Defender X: Back on the road
Old friends, older bodies, Georgia, Baku and the road east
Istanbul again
I had looked forward to this leg of Defender X more than I had admitted to myself.
Not because of the cars. Not because of the route. Not even because we are heading for Sydney in the long run and that still carries a charge after all these years. No, this time it was more personal than that.
A few days before leaving, a relationship I had been in for three years came to an end. In a good way, I think. Or as good as such things can be. No shouting. No bitterness. No drama. But endings are endings. Even when both know it is right, it still leaves a bruise.
So to get on a plane almost immediately afterwards and meet up with this strange, loyal, funny, exhausting, generous road family in Istanbul felt like exactly the right thing to do.
This journey goes back a long way for me and Jeff. Long before it became Defender X, before the convoy, the filming, the branding, all of that, there was simply an idea between the two of us that we should travel together by car. It was never really only about the cars. It was about movement. Companionship. And the old belief that the road still has something to teach you.
Since then it has grown into something much bigger, more complicated and in many ways more unlikely. But the heart of it is still there.
When I arrived in Istanbul, a bit swollen from stress and too much food, worn down from weeks of nonstop film work, and not exactly sharp mentally either, I knew why I needed to be there.
The first evening was exactly what it had to be. A magnificent hotel by the Bosphorus. A Michelin restaurant. Endless small plates. Wine. More wine. Whisky and cigars after that. Excessive, yes. But that was not the point. The point was the group. The feeling. Everyone was happy to see each other. Everyone looked forward to what was coming. And everyone also knew, whether we said it or not, that these trips take something out of you. Moods change. Bodies get tired. Age is no longer something abstract. It is in the room with us now. Health too.
But there we were again. Starting another chapter.
What the road does
For me there was another reason I needed the road. When you sit in a car hour after hour, you cannot escape yourself. At home, even in my own flat, I always feel I should be producing something. Writing. Editing. Answering. Planning. Worrying. Everything turns into work.
But in a car you are stuck. You cannot jump up and fix your life. You cannot pretend to be efficient. You just sit there, look out, talk for a while, and when the talk runs out, as it always does, your thoughts start doing their work. I have come to realise how healthy that is for me. The road forces me to sit still.
The first drive to Ankara was easy enough. Five or six hours. A good way to begin. Nobody gets too tired. You get into the rhythm. I also recognised parts of the Anatolian landscape from when I cycled through there with the girls. Not exactly those roads, we were further south then, but close enough that memory kicked in. That happens more and more now. The older I get, the more every new road seems to contain older ones too.
Then came the long push to Trabzon. Ten hours, but easy in its own way because Jeff and Steve are extraordinary drivers. They love driving for its own sake. They do not need a monument, a viewpoint or a detour to justify a day. They are happy just going from A to B and doing it well.
I am not really like that. I always want to stop, walk, talk to someone, get off the main road. But even I had to admit that this stretch was spectacular. We crossed the mountains, dropped towards the Black Sea and then followed the coast east. With good weather, that stretch was spectacular.
And yet it was impossible for me to look out over the Black Sea without thinking of war. Beyond that calm water, way up north, Ukraine burns. A brutal war, and one that will shape the history of the world whether we like it or not. I spend a lot of time back home thinking about the state of things, about what kind of world my daughters are going to inherit, and I did not want this trip to become only that. But it was there. In the background all the time. Like distant weather.
Into the Caucasus
Crossing from Turkey into Georgia changed the mood immediately.
Turkey on this leg had felt polished, orderly, almost fully European. Immaculate roads, smooth movement, everything working. Then at the border the Caucasus arrived. Babushkas. Goods piled high. A proper border post. Noise, trade, disorder, people carrying things in and out. It felt like stepping through a curtain.
I had only been in Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh before, not really Georgia, but the Caucasus has fascinated me for years. Partly because it is post-Soviet, and anything post-Soviet catches my eye. After so much time in Russia and especially Siberia, I recognise things in places like Georgia even when I have never been there before. Not everything, of course, but enough. Enough that something in me relaxes. I know the rhythm. I know the buildings. I know the roads once you leave the best ones behind and start seeing village life.
Batumi struck me as half Dubai, half Soviet, and the two halves had clearly not agreed on anything. The new city was full of cafes, polished surfaces and well-dressed people. Steve said it was like Paris. That is overdoing it. For me, as usual, it was the old town that mattered much more. Less polished. Fewer nice clothes. More texture. More of what survives when the slogans of modernity lose interest.
One of the strongest images I carry from Batumi is exactly that mix. The modern Marriott there, and in front of it this older, almost absurd piece of Soviet visual culture. The whole place felt like that. New money, old ghosts.
Stalin country
Then Gori. Or rather near Gori. Stalin country.
That mattered to me even if it did not really matter to the others. I am the one in this group with the real affinity for the Soviet world. I know the history reasonably well, and I would have loved to visit the Stalin museum there, but it did not happen this time.
Instead we stopped at a modern road station nearby and ate huge shawarmas. I was hungry. Tired too. And all the while aware that one of history’s great killers came from just there, from those green hills and those ordinary provincial streets.
There was something unreal about that. No grand memorial moment. No historical ceremony. Just shawarma, traffic and a Saturday afternoon.
Maybe that made it stronger. History sitting there in plain sight without announcing itself.
Evelina in Tbilisi
By the time we got to Tbilisi, I needed time on my own. That is one of the strange things with trips like this. I love the group. Truly. But after enough hours in the car, enough meals together, enough talk, I need to get out and walk alone.
So I did.
And that changed everything, as it often does. In a convoy you travel in a bubble. In a city alone you become open again. You meet people. You hear things. You notice more.
On my way up towards the Mother of Georgia statue I saw a young woman sitting outside a cafe. Her job was to get people to stop and come in for tea. I noticed her from a distance because she looked vulnerable and strong at the same time. We spoke briefly and I told her I might stop on the way back.
I did.
Her name was Evelina. We started talking almost immediately about deep emotions, the kind of conversation that begins without any small talk at all. Later she said she wanted to talk more, so we met again that evening for a drink at the hotel bar. She was young, an artist, and full of deep thoughts about life. One of those people you meet for a very short time and still remember.
Walking back later I thought, yes, this is still why I travel. Not to get somewhere. But because a person you had never heard of two hours earlier can suddenly make a place feel real.
Baku without the cars
We knew from the beginning that the cars would not continue into Azerbaijan this time. That was simply part of this leg. I am not a driver, so for me it was easier to accept than it probably was for Jeff and Steve. Jeff’s journey is the spine of the whole thing, and I was just very happy to be part of it.
Still, arriving in Baku without the convoy felt strange. As if part of the journey was missing.
Baku is stunning if you want it to be. Immaculate. Controlled. Enormous buildings. Lights along the waterfront. Steve was extremely impressed and I understood why. He likes this kind of modernity.
But I had been there before with Sophie, and both of us know enough about Azerbaijan to understand what sits behind the surface. A place where control is everywhere has a texture of its own. This time what made it physical were the cameras. They were everywhere. On every street corner. Looking down on you all the time. Everything shines, but you know exactly how little room there is to get anything wrong.
Still, I enjoyed parts of it enormously. Me and Doug had a late evening walk through the old town after cigars and good drink, and it was wonderful. Warm, beautiful, easy. But even then I kept thinking that this is a country where the wrong sentence in the wrong place can cost people everything.
What it still gives
So what does this leg say to me?
Maybe simply this.
The world is more closed than it used to be. We are older than we used to be. And none of that has made the road matter less.
Borders are tighter. Countries more watchful. Some of us had health concerns. All of us carry more history in our bodies now than we once did. Age is part of the story. Health is part of the story. Time is definitely part of the story.
But friendship still pulls us onto the road. Curiosity still does. And coming back to a group of people who understand you, even for seven days, is not a small thing. It might be everything.
When the talk runs out and you are staring at a Black Sea horizon thinking about a war you cannot stop, about daughters growing up in a world getting harder to read, about a relationship that ended quietly back home in Malmö, the road does not give you answers.
It gives you motion. It gives you perspective. It gives you life moving again. And sometimes that is enough.
Other essays from Defender X: