Week 3: Farmers, Philosophers and the Gods.

The journey through the Balkans had been exhausting, as exhilarating and wild as it was, it was a sigh of relief to re-enter Europe on somewhat more familiar ground. The Balkans were harsh, the people incredible and kind, but there was an underlying tension in the region that was palpable; as a foreigner, one couldn’t help but be impacted by it—there was an edge. The scars of war and hatred hadn’t completely healed yet. Nor had mine. The wilderness of the place had appealed to my sense of freedom and savagery, but the Officer in me still couldn’t quite let go of the past; it had been a bit much, a rest dearly needed.

The hospitality displayed by my new Bosnian family, Nadira and Svedad, was second to none, and my heart was heavy leaving them and the wilderness of it all. But this was just the beginning, and the need for familiarity and rest was calling.

It had been such a relief to meet Alex again; we hadn’t seen each other for over 12 years, probably more, since I had joined up. We grew up together in Brussels in the late '90s, early 2000s. Our youth had been a mix of European technocracy and dabbling, even fingering, with criminality. Brussels in those days had been wild, hash from Morocco, ecstasy from Holland, and a booming underground techno scene that was too hard to resist for our young and curious souls. We were lucky to have been part of a good school, the European School of Brussels. This school was a socially engineered project launched by the European Commission, with 5000 kids from 15 nationalities being bred to be the future of Europe. An idealistic project, yet the reality was not quite what was expected. From a very early age, national clichés and differences were felt, especially on the football pitch. The Brits would always fight the Spanish, the Germans were liked but were boring, we loved the Italian girls but the men were posers. No one really understood the Greeks and they didn’t care. The French were assholes; the Brits would all become alcoholics, everyone wanted to hook up with the Swedes. It had been a mess, but a fun one. Alex and I had been part of a strange gang, the druggies, the anarchists, the weirdos. We were the most plurinational and mixed group of the school, our appreciation of hard techno and soft Moroccan hash melting our nationalistic differences. We considered ourselves anarchists, different, and didn’t subscribe to the nationalistic clichés that were so embedded into the fabric of all the others. This inevitably led to problems—drugs, money, and an appetite for risk meant that we often took it too far.

I had been an anomaly at the school. Having just left France, where I had lived in a one-bedroom flat in a rough tower block after my parents' divorce, I gained access to the school through my new stepmother. My friends were all sons and daughters of members of the European Commission, well-to-do intellectual families with money and facility. It had been a strange transition from my previous life, but it opened my eyes to a different world. I had been an angry kid at school and drugs and violence soon became my means of soothing my adolescent angst.

Alex had been part of our gang; he entered the school at the same time as me. He came from a Greek intellectual family. A good-looking kid with tons of charisma and personality, he had quickly fitted into our mad group. When we finished school, he and I lost touch. I discovered this week that he had started going down a very dark path—guns, drugs, fast money. He had been unhappy. Luckily, he had a supportive family that accepted helping him when he asked for it. They took him away from the seedy world he had been falling into and tried to get him into a new life. Business in the city, not even a year in, it almost broke him. So, he decided to take a chance, get a loan, return to his family’s village on the foothills of Mount Olympus and start an organic farm. And that’s where we met again after 15 years, him a farmer and me, a wanderer. Seeing him, I was immediately relieved and impressed; not only did he look the part, but he was the part. He had been working the land for 12 years by then and was bloody good at it. So much so that the old farmers in his village called him the Mayor and wanted him to run for it. He didn’t care. He had remained an anarchist at heart, but he also had three kids to feed and a wonderful wife to look after. So his priorities were clear. He had come such a long way from the fast cars, fast money wanker he had become when we were younger.

There was no judgment here. As he had been descending down that path, mine had been worse. Violence, crime, and drug abuse had all been part of my staple diet until I almost ended up in jail for 5 years for GBH and drug possession. And let’s be honest, I had been a pretty bad drug dealer, good at sales and PR but terrible at stock management. As Notorious BIG once rapped in his ten crack commandments "never get high on your own supply"—that had been hard to apply. I had been disorganized and turbulent. Would I have turned to that today with my Sandhurst training, I would no doubt have been able to up my game to Escobar levels.

The deal with Alex was simple: he worked from 6 am until whenever it needed to be done. He didn’t ask for help, but I was glad to lend a hand. Manual labor, simple tasks, working the land, and not being sat on Tara with a still very bruised bum was a relief. Not only that, it gave us time to reconnect and strengthen our friendship.

We planted apple trees, tomatoes, plowed fields, dug holes, smoked countless rollies, and hung out every night in the local pub drinking beer and remolding the world with the local communist leaders. Life was simple, as Alex put it, no time to be sad when there was work to do. He was right.

We took a break from the farm and headed to Athens, where Alex commuted on the weekends to see his wife, Katiana, and their three small children. They lived in the suburbs of town, on Marathon Road, the actual road named after the battle of Marathon. It was a good reminder for me that this trip wasn’t a sprint; the point was to enjoy the journey and not focus on getting anywhere fast, just live and enjoy.

I had thought I was tough being a solo motorcycle adventurer, but it paled in comparison to being a young father of three boisterous kids aged 1, 3, and 6! The house was a volcano of activity—screams, baby cries, laughter, and life! It must have been exhausting for Katiana with Alex away all week on the farm, and equally hard on him being away from his loving family all week. But he wouldn’t have had it any other way; he was a headstrong, proud farmer who had made his choice in life and was committed to his land. I had nothing but respect for him and how far he had come. It had to be said that running a mini crime network in our youths had its advantages; in the end, business was business. Managing stock, demand, distribution, sales, security, and human relations were the same no matter what product you pushed. Thankfully, organic vegetables were somewhat more ethical than what we used to peddle…

Seeing Alex had transported me back to being a teenager, memories of my turbulent youth kept coming up, not only in thought but in conversation. We talked about friends we’d lost, to drugs, to violence, to mental health. We counted ourselves lucky. I thought about Tom, seeing him get his throat slit and his sad passing years later. About Yan, Eric, and me fighting racist Belgian police officers and being tortured in the basement of Brussels Main Station for two days, not without taking a bit of them with us. Yan had been nicknamed Tyson in the jail for biting an officer’s hand off, fuck them. The beating and strangulations we suffered at their hands deserved far more than losing a bit of flesh.

The turbulence of the vibrant house was a bit much for me, and the wonders of Athens were calling, so I escaped Marathon Road in a bit of a sprint to go and discover the city for a day.

Athens was truly a megalopolis, where antiquity met modernity. The Acropolis still dominated the horizon wherever you went, and was a must-see for a first-timer like me, but be warned, it was a complete tourist attraction. First, you queued to buy a ticket, then you queued to get in the queue to get on an international conveyor belt of digital vultures all there to feed off the carcass of what had been the intellectual heart of Western Europe. Walking up the stairs of the Acropolis, I overheard three young American tourists naively and overbearingly loudly say, "Oh my gosh, this looks just like Caesar’s Palace in Vegas." It was time to leave before I said something I’d regret. The heat, the queues, the idiocy contributed to agoraphobia. Socrates must have been turning in his grave…

Downtown Athens was where it was at, a foyer of anarchists, free thinkers, and revolt, as was apparent by the graffiti on the walls and the constant presence of heavily armored police robocops. Greece had still not recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, the cost of living was exorbitantly high in comparison to the average wage. Political corruption, inflation, stagnant wages, and a growing divide between the rich and the poor had been a recipe for revolution. I spent the afternoon getting drunk in an anarcho-communist bar talking to a young lawyer who had to quit humanitarian law due to the below-average pay. I made the bar laugh when I returned to Jenny, the owner, with a bag full of tomatoes after she asked me to buy some ingredients to make Bloody Marys.

One day in Athens was enough; time to go back to the farm. On the way back north, we passed Thermopylae, the site of the 300. Where the brave Leonidas and his loyal warriors held off Xerxes and his imperial hordes long enough for the Greeks to unite and push the Persians back. The site was somewhat underwhelming to see, but there was power there. Sadly, the modern monument had been taken over by far-right nationalist groups that had tagged it with Neo-Nazi signs. It had become a symbol of white resistance against immigration. Yet again, division and ethno-nationalism went hand in hand to stoke the flames of hatred and divide. A recurrent theme that had followed me from the Balkans. When would we ever learn to live united in our differences, supporting one another and not falling prey to power-mad politicians set on greed, power, and nationalism?

Before leaving Greece for the Orient on a reverse Odyssey, I had to change Tara’s tires; my near miss that had almost landed me in a twenty-meter ditch on a track in Bosnia required that I get better adapted tires for off-roading. By chance, Alex made a few phone calls and found a garage in the nearby town of Larissa. Arriving there, I knew I had found the right place. A young Greek riding an old custom R90 pulled up as I parked. We struck up a conversation about bikes, philosophy, the art of living, and motorcycling. He told me that Gabriel, the owner, was known as the tire philosopher all over Greece, and that he had specifically ridden up from Athens, four hours away, to have the tires he bought there fitted by Gabriel.

In a modern-day Hephaestus’ forge, tucked away in the shadow of Mount Olympus, stood Gabriel, a philosopher and craftsman of the modern era. His workshop, much like the famed forge of the gods, was a place where art and utility blended seamlessly. Gabriel, a staunch Epicurean with anarchist tendencies, imbued each task with deliberation and artistry. His reputation was legendary, drawing bikers from across Greece, all seeking the precision that characterized his work.

As I entered his domain, the ambiance resonated with an amalgam of myth and machine. Swallows darted in and out of the garage, their movements as rhythmic as the turning wheels they mimicked, creating a living symphony that underscored the pulse of this unique workshop.

During our encounter, I shared with Gabriel my global odyssey—a journey to ride across the landscapes that had birthed legends. His eyes lit up with the spark of shared wanderlust as he wrapped me in a hearty embrace, exclaiming "Brava!" in encouragement. In return, I vowed to dedicate a segment of my journey—a hundred kilometers across the Pamir—to him, as a tribute to his artistry and spirit.

Feeling an innate connection to that place, where the hum of the modern met the whispers of the ancient, I realized the privilege of having my bike tended to in this sanctum. The swallows’ dance above captured the essence of freedom and movement, echoing the very essence of my own travels. There, in Gabriel’s garage, the bond between rider, road, and craftsman became a modern myth, each motorcycle a steed worthy of the gods themselves.

Pumped with fresh confidence in my bike’s tires, adding some new brake pads and a wash that had it sparkling like a diamond in a goat’s nose, I zipped south hoping to catch up with a mate who had pledged to meet me in Meteora, a UNESCO site in northern Greece. But alas, my friend got tangled up in Corfu. He swapped chasing enlightenment for chasing skirts and MDMA. When he tried scootering 400 km to Meteora through a sprinkle of rain, well, let’s just say his plan dissolved faster than soluble aspirin. My sympathy for him was as scant as his chances of making it—hope the storm really kicked his comedown into epic shit proportions.

The name "Meteora" translated to "suspended in the air," which aptly described the extraordinary rock formations that dominated the region. These immense, naturally sculpted pillars of rock soared up to 400 meters high, creating a surreal and majestic backdrop that seemed to defy gravity.

Atop these formidable stone pillars were six Eastern Orthodox monasteries, built between the 14th and 16th centuries by monks seeking solitude and spiritual elevation. These monasteries had been constructed under incredibly challenging conditions, with materials and daily provisions being painstakingly hoisted up the cliffs using ladders and ropes. The isolation provided by the height of the rocks offered the monks both protection from political upheavals and the ability to pursue their religious practices in peace.

A once place reserved for monks and meditation had now been turned into a tourist attraction where busloads were offloaded at each viewpoint for 5 minutes to feed their digital addictions and move on. I tried to climb a few rocks to find a secluded spot to meditate but kept being interrupted by incessant chatter of "Stand there," "Great pictures," "OMG, this will look great on Instagram." The temptation to knock on one of the monastery doors and ask for asylum was real. Instead, I beat a hasty retreat back to the farm, I didn’t think I was ready for a chastity vow just yet.

A few more days on the farm were joined by Simon, a young French kid on an adventure across the region. We drank beer, planted potatoes, reshaped the world and had a great time just laughing and working the fields. Life was simple, life was good.

The farm was on the foothills of Mount Olympus, home of the gods. Birthplace of Greek mythology and, in a sense, the birthplace of Western spirituality and psychology.

It dominated the landscape surrounding the farm and had been calling me from the moment I arrived. It was time for me to leave; my body had healed from the Mostar bridge jump, my soul was full of the love, kindness, and generosity shown by Alex, and my mind was quiet from the hard work on the farm. If I didn’t leave soon, I might have ditched the bike and picked up a tractor. The East was calling, but not without hiking to the Pantheon to seek the gods’ blessing for my journey.

A powerful and deeply sad goodbye to Alex in a field, we saluted each other, fists raised in the anarchist fashion, and I was off on Tara, riding up to Prionia, the base camp of Mount Olympus.

The trek from Prionia to the first refuge was meant to take 5 hours, but due to leaving late from Alex’s and taking the scenic route, I arrived at 6 pm with little light left to spare. I parked Tara outside the one restaurant there, and the curious and skeptical owner told me he’d look out for her. I sensed he was concerned for me, but I waved him away and set off on the trail at yomping speed (Royal Marine parlance for walking with kit on your back). The constant smoking and drinking hadn’t helped with the steep incline, but it felt good to be in my body again, to fight myself up the mountain, to have a clear tactical mission to achieve, and some time pressure to make it happen. Arriving at the refuge a sweaty, tired mess with 10 minutes of daylight left was a bit tight, thankfully there was a spare bed. A big dish of spaghetti Bolognese served by the incredulous and witty owner Marta, followed by a hot chocolate and a smoke, and I was off into Morpheus’s arms, dreams of the gods and Olympus keeping me up, or maybe it was the snoring.

Up at 6 am and on the trail by 7 to get ahead of the crowds and be the first one up there. Marta had told me it took 5 hours to scramble up and back to the refuge; cool, I hadn’t suffered P Company and the All Arms Commando Course to yomp like a hat (term referring to non-specialists), the objective was to do it in 3.

At yomping pace, I scrambled up the hill, overtaking a few groups, my ego getting the better of me. There was no joy in doing things just to beat others; I hated myself for it. But it was too late, now that I had overtaken them, there was no way I was letting them get past me again and give them the satisfaction of beating me. I was in the hurt locker, legs burning, lungs in overdrive, and I tasted metal in my mouth. Getting to the first ridge line, there was a group ahead of me roping up to get to the summit, they all had helmets and climbing gear. I was wearing a baseball cap, a T-shirt, and shorts. Something was wrong, but I was there, they were in front of me, and I was going to get to the summit first.

The scramble part of the climb was rather vertiginous and steep, three points of contact at all times, and best not to look down too much, just like parachuting. As an officer, when you passed your qualification, you were the first one out of the door, led by example and all that. So you had the honor of standing by the door of a C-130 aircraft flying at 300 km per hour and being the first one out. I remembered the jump master telling me, "Don’t look down, sir!" through the wind and bustling noise of the engines. The first thing I did was look down... A lesson I would not forget. When you were doing silly dangerous things, just focused on the here and now, yourself, your gear, and where you wanted to go, not where you didn’t want to, or sure as hell you were going to end up there.

Finally, I reached the top, overtaking the ropers (screamers) and I was the first one to reach the top of Greece on that day, what a sight, what a relief, adrenaline, exhaustion, and exhilaration all kicked in, it had been good to be alive and even better still to have beaten everyone else to it!

The group of ropers reached me, we exchanged pleasantries, internally all I thought was they were fat and lazy and should ask the gods for forgiveness. One of them was a tour guide, at least he wasn’t in shit state, we struck up a conversation. He explained that Mount Olympus was only officially climbed in 1913 by a Greek climber after the liberation from the Ottoman Empire. In antiquity, it had been forbidden to climb to the summit as it was feared that it would provoke the gods. Probably a good way to prevent any foolhardy warriors trying to impress their Athenian crushes from doing something stupid, no search and rescue teams on standby in those days…I shook the guide’s hand and nodded at the screamers.

On my way down, I pondered about the meaning of the gods—Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite, Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus. Freud understood that they were merely archetypes of what we called modern psychology. It was such a shame that our monotheistic, narcissistic Christian god had killed off the gods of old. I wished Nietzsche was right; God is dead, and all the better for it. He wasn’t though; he had developed schizophrenia and a weird obsession with control and guilt shaming. It was time to bring back the gods of old, the bold, the wicked, the vain and cruel ones. The ones that looked more like us, the honest and imperfect ones, those that reflected our real psyches, warts and all. It was time to bring back some magic and wonderment to our uniformed and stale modern life. Bring back Pan, the cyclops, the titans, the fairies, the trolls—let us wonder at the world and let our imaginations be our true guides.

Conversation with the gods over, it was time to find a place to rest. The Aegean Sea was calling. A mad dash down from the Pantheon with Tara, we found a secluded beach by Thessaloniki to pitch the tent. Disaster struck as my inflatable mattress burst, mosquitoes made it into the tent, a sleepless night in the most idyllic of spots. 4 am, couldn’t sleep, legs heavy and mind tired, I jumped on Tara and headed as far east in Greece to the Turkish border. Whispers of the east filled my mind; it was the end of the west as I knew it. After this, it was all uncharted territory for me, a step into the unknown, a step closer to living my dream. Next stop, Byzantium, modern-day Istanbul. I savored a last pork steak and a few beers on a quaint terrace in eastern Greece and looked forward to a night of Persian dreams. "Tomorrow the Orient, tomorrow Istanbul, tomorrow I ride East!"

The anticipation of new lands, new experiences, and possibly new challenges filled me with both excitement and a deep sense of purpose. This journey wasn’t just about covering distances or ticking off famous sites; it was about understanding different cultures, engaging with history firsthand, and testing my limits both physically and mentally. As I set off each morning, the sunrise wasn’t just a start to another day; it was a symbol of the fresh opportunities that awaited, of roads not yet taken, and of stories not yet told.

As I crossed into Turkey, the literal and figurative bridge between Europe and Asia, I reflected on all I’d learned and all I had yet to discover. Tara, my constant companion, carried me forward, not just across landscapes, but through the layers of history and human experience layered deep in these ancient lands. There, in the cradle of civilization, every mile traveled was a step back in time, each turn of the wheel a rotation through centuries of human endeavor.

It was more than a journey; it was a pilgrimage of sorts—a quest not just for sights and sounds but for wisdom and growth. As the roads stretched out before me, leading to horizons yet unseen, I knew that this adventure was about much more than the destination. It was about the transformation that came with the journey, the shedding of old skins, and the discovery of new strengths. It was also about peeling the layers off, about figuring out who I was, about giving myself the permission to live, to laugh, and to feel. It was about letting go of guilt, it was about finding my truth. And so, with the gods of old whispering in the wind, I rode on, ready for whatever lay beyond the next bend.

But that had been nonsense. The reality was that I had spent twenty days mainlining coffee, kilometers, cigarettes, and beer. I had been lonely, tired, and elated. I had been told to write more positively about my experience, to portray this as the trip of a lifetime, one that people would envy and that I should cast in a better light. Well, screw that. If people really wanted to live nomadically, they should have escaped their lousy situations and just done it. Chosen life, not someone’s second-hand dreams. Gotten off their ass, picked something challenging and daunting, and just done it. But be warned, life on the road wasn’t all dreamy sceneries and idyllic, manicured Instagram shots; it was dead animals, it was fatigue, it was doubt. It was finding a song that brought me comfort and listening to it on repeat. It was incessant checks on my Instagram and TikTok to see if I had new followers and if what I was doing was cool enough to garner more likes. It was missing having intimate moments and resorting to cranking in my tent alone at night, all while wondering if some drunken Greek kids were going to find it amusing to set my tent on fire. Life on the road was hard, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I had been living my best fucking life, it had been messy, it had been chaotic, and the people I met were wild, funny, caring, and free. I was exactly where I needed to be.