Saturday 27 August 2011

Turkey

Muduru - Nallihan 63km
Nallihan - Beypazari 71km
Beypazari - Ankara 76km

Turkey just seems to get better and better the further I get into here. I love it.

It is almost impossible to get through the day without being stopped and invited to drink tea, people selling the fruit and vegetables at the side of the roads, give you fruit, bread, anything they have, so interested to know where you from, amazed with the journey you are doing, where you going and just big smiles all round, then send you off with their blessings, so happy that you stopped and spent a little time to satisfy their curiosity, do we do that to our foreigners and visiters in our own countries?

Has civilized man evolved so much that we fight and live in fear of our brothers and sisters, because that is what we all are at the end of the day, brothers and sisters, but this is the attitude we do not seem have in my country, the UK, what do we do when we see someone different? Oh he looks dodgy, out of place, be careful.


I tell you one thing I notice here, is the lack of alcohol, and wether it is because of this and/or in combination with their religious beliefs, they seem very calm, peaceful people. I have been through the big cities, through the really poor, rough looking parts, and I have not seen or heard one idiot yet like I see in other parts of the civilised world, now spreading over from the friday nights, weekends to all nights of the week.

I have not seen vandalism.

Every day morning, noon and evening all the temples have loud speakers and a man starts singing his praises to God, with a genuine passion in his voice that sends shivers down my spine sometimes, very atmospheric actually, if you can just imagine it echoing all around, sometimes I have been in what I thought to be in the middle of no where, camping and this starts up from somewhere, enhancing the nature that I am in, this immersion in life/nature, simplicity, he sings for just maybe 5 minutes, then stops, I am starting to recognise the words now as it seems to be the same song or prayer whatever it is. This part of religion I find nice, if it makes you respectful, peaceful and inspires you to live life spiritually, then maybe it would produce nice communities of people, like I am experiencing at the moment!

Maybe this is a part of something we lack in some of our countries, we believe less and less in anything spiritual, as our natural world gets covered up with more and more concrete and shops, distractions, so all we are left with is the material world, where alcohol and entertainment runs the merry go round. Yes I know this is not just our part of the world it is slowly becoming all over and spreading!







Hanna and Damien, a great couple I met this day and rode together for a few days enjoying more of these moments.


...Another perfect place to camp






..Much drier landscapes now

More of those...."Oh crap when does this road level out" the planet appears to be only hills.

....and trucks


Some beautiful layered, coloured sand stone here.







...Aaaaah I wish for all the world to be this happy.



I love like this


Now if you own this many sheep/goats, not sure what they were really you doing very well.


...Damien just shaking on the deal....he gets all the sheep!

....he's thinking about it








Ankara and beyond...to be continued

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Turkey

Edirne - Corlu 113km
Corlu - Istanbul 110km
Istanbul - Tuzla 55km
Tuzla - Adapazari 94km
Adapazari - Mudura 87km

Currently trying to escape the 'black hole' like pull from the density that is called Istanbul, that seems to be spread out for hundreds of kilometers in every direction outside of its event horizon.

Turkey, we are in.

A quiet night under my old oak tree counting shooting stars and thinking about everyone and the world.


from cart to recumbent, evolution seems slow at times.

kilometeers of lorries waiting to get into Turkey, cannot imagine how long they must have to wait




Some people got the right idea to keep cool




I was just about have a go myself then someone switched the water off...they know you know.



My first Turkish tea drinking session, great tea, love it, but they could not keep up with me.



From Holland, going to India.


The madness starts, the black hole of Istanbul sucking everything in from miles around.



Mr Everest

Mr Everest

That is who I shall call him as he wished to be anonymous, so I will respect his wishes.

I nearly rode straight past him without noticing, as I was day dreaming a little bit, thinking about the previous days events and also thinking about todays tasks that I needed to achieve whilst here in Instanbul, mainly being my last chance to find a bike shop for a few spare parts that I was needing, change a bit of money and trying to decide if I could miss any of these out, so that I could get away from here as quick as possible, as this place is just an incredible dense, hot, huge expanse of population, cars, lorries and what must be nearly half the worlds concrete resources, which almost made me skip all my needs and jump on the first ferry to the east side and try to peddle to some open space.

Then out of the corner of my eye I saw 'Everest' that was a mountain of containers, bags, boxes, straps, a few wheels, tyres, skis and maybe an entire Sherpa family living somewhere within towering above on top of this poor van.

The side door was open and my eyes immediately danced around the alladins cave of pictures, photos, memories, books, equipment and generally what looked like ten life times of travelling and mountaineering, to finally rest upon a man, calmly sitting within, writing what was probably chapter nine hundred and seventy eight, of the first part of a trilogy of his memoires.

My hands reacted without my brain having to send any signals to them to pull the bike to a stop, in awe of this travelling museum of experiences, all I said was “bloody hell mate” where have you been, then three hours vanished in a blurr of dialogue and my head was buzzing full of new ideas, hopes, dreams and enthusiasm.

He had literally been travelling most of his life, luckily had a bit of money to start out with and thus spent a fortune climbing mountains all over the world, finally now at the grand old age of 209 and after climbing Everest in 2003, solo, he decided to bring back as much of his climbing gear back from various friends places where he had been storing it, to try to sell it on or give it to a climbing school, which brings him up to this present moment, sitting in his van trying to decide as I was also trying to decided which bits could be left out and just go directly to the chase?

He gave me every detail to the places I was going to, or should be going to, or ones to avoid, and described some amazing places, people and culture of Iran, of all the places this seemed to have really caught his attention, so I have a few places, names and directions to follow and very interested to see what my own experiences will be, but the way his eyes were alight as he spoke, I believe every word.


These were a great idea, exercise machines in the park.


A relief to hop on to a ferry to cross to the east side of Turkey.
......To be continued....its a bloody big country this.