Trabzon to Kutaishi

So Trabzon wasn't that interesting. After over a month in Turkey, it had nothing new. A statue of Ataturk in the main square. A mosque with a red carpet and large chandelier. A market/bazaar section with tiny streets packed with people.

When leaving, I had by far the easiest day of riding in Turkey, an easy 70ish km to Rize along the black sea. It was almost entirely flat with a slight tailwind so I arrived early enough in the day to see the town, which also wasn't that interesting. A mosque, a State of Ataturk, but at least Rize had a ruined castle on a hill.

which provided a decent view of the city:

When leaving Rize I somehow managed to put several holes my tires all at the same time, so I was sitting there patching them in the square with several people watching. Turkey is so far the only country where I've gotten a puncture, and also the only country where I haven't been able to find spare tubes that fit my rims and tires, so I'm now dealing with the slow leak that comes with patched tubes.
It was 130km to Batumi and I was planning on doing it in 2 days, but since the road was again super flat with a bit of a tailwind, and none of the towns along the way seemed interesting I decided to cross to Georgia, which was fairly painless. A bit of a line for passport control since there were lots of buses full of people coming through, but no customs check as far as I could tell.

On the way out I met a Japanese cyclist and handed him the maps of Rize I got from their tourist office. Once past the border I met three french cyclists who were returning to France after three years on the road and I handed them my map of Turkey, as well as about 1 lira in coins. Stopping at an ATM in Batumi before heading to a hostel I was stopped by two more cyclists on foot. An american and a Finn. Once I arrived at a hostel I spotted two German cyclists, as well as a British motorcyclist. A few days later I was stopped by a swiss and australian cyclist (on foot, they recognized my ortlieb bag). Apparently every cyclist stops in Batumi at some point on the way into or out of Turkey.
I arrived in Batumi late on a Friday, so I had some time to kill until Monday when the Azerbaijan consulate would be open. It has so far been a bit of an odd experience being in Georgia because I can't read the script at all. Being illiterate is somewhat akward. However, most things are either transliterated or just outright translated into English. Batumi itself is a fairly modern tourist town. I guess it's been described as much like Vegas. I was in a cafe where every item on the menu was in georgian, russian, and english. They have some cool statues and a nice long stretch of stone beach. Also now that I'm in Georgia I will stop seeing mosques and start seeing churches again.

I was able to get my visa to Azerbaijan quite painlessly on Monday so I headed towards Tbilisi. On the way was Petra, an old ruined fortress with what I assume was once a form of hanging gardens.

It turns out Georgian drivers are just as obnoxious with honking as Turkish drivers. Also, the roads no longer have a wide paved shoulder. Also, in Turkey they tend to have 20km of wheat fields between towns, whereas in Georgia people pretty much live continuously along the road, with no break between villages. I was thinking I wouldn't be able to find a place to camp, so when I made it to Lanchkhuti, I was planning to find a hotel, except I was first stopped by a group of drunk Georgians sitting at a cafe and I was handed Chacha in a plastic cup. And then beer. Russian seems to still be spoken quite a lot here, as one of the older guys was the third Georgian I met who spoke it. I was invited back to his home where we continued by drinking wine and eating some type of goulash with bread. In the morning it was more of the same (I was offered wine for breakfast but declined) plus some type of cheese filled bread which they had me dip in honey. I made it to a hostel in Kutaisi today where I Saw a few monasteries, including the world heritage site the Gelati Monastery

And the Bagrati cathedral which was almost completely destroyed in the 1700s and rebuilt just recently.

Malatya to Trabzon

So leaving Malatya and heading north I had a choice to make: How much pain do I want to be in as I ride through the mountains of central Turkey? I guess the answer was: too much. The first day was not too bad as I made it almost all the way to Arapgir. I was however riding through nothing but wheat fields the whole time so it was fairly boring. It's been hot enough to melt the tar on the road, so it sticks to my tires, along with other little pebbles. The back of my shirt after a day in the sun:

After that I spent most of the day remembering that even though a road looks like it follows the contours of the mountains and runs along a river, it doesn't mean that it's flat.

I started the day at 1300 meters, descended to about 900, then back up to 1200, then down to 700, then back up 1000, then up and down and up and down between 800 and 1000, only to descend finally to the level of the river to 700, and then spend the evening walking back up to 1000. yaaay. I made it to Kemaliye that day, which is a bit of an interesting city. If there weren't mosques, you could almost mistake it for being swiss.

I made my way out of town and a bit up the next pass and camped beside the road. The next day I started out by walking the rest of the way up the pass towards Ilich, where I stopped for lunch. I thought that ilich would be the last large town for 60ish km so I'd better stop at a market. I was sitting at a bench under a gazebo type thing, reading a book and passing the time during the hottest part of the day when A turkish guy walked up, said about 2 words in turksh to which I responded that I had no idea what he was saying. After that failed attempt he didn't say much more, so I went back to reading my book. About five minutes later he walked off and returned with pots full of food. Suddenly there was a picnic happening around me, and we enjoyed some spicy noodle dish, and a tastey rice and (what I assume was) lamb. As we were finishing, another couple showed up with their three children and we enjoyed watermellon together. After that, I continued on towards Kemah. I was walking my bike up the third mountain pass of the day when after two people stopping to ask if I wanted help, in a moment of weakness I gave in and accepted. I had my bike put in the back of a pickup and I was driven the last 20ish km to Kemah, where I grabbed some food and was invited to tea by a group of other turkish cyclists who had come from Erzinjan which where I was headed. They invited me to ride with them which meant waking up at 6am. Surprisingly I wasn't the slowest rider in the group. When we arrived in Erzinjan I was treated to lunch and tea. I was also set up in a hotel where one of the cyclists was the manager. I was even driven a bit out of town to visit a local waterfall/picnic area, and also treated to dinner (and more tea). One cup of tea for breakfast, two for lunch, two after lunch, one when just waiting around(which I declined but was served anyway), 2 for dinner, makes 8 cups of tea that day.

Leaving Erzinjan in the morning I made my way north to stay in a small town by the name of Kuse. At the edge of town I was stopping to put on my raincoat briefly when two security guards at the local school basically dragged me into their booth to serve me tea. The second time in two days when I've clearly said I don't want tea and frustratingly I've been served it anyway. Asking around a bit in town landed me more tea, and a hotel room for 10 Lira ($5), which is a new all-time low for paid accommodation. After that it was a long ride to Machka, with a long climb near the end of the day, followed by a 1200m descent. Walking along the street, I heard the dreaded "Turkish tea, coffee, yes please" and I thought "nooooo, out of the desert and into tourist country again"

The following morning I had to climb back up another valley to visit the Sumela Monastery, which is built into the side of a huge cliff face.

It was raining a bit on the way there and I think the park entrance guy took pity on me and let me in for free. After that it was an easy ride into trabzon which is not the most interesting city, but it's the first time I've seen the Black sea.

Since my parents keep bugging me about water, I should mention that I have been able to carry a lot less than usual in Turkey, even though it's very hot out. There are water fountains with clean cold water all along the roads, and in cities. Some are as fancy as this:

Most of the fountains however look like this:

Ankara to Nemrut

So I arrived in Ankara, dropped my bags in a hostel saved the location of a few bike shops to my phone and headed out to find some brake pads. On the way to Ankara I had made a few attempts to buy pads by stopping at any place with bikes with disc brakes out front and pointing to my brakes. This had just resulted in offers of tea and people who had no idea what they were doing trying to take apart my brakes. So this time I was wandering around with a spare pair of pads I had and handing them to people. Also it turns out most places in Turkey that sell bikes don't sell parts at all.
At the first shop/area in Ankara with no brake pads, I had an old Turkish guy on a bike lead me towards another shop. He was weaving in and out of traffic while I was following more slowly, trying not to get killed. At the shop he lead me to, they didn't have pads, but I ran into two German cyclists headed the same way as me, and one of them was replacing his entire frame. I went to two more shops and finally found the pads I was looking for, then headed back to the hostel. In the morning, on the suggestion of the German cyclists, I headed to the Uzbekistan and Tajikistan embassy to apply for visas that I could pick up in Baku to hopefully save me some time. The Tajikistan embassy wouldn't take my application however and wanted me to come back on Monday. After that dissappointment I spent some time exploring the city, including the Kocatepe mosque:

Let's be honest, it's exactly the same as the Blue mosque in Istanbul, with one major difference: less people.
Blue Mosque around 11am:

Kocatepe around 6pm: 

I also went to see a random roman pillar erected in 362AD:

I saw some protesters walking through the city during the day, and later that night when I went out for food, since the hostel I was staying at was right next to the park where they congregated at, I could feel the teargas the police had used.
The following day, there were tons of police hanging around the city, most in full riot gear. I went to visit Ataturk's mausoleum, where there were tons of people.

Making my way out of town I tried to avoid the huge 300ish meter hill to the south that I had already climbed three times, but of course I just ended up climbing a much higher hill. At least I got this semi interesting view of Ankara:

Two more days of fairly uneventful riding and I was in a hostel in Goreme. On the way there I passed through Gulshehir which boats a few sights such as this apparently famous mushroom shaped:

I arrived at Achisaray open air museum (which contains mushroom rock) at about 4:55pm and they apparently close at 5. The guy at the gate turned me away, saying they would soon close. The funny thing is, it's a 7km long valley that contains tons of old dwellings and churches carved into the rock. I would've happily paid the 5lira to visit, but he clearly didn't want my money, and since they can't fence off the entire valley... I wandered about 200m down the road and let myself in. I made it to Goreme, where I stayed in a hostel built into the side of a cave.

I decided that I might as well splurge on the ballon ride that they were offering, and it was pretty cool. We were in the air by 5:30, along with probably 60-70 other ballons:

I was back at the hostel by 7, where I proceeded to sleep until 10 before heading out to loop around cappadocia.

Two days of fairly uneventful riding, other than a lot of uphill, including a 1900m pass, and I landed in a small town in the mountains, where with the help of a Turk who knew some english and some french, I stayed in a hotel for $10, which I think sets a new all-time low price for accommodation for me. A few more days of fairly hard riding, up and down and up and down through mountains, and I arrived at a hostel in Karadut. From there I had planned to go up and over Nemrut, so I rode, or rather mostly pushed my fully loaded bike 1000m up the mountain, only to find that the last 200m wasn't paved, or even a path really, and there was no way I was going to get my bike over the top.

So I turned around, and in about 20 minutes skidded down the mountain that had taken me 3 hours to go up.  The plus side was I got to see more of the nemrut national park than I would've otherwise. On the way to Malatya, headed north, I was sitting around biding my time near what would be my campsite until it got dark, when a Turkish guy practically insisted that I come and spend the night at his place, so I had a free dinner, free breakfast, free night's sleep, and an evening with a bunch of Turkish people who knew hardly any english, interspersed with occasional calls to one of his sons who could translate a bit. After that I made it to Malatya (not without getting more free food and tea on the way), where I am staying in a hostel/pansion before continuing north to Trabzon.

Some thoughts:

Turkey Pros:

1. Turkey is quite beautiful

2. The Turks are nice. I have had countless offers of tea. I have gotten free food. I have gotten free lodging.

Turkey Cons:

1. Honk

2. Honk

3. Honk Honk Honk. Every 20 seconds I get to hear the song of the turkish people which is apparently a car honking.

4. Parrots, I mean Turks (mostly children) who know one word of english and who can't pronounce it correctly, scream hell-o, hell-o, hell-o, from the side of the road. Waving at them doesn't get them to stop.

5. Hills/mountains. There isn't a flat piece of land in Turkey.

In summary, Turkey is a great place to be a cyclist, but a terrible place to be cycling. If the Turks want to keep their reputation of great hospitality and kindness, they need to destroy every single car in the country because I'm convinced there is no worse person than a Turkish driver.

Istanbul to Ankara with a side trip while waiting for a visa

So Since I knew I would be waiting in Istanbul for visas, and my parents were worried, they had arranged to meet me in Istanbul and we flew to Izmir where they rented a car and we drove around for three days visiting a bunch of tourist trap heritage sites before I flew back to Istanbul. I realized this was the first time I'd been in a car in about three months.
Immediately after landing in Izmir we headed towards Ephesus which is an old roman city.

The model in Vienna:

The real thing:

We also stopped by what's left of the Temple of Artemis, a single column sitting in a swamp:

We drove to Pamakkule the next day, to see the travertine pools, and hundreds of other tourists:

There is also the Roman town of Hieropolis behind the pools, which also includes an amphitheater:

The next day it was off to Aphrodesias to see yet another roman ruin. This time the highlight was probably the stadium:

The old Agora (and much of the rest of the ruins) were also covered in swamp:

After that I took a plane back to Istanbul while my parents stayed on the coast. I got my Kazakh visa for the low low price of $160, met up with someone from couchsurfing and tried chikofte which is a sort of spicy vegetarian wrap that's actually very good. The next day we headed out to one of the princes islands just south of Istanbul which are sort of a different world. It seemed to be much more relaxed particularly since they must've had a rule about no cars on the islands because it was mostly bikes and horses with carriages.

On the suggestion from my great host in Istanbul, I took the ferry from Pendik to Yalova to avoid the massive highways east of Istanbul like the ones I had tempted fate with on the way into town. After disembarking from the ferry, I set my cycle computer to kilometers/meters/celcius, and reset everything. This was the start of my true Asian adventure, and I had had enough of mentally converting miles to kilometers for the last 2 months. Since the start in Edinburugh I have come roughly 3500 miles and climbed Everest about 5 times.
All along the road from Yalova they grow cherries, and sell them for about $1.5 a kilo, so I bought way too many. I made it to Iznik by sundown, where I guess their claim to fame is the Istanbul gate, which is apparently a wall around at least part of the city.

I made the mistake of spending the night in between cherry trees just outside of town, so I got to listen to dogs barking all night. I didn't set up the tent because it wasn't supposed to rain, but I probably should've since the tent keeps the bugs out.
I spent much of the next day climbing and working my way around these mountains:

and finally I made it to Tarakli at about 7pm, where I wandered into town, parked my bike, bought some bread, walked across town to buy some baklava, only to have the baklava bought for me, as well as a glass of tea. After much inquiry, I was shown a place to camp in an empty lot owned by the guy who bought me tea, and told to come back after dinner. I would've much preferred to camp outside of town after the mostly sleepless previous night but felt rude turning down his hospitality, so I locked the bike, ate dinner, then wandered around town trying to find the historic sites that were supposed to be there, but I couldn't find anything. I did find a huge cliff that gave me a great vantage point to see the town. There are five mosques in this picture:

After that I headed back to the tea shop to sit around and "talk" to the Turkish guys (and only guys) there. I also received a free ice cream cone from another Turk. After learning a few Turkish words, the 10ish o'clock prayer call came and people started leaving to head to the mosque so I used that as my excuse to leave and go to sleep since I was tired from doing 100km that included a lot of climbing. Tarakli was actually much quieter than Iznik.
I spent the next day climbing, and climbing, and climbing. I spent the first 2 hours of the day rising to a 1200 meter pass, only to reach the summit and lose 400 meters in about as many seconds. Then I spent the next 2-3 hours climbing back up to a 1300 meter pass, but this time there was at least a decent payoff and the next 30km into Nallihan was all a slow decent with a nice tailwind making it almost effortless. Nallihan itself turned out to be a town only good for dinner and a resupply and I made my way up the hill out of town to sleep, again without a tent. While riding and thinking, "hmm, this looks a lot like the midwest/western US" it occurred to me that I am literally in the midwestern part of Turkey:

I've also come to absolutely hate whoever told the Turks that honking at cyclists could be a friendly gesture. It seems that even outside the cities I can't go more than a few minutes without being honked at. Particularly the truck drivers love to come right along beside me and then blast their horn. As if someone could ever appreciate that. This is probably the only thing making me hate Turkey right now.

From Nallihan I made my way towards Ayash, where I came along this interesting bit of terrain:

Ayash is an interesting town that is built up on the side of a hill.

I arrived at the end of the day after about 100km and was tired. I was stopped by a group of kids playing soccer who showed me the local market, and they proceeded to all follow me around for the next 10 minutes and watch what I bought, and how I stored it in my bags. As I was pushing the bike up the huge hill that makes up the town, I parked it and started walking up a section that looked like a promising campsite, only to be stopped by a local sheepherder who seemed to care very much that I was walking in a field. So I walked back down the hill about 200m, parked the bike again and walked up the other side of the hill, only this time on the way down I was greeted by a local policeman. Apparently walking up a hill is frowned upon in Ayash. He asked for my passport and when I refused to give it to him he didn't press me on it too hard, which meant that either I hadn't been doing anything wrong or he decided that I wasn't worth his time. Either way, playing the ignorant foreigner card seemed to work and I was on my way out of town. The joke's on him because I literally made it about 20 feet past the sign denoting the end of town when I spotted a great hiding spot to set up camp. This time it threatened to rain so I had to set up the tent. The view in the morning was worth the trouble of the day before:

After several hard days of 100km each, I had an easy day of 60km into Ankara where I successfully made my way into a hostel here.