Turkey

Merhaba!

Well another 20 minute border crossing which is great, overall very organised and friendly, we give 10/10 to Turkey! The roads here are another step up, all motorways and fancy dual carriageways which we are not used to, so we decide to keep driving and try and get to a campsite marked on our map in Istanbul...We had been on the road a long time aleady, and we eventually arrived at Istanbul around 9 in the evening. Then began the process of finding the campsite which was just not apparent anywhere, and no matter what we did we couldn't find it. So at around 11 o'clock after driving up and down the streets of the suburb of Birkakoy, Istanbul, we pulled up on a bit of wasteland behind a derelict fuel station near to what looked like a "homeless glow" and went to sleep in a bit of a grump. The following morning we realised that the "homeless glow" was infact a geese coup, and we were sort of by a park by the sea. There were a couple of police cars down the other end, but they just seemed to be hanging out with some other guys having breakfast. We had breakfast ourselves - fried eggs, mmmm, cleared up and pulled away, but the police saw us and pulled us over. We anxiously said: "oh great, what's going to happen now", but when we pulled up to him he said, "Yes yes! You come in I make you Turkish food! Speciallity!!". We said that was very nice of him, and tried to explain that we were trying to find the camping ground, and he shot off to make some loud phone calls then ushered us around the corner to a guy who was a mobile mechanic and was fixing someone's tyre, but he spoke a bit of English. He said to us, "Istanbul campsite; closed 10 years ago, Atakoy campsite; closed 2 years ago, Birkakoy campsite; closed 5 years ago, but there is one place, they have water.. and parking security...100 meters that way!". Off we trundle, and literally 100 meters further down the road, we come to a gate through which there was a completely derelict, overgrown and as good as bombed lodge chalet place, with a man who said " yes yes, camping no problem, security no problem" and took us down the lanes of this once-was resort to a place where there were about 4 other motor homes parked on a large flat patch of concrete with vegetation sprouting from every crack. He showed us the bathroom which was the broken in door of the nearest chalet which had a...toilet...and a sink with a plastic bowl that you had to fill up to flush the loo as the flush didn't work. "Well we've found the campsite" we said, and realised that at this point we were literally over one wall from the place were we had kipped the night before!!

So we handwashed some clothes and got them up on a line, then headed into town with a chatty taxi driver in a battered old Dacia. We've been excitedly monitoring the "old banger of choice" in each country we have been through, as I (Simon) think that you would all be interested to know that in Czech Rep and Slovakia it's the Skoda 130, in Poland it's the Fiat 500, in Ukraine and Moldova it's the Soviet Lada, and in Romania and Bulgaria it's the Dacia 1310. I wish I'd managed to get photos of the 'pimped' up versions of these classics!

Now Istanbul is a city of 20 million, it is huge, and pretty mind blowing. The history is incredible as the city has been the capital of the eastern Roman Empire, and of the Ottoman empire, and was one of the most glorious cities in the world between around 500-1500AD. Many of the old buildings from this era remain, and we saw the immense Topkapi Palace and its luxurious Harem, which along with its grounds take up a very large proportion of the central area of Istanbul. We saw the Blue Mosque, which makes you dizzy looking up at the cieling due to the size of the space, and detail of the tiling. We didn't bother going to see Aya Sofya which was a church built in 537AD, then converted into a mosque in the 15th Century, then made a museum in the 1930's. It is meant to be one of the worlds most glorious buildings. I think we were a bit glorioused out by that point!

We had overpriced kebaps for lunch, and went for a walk which found us in the Grand Bazaar which is like a mini city in itself. It's all inside an old building but has countless narrow streets, containing some 4000 shops. You can get really amazing (very expensive) rugs, jewellery, clothes, well everything really, and you just have fun haggling your way through it. Rhona learnt the word for "how much" in Turkish, but didn't realise that saying it would invoke a response in Turkish, which we of course didn't understand so had to ask again in English! That's the point when they probably double the price!

We decided to walk back to our campsite from town as it was all along the seafront through parks and promenades and looked quite pleasant. Quite a big thing in parks here is to have an outdoor gym, which is where you expect to see swings and round'a'bouts, you would infact get all these excercise machines, so you could watch mainly ladies in burkas doing all sorts of squats and thrusts! we thought it was amazing that the machines weren't vandalised as they would be in Britain. Another big thing here is fishing, and fishermen line the coast casting their rods. Another big big thing is Istanbul, and it took us 2 1/2 hours to walk home, so another late night for us.

The next morning we were very late heading off towards the east of Turkey. We caught up with our blog entries, sorted some things out around the van and were entertained by a lovely German family who were also using the 'parking site'. We had problems with the water supply! Big problems, which meant that the toilets which were pretty bad anyway were filling up with all sorts of nasties!! We also had a very full porta-loo to empty somehow and with no running water, that was starting to look to bad to be true! - However a few hours later some workers managed to resume the water supply, which helped a little bit but still pretty dire I would say!! But that said we headed off happily at about midday, hoping to get close to Ankara that evening. We arrived at a place called KIzIlcahamam, which was marked on the map as a "Thermal Resort" and a "place of special tourist interest", which we thought would be an ideal place to spend a night. There was also a campsite marked there. We thought it might be some kind of hot springs or something - cool. Alas, it was beginging to become apparent that our days of campsites with all the utilities we needed were probably over! After searching once again for the campsite marked on our map, we again ended up wild camping! So again no shower, we were very smelly but in a beautiful spot high up in the Turkish hills. Rhona was hoping that her hair would start cleaning itself as is apparently meant to happen..hmm... Perhaps a nice cheap hotel would have to be the next stop! And a nice Hotel was the next stop in the city of Sivas after another long drive the next day! We watched the scenery change countless times, from the beautiful forested hilly terrain, to the more barren and rocky, red soil/dust to white! Turkey is amazingly vast with long distances between large busy cities. Outside the cities the roads, (a lot of which is dual carriagway) that we have been travelling on, have been almost deserted.

The 'cheap hotel' part of the plan once again didn't quite work out. It wasn't incredibly expensive but was about £30 rather than the £10 which we were hoping for and fitted in with our budget! We keep reading about cheap hotels but never seem to be able to find them. Never mind it was extremely nice and we and all our clothes ended up sqeaky clean. We tried out the Turkish cuisine again which is extremely bread based but very tasty. For lunch it was a 'Simit' which is a ring of quite heavy bread covered in seaseme seeds..lovely.. and then of course kebaps for dinner...yummy!

The further you drive east in Turkey, the scenery becomes more and more dramatic, and as we continued on past Sivas, the mountains all around were beginning to be snowcapped, then just white with jagged rocky outcrops. The gorges became deeper, the cliff faces sheerer, and the rivers more turbulent. The van had to cope with a lot of strenuous driving, as we climbed mountain pass after mountain pass before twisting back down to the valleys on the other side. At the tops of the passes at around 2200 meters, the temperature would drop as low as 4 deg, and in the valleys (no lower than 1600m) it was never more than 15 deg. The scenery has been so stunning, and we know that our little camera just isn't up to representing the sheer vastness and beauty of what we have seen. Still, I think that those images will be with us forever. I don't know if it was the constant steep hills, or some poor quality diesel, but our van seems to be belching out thick black smoke now. Hmm, well all the other vans and lorries do so it can't be that bad; maybe we'll blend in a bit more? We got just past Erzurum that night before pulling over. We worked out that we are just about 300 miles from Iraq at this point, but that's ok. There are also quite a lot of army vehicles around which is quite worrying. We're alright here, but apparently a bit further south-east, the empty mountain terrain is used for hideouts by terrorists, so we won't go there!

Turkey has been our favorite country so far, although it seems that each country that we go to is better than the last! It would be really great to have a lot more time here, as there are so many interesting things to see and mountains to climb!

Past Erzurum, the scenery continued to astound us to a greater degree than the day before, and as we've just used all our best words on the last paragraph, we really don't know how to describe it any more, apart from to just say "WOW"! We have also seen the people get poorer as we've gone east, from the very affluent Istanbul, to the east where there are nomadic tribes sheparding their flocks and living in tents. The villages are tiny and remote, normally consisting of a few falling-down stone buildings, and mud out-houses clinging to the mountainside. We have continued to feel welcomed here, and every Turkish person we come across seems to want to speak or just smile to us.

It was only a few hours drive from Erzurum to Dogubayazit where we made our next stop, so we were there before lunch. It is a frontier town, being a mere 35km from the Iranian border which we plan to go through tomorow!! Yikes, can't believe were here already! We found a cheap hotel again, as it would be a good base to do some internet stuff that needs done, and sort out all the paperwork for the crossing. Our room has stunning views of Mount Ararat and a great panoramic communal area on the top floor, which makes up for it being very basic and luminous green! The streets of the town are narrow and packed with shops, so we decided to go explore. We found a bakery, and bought a Peda bread that we just saw come out of the oven for 20p, and tried to eat it for lunch, but couldn't even get half way it was so big!

There is quite a heavy military presence here, ever since around Erzurum, every village, town, and even remote hotel has a small company defending it. In Dogubayazit (or Dog Biscuit as the travellers call it) there are large garrisons with tanks, guns, towers, and lookouts on the hills. We are also in the part of Turkey that is inhabited mainly by Kurds rather than Turks. The Kurdish people are a historic people group that have lived in an area that covers parts of Turkey, Northern Syria, iran, and Iraq for centuries, but their identity has always been denied and repressed by their respective governments, with sharp dealings being dealt to anyone who suggested that they should be recognised as a separate tribe, with separate language and culture.

Anyway, after lunch we decided to go and visit the Ishak Pasa Palace, which was built between 1685 and 1784 up on a crag on a nearby mountain, and was very cool. The stone carvings adorning all the doorways, arches, windows and fireplaces was quite something, and its position high up in the crags made it truly spectacular. There was also a mosque, that was built before the palace, but it had been renovated for use, and looked rather like a small methodist hall on the inside! Further up the cliff was a proper fort built into the sheer rock face. This was the best bit, as you could climb up to it, and clamber along some exposed ledges to walk along the walls. There are plans to refurbish it, but until then it is quite a ruin, and you can just explore it at your own leisure. Rhona had a bit of trouble getting up some of the steeper parts, but luckily there were plenty of young Turkish men available to help her out...

Day 15 (Bulgaria to Istanbul): 436 miles

Day 16 (Istanbul): 100 meters

Day 17 (Istanbul to Kazilcahamam): 266 miles

Day 18 (Kazilcahamam to Sivas): 360 miles

Day 19 (Sivas to Erzurum): 314 miles

Day 20 (Erzurum to Dogubayazit): 164 miles

Max temp Istanbul: 29 deg C

Max temp Eastern Turkey: 16 deg C

Min Temp Eastern Turkey: 4 deg C

Total miles travelled so far: 3796 miles

Diesel in Turkey is more expensive than UK: £1.30/litre !!! No wonder the roads are deserted!