Turkey - East to Egirdir and Konya - Day 342 (24,494 miles)

CORRECTION ANNOUNCEMENT - It is with great regret that we confirm an error in the previous blog. It was stated that we left Istanbul and travelled east, well that's rubbish we travelled west ( but now we really are going east!). Unlike the News of the World we do not consider this a grave error and therefore this will NOT be our last publication, so sorry you have to keep reading for a while longer yet.


A fabulously colourful and tasty breakfast.

Stopping in a village to check our map, the older gentleman was keen to help us find the right road and the younger one wanted to check out how he looked in my sunglasses.

We stopped at Egirdir, a small town on a lake of the same name (the 4th largest lake in Turkey). The town itself was pleasant enough but on a small peninsula that juts into the lake we found a fab Pension and spent 3 days, staring at the lake, eating, drinking and wandering around.

John swimming in his thermals to protect him from the sun although the water was a bit chilly.


As we left Egirdir we planned to travel east (yes I do mean east) for around 3oo km to Konya which is a large city in central Anatolia. We approached the city from higher ground and both of us were rather disappointed by the enormous sprawl that covered the valley. We did know that it had a population of 1 million plus so really shouldn't have been surprised by the size but the thought of finding a hotel late in the afternoon in big cities is never the most appealing prospect.

Anyway, we decided to stick to the plan and find the hotel that had been recommended to us, luckily this was a pretty quick exercise and we settled into the nice little hotel and felt a lot better.


While tucking the Tenere up for the night John came across the rather unusual machine above, it's a Royal Enfield Bullet (made in India) that has been fitted with a Chinese engine and runs on either vegetable oil or diesel. We met the owner Harry, he is a Brit recently embarked on a 2 year RTW trip. We spent a great evening with him swapping stories and information.



Harry setting off the next day.

Again, we don't want to make this history overload but Konya is famous as the home of the Mevlevi order (otherwise known as the Whirling Dervishes) the whirling is part of a ceremony known as Sama. This order was started in the 13th century by a Persian poet sometimes called Rumi and sometimes Mevlana.

The buildings now form the Mevlana Museum and is a place of pilgrimage for Muslims, there is some beautiful architecture.





As an important centre for Islamic religion finding an alcoholic drink in Konya is a challenge, the fancier hotels may have had bars but we couldn't afford to pay inflated prices. We trawled the streets looking for a local bar or shop selling beer but no luck. I caught John looking longingly at these bottles of Methylated Spirit. We both agreed it was time to leave town...................