Caspian Chaos, Shitbox Stress Test

Fourteen nights to the Caucasus and back, self-guided, eleven thousand kilometres through Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Eleven thousand kilometres in a fortnight is a serious distance in anything, and these events are run in cars bought for very little. That tension is the whole character of the thing.

The route runs east across Turkey into Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, then back to Europe, and the organisers are clear about what the surfaces involve: gravel, off-road sections, river crossings and the unavoidable stretches of motorway. The Caucasus is the draw, and rightly so. The mountain roads between Georgia and Armenia are among the most dramatic in the region and see very few visitors, and the return leg can be shortened by taking the Black Sea ferry from Georgia to Bulgaria rather than retracing the whole way. A Georgian feast is included, which in that country means rather more than a dinner.

All the accommodation is included and varies from small hotels to mountain cabins to campsites, so camping gear is required rather than optional. The full route comes in a roadbook with GPS files or QR codes once registered, along with a communications device for the event, stickers and, as the organisers put it, other idiots in cars like yours. The price shown should be checked against the live page, which quotes a team fee of €990 for two, €600 solo and €450 for each additional passenger. Mid-September is the departure, which is the right month for both Turkey and the Caucasus.