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| Niki Greek Border Station — our return-to-Greece crossing in the next North Macedonia episode. |
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. That route component closed with a domestic flight back to Ashgabat, followed by an air reposition through Istanbul to Tbilisi, where Shehzadi was waiting. From Tbilisi, the road turned west. Europe was now 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 into North Macedonia. The full route map is here: MAP. The earlier Turkmenistan route component begins with our Silk Road expedition into Turkmenistan; this post is where Shehzadi takes over again.
Georgia to North Macedonia Overland via Türkiye, Istanbul, and Northern Greece — Post Summary
This leg puts Shehzadi back on the road in Tbilisi. Georgia gives way to Türkiye’s Black Sea coast, Istanbul carries us across the Bosphorus from Asia to Europe, and northern Greece leads to the Evzoni/Bogorodica crossing into North Macedonia. Three land borders and one continental hinge do most of the work; the snacks merely provide supervision.
| What's Covered | |
| 🧭 | Route at a Glance — the road spine from Tbilisi to Skopje |
| 🚙 | 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 Kipi — the Türkiye-Greece border and the road into northern Greece |
| 🏛️ | Drama to Evzoni — Greek Macedonia 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.
With Shehzadi back under us in Tbilisi, we drove west through Batumi to the Sarpi/Sarp border, followed Türkiye’s Black Sea coast through Arhavi and Samsun, turned inland through Düzce, crossed Istanbul’s Bosphorus from Asia to Europe, continued to Ipsala/Kipi, and crossed northern Greece through Drama to Evzoni/Bogorodica before reaching Skopje. This westbound run made Silk Road romance share cabin space with fuel stops, border booths, and snack crumbs that had achieved permanent-resident status.
Method: Overland in Shehzadi, our 2024 Toyota Tundra
Land borders: Sarpi/Sarp · Ipsala/Kipi · Evzoni/Bogorodica
Themes: Black Sea road · Bosphorus crossing · border-country travel
Route at a Glance
- Tbilisi to Batumi — west across Georgia toward the Black Sea.
- Batumi to Sarpi/Sarp — the coastal border crossing from Georgia into Türkiye.
- Arhavi to Samsun — Black Sea road through tea country, tunnels, harbors and green mountain country.
- Samsun to Düzce — the inland westbound run after the coast.
- Düzce to Istanbul — the approach to the Bosphorus and the crossing from Asia to Europe.
- Istanbul to Ipsala — across European Türkiye toward the Greek border.
- Ipsala/Kipi to Drama, Evzoni/Bogorodica and Skopje — northern Greece and the crossing into North Macedonia.
Tbilisi to Sarpi/Sarp: Leaving Georgia for Türkiye
We left Tbilisi westbound toward Poti, where the route meets E70 for the Black Sea run through Batumi to Sarpi. 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. Later in the same 2025 journey, we would cross the Bosphorus again heading east.
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| Shehzadi (the Vagabond Couple's Toyota Tundra) resting at Ipsala, Türkiye |
Ipsala to Kipi: Crossing from Türkiye into Greece
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 Evzoni: Northern Greece and the Road to 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. From the Thessaloniki side, we turned north to the Evzoni crossing, passed through Bogorodica into North Macedonia, and continued to Skopje. The border rhythm was familiar: slow approach, document check, vehicle check, and the delicate hope that nobody asks where the one essential paper is hiding.
Crossing the Bosphorus in Shehzadi was the geographic hinge of this leg. The Black Sea corridor gave way to Balkan borders, and the road continued west as one component of our complete 2025 Silk Road/world-overland journey. The map changed continents. Shehzadi remained stubbornly pickup-shaped.
Skopje takes over in the next episode: Skopje and North Macedonia Overland from Greece, with Mother Teresa Memorial House, Stone Bridge, Old Bazaar, Mount Vodno, the Millennium Cross and Matka Canyon before the route returns to Greece through Medžitlija–Niki.
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.
