To the Bosporus & Beyond

The rules to this particular rally race are as bizarre as the route’s landscape belonging to camels and cobras. Each team must kick off with six members with two to a car at the starting line. To finish competitively, each team must arrive with at least one vehicle and all team members intact. However, the vehicles must be at least 20 years old. Or not allowed to exceed € 1,111.11 in value. Accommodation costs are limited to € 11.11 per person per night on average. And lest we forget, no navigation or GPS devices are to be used; encouraging the good ol’ way of travelling - paper maps and asking for directions!

8000k EAST

The competing 111 teams with 3 cars per team left Oberstaufen, Germany on the 27th of April; each travelling varying routes to conjoin here in Istanbul, the mid-way point where East embraces West across the glittering Bosporus Strait. While the scenery is certainly romantic, this journey isn't for those desiring luxury, plush bedding and room service. At the preceding evening of Turkish BBQ and storytelling under the shadow of the golden Sultanahmet minarets piercing up into blushing pink sunset, 27-year-old Max Holodynski recalls “At first we thought it’d be nice to be in Mallorca. But then, we decided that’s boring!” His fellow teammate Lotte Jens drapes his wiry frame across a lawn chair in obvious pleasure and needed relaxation. He chimes in with a wide grin: “Aaaaah yeah, but now THIS is one hundred percent adventure!”

For Öcher-Safari, their route so far through Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria has seen a barrage of obstacles - roadblocks, double backs, a near plunge into a river, and highway robbery from “helpful locals.” The team also explains that all competitors have specific cultural tasks to accomplish along their journey - including the transport of a small tree gifted from their homeland to be planted on Anatolian soil. We set off to accomplish this symbolic adventure to the blare of horns, a strange compilation of Turkish and Bavarian music, and cheering crowds. Driver Jenny Mehring slams down on the clutch and jerks the wheel around, rocketing us down the hill from the Sultanahmet plaza into the heart of Istanbul with navigator Max doing his best with a tourist map. Trussed up between rumpled covers, pillows, bags, and travel gear, I lay prone in their sleeping quarters with my camera poised at the windshield to grab as much of the action as possible. 

WE MADE IT TO ASIA!

It takes a ferry ride across the Bosporus, a million detours and a friendly police guide, but the planting site destination finally comes into view through the mud and bug stained window shield. Öcher-Safari’s lorbeer (laurel tree) is at long last at its journey’s end, to be planted here in its new home overlooking Istanbul. The Bavarian green leaves, hold a deeper and darker lustre from the sun kissed olive colours of the hillside above the dense city; a physical symbolism of East befriending West. I part ways here with the lorbeer and the team, wishing them well through the rest of Turkey, Israel, and into Jordan. No one has any inkling of what awaits; the journey turning increasingly exotic.

How could they know that they would enjoy snowball fights high up in the mountains, go night swimming in the Black Sea, pick wild oranges along the route, and spend a night at a Turkish castle? Or that they would go on to become famous on Turkish television, drink tea in a secret canyon, and see a camel race? But that’d be far too easy of a story. Accomplished traveler Hemingway notedly believed that “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” So it is that not all would be pleasant for Öcher-Safari. The countryside outside of Kars will see the spinning crash of their Orient car. And Rallye will silently rest in peace in Erzurum, unable to continue from the extraneous journey. Yet, this team will push on through passport problems, drenching rain, military escorts, and sand dunes.

SAND AND STONE

Several days later, we meet up with Öcher-Safari again to greet them at the finish line. The rally ends at Jabal Rum, a Bedouin camp in the Jordanian desert where surreal stone formations rise up to the sky from an endless sea of sand. The rumour is that the winnings – a camel, yes, a live one! - will be prized in Amman. However, since the camel is ironically forbidden to leave Jordanian borders (export regulations), the Allgäu-Orient is ultimately not about the stakes. Rather, it represents the glory of the journey where risks and uncertainties are weighed and dared against the possibilities.

Do remember, these teams are not elite Formula One drivers nor Louis-Vuitton carrying globetrotters. “We’re just engineers and business majors from Aachen,” Max begs-off sheepishly. But I’d pause to wonder if they are not the real journeymen, bound across international borders with a taste for the unknown? Albeit roughed up from three weeks of sleeping in cars, dining on limited resources, and encountering bandits. And true to Hemingway, Öcher-Safari survived with emboldened spirits, claiming: we miss the stones and sand between all the stones and the sand. Though cryptic at first, the words perfectly capture the art of travelling. To tell the glory tales of chance encounters and endless horizons, one needs to savour the details of the journey - right down to the stones and the sand - and not the finish line.

Because as these Allgäu-Orient racers well know, the space between a journeyman and the horizon is filled with possibilities.