventually be drawn to the
Kurdish homelands, hoping to
find someone there, too, who
could tell their story. The Kurds,
it turned out, had many stories to
tell. For nearly a month I stayed
and listened, travelling from one
impoverished Kurdish town to
another. But it was by sheer chance
that I arrived at the exact moment
the conflict kicked off.
“Have you heard about Kobani?”
Francesco, an aspiring Italian
photojournalist, yelled to me
across the courtyard of a hostel in
the Arab quarter of Urfa. It was
my first morning in the Turkish/
Syrian borderlands, and I was
emerging from my dormitory still
half asleep. “ISIS have blown up
Kobani,” he shouted. “I’m going
down to see. Are you coming?” I
shook my head, unsure what to say
or even to feel. Kobani lay just over
the Syrian border in Kurdish-held
Rojava. I had planned to stay there
the previous night. On a whim, I’d
diverted to Urfa instead.
Despite all the chaos and
conflict of that time, I rarely felt
unsafe. Even in war violence
is localised, and Kurds have a
profound tradition of hospitality
to travellers. Everywhere I went,
6 Find out more at www.gettingintoadventure.com