Where a phone can live while you are riding
Plan as if there is nowhere on the machine to put anything — no glovebox, no dry compartment you can count on. Whatever comes with you rides on your body, and your body is being shaken by uneven ground for however long the ride you booked lasts. That is the whole design problem, and it is why the answer to can I bring my phone is yes, with conditions.
A front trouser pocket is where most phones start the day and it is the most common way one ends up in the dirt. You lean forward over the bars, you stand on the footrests when the ground turns rough, the seat pushes the fabric across your leg, and a flat smooth object slides. You will not hear it land: there are engines behind you, dust around you, and nobody in the group is watching the ground.
What works is dull. Something that closes over the phone rather than merely around it, worn where you cannot forget about it.
- A pocket with a real zip, on the front of your body. A cargo pocket with a flap is not closed.
- A small pouch on a short cord, worn under your top so it cannot swing into the handlebars.
- Put away before the engine starts, not after the first bump has reminded you.
- Nothing in your hand. A hand holding a phone is a hand not holding the machine.
Dust, grit and the parts of a phone that mind them
The riding is on natural land in the Aspendos area, around the Köprüçay river: dry ruts, forest tracks and river sections. Dry ground plus open machines makes fine dust, and fine dust is the awkward enemy for a phone. It does no harm to a screen. It collects in the charging port, the speaker grille, the seam between case and body, and the ring around the camera glass.
The expensive mistake is wiping. A dusty lens polished with a dusty t-shirt is a lens polished with grit, and those hairline scratches are permanent — they are in every photograph you take for the rest of the holiday, and in every photograph you take after the holiday too. Blow the dust off first, then use a clean microfibre cloth that has spent the morning sealed in a bag waiting for exactly this.
Two more small habits. Do not push a charging cable into a port that has been out in the dust since breakfast: the connector tamps the grit deeper, and one day the cable stops seating properly. And do not leave the phone lying in full sun on a seat while the group is stopped — a hot phone gives up on video first, usually about a second into the shot you wanted.
A zip bag is the cheapest insurance you will buy all holiday
The best piece of kit for a phone on this day costs roughly what a bottle of water costs: a freezer bag with a zip along the top. The touchscreen works through the plastic, the camera shoots through it well enough for a picture taken at a standstill, and the bag keeps out everything a dry track throws up — plus most of a splash off the shallow river sections, which turn up where conditions allow rather than to order.
Press the air out before you seal it so it lies flat in a pocket instead of ballooning. Two bags are better than one. Take it seriously enough to bring it from home or buy it in the supermarket by your hotel, and not so seriously that you treat it as a rated waterproof case: it protects against dust and splash, never against the ground.
If you would rather spend a little, a proper sealed pouch with a window and a lanyard does the same job more tidily. What else belongs in the bag is the packing list guide's territory, and it covers the whole bag rather than just the electronics — this page is only about the things with batteries in them.
Filming while riding: no, and here is the reason
Every driver takes a compulsory test ride before the tour, and passing it is what decides who drives. The test exists because the machine is new to you, and a machine that is new to you wants both hands and both eyes. A phone takes one of each.
The ground is the real argument. Off-road trails change under the wheels without announcing it — a rut, a stone, a soft edge on a bend — and the correction you make is a two-handed movement. One hand on the bars with the other one holding a screen out sideways is how an ordinary afternoon turns into the version of the story nobody wants to tell. It is also how devices disappear: a phone dropped on a forest track, in dust, with a line of machines coming through, is very often a phone that stays there.
It is not a job for the person riding along either. Whoever comes along as a passenger pays half the driver's price, joins as a full participant, and has exactly one task on the machine, which is to hold on with both hands. A passenger who is filming is a passenger holding on with one.
The moments that are actually worth shooting
Almost every good picture from this day is taken standing still, and there are more of those moments than people expect before they go.
There are two sessions a day, a morning one and an afternoon one, and they do not photograph the same, for the plain reason that they run at opposite ends of the day and the sun is nowhere near the same place in each. Which one flatters your pictures depends on the day you happen to go, so we would rather not talk you into either — the guide comparing the two sessions handles the rest of that decision.
- At the base before you set off: machines in a row, helmets on, everybody still clean.
- After the test ride, once your group has worked out who is driving what.
- Whenever the group is halted and the engines are off. This is not a sightseeing run built around photo stops, but standing still is the only state in which a phone belongs in a hand out there.
- At the rest stop, where there is time to do it properly. Drinks and snacks there are not included in the price, so carry some cash.
- At the end, before anyone cleans up. The photograph that actually gets sent home is the dusty one taken at the finish.
What we do not provide, said plainly
We do not run a photo or video service. There is no photographer riding with the group and no gallery to buy afterwards, which is the whole reason this page exists — every image of your day comes out of your own group's pockets.
Nothing in what comes with the ride is a camera mount, so do not plan a shot that depends on one, and do not attach anything to a helmet without asking your guide on the day. There is no hand-in desk in this story either: we publish no storage arrangement at the base, so a phone that travels to the base travels onto the machine as well, in your own pocket, for the whole of the ride. That is the decision this page is really about — carry it or leave it in the room. What happens to the rest of your bag is the packing guide's question, not this one.
The insurance that comes with the tour is liability cover for the activity, not a policy on your electronics. Round-trip hotel transfer, your guide, insurance and a helmet are what the price covers; the phone is yours and it travels at your own risk. If you would rather not make that decision at all, leave it in the room and appoint one person in the group as the camera.