Dave Tapsell
Overland Buses (xiv)
Turkey: December 1971
This photo, taken by John H, shows the AEC bus somewhere between Maras and Elazig, in central Turkey: the shivering passengers are reboarding the bus after they had had to walk for two kilometers in a snowstorm. It had been so bad that I'd been unable to see where the road was so they walked ahead a few metres in front of the bus, and I followed them, as there was steep drop to one side. Also, if the bus had begun to slide off the road then they wouldn't have gone with it – I'd kept the front door open so that if the bus had started sliding over the edge, I hoped to be able to leap out of it. It took five days to drive over 600 miles from the Mediterranean coast to Erzurum, which is on the main trunk road across Turkey to the Iranian border – part of the so-called Eurasian Highway, and in those days still made up of long distances of gravel. I had bought snow chains for the rear wheels in Adana; without them we would never had got anywhere; they were needed until we got to Agri, having finally got over the Tahir Pass, once it had been re-opened after the colossal snowfalls. One section of that trip, from Malatya to Elazig, took a whole day to drive just seventy-odd miles.
Overland Buses (xiv)
Turkey: December 1971
This photo, taken by John H, shows the AEC bus somewhere between Maras and Elazig, in central Turkey: the shivering passengers are reboarding the bus after they had had to walk for two kilometers in a snowstorm. It had been so bad that I'd been unable to see where the road was so they walked ahead a few metres in front of the bus, and I followed them, as there was steep drop to one side. Also, if the bus had begun to slide off the road then they wouldn't have gone with it – I'd kept the front door open so that if the bus had started sliding over the edge, I hoped to be able to leap out of it. It took five days to drive over 600 miles from the Mediterranean coast to Erzurum, which is on the main trunk road across Turkey to the Iranian border – part of the so-called Eurasian Highway, and in those days still made up of long distances of gravel. I had bought snow chains for the rear wheels in Adana; without them we would never had got anywhere; they were needed until we got to Agri, having finally got over the Tahir Pass, once it had been re-opened after the colossal snowfalls. One section of that trip, from Malatya to Elazig, took a whole day to drive just seventy-odd miles.