Turkey - Return to Istanbul - Day 371(26,660 miles)

After 32 days and just over 3000 miles (4800 km) we arrived back in Istanbul, neither of us expected to cover so much ground but Turkey is a big old country and there is still alot for us to come back and explore another time.

Adil our friend from the motorbike club had offerred to meet us on the outskirts of the city but as we had a GPS record from our previous visit we thought we'd be OK. We did enter the city via the Bosphorus Bridge which was important to put us in the right part of the city, but unfortunately due to a case of 'premature exiting' we ended up in the thick of the city rather than continuing around the ring road. It was Friday afternoon, notoriously bad in most cities but with a few illegal u-turns and use of pavements we were back on the right road without losing too much time. We arrived hot, a little harrassed but very glad to be back at the club.

A welcome back cake from the club members, suitably served on top of a map of Turkey!

Metmin, Tatiana and Yasmin and a selection of biscuits (to go with the cake!)

The main priorities for the next couple of days were to give the Tenere a good clean, fit new tyres and service the engine. We were lucky enough to have the use of Apo's workshop (you may remember him as the cook of the fantastic chicken we ate during our last visit). As you can see from his well loaded KTM above, Apo and some friends were off camping after helping John.

Come Sunday I left John to relax at the club's apartment and went into the old city for a bit more sightseeing that I hadn't fitted in last time.


Above is the Hagia/Agia/Aya (it seems to be known as any of these) Sofia museum. There has been a church on this sight since 363 AD, this building was completed in 537 AD and has been a Greek church, Roman Catholic church and Mosque during the centuries since finally becoming a museum in 1935. A very impressive structure and huge space.


A joy to visit on a hot day is the Basilica Cistern, an underground chamber of nearly 10,000 square metres. Apparently there are hundreds of cisterns under the city that used to supply filtered water. Today it's a huge, grand fish pond with beautiful columns and ceilings where tourists go to cool off.

During both our visits here we have spent most evenings in the neighbourhood local to the club as this is much cheaper than the city centre. We had become regulars at one particular restaurant that served good food and often sat on the front balcony people watching.

We always felt perfectly safe in this area and many of the club members were local people so we weren't so much worried as intrigued when for 3 nights there were swarms of riot police, water canons and armoured vehicles patrolling the local streets.


We saw no actual protests or riots but we did hear there had been an anti-government protest a short distance away. No news seemed to make it to the internet and we didn't find any english written newspapers in Turkey. However since then the 4 highest officials in the Turkish armed forces have resigned as well supposedly due to disagreements with the government, no idea if there is a link.

We had a great time in Turkey, the history is amazing and the people incredibly friendly. Once again a huge thankyou to all the wonderful people we met at the Istanbul Bisiklet Motosiklet Ihtisas Klubu we have made many special friends who we hope to see again.

Turkey - The Black Sea Coast -Day 367 (26,356 Miles)

Our route back west to Istanbul saw us stick mainly to the Black Sea coast with a couple of detours inland, this coastline gets few foreign visitors as most favour the Med and Aegean. We did know that it's popular with Turks especially from Ankara and Istanbul and as it was July and therefore the school holidays it was rather silly of us to be surprised at how busy and how expensive it was! We had a couple of spare days that we planned to use to extend a stay and have a little seaside mini-break if we got to somewhere on the coast that we really liked but to be honest there wasn't anywhere that we liked enough and could afford. If we had been there at a quieter, cooler time of year I think we would have appreciated it alot more and probably explored more of the villages.

An early morning paddle before getting into the riding gear.

Our first inland stop was the very pretty town of Amasya, lots of historic tombs, mosques and Ottoman houses. We stayed at a pension in one of these houses with a balcony over the river.







A fuel and chay stop that turned into a bit of a party.

As did the next lunch and chay stop! I don't think we've mentioned that most fuel stations give you free chay when you stop to fill up and although we usually just have one glass each you get the impression they would happily let you sit there all day drinking free tea. We weren't allowed to pay at our lunch stop on this day either and left with the local policeman and another gentleman's mail addresses and phone numbers and an invitation to dinner had we been stopping there longer.

These stork's nests are a regular site along the roads in Turkey, they're huge.

Day 365, yes that's right 1 year on the road! Should we mark the occasion with Champagne or lobster? No way on our budget, instead we chose a celebratory salad! This magnificent creation looked like it should have had a sparkler on top.

So how does a year of travelling feel for us? Well at this moment in time we would have to say we're both a bit tired and John is suffering with pains in his arms that we are assuming may be something to do with the amount of time on the bike or his riding position. But, we have and hopefully will continue to love the journey, visiting new places and meeting new people.


Another inland town we visited that we liked enough to stay an extra day was Safranbolu, a maze of cobbled streets and historical buildings.






These ladies were handmaking little turkish ravioli (I meant to make a note of the name and forgot). Each are filled with a tiny amount of minced mutton, cooked and served with garlicky yoghurt. This was John's dinner choice that night.

This was an old caravansara (roadside inn) these were found along the ancient trade routes across the middle east, this one is now a fancy hotel that we couldn't afford to stay in but treated ourselves to chay and baklava at the end of an evening to get a look around the place.

While travelling through some particularly dusty roadworks we crossed paths with Maciek who is on a route south and east from Poland for a while. He is travelling on a tight budget and pretty self sufficient so quickly whipped out a stove and pot and we pooled resources to have tea and biscuits at the side of the road, how civilised. He is riding a new Yamaha XT660R which was given to him by a dealer in Poland (very generous). We wish him a safe and enjoyable adventure. As those of you who know John well will understand Maciek's method of packing brought him out in a cold sweat!

You may be able to see a cloud of dust behind the guys in the above photo, the absolutely huge roadwork programme currently underway in Turkey means tons of rock are constantly being excavated from the rock faces. It it not uncommon for these works to cause landslides and we saw a few boulders bouncing across this and other roads on our travels (never had the camera ready unfortunately!)


A beautiful little bay but it was the middle of the day and too hot to stop!

Turkey - Fleeces in July - Day 358 (25,894 Miles)

Our last stop in Eastern Anatolia before heading NE was to see the statues on Mount Nemrut. We stayed in Malatya a town to the north and looking at the map it appeared we could do an easy day trip on smallish roads. Malatya sits at just under 1000 metres above sea level and the statues were a further 1000 metres up so we expected a fairly scenic ride. The staff at our hotel were really helpful so we thought we'd just check on the condition of the roads we planned to take. After some deliberating the lady that spoke the best English delivered the verdict. "The roads are bad, very steep, big drops, oh my God you should not go that way!" The only alternative was a 4 hour trip each way that stuck to large roads but was several hundred Km more than we wanted to cover. As it turned out a guy with a Harley in the shop next door to the hotel said we'd be fine on the shorter direct route. The hotel receptionist had most definitely never travelled in Nepal!




It was a pretty ride, we took some film footage to show our hotel receptionist, she rolled her eyes and said "You are mad!"

These statues are thought to date back to 1st century BC.

We arrived around noon so bad timing in regard to the sun, it was well up in the 30 c's but a good time as most tourists go for sunrise or sunset so we had the place to ourselves.



The next day we road north east through some lovely scenery, Zeki from the Istanbul bike club had told us about an ancient stone road in the mountains. He had marked it on our map but we really should have asked more questions like "What will it be called in Turkish?"we rode around getting very hot and having no real idea what we were looking for. Oh well, if we get back here some other time we'll try again.


Hot and a bit lost, with not much in the way of shade! We left the bike here and ate some fruit under some very spindly poplar trees on the other side of the road. Like most people we have met on our travels in rural areas the Turkish drivers will always stop to check you are OK and as we were hidden in a bit of a ditch it looked like the bike had been abandoned. Everytime we heard an engine stop or slow we had to pop up out of the ditch and give them a smile and thumbs up, it must have looked like we were using the ditch for a bit of a 'comfort break'.

People we had met when travelling through Anatolia had warned us that as soon as you cross the mountain range between Anatolia and the Black Sea region it would be grey, wet and cold. It had been so hot and dry that we found it hard to believe, well, unsurprisingly they were right and we were wrong!

In addition to the change in the weather we were also shocked by the difference in accommodation and food prices in this region. We had underestimated the cost of fuel when anticipating what we'd spend in Turkey as a whole and if our first pension and meal experience here where anything to go by we'd be joining Greece, Spain,Portugal, Ireland and apparently Italy in economic deficit land.



Above is the Sumela monastery built at around 1200 metres altitude, as you could drive virtually all the way up we enjoyed seeing it. Had there been a need to tramp up a big hill we may have given it a miss as we are both feeling a bit travel weary at the moment.

Our most easterly stop was a small alpine village called Ayder a pretty resort on the edge of the Kacker mountains around 100km from the border with Georgia. It was just what we needed, a really chilled out place (in more ways than one, we did actually need to put our fleeces on).

It may have been chilly and damp but the Turkish holidaymakers always seem keen to get outdoors to picnic and play games.

The local ladies still wear very traditional clothing and alot of knitting goes on (not surprising considering the temperatures, they need those woolly socks).

We stopped at this mobile cay (tea) cafe and chatted to the owner who was very knowledgeable about the architecture in the local area. It wasn't too long before a family had arrived and set out a picnic close by. Well actually the women set out the picnic while the men came over to drink cay and play backgammon! They were lovely people and we left having been well fed by the ladies on lovely Turkish cheese and chilli scones (not sure what they were actually called).

Our first stop on the Black Sea coast was the town of Trabzon, it's pretty big (pop. around 230,000) and consequently we spent a tense 30 mins finding our hotel of choice. John always tells me he hates towns and why are we here and I always say we should stop and ask directions sooner than we do! Chances are we'll still be following this routine another 20 years into our relationship.

This is Ataturk Kosku, a villa built for a Greek merchant in 1890 and given to Ataturk (1st President of the Republic of Turkey). Nice little place, we both wouldn't mind living here.

This is Damien from France who left Paris in April and is on schedule to arrive at Vladivostok in October, this rather unusual bicycle being his main form of transport.


We stopped at a small town called Espiye to meet Yusuf a member of the Istanbul motorcycle club and enjoyed a couple of hours chatting with him and his nephew Ederm. The guys showed us around their town and took us up to a viewpoint that looked over the town and the Black Sea.



The Turkish government are keen to increase the number of professors within their higher education system so are currently funding 1000 post graduate students per year to study at Masters and PhD level in the UK, US, Germany and some other countries. The payback is that the students have to return to Turkey and work for twice the number of years they spent studying abroad to clear their debt to the government. Ederm is about to leave Turkey and will be studying in the US for the next few years as part of this scheme.

Turkey - Captivated by Cappadocia - Day 347(24,734 miles)

Around 18 years ago John and I spent a couple of weeks in Turkey based on the Aegean coast, although it was meant to be a relaxing time we quickly filled it with a few days on a boat and trips to Ephesus and Pamukkale. It was on this trip that we first saw pictures of Cappadocia, we both wanted to visit then but just didn’t have the time, still 18 years on we made it here.

We loved it and thought it was absolutely beautiful hence there are rather a lot of photo's this time. It's quite a big area so we based ourselves in Goreme a nice little place with plenty of pensions and places to eat.

This is one of THE places in the world to take a balloon flight, we couldn't justify the cost (we had rather underestimated our budget for Turkey) but at 6am each morning our pension roof terrace was a great place to watch the take offs.













The trogladyte dwellings and churches in the region date back to the Hittite period (quite a while BC).



We met up with Harry again (mentioned in our last blog) and had a great evening with him and Hitome from Japan who was on a bit of a whirlwind tour of the major sites of Turkey.


Alot of what we saw was on foot from Goreme but we did a 200km round trip one day to visit some other sites.




Above and below is Selime monastry, location for some of the Star Wars film that Ewan Mc was in (not sure if he's been in more than one).









John unable to relax with a book or music and on an economy drive decided to fix his broken umbrella (well it did cost about 2 quid in Bangkok). He spent ages whittling (I think that's the right word) a piece of wood into a suitably sized splint for the broken spoke. Oh the excitement of world travel.

We spent a day hiking in the Rose and Red Valleys, stunning views.





Flippin hot and a bit of a climb.








After a long day walking we felt we could justify a nice dinner and some local wine (not bad stuff).



Leaving Paradise Pension in Goreme, 2nd from the left is Diane an independent traveller from Canada who is exploring Greece and Turkey. Some great conversations with Diane and the warmth and helpfulness of Erdo and the staff here made it hard to drag ourselves away.

Bye for now.