Day Twelve Wednesday 29 September

6 am two of the team leaders Russ and John take 12 of the vehicles to a garage about an hour away for various repairs, while 2 vehicles with minor faults stay behind at the sports comlex in Beycoz near Istanbul for local repairs. The rest of the vehicles leave Beycoz for our next desination, Ankara about 7 hours drive away. Amar and I stay with the 2 vehicles at the sports complex in our lead vehicle for a local mechanic to come and replace the ignition barrel on one vehicle that has lost the keys, the other vehicle needs brake pads replacing.
The mechanics arrive with a tow truck that is too small and has to go back to bring another larger carrier. We spend the whole day and work is very slow and extremely frustrating. On top of all this we are surrounded by around a dozen uniformed armed police officers and another half a dozen plain clothed officers who are constantly pressurising us to leave. We tell them that we cannot leave until out vehicles are repaired. Tempers are high and the language barrier does not help.
Eventually at around 6 pm the two vehicles we are supervising are finished being repaired and the police are anxious to get us out of town and leave for Ankara. We are told that we must leave immediatly. Angry words are exchanged and we decide to leave the sports compound. We are escorted out of town onto the motorway and asked to drive on. We refuse. We will not leave untill all our vehicles are reunited. More angry exchanges occur. We are told that we must drive on towards Ankara without the other 12 vehicles. This is not acceptable to us as we want to wait for our comrades. We recieve word that the rest of the convoy that left for Ankara have reached their destination.
It is now around 8pm and we recieve a call from John that they will be joining us in about an hour and half. The police are still with us on the motorway and want us to move. We ask if they can escort us to a service area where we could wait more safely, and are told that that would not be possible as it is out of their jurisdiction. They want us to take the road to Ankara and keep moving. Again we refuse and sit in in our vehicles until the rest arrive.
Nearly 90 minutes later the rest arrive. Everyone has had a very tiring and frustrating day but we are all overjoyed to see each other. Once agin we are all together with all the cars now repaired. We inform the police that now that we are all together, we will drive off to Ankara. The police leave us and we drive on as a convoy.
We drive for about an hour or so and some of the drivers say that they are too tired to do the long 6 hour drive tonight so we decide to pull into a service area and set up camp and try and get some rest.
It is now around 11.30pm and everyone is pretty much knackered and very soon we are all asleep on the ground in our tents and sleeping bags.
At around 2.30 am there is a thunderstorm and the heavens open up and it starts to rain very heavily. Some of us get very wet inspite of us being in our tents. What a downer but we must rest a little in the rain. We all get very wet and cold.