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.