6-12 March, Istanbul-Hatay-Istanbul, 2200 km (~1400 miles) round trip.
After the February 6 earthquake, I was fumbling to find something in the disaster zone to do and take some weight off the poor souls there. After about a month, a friend informed me that the field hospital Italians established was in need of interpreters (I speak Italian). Did a phone call with the lady dealing with interpreters in the hospital. Lady asks how I'll come to the hospital. When I mention I'll drive there, the lady says "Great, you'll sleep in the car then". I had contemplated sleeping in the car before, so I did a field test with the car in the front yard. I folded the rear seats and put an inflatable bed in the back of the car.
Not super comfortable, but surely doable for 5 nights.
Inside of the car will get cold (Hatay was approaching freezing point at night), I planned to point the car at the wind and idle the car as I slept. 0.5 l/h fuel burn at idle, 5 nights with 8 hours of sleep = 20 litres fuel burn just through the nights. Adana-Hatay-Adana would take 220 km and 14 l more fuel. If I were to do any significant driving in Hatay, or if the car were to burn more fuel at night than I anticipated, I could be in danger of being stranded with no fuel, or having to buy fuel (of questionable quality) there. So I bought a 20 L jerry can.
I stocked the underside of the boot full with food, water, soft drinks and plastic tableware as I expected to be fully self-sufficient for the 5 days I'd be there. Multiple portable chargers, a solar charger and a laptop with VCDS cable to check/reset faults in the field.
(Flour was obviously not for the trip)
Work didn't let me off Monday, I left after work on Monday night. During servicing the mechanic mentioned the coolant level being a little bit low, we added maybe half a liter of coolant and I thought no more of it. Some work calls, some chit-chat with my then-girlfriend and time flew until I arrived in Ankara. Due to work (and other stuff) I had done the 430 km Istanbul-Ankara trip many times, so I knew the road like the back of my hand.
Car beeped and did the flashing red light due to low coolant, when passing through the Ankara ring road. I drove for perhaps half an hour more, did the climate control diagnostic thing for the digital coolant temperature readout. Temperature never exceeded 85C, I pulled into a gas station, bought some pink antifreeze and filled the coolant back up. I drove for some more, but after realizing I had ample time to get to Adana and noticing my jerky steering inputs, I stopped at Nigde and slept for a bit. The cold woke me up, so I continued with the descent into Adana.
I'm originally from Adana, I've been there many times and I have some friends and family there. Adana was the final rest stop and restocking point. I filled the tank and jerry can there, and picked up 2 other interpreters from the airport to take them to the hospital. As a sidenote, Adana airport was overflowing with cargo planes carrying aid from around the world and was working at maybe 3x its normal capacity. Unloading 3 747's is no joke.
We took the highway that led from Adana to Hatay (and onwards to the Syrian border), however at about 50 km to go the highway was closed and everyone was being directed to an exit. As it turns out, parts of the elevated highway had collapsed, so we were forced to use the expressway through the city to reach the hospital just south of Hatay.
To this day I have no words to describe the destruction I've witnessed there.
(graffiti to the left of pic writes "We'll be back!")
Roads were damaged, traffic lights and infrastructure were damaged. Police from all around Turkey, unfamiliar with the area, tried directing traffic with hand signals, but together with the eerie sense of urgency every other driver had, the expressway was more like Nürburgring 24H than a 2+2 lane road.
We finally arrived in the hospital, the chief physician Nicola greeted us and showed us around. I told him I'd be OK with sleeping in the car, he said no way, and found me a place in one of the bivouacs they had erected next to the hospital.
I won't go into how things inside the hospital went, that's a topic for another forum or to discuss with a psychologist. I'll just say that the doctors and support staff took great care of me and thanks to them I could do 16-hour shifts.
Quiescent moment. Mobile café driver drove this old Mercedes van all the way from Istanbul, toured the whole disaster zone, emptied all his stock of coffee, milk and paper cups and returned to Istanbul to refill his stocks. Champ did this multiple times.
The environment in the hospital was overwhelming. When things were quieter, I went back to the car, put on some music and tried to relax. We've owned the car since I was a kid, it brought a sense of familiarity in that alien, perhaps hostile environment. I ate a can of food, disinfected my hands and went back in. Tailgating every now and then really helped me unwind. After knowing I wouldn't sleep in the car, I had no need for the jerrycan or the fuel in it. The dentists' guild were erecting a dental clinic next to the hospital and had a generator without fuel, so I gave the jerrycan to them.
Only pic of the car I could find through the whole thing. Far left is the ambulance from a city 600 km away, sent to the zone for help. Far right is one of the containers that housed the dental clinic. Opposite the cars (outside of pic, to the right) is a bunch of containers that housed the clinic and sleeping quarters for the clinic personnel.
The weather was all over the place, perhaps due to that I picked up a bit of a cold and wasn't feeling particularly great on the day we left. I took 2 people back to Adana.
A relative of mine lives to the north of Hatay, in a part that was -relatively- untouched by the disaster. We stopped there for a bit, I gave them phone chargers, they gave me moonshine. Would be uncool to go for a visit and not bring anything, so I offered the can of pineapples I carried with me as dessert. The metal mug was given to me at the hospital, has pineapple juice in it. After this short stop, I took the two passengers to Adana, dropped them off at the airport and pressed on.
LED's are a boon to night driving, but throw a bulb fault.
After climbing from sea level to 1200m altitude. There was no way the tank was still close to full, fuel gauge was inaccurate. In-tank fuel pump which contains the fuel level sensor died a couple months later.
Again, jerky steering inputs, I realize I need to get some sleep, so I stop at a gas station and get some shut-eye. Then, someone parked their car next to mine in an empty parking lot and slammed the door open on my car and I woke up. After the fit of rage I couldn't go back to sleep so I pressed on.
Trailer that carried aid all the way from Uzbekistan. He's headed towards Istanbul / Europe though, not either back to Uzbekistan or to the disaster zone.
Shortly after I left, there was heavy rain for a few hours, from Aksaray all the way to Ankara then on again-off again until the Bolu tunnel. The two ends of the tunnel always have different weather, so unsurprisingly the descent from Bolu into the Sakarya plain was dry and uneventful. I encountered some lunch rush-hour traffic on the way in from Istanbul city limits all the way home, but it was almost welcome after all the highway driving.
Filled the tank just before arriving home. 1015 km from pineapple stop to Istanbul home.
This has been the longest (and likely the most important) road trip I've ever done. I'm forever grateful to the brave doctors, midwives, nurses, technicians, chefs and pharmacists that came all the way from Italy and put in monster shifts in those conditions. I'll be drenching them in wine and food as soon as I find the chance to go to Turin.
edit: spelling
In memory of the victims of the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria.
