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| Niki Greek Border Station, Greece |
We had just finished the Turkmenistan chapter of our Silk Road run, ending at Dayahatyn Caravanserai and the Amu Darya, which is a nice place to feel ancient until the vehicle reminds you it still needs fuel. From Tbilisi, the road now turned west. Europe was no longer an abstract idea on a map. It was a series of border booths waiting to examine our paperwork with the quiet suspicion usually reserved for magic tricks.
This Georgia-to-North-Macedonia leg took us from our home base in Tbilisi toward Batumi, across the Sarpi/Sarp border into Türkiye, along the Black Sea coast, across Istanbul’s Bosphorus, and through northern Greece toward the next chapter. The full route map is here: MAP. It also continues the larger Silk Road expedition into Turkmenistan arc, because apparently one continent was not enough paperwork for us.
Georgia to North Macedonia Overland via Türkiye, Istanbul, and Northern Greece — Post Summary
This leg follows Shehzadi west from Tbilisi through Batumi and the Sarpi/Sarp border into Türkiye, then along the Black Sea coast through Arhavi and Samsun, inland to Düzce, across Istanbul’s Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge from Asia to Europe, onward to Ipsala, and through northern Greece and across the Niki/Medžitlija border into North Macedonia. It is a practical road chapter with big geography, three borders, one very famous strait, and the usual reminder that long-distance overlanding is mostly history, weather, paperwork, and snack management.
| What's Covered | |
| 🧭 | Route at a Glance — stop-by-stop road spine from Georgia to North Macedonia |
| 🚙 | Tbilisi to Sarpi/Sarp — Georgia, Batumi, the Black Sea, and the Türkiye border |
| 🌊 | Arhavi to Samsun — Kaçkar foothills, tea country, and Türkiye’s Black Sea road |
| 🏙️ | Samsun to Düzce — Atatürk memory, harbor views, and the inland run west |
| 🌉 | Istanbul and the Bosphorus — Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge and the Asia-to-Europe crossing |
| 🛂 | Ipsala to Greece — the Türkiye-Greece border and the road into northern Greece |
| 🏛️ | Drama to Niki — Greek Macedonia, border country, and the crossing into North Macedonia |
Video: route map from Georgia to Türkiye, Greece, North Macedonia, Italy, Spain, Morocco, and back to Spain. The map is tidy. The actual packing was not.
We drove from Tbilisi to the North Macedonia by way of Batumi, Sarpi/Sarp, Türkiye’s Black Sea coast, Samsun, Düzce, Istanbul, Ipsala, Drama, Thessaloniki, and Niki. This was the first westbound overland stretch after Central Asia, where Silk Road romance had to share cabin space with fuel stops, border booths, and snack crumbs that had now achieved permanent-resident status. This post covers the road from Georgia into Türkiye, across the Bosphorus from Asia to Europe, through northern Greece, and across the Niki/Medžitlija border into North Macedonia.
Method: Overland by truck
Distance / Time: Approx. 2,200 km / 5 driving days
Themes: Black Sea road · Bosphorus crossing · border-country travel
Vehicle: Shehzadi (2024 Toyota Tundra)
Route at a Glance
- Tbilisi to Batumi — the westbound exit from Georgia toward the Black Sea.
- Batumi to Sarpi/Sarp — Georgia’s coastal border crossing into Türkiye.
- Arhavi to Samsun — the Black Sea road through tea country, tunnels, harbors, and green mountain country.
- Samsun to Düzce — a long inland-westward run after the coast.
- Düzce to Istanbul — the approach to the Bosphorus and the crossing from Asia to Europe.
- Istanbul to Ipsala — the push across European Türkiye toward Greece.
- Ipsala/Kipi to Drama, Niki/Medžitlija, and North Macedonia — northern Greece, Greek Macedonia, and the next border crossing.
Tbilisi to Sarpi/Sarp: Leaving Georgia for Türkiye
We left Tbilisi on the E70, the long European route that runs across the southern Caucasus and then keeps behaving as if the Black Sea is its favorite travel companion. The first hours were familiar Georgia: city edges, roadside bread, fuel stations, low hills, and the pleasant illusion that everything was under control. Overlanding likes to allow that illusion for about twenty minutes. It has manners.
Batumi brought the Black Sea into view with its odd but memorable mix of glass towers, old neighborhoods, palms, and coastal weather. The city has always been a hinge point between mountains, sea, and trade, which is a neat way of saying people have been moving through this corner for a very long time and leaving traffic behind for the rest of us. From there, the road tightened toward Sarpi, where the mountains press close to the coast and Georgia performs one last dramatic exit.
Video: Georgia to Türkiye at the Sarpi/Sarp border crossing. Shehzadi rolled out of Georgia with less drama than a grocery checkout, which is exactly how border crossings should behave.
The crossing into Türkiye was smooth: documents, vehicle papers, stamps, and the usual polite dance of people trying to understand why an American pickup was wandering across this end of the Black Sea. Türkiye felt familiar from past visits, and we had already heard the language before, but this time we were not arriving by flight or city break. We were arriving in Shehzadi, which makes every country feel slightly larger and every parking spot feel like a philosophical problem. Our older Türkiye posts live here: Turkey travel stories.
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| Kaçkar Mountains at Arhavi, Türkiye |
Arhavi to Samsun: The Black Sea Road
Arhavi sits between the Black Sea and the steep green country below the Kaçkar Mountains. It is the kind of place where the sea is right there, the mountains are right there, and the road is trying to squeeze politely between them while trucks, tea, and weather make competing claims for the lane. The result is beautiful, practical, and mildly bossy.
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| Shehzadi (the Vagabond Couple's Toyota Tundra) at Arhavi, Türkiye |
Shehzadi looked perfectly content in Arhavi, which is impressive for a Texas-born truck now parked in a Turkish Black Sea town beneath wet green mountains. The eastern Black Sea coast is famous for tea growing, dense valleys, and villages that climb the slopes with great confidence and very little concern for flat land. Flat land, to be fair, is scarce here. It appears to have left early.
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| Lighthouse of Arhavi, Türkiye |
The lighthouse photo gave Arhavi a clean coastal punctuation mark before the road pulled us west again. The D010/E70 Black Sea highway is a rhythm of tunnels, bridges, towns, harbors, and sudden sea views. It is efficient in the modern way, but the old geography still rules the mood: water on one side, mountain walls on the other, and weather arriving like it owns the deed.
The next morning, the coastal road carried us past Rize, the center of Türkiye’s tea country. The tea terraces here are not a postcard decoration; they are an entire regional economy spread across steep green hills. The Black Sea kept flashing between tunnels, and the road kept reminding us that “coastal drive” can also mean “many kilometers of engineering wrapped around a mountain.”
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| View of Samsun Harbor from our hotel room (Türkiye) |
By evening we reached Samsun, stretched along the broad curve of the Black Sea. The harbor view from our hotel room was the sort of practical beauty overlanders appreciate: water, lights, a bed nearby, and no immediate request from the vehicle for attention. Civilization is sometimes just a parking spot and a shower. The philosophers can argue later.
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| Sunset at Samsun Harbor, Türkiye |
Samsun to Düzce: Atatürk Memory and the Inland Run
Samsun carries a large place in modern Turkish history because Mustafa Kemal Atatürk landed here on May 19, 1919, a date officially tied to the start of the Turkish War of Independence. That gives the city more weight than a normal Black Sea port stop. It also means that dinner walks can suddenly become history walks, which is efficient, if slightly unfair to dessert.
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| Sunrise at Samsun Harbor, Türkiye |
Morning over Samsun Harbor softened the industrial edges and gave the sea one last chance to look innocent before we turned inland. Leaving the Black Sea changed the feel of the drive at once. The road moved through forested hills, towns, and long westbound stretches where the map promised progress and the odometer demanded evidence.
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| Shehzadi (the Vagabond Couple's Toyota Tundra) resting at Düzce, Türkiye |
Düzce made a solid overnight stop, with clean streets, practical services, and enough road-town competence to make an overlander relax by several millimeters. It sits between larger Turkish corridors, so it feels less like a destination and more like the kind of place that quietly keeps the country moving. These places matter. They just do not hire a marketing department with a fog machine.
Istanbul and the Bosphorus: Asia to Europe on a Bridge
The next day had a clear emotional headline: Istanbul. The city has been Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul, which is either a magnificent historical sequence or a municipal paperwork nightmare depending on who had to update the signs. For us, it meant something simpler and larger: we were about to drive from Asia to Europe.
The Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge crosses the Bosphorus north of Istanbul’s older bridges. Opened in 2016, it carries motorway traffic across one of the world’s great geographic dividing lines, which is a dramatic job for something that also has to handle commuters and trucks. We rolled onto it in Shehzadi, trying to act normal while the map quietly changed continents underneath us.
Video: driving from Asia to Europe across the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge over the Bosphorus. A bridge, a strait, two continents, and one pickup pretending this was all perfectly routine.
Beneath us, the Bosphorus linked the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, while history lined both shores with the subtlety of a brass band. We had been to Istanbul before, but driving across it during an overland journey gave the city a different role. It was no longer a stop on an itinerary. It was the continental hinge under our tires.
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| Shehzadi (the Vagabond Couple's Toyota Tundra) resting at Ipsala, Türkiye |
Ipsala to Greece: The Border Back into the Balkans
After Istanbul, we kept west toward Ipsala, the Turkish border town facing Greece across the Meriç/Evros border country. Ipsala is not the sort of place that tries to steal the travel spotlight, which is exactly why it works. Border towns tend to be practical. They know travelers are thinking about documents, fuel, insurance, and whether the next officer will ask for something tucked in a folder no one has opened since breakfast.
We stayed in a simple hotel, ate under olive trees, and watched the evening settle over the edge of European Türkiye. The next morning, the Ipsala-Kipi crossing carried us into Greece with blessedly little theater. A few questions, a stamp, and suddenly the signs changed, the alphabet changed, and the coffee seemed to have been issued a stronger personality.
Drama to Niki: Northern Greece and the Road Toward North Macedonia
From the border we drove through northern Greece, past Alexandroupoli country and into Greek Macedonia. Drama, despite its name, behaved very calmly. The town is known for springs, plane trees, and its position below the mountain country of northeastern Greece. With a name like Drama, this restraint deserves respect. Many towns would have overplayed the part.
The road then carried us toward Thessaloniki and farther across the northern Greek corridor. Fields, hills, fuel stops, and roadside coffee did the quiet work of moving us toward the next frontier. By the time we reached the Niki Greek Border Station area and crossed toward Medžitlija in North Macedonia, the day had narrowed into that familiar border rhythm: slow approach, document check, vehicle check, and the delicate hope that nobody asks where the one essential paper is hiding.
This stretch mattered because it closed the Asia-to-Europe turn in the most literal way. We had rolled out of Tbilisi, crossed into Türkiye, followed the Black Sea, crossed the Bosphorus, entered Greece, and crossed into North Macedonia. The ancient Silk Road did not end at a neat line on a map, and neither did our route. It kept changing languages, alphabets, road surfaces, and snack options. History may be grand, but it still needs a border lane.
But that, dear reader, is a tale for the next episode: From Greece to North Macedonia and Back: Skopje Adventures in Shehzadi.
For now, we parked Shehzadi in the space specially arranged for a full-size San Antonio-born American pickup truck by the kind people at our hotel, took a breath, and let the road stop moving for the night. Next: Skopje and North Macedonia.
