Sam sick, Bike sick.
September 4, 2008 at 6:40 pm | Trip | No comment
Maybe we’re symbiotic, or maybe my bike’s just a one upper but no sooner had I decided to soldier on to Odessa with my hacking cough and running nose (which, in a motorcycle helmet is a lot less fun than it sounds) than my bike decided to first become impotent by falling sideways after the side stand turned limp and subsequently incontinent by leaking shitloads of oil.
I’m not actually sure this two incidents are related as it seems to be leaking oil from the opposite side to the side it landed on (and the opposite side to the one that was leaking before).
If I’m honest I’m about ready to break this bike for parts and buy some cheap ukrainian POS that at least will be cheap to fix.
I of course had arrived in Odessa before I discovered my leak, which is leaving me to chase after a non-english speaking local who’s been trying to help me get to a phone/internet etc, though for cash of course, not out of the kindness of his own heart.
We shall see what tomorrow brings…
Taxi!
Hot Talk
September 6, 2008 at 1:25 pm | Trip | No comment
‘Many a word said in haste’ and all that…
After running the engine for half an hour yesterday I was unable to replicate the oil leak.
From the location of pooled oil and trails thereof I think it was leaking from the oil pressure switch, which would make sense as the oil pressure light has been flickering on occasion.
So I gave it a quick tighten, hopefully that’ll sort things out 
I really should have researched my crossing into Romania more thoroughly when coming to Odessa, as it turns out although there’s a shared border, there’s no crossing, meaning I’m going to have to go into Moldova, yay!
And according to recent reports, crossing into Moldova is a rather hellish experience…
Bribery ahoy!
Kiev Hostel Politics
September 6, 2008 at 5:54 pm | Trip | 4 comments
Hostels in Kiev are a weird weird thing…
I stayed in (reportedly) the best Hostel in Kiev (Kiev Backpackers).
Which, had a decent enough location, was clean enough and no lock out.
However the Norweigan guy running it was one of the most abrasive people I’ve ever met.
If you asked him a question, it would immediately be thrown back at you as stupid, and too much effort to answer properly.
He was vocally racist against Russians and Ukrainians (right in front of them in the restaurant, hope to god they didn’t speak English).
Not to mention the fact I’m almost certain he charged me 360 grivnah for the first night (about 50 euros!), though I evened the score by getting a free night without him realising).
However if you look at the alternatives on hostelworld.com you’ll see similar stories (and worse) at the other hostels in Kiev.
In fact he was telling me of an English guy who set up a hostel in Kiev with a very similar name to his, which created an ongoing debacle whose highlights include the English guy leaving a dead cat slit from top to tail in front of the Norweigan guy’s hostel, operating on a tourist visa and without a hostel licence and threatening the Norweigan’s wife and 7 month old son, or so we’re told.
All in all I think there’s a niche in Kiev for a reasonably priced and more importantly sane hostel owner…
Still he did have a couple of pretty young things working for him who were always insisting on a joyride, so it wasn’t all bad!
Moldova, Romania
September 9, 2008 at 8:30 am | Trip | 2 comments
“Any LSD or guns?”
I think the border guard was a little offended when I burst out laughing.
Getting out of Ukraine was easy, so far the worst the Moldovan guards had done was insist that I had to detour around Transnistria (around 250km) and say.
“Maybe a little present!”
I played dumb “Oh, what’s a present?”.
They looked at me in disgust and handed me a form to fill out.
I filled it out and made my way into the queue for customs where I was asked whether I was drugsmuggling, and no sooner had they started inspecting my panniers than a yellow Suzuki rocked up behind me and I heard.
“You’re from England?”
I turned, smiled and replied that I was, whereupon a beamish smile broke out on the guys face and he pumped my hand vigorously.
“Where are you going?”
“Chisinau”
“I live in Chisinau! We should go together!”
“Sounds good!”
How little I knew at this point what a blessing it would be.
The customs official had been observing this exchange in silence, and upon its completion, gave me a sickly smile and waved me through.
“Huh..” I thought to myself “that was easy…”
I waited on the other side of the border for my new compadre, who followed in very short order and asked:
“How fast you want to go?”
“Oh, hundred, hundred and twenty is fine by me” (kmh lads, kmh!)
“Excellent, I am Moldovan criminal police, we have no problem with speeding!”
As the country we were in at the time was Transinistra (a breakaway country from Moldova consisting of some 600,000 odd people) we still had to cross another border to get into Moldova proper.
We stopped at the next border post, showed our passports, Constanin (my guardian angel) exchanged a few jokes in Russian and we were whisked straight through.
I can’t help but think that would have cost me an hour and a small sum of dollars to get through on my own.
Once through into Moldova I realised what a blessing my guide was.
As you see, if there’s one thing Moldova lacks (apart from EU membership, and a first world infrastructure) is fucking ROAD SIGNS, I swear there’s only one of the fuckers in the entire country.
We went whisking down unmarked roads that I would have had no chance to navigate on my own, and when we arrived at Chisinau, Constantin even rang my hostel for me, found out where it was and took me there!
What a guy! It’s people like this that make travelling what it is.
I didn’t do much that evening, as even though I’d set off in the morning, it had taken me hours to find the right road out of Odessa and by the time I arrived I was ready for some food and some sleep.
And what food!
I had, of all things in the universe, Caviar and Sturgeon Pizza!
That, a beer and an orange juice came to just under 7 quid (horrifically expensive by Moldovan standards, but a cheap price to pay to be able to say I’ve had Caviar Pizza!
It was incidentally, like a very posh anchovie pizza, and since I love anchovies, that was just great!
The next morning I set off for the Romanian border, which should have been easy to find once I got on the M1.
However, the “M1″ at one point randomly curved off to the right and I went straight on (with, of course in grand Moldovan style, no signs indicating which way the main road was).
So I was left going down roads like this.
Which left me very glad I upgraded my suspension!
Gravel is fun, you have no say in where you’re headed, you’re just along for the ride!
At one point I hit such a vicious pothole that my tent/misc bag came off (amazing, considering it’s strapped down with two ratchet straps) and I didn’t even notice until about 10 miles later.
Fortunately it was still with me as it was locked on to the bike, I was just lucky it wasn’t hanging next to the exhaust!
Crossed over into Romania eventually with no problems, total cost of Moldovan borders?
$0!
Romania as I saw it was much prettier than either Moldova or Ukraine before it.
It’s almost as if some-one did the south downs, then some-one else responded “Pfft, I can do better than that!” then did Romania.
I wasn’t quite sure where I was spending the night, so I popped into a couple of Motels along the way.
“40 euros please!”
… Yeah, no thanks.
Seeing as the roads were blissful in comparison to Moldova (average speed, 100kmh!) I decided to press on to Bucharest and find a Hostel.
And what a hostel!
I parked up next to this.
Turns out staying at the hostel is a German chap doing almost the same trip as me!
With almost the same time frame!
He’s entering Turkey a little later than I am (25th rather than the 11th), and he’s going to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam rather than Philippines/Indonesia, but other than that, identical!
Oh, also…
The Hostel has a resident Pile-’o-Kittens (TM)!
So, what the hell, I figure I can stay another night!
Not Constantinople
September 15, 2008 at 10:35 am | Trip | 2 comments
Bucharest is not far at all from the Bulgarian border, took me no time at all to cross and despite being told you had to pay a toll to get over the river that marks the border, the guard at the toll booth lifted the barrier and waved me through without so much as a Moldovan Lei in exchange.
The roads in Bulgaria were much akin to Romanian roads (ie; 1,000,000,000,000,000 times better than the average Moldovan/Ukrainian road) and I was bombing down the weird style of wide single lane roads that characterises this part of the world.
Oddly enough when I leapt onto the first motorway on my route I was slowed to a crawl by a rolling traffic jam going at 20-30mph.
Being a slim fit vehicle (if somewhat more rotund than the average motorcycle) I flitted my way daintily through the traffic, sliding determinedly between cars like a skinny guy in a mosh pit full of dykes.
I eventually got to the front of the queue and found three police cars driving across all lanes of the motorway with their lights flashing, and beyond them in the distance I could see the Bulgarian equivilent of the Tour De France.
Urgh… 2 hours at 30mph in the blazing sun, could have done that stretch of road at 90, c’est la vie, I was stopping in Bulgaria for the night anyway.
I eventually found a campsite near Bulgas and settled down for the night.
In the morning I found the German owner of the site (known to the world as German Willie) who turned out to be walking to Japan (through Kazahkstan and China) on his own.
Though.. Being as he was 70 and had spent the last 6 years in Bulgaria apparently I do wonder slightly whether he’ll get to the end of his trip.
Still, it’s not about getting there is it?
Though judging by some of the tales he was telling me, he’s a very experienced traveller to say the least!
We said our goodbyes (he gave me some insanely thin towel I’ve yet to try out) and I motored off into the distance.
The road to the Turkish border was very very small, and I more than a few times I questioned whether it was in fact the right road.
Still, the roads were beautiful so I kept going.
My accident prone nature was bound to catch up with me again however and not long after I took the above photograph, I took a corner relatively quickly (though perfectly manageably), leaned over and heard a grinding metallic sound and suddenly I was on the tarmac.
Turned out the side stand had got trapped below the centre stand and when I leant over to take the corner it had scaped the tarmac and sent me tumbling.
Thank god for ‘All the gear, all the time’, I just stood up, dusted myself off, picked up the bike and carried on unharmed.
Close to the Turkish border there are some quite spectacular hills, and if the roads were a bit better surfaced they’d be good fun!
Woo! I made it to the Turkish border! And my last sign in Cyrillic!
The border was pretty easy, took a fair amoung of time to get all the paperwork as I had to go through umpteen different offices, but the motor insurance was a piffling $10 and the visa only $20.
Once I got through the border, oh my god, a whole new world of tarmac.
I think the Turks dream of paving the entire world, on the Bulgarian side I was riding single lane roads which hadn’t seen a construction crew this side of the millenium and on the Turkish side…
Good god, thank you Jesus, I can keep to my schedule and get to Istanbul today without a worry!
I bombed along the E80, a 3 lane super motorway, at 90mph and got to Istanbul in no time at all, though the 90mph wind speed did result in 3 days of excruciating muscular pain… Maybe I’ll keep the speed down next time…
“Istanbul 20km”
And then the houses started.
Istanbul is home to more than 13,000,000 people and good god it is huge.
A quick consultation with my map and I arrived in the area of my benefactor.
Taksim being a complete maze I did the traditional thing of giving the address to a taxi driver and following him through the death defying driving of Istanbul.
I was greeted by Sharron, a friend of my father, who’s staying in Istanbul teaching English and graciously agreed to put up with my smelly self and provide me with a place to sleep (and subsequently some rather delicious meals!).
I’ve been in Istanbul a few days now, so there is much to relate.
But, that will have to wait for another blog post!
In the meantime, here are some samples 
Bir, Iki, Uc, Dort!
September 21, 2008 at 8:22 pm | Trip | 1 comment
I always find it hard to write an entire post about a city, even one as amazing as Istanbul; it requires having an opinion on things, and I find they’re treacherous things at the best of times!
I’ve been having a fantastic time in Istanbul, not least because I’ve spent the time being shown round by a lovely Turkish girl by the name of Melahat!
This lovely girl spent endless hours giving me the low down on the best places in Istanbul, all the drinks and meals, not to mention the local slang and some interesting insights into Turkish life!
We did just about everything there is to do in Istanbul (yeah right that’d take a lifetime!).
There’s me in the middle of the Bosphorous, with the main bridge in the background.
This is the Turkish speciality of erm.. something-er-other, it’s quite nice but I’m told the batch we had wasn’t up to its usual spice level!
Kumpir, basically a baked potato (except uhh.. boiled) stuffed to bursting point with everything from gherkins to yoghurt to olives to beetroot (and anything else they can lay their hands on!)
Post haircut a way up Golden Horn.
Istanbul is Purdy!
A street performer on Istiklal.
I swear this guy is the most talented motherfucker I even met; he was singing, playing really fast flamenco guitar and riding a unicycle.
In four months not a single street performer has got a penny from me, this guy got all my change (about 80p).
A film set I ran across near Istiklal, seemed to be doing a protest scene (note the poor guy clinging to the railing on the top right!)
The spice bazaar was absolutely incredible, scents from hundreds of spices (and a number of the more pungent shoppers!) mingled to create a heady mix that verged on overpowering.
Me and Melahat performed an experiment whereby she would go up to the stall and ask the price of something, then I would try a couple of minutes later.
Surprisingly the shop-keepers proved quite honest (or observant) and the prices were pretty much the same.
Unlike my first taxi, which cost me 20YTL when it should have been around 5…
Oh well, I can count up to 50 in Turkish now and ask “Nekidar?” which means “‘ow much is it?” which seemed to do the trick when getting my hair cut (initial price 12 YTL, final price 5! :D)
My cynicism has taken a step up lately, as everyone around is trying to rip me off it seems.
I was walking down a road near the Iranian embassy last Monday after handing in my passport, when a guy walking in front of me (who buffed shoes for a living) dropped his brush.
I found it rather odd that he didn’t notice the loud *clack* that the wooden brush made when it hit the pavement, but nonetheless tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out the fallen brush.
“Thank you very much sir, where are you going?”
“Uh, just to the internet cafe…”
“Oh, that internet cafe is for tourists, come with me! My friend run internet cafe half price!”
Hmm, how convenient, still I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment and follow along.
We stopped in front of a shop:
“We drink chai or Turkish coffee here! 10 minutes only!”
“Erm.. Thanks but I really have to get to the internet cafe right now!”
“Please! Don’t insult me!”
“Byeeeee!” I yelled over my shoulder as I walked determinedly in the opposite direction.
I thought nothing more of it until two days later I went to pick up my passport (with said Iranian visa) and walked down the same street.
*clonk*
This time I simply stepped over the brush and kept walking.
About half an hour later I was walking down the same street again in the opposite direction.
*clonk*
“Jeez, do these guys never give up?”
I don’t know what the rest of the rouse was but from what I’ve heard they’ll either charge you exorbitant amounts for the supposedly free chai, try and sell you a carpet, or simply spike the tea and strip you of everything you own.
I leave Istanbul on Wednesday, many experiences and one Iranian visa richer, woo!
Reading people
September 23, 2008 at 5:26 pm | Personal, Philosophy | 2 comments
I am and always have been, notoriously bad at reading people, I don’t know what it is, if I believed in all this self-diagnosis bullshit people bandy around I’d say it was a mild case of aspergers, but as I don’t, I’ll say it’s probably simply one of those things I’m not good at.
Talking to my mate James (as opposed to my dad James, though he is in many ways my mate… I’m getting sidelined here..) he tells me how he’s constantly observing people, analysing what they say, how they say it.
Of course, I do this as well to a certain extent, but always at a very basic subconscious level (this ties right back into my big theme of conscious/subconscious but anyway), and although I can attempt to observe people like this at a conscious level, I’m very bad at it.
Maybe it’s a lack of practice, but the opportunity to practice is a rare beast to come by.
When engaged in conversation, especially more in depth ones that are likely to give revealing information I’m never thinking about the other person…
Their argument maybe, but usually I’m even more self absorbed than that, thinking about my argument, my responses…
In fact, that makes sense… I’m thinking about how the other person is likely to interpret my responses, and how best to express my opinions/feelings without being misunderstood.
Maybe I simple need to find a balance between reading myself as others see me and trying to read others.
Fine tuning ones mental priorities and thought processes is never an easy business, and my propensity to “unthought” (I love newspeak) makes it all the more difficult to change my patterns in the fleeting moments of clarity.
Take for example Melahat, the girl I spent quite a few days with over the past 10-11 days.
At various points during each day my subconscious would alert me to various actions on her part that could be interpreted as ‘interest’ or generally worthy of deeper analysis.
And, as is normal for me, I would take the sum total of these incidents and weigh them up against their negative counterparts, and try and decide what in fact she was thinking.
But really a logical approach generally fails miserably unless you have quite fantastic insight (which I clearly don’t), and I get the idea I should be ‘feeling’ things more.
A differing culture doesn’t help matters, and I was very interested to engage Melahat in a discussion about the Turkish dating scene.
The conversation stemmed from a discussion me and (I think, again James) were have about how most of the trepidation about ‘making a move’ comes not from fear of your own embarassment, but infact an unwillingness to put the other person in a socially awkward and embassing situation, and also the idea that subsequently the girl will then feel uncomfortable around the guy.
Our conclusion on the last effect was that this stemmed from a misapprehension on the part of most girls that after a guy has asked them out once, he will never cease hounding them, my mate agreed.
I mentioned this to Melahat.
“Oh no, not in Turkey!”
“No?”
“No, the guy will ask again and again, no matter how many times you say no!”
“Wow.. what a pain…”
We went on to discuss the dissimilarities in the subtle nature of the game.
“In Turkey, it’s quite common for a guy to ask a girl out on two or three dates, that are entirely platonic and then on the third or fourth date, say ‘I love you, what do you think about that?”
“Really? Wow, if I guy did that in England the girl would think he was completely mad!”
I got the impression that Turks were generally a lot more up front with their emotions, where further west we’re generally fear our own emotions and in some twisted subconscious way thinking that being in love with someone is a weakness, dependence is a weakness, to be strong you have to be independent, if you’re independent you don’t need anyone, if you don’t need anyone you can’t be in love.
I envy the Turks for that freedom and shall champion it whenever I can…
Still, I never did ‘make a move’ as I didn’t want to spoil the friendship Melahat and I had and from various comments I become convinced of the opinion that she felt the same way.
Excuses, will be the first thing running through your mind I should imagine, retroactively changing my feelings to protect myself, ‘Pfft, I didn’t want that anyway…’.
And that’s what I’ve told myself when I’ve felt that before, as I’ve had it drilled into me (by peers and media) that I should want every single attractive girl that I interact with, but… (even though I certainly wouldn’t be averse to such opportunities should they present themselves) I really don’t see the point most of the time, I’m simply happy to be around nice people.
I do fear that it’ll be something I regret in later life, but… Maybe by that point I’ll have matured enough to fully ignore the ‘notches on the bedpost’ mentality that seems to pervade male society at the moment….
Conflicting Opinions
September 23, 2008 at 6:04 pm | Philosophy | No comment
I’ve always thought of my trip as a ’search for significance’.
When I was working 9-5 for a living, I was always concerned by a lack of significance in daily life.
Repeating the same routines every single day worried me, it made the time pass too fast with nothing to remember one week from the next.
It affected everything, my choice of girlfriend, car, house; I’ve always been inspired by “The Diceman” and anybody who’s read the book will know that’s quite a scary thing to say.
But significance is such a fickle thing, such a subjective thing.
I’m 2/3rds the way through re-reading “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami and what’s struck me the second time around is how every single episode in the book seems to have the most incredible significance, even if the significance is that it’s… not significant.
How can I yearn for significance and at the same time idealise the notion of sitting somewhere just listening to music or sitting quietly in a café watching the world go? Are these moments significant?
Maybe it’s the dedication of doing just one thing, even if the one thing is less than significant.
Maybe significance is the wrong word.
This is the trouble with words, if you have a blinding flash of realisation, of clarity and can conceive a fantastic notion, you have to put it into words.
Woe betide you should you choose the wrong words, as later the words, rather than the moment of clarity, will define what you look for…
I chose the word significance, but it doesn’t encompass everything that I’m looking for.
I’m looking for a negative more than anything, I’m looking for a way to stop time rushing by, to fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run.
But channeling this idea into the concept of acheivement or worth or relative merit is a mistake I feel.
Perhaps as I’ve said before I simply need to think about what I’m doing more, to analyse what I’d like to do, rather than be content to sit in apathy.
Lack of action is fine, I have no problem with a lack of action.
What I have a problem with is a lack of honest decision.
If I decide to sit and listen, rapt, to music as the focus my attention, that seems a worthy goal to me.
If I simply sit and idly listen to music simply because it’s the easiest option, that I have an issue with.
Making the easiest decision… I mean this precisely.
As the easiest decision may be, and often is the hardest path.
For some-one whose parents are pressuring them to go to university, the easiest decision is to go to university, but the easiest path would simply to work in Tescos.
There is no inherent truth in the idea that the easiest decision is necessarily the worst, I am merely saying that I find apathy in decision making abhorrent…
When I get to Australia
September 23, 2008 at 6:20 pm | Trip | No comment
Strange to be thinking about something so far away, when I have such wonders in front of my nose.
But I suppose it’s my equivilent of whistfully thinking about home, as I don’t particularly have a ‘home’ anymore (beyond ‘where my bike is parked’).
As my financial situation stands, having been taken roughly in the barn by BMW, I will have to work solidly in Australia to support myself; although I am sure with excursions at weekends and holidays!
I am really looking forward to a manual job.
It may not be a long term job, but I would love to know the feeling of coming home from work every day, physically exhausted rather than mentally.
When I got home from my desk job, I was mentally exhausted, that horrible kind of exhaustion where your muscles scream ‘hey, yeah, let’s go, we’ve got work to do!’ and your brain screams ‘Murr, let’s sleep’.
Even worse when you try and sleep, you can’t, you don’t have the simple pleasure of wearied muscles sinking deeply into the mattress and end up fidgeting endlessly.
My solution? At the time I drank to get to sleep most nights, worked quite well for me, although I eventually came to a point where I associated boredom with a very strong desire to drink, at which point I decided to lay off the booze for a while.
My attitude towards personal posessions has changed immensely in the past few months.
Having everything you own in the world in the panniers of your motorcycle can do that to you I guess…
I said to some-one the other day “I have a real hankering to build a bed” which naturally surprised them somewhat.
When I get my own place in Aus I intend to furnish it, electronics and all, for under £100.
If the second hand markets in Australia are anything like they are in the UK, simply putting an ad in the paper saying “Will collect furniture” should get my phone ringing off the hook with people glad not to have to hire a van to take it to the dump.
As for electronics? Provided I go a few generations back I should be able to get everything for nothing.
“CRT TV? Windows 2000 PC? Sure mate, free!”
It all sounds very hippyish but, I get the feeling I’m going to want to save as much money as I possible can to continue my trip.
As it’s always been my plan to go beyond Australia, hell, those of you paying attention in the photos will notice my panniers say “Travelling the world” rather than “UK to Australia!”.
If I can scrape together the money I’ll ship the bike to South America, I’ve heard tales of people spending 9 months in Latin America on a motorbike on around $1500 (including petrol, food, accomodation etc).
My other idea is to go to University after a year in Australia working.
Really these ideas are simply putting off working full time again for as long as possible, but there are still many things that appeal to me about university.
Mainly the congregation of people with some degree of interest in something in a single place.
The thing that irritates me about most people is they’re not interested in anything.
Oh they may have their hobbies, their topics of conversation, but for the most part they’re simply inane.
Really this is a very sweeping generalisation, and it obviously depends who you talk to and what circles you move in as to whether or not you can relate this to ‘most people’, but honestly I feel you can sum up a helluva lot of people in the world like this.
That’s one of the things that makes travelling appeal I guess, what other people from different countries and cultures talk about inanely is often of the greatest interest to a traveller!
Cappodocia
September 28, 2008 at 2:10 pm | Trip | No comment
I left Istanbul, striding (well, rolling technically) proudly into Anatolia.
To say the landscape changed was an understatement.
If you’ve ever taken a photo of a faraway landscape, you know how much less impressive the photo looks than the reality…
So imagine what this looked like to me as I stood next to my gently cooling bike, awestruck at its magnificance.
I had a long way to cover to Neveshehir, and I set off late.
I’ve discovered many months ago that once it gets dark and I have nowhere to stay, I start to get bloody stressed.
Add to this the lack of hotels (and my lack of knoweldge that ‘Pension’ means ‘really cheap place to stay’ in Turkish) and I was starting to get a bit worried.
Eventually I found a petrol station that had a field conveniently empty next to it, a short offroad stop later and I was camped for the night.
Not the most inspiring campsite in the world but being free counts for a lot in my book!
Massive salt lake I passed on the way, would have loved to drive out on to it, alas it was… a lake rather than a ‘flat’.
Cappodocia is a cool place man…
I managed to find the campsite marked on my map, and what a view…
‘Bir Nekidar?’
‘On Besh’
Fifteen Lira a night, about 7, seemed expensive but… compared to a hotel…
Camp setup I headed to find an internet cafe and along the way saw a BMW R1200 GS going in the opposite direction, which waved and pulled over.
I swung round the approaching roundabout and pulled up alongside what I could now see was a swiss bike.
‘Hey! I’m just going to ___ valley to meet a Belgian guy, wanna join us?’
‘Sounds good!’
I rode with him and we met up with his associate on a brand spanking new F800.
Turned out that the Swiss chap was heading south, but the Belgian was heading east.
We decided to team up for the journey, which was to be continued after three days in cappodocia.
We three agreed to meet at Jean’s hotel the next day and parted ways.
I went off and did a little offroading…
The next day…
‘I was thinking of going down to Ihlara valley today’ Stefan proposed.
‘I’ve already been’ Jean responded ‘But you two can go!’
‘Cool’
Quite an impressive place!
We strayed from the beaten path for this photo.
Offroading is fun!
Stefan made the most of the photo opportunity!
Farm tracks are good fun on road tyres!
The road goes on forever!
Tomorrow we head off to Nemrut, a short post, but I wanted to get those photos out there