Bear Attack (day 79-80)
Day 79 - 80 (30th - 31st Oct)
7,220 miles
Nemrut Crater - Ahlat
I woke at 01:13 to something big and moving outside, I fumbled around for my torch and could see something leaning against the side of the tent. I shouted 'Away!' a few times hoping the sudden noise and light would scatter whatever had made the noise, but the side of the tent was still being pressed. After a moment the noise continued. I unzipped the vent of the sleeping compartment and shone my torch out to see what was happening hopeful that full beam in the face might work - the bear stopped what it was doing and just stared at me. Fuck.
I zipped up the vent and looked at the time, it was just after 01:15 and sunrise was at 06:30. My mind went blank, I wasn't in any way covered for this. I'd already annoyed it once, but I thought I'm in this situation anyway so I unzipped the vent again, briefly took a photo and zipped up. It wasn't in focus but I wasn't doing it again.
My first thought was food, was there anything in the tent at all. I generally don't keep food in the tent, ironically for this reason although more of a distant idea of good practice rather than actually relying on it to survive. I had toothpaste in the sleeping compartment and I had two cereal bars in my riding bag but they were in a roll-top dry bag and sealed, so I had some bits it might care about but they're fairly bland compared to the feast it was trying to get to outside. I lay there listening to it crunching and growling and the sound of things being pushed around and stood on. Ali and Lizzie have lived in bear-land for a while and through conversations about bears with them mostly in passing, I remember the need to 'play dead' if it goes for me, not antagonising it. They can run faster than a human, have powerful jaws and claws, can climb trees, swim faster, basically unless I can stay out of its way I don't have much chance. At the point it was interested in the jigsaw puzzle of strong scents in the topbox outside, it shouldn't care about me but once its finished with that it might change its focus. My phone had no signal, I knew that from last night but I still checked. I didn't know whether to just quietly ride this out or raise the alarm, at the point I need help it would be far too late and I have no way to defend myself.
I messaged Ali, Pa and Jax through the inReach messenger, which I had conveniently checked did work about 4 hours earlier - 'Pa there is a bear attacking my bike for food. Send police here, I dont know if it'll turn on me.. I'm in the tent. Help!!'. The messages sat pending, they wouldn't send. I lay there for half an hour watching the screen spin pending the messages, before I tried anything else I needed to know someone was aware and starting to head toward me. I hesitated again, but realised this probably did count as an 'SOS' scenario and triggered the Garmin alarm, which sat pending too. I clipped the satellite messenger to the inside roof of the tent, and the messages sent - almost an hour after I first woke. The reponse from Garmin came back first acknowledging the trigger, asking the nature of the emergency and wanting to establish whether it was a real alarm. After the fact, I also discovered at that point they started a phoning campaign to contact Mum & Pa who were driving back up from Dover ignoring international calls they didn't recognise as Garmin were reaching out to my emergency contacts.
I had contact with Garmin SOS team based in Texas, and I had contact with Pa & Ali who were now engaged in support from the UK and Canada. With those conversations occuring in the background I thought about where I was again, it was -5°C outside, I had been fine in my sleeping bag and liner but I had my riding gear in the vestibule which might protect me a bit if it goes wrong, so I reached through and pulled it into the sleeping compartment, solid and freezing cold. I put the gear on, boots helmet et al, and tried to cover myself with my sleeping bag to keep some heat in. Ali messaged and gave the same advice about the riding gear, but added that if it properly attacks me, to cover the back of my neck with my hands, fingers interlocked behind, and protect at all costs. Bears maul, they tear and gnaw and they go for limbs and necks, so no matter how much it hurts protect my neck and stay in a ball. The only self-defence item I had with me was my camping penknife but 3" wasn't going to do anything, I figured the best chance I had was to use it to cut my way out of the tent if I needed to - so I lay there in full bike gear holding my knife, intermittently messaging updates to Garmin that the bear was still there, still going at the topbox and possiby the rest of the bike whilst I waited in the freezing cold to hear whether anyone was on their way. I had far too much time in my own head, thinking through worse case scenarios, writing in my phone to family in case I didn't see the sun rise.
Three hours after my first message to Garmin, I was told they were in the crater at my GPS location and couldn't see me, asking me to describe my bike and tent. At that moment in time the bear was still outside and my bike was on its side against the tent I was in, with the torch on. I gave what they asked for but pointed out the colour and numberplate wouldn't make much difference, if they saw the scene it would be fairly obvious. An hour went by with my sending them What3Words locations, using an off-line map to describe my position relative to other features of the landscape, describing the route I took from the road to get there, using Google to get the Lat and Long, as well as the Satellite Messenger location. Nothing was working, they kept insisting they had tried those locations and not found me.
At 04:30 the sound of the bear had stopped, I had my drone in the tent with me so turned it on, slipped it out the tent and launched it, telling Garmin SOS control I had done so, and to get the rescue team to look for it. I flew it straight up and span around in the dark, spotting 3 sets of lights a long way off on the horizon. I flew directly toward them and got to 2km from the launch point before the landscape obscured the signal and the auto-return to home kicked in. They must have spotted it because a few minutes later the sound of sirens came down the valley and I could see through the drone control that they were approaching.
I was very very relieved when they arrived. I gave the first chap in military clothing holding a fairly serious gun a hug and thanked them for coming to me, the stress and tension I'd been holding finally releasing. Within a few minutes there were 2 police cars, an emergency truck and a first aid vehicle there, totalling about 12 people. The bear sounds had stopped about 20 minutes before the rescue team arrived, but if it was close by it didn't show face again.
At that point I felt silly for having created such a fuss, but looking back I shouldn't feel bad because it ended well, it could have gone a different way very easily. Four of us lifted my bike upright and after a few cycles of the starter, it kicked into life - this bike hasn't had the easiest trip so far. I sifted through the destruction of the top box, through gifts and torn items. It had completely ruined the top box, tearing it off the bike, damaging the mounting to the bike and corresponding part on the luggage, then broken through the underside of the box to get to my food supply. It had burst my water carrier (the second one of the trip after the first died in the Norwegian crash), my nalgene bottle, damaged the pannier that became trapped under the bike, it had also bitten into the beer I bought in Denmark and was saving to drink at home, and everything that wasn't broken, had been drooled on or covered in bear paws and was very muddy. Gratefully, my tent didn't suffer any damage but I packed it away hastily so was a mess of ice and sand. With everything shoved in the back of a police car and dawn breaking, the police and military were quite keen to get lots of photographs so there were several rounds of pictures then I followed the police 40 minutes down the volcano to their HQ shared with the hospital. A semi-bemused doctor asked me through Google translate whether I had any injuries or had made contact with the bear, after establishing I wasn't injured I went with the police to their office and dumped my kit there.
I was treated as guest of the policemen to breakfast in the hospital canteen then sat in the office for a few hours whilst I conversed through Google and drank multiple turkish teas even after politely refusing them. The guys who stayed with me were really kind, couldn't do enough for me and were keen to make sure I had everything I could need but ultimately there were things I needed to do that were beyond the realm of an office in a hospital. I washed some of the bear damaged stuff in the sink and started to think about how to continue. I was being asked lots of questions about where I will go and what I will do, but in the end I just wanted space to look through and sort my things properly and didn't have a plan to declare, I was off-schedule at this point. I had been carrying a spare dry bag since the UK, which I shoved the remaining contents from the topbox into and strapped to the pillion seat.
At 10:30 it became apparent I couldn't actually leave, interpol were conducting an interrogation of me and I needed to stay until it was complete. After an hour of waiting I started to make it fairly clear that I needed to go, I'd had very little sleep, I wanted to find somewhere quiet to just start to fix and resolve and reorganise myself, but now I couldn't go because of Interpol. At midday I asked whether I was under arrest and whether they could actually stop me leaving, apparently not, so I suited up, said thank you again, and left. It was a tricky thing to balance, making sure it was clear that I very much appreciated everything they had done and without their support it could have been a very different outcome, but that I wasn't staying any longer.
I rode for an hour or so, and stopped to look for a target hotel to land at. I was planning on cutting it fine with the sunset time again but was contouring Lake Van (Van Golu) which seemed calm and peaceful. There were a few quite hotels along the coast, one was 5 minutes further, so I rode there and stopped. Solid walls, a shower, and an attached restaurant with a view of the sea from my bed. I had a wash, got some of the camping stuff out to air, and went to the restaurant for whatever special was available then headed back to the room and was in bed by 20:00.
After a little confusion of the room availability I was able to stay another night if I changed rooms so did that, and continued to tackle the damage from the previous night. Using a car jack I contorted the metal pannier back into shape, aired the tent by pitchg it and wiping off the sand, gravel and mess, got some clothes washed, cleaned other items which had been played with by the bear, and re-organised my belongings to be more efficient in the pannniers and dry bags with clothes in the dry bags and sharper items in the panniers. I'd had a very good system with the topbox for storage of quick items, food, water and daily bits I used, and losing that facility makes the practicality of camping and travelling with my set-up a bit more annoying now.
I went for a run along the beach in the afternoon sun and started to feel a little more together again with everything. Whilst I had been in the police station Tom had noticed the episode had been published in Turkish Media already, not 6 hours from the actual incident, and one of the media outlets had published a photograph of my passport. I had only shown it to two people whilst at the hospital/police station, but the photo I'd taken of the bear had also appeared online too after one of the policemen had photographed my phone with it on. I tried contacting the media outlets but heard nothing back, I contacted the embassy to see whether I needed to do anything about the passport, and had spent a day rejecting invitations from hundreds of strangers on instagram who had obviously seen the article in the news. After a rather unhelpful set of conversations with the HM Passport Office and the Consulate in Istanbul, it seems I may be okay with the data that had been shared, despite it being very uncomfortable.
