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...................

Turkey - Old Ruins - Day 336 (24,008 Miles)

No, the title isn't a reference to the condition of us this far into the trip! As we headed east from Istanbul the places we planned to visit that week were mainly ancient ruins.

So, now it was going to be a very different pace of travelling, Turkey is 783,562 km2 compared to Nepal at 147,181 km2 (yes of course this is courtesy of Wikipedia and we cannot take responsibility for accuracy!) However we do know that in 4 days travelling here we had covered more Km's than during a month in Nepal. Me, I have say I preferred the Nepalese pace, slow, winding roads that gave me a chance to take in the scenery and get some decent photo's. Still, with so many interesting places that we hoped to visit in Turkey this was how it would have to be.

Late afternoon on our first day we arrived on the Gallipoli peninsular, a peaceful area of countryside and Aegean Sea coast line. It is a stunning backdrop for the war cemeteries and memorials which have made it famous. There are many cemeteries and you could easily spend several days visiting them all but we just spent a few hours wandering and sitting. John poignantly commented how sad it was to think of those soldiers who only got to experience the sights, sounds and smells of combat before dying here. For those that lived through the experience it must been hard if not impossible to appreciate the natural beauty considering the situation they were in.





A short ferry ride across the Dardanelles Straits.

A pretty easy picture clue we think but unfortunately no prizes for a correct answer (we're unemployed don't forget).

Yes, that's right our first ancient ruin was the city of Troia (Troy), various parts of which have been excavated since the 1860's when a wealthy German archeaologist began the work. Ok, that's enough I am not going to quote anymore facts about Troy or probably any other archeaological sites we visit, there's just too much history. If you're interested you can read up (even if it's just Wikipedia!).


We left Troy around midday and wanted to cover another 280 km to reach Bergama that day. The roads were flat, pretty straight and in good condition, good news then you may think. Well it was until John saw the white car with the blue flashing light and the man in uniform waving him onto the hardshoulder! According to the Officer of the Law we were travelling at 108 kph, he had no radar gun to prove this (that was back further down the road apparently). This equates to 67 mph, well I know when John is going this fast without looking at the speedo as it's noisy, vibraty and not very comfortable and it didn't feel like that, John thinks he was going more like 100 kph but the bottom line is anything over 99 is a speeding fine. It was all rather strange, we have been told since by a Turkish guy that the ticket will be linked to John's passport number and we will have to pay at the border but he didn't ask for John's passport! All that is on the ticket is his name, Reg and UK, no full address. To add insult to injury the policeman gave John two sugar cubes as a parting gift (or sweetener!)

Maybe we'll pay or maybe we'll 'forget to'. To be fair we certainly can't say we weren't warned, Matt and Anita were in the same position a couple of months ago and the guys at the Istanbul motorbike club told us to be careful.


Bergama (ancient name Pergamon), is a pretty town that markets itself as "The Cradle of Civilizations". We found a lovely guesthouse that we liked so much our 2 night planned stay turned into 3.

The Asklepieum.





The Temple of Trajan.

The Theatre.



The Temple of Serapis (The Red Courtyard).


The Temple of Serapis (The Red Courtyard) from the hill above.

To get up to this point it's a long hot walk, a 8 TLR cable car ride (our budget is too tight for this) or as we chose to do ride the bike. Asking directions brought to our attention how different the attitude to safety is here than in the countries we have spent the last 6 months. When asking directions I was told "you must be very careful on the motorbike it is a very steep road" the reality, a Nepalese family of 5 on a 125cc in shorts and flipflops carrying a sack of rice and a live goat would have been up this incline in seconds and it was no problem for us either.





We're on the 'Cat' diet at the moment, most evenings any fish or meat in our meals is portion controlled by sharing with the local cats.


There was a festival going on while we were in Bergama the evenings were lively with lots to see, everything from tractor exhibitions to a calypso band (ooh aren't you jealous).

This blog entry is dedicated to Coop (well there is a little bit more about the bike this time!)

Turkey - Istanbul Part 1(we'll be back here in a month!) - Day 332 (23,548 miles)

Matt and Anita had shipped their bike into Istanbul a couple of months before us and had received a warm welcome and much help from the members of the Istanbul Bisiklet ve Motorsiklet Ihtisas Klubu. We made contact with club member Zeki before we left Nepal and headed for their club headquarters when we arrived.

They have a great set up, an area downstairs for chatting, drinking tea (an important pastime here), eating biscuits, looking at bikes, working on bikes, planning the events they take part in and an upstairs apartment for passing travellers to stay in.

From right to left Zeki, Adil, Ismail, Mehmet and a young lady who's name we didn't get.

On the right here is Jake a New Yorker who is spending his college summer holidays touring eastern Europe. He had been staying at the club and showed us round the neighbourhood on our first night taking us to a good cheap restaurant and baklava shop before heading off the next day on the remainder of his journey.

Adil holds the approved customs release form at Istanbul airport. This was our most difficult import yet (worse than Delhi), without a Turkish speaker or alternatively paying for an import agent it would have been impossible. You must have proof of police clearance for the rider and 3rd party insurance before you can even start the clearance process. In our case this was complicated by the fact that our bike reg number contains an X and there is no X or W in the Turkish alphabet, therefore none of the usual insurers would insure us!. To solve this Adil took a 90km round trip to the Turkish Automobile Association office who were able to arrange the necessary cover.

The complete process took 2 days and that was with Adil knowing the system inside out.

Our first sightseeing stop was the Kapali Carsi (Grand Bazaar) some of the building is 15th century and it holds 4,500 shops. It was torture! We wanted to see it but leaving without buying a carpet or lovely glass light fitting was so hard (well for me!)

The carpet sellers were on fine form

Them "Please, please come look, no charge for looking"
Us "No thank you, we are travelling on a motorbike, we cannot carry"
Them "No problem, we can ship, very good price"
Us "Turkish carpets are lovely but we already have some"
Them "Come I show you the best in Istanbul"
Us "We have no jobs, no money!"
Them "This is an investment,I do very,very, very good price"

At this point John would start talking about wool on wool, wool on silk and knots per inch to let them know we knew something about how to tell the quality of a carpet and wouldn't be lulled into buying that cheap tatty old one that had been in the shop for years!

Note the seated man having his blood pressure taken, perhaps his wife is a bit of a shopper like me.



I so wanted one of these.

Next stop was the Spice Bazaar if we couldn't buy anything to carry home at least we could indulge in lovely dried fruit, nuts and Turkish Delight while here!











After a couple of hours walking round the beautiful Topkapi Palace John hits the point of sightseeing saturation! He's probably wondering how long before I'll notice if he makes a run for it.

We take a break for dinner and a couple of beers before visiting the famous Blue Mosque......









I forgot to take my scarf so had to don one of the small sheets given out for head covering at many mosques and temples. Although this is an Islamic rather than a Christian place of worship I did feel like I was dressed to utter that well known Monty Python line "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy."

On Sunday we joined some of the club members for a picnic in a forest outside of the city. John helped with some on the spot petrol tank repairs before lunch.



Chef for the day was Apo, old olive tins were turned into ovens and in 50 mins he produced the best chicken and vegatables we had ever tasted.








Great company, food and chay turkish tea made in a traditional pot. We had a great day.



We took a boat trip on the Bosphorus the stretch of water between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, it's a great way to get a view of lots of the spectacular buildings in the Old City of Istanbul.










After a week in the city we packed up the bike and head west to the Gallipoli Peninsular.


Ismail and Adil lead us out of the city and pointed us in the right direction. We'll see them again in around 4 weeks time as we head back to Istanbul then to fit new tyres before we leave Turkey.