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.

Sofia to Istanbul

So I went to the US embassy in the morning, and it turns out they can't do anything to help with a license since it's a state issued ID, which I was somewhat expecting. So it was off towards Plovdiv. I took the E80 to Bulgarian route 8, which was a smaller, more forgotten in parts highway that looked like this:

After two days I met a host in Parvanets which is a small town south of Plovdiv. Turns out he is a pilot in the Bulgarian Air Force, so he had Friday off to take me biking up into the mountains south of town, and then ride down them at ridiculous speeds. It was at this point I realized that even though I have a mountain bike, the road tires are fairly useless for traction, particularly the new rear tire from Sofia. I spent most of the way down afraid I'd fall off the side of the mountain, but I still had fun. I then made my way the 10km into Plovdiv to stay at a hostel before exploring the city the next morning.

Plovdiv has a fairly interesting old town with Roman bits, such as this still in use theater:

And this chunk of the old Hippodrome, just chilling below the city:

Of course they also have their fair share of Orthodox churches. I was lucky enough to observe what I assume was a baptism for a while.

I left Plovdiv around 4pm, and made it quite a ways into the mountains, and enjoyed this view while camping (and being afraid of bears):

The day after was fairly uneventful, and ended just past Svilengrad, camping on the edge of a field, before crossing the border. I decided to skip Kardzhali, which was recommended by my host in Parvanets because it seemed like a lot of extra climbing.

I awoke early, as has been the norm when camping for the last few weeks. The sun comes up around 6am, and by 8am I'm burning up in the tent. I can roll over a bit and open the sleeping bag which buys me another 30 minutes or so, but after that it's hot enough I can't stand it inside the tent. I made it to the border early, where I was expecting to be searched thoroughly, but they didn't even open a bag. Another uneventful border crossing except this time it cost me 35 lira for a visa.
In case you weren't sure which country you were entering they added a landmark for you:

Shortly after I made it to Edirne where there is this gigantic mosque:

While I was getting fast Turkish food for lunch, I heard the Muslim prayer call emanating from every mosque in the area. I have to admit that as an American the only time I've ever heard that has been in a movie or video game and it's usually used as the foreshadowing for something terrible about to happen. So, hearing it in person for the first time, it gave me chills, even through the 100 degree heat.
I made it all the way through Lüleburgaz, which is a town of 100,000 people, built around a large main road. Scenes like this really helped cement the impression that I was living in a video game:

I again camped hidden beside the road. The next day I made a large detour planning to camp somewhere north of Istanbul to come directly into the city and avoid the large sprawling crowded roads along the coast, but I made a wrong turn and ended up headed exactly in the direction I didn't want to be headed. In the 20ish miles I was on smaller back roads I was invited to tea by a bunch of Turkish guys sitting at a shop along the side of the road. I joined them and was bought two glasses of tea and two packets of Ayran which is a Turkish salty yogurt drink that's not half bad. While I was there I watched as a truck driver parked his huge truck in the middle of the street and walked over towards us, only to also have his tea bought for him by the same guy that bought mine. That night I made it to the Aegean coast and found a spot at a campsite for 15 lira.

Next day and it was off to fight the traffic and constant hills into Istanbul to meet my parents at a hotel.
Next day and it was off to the Kazakh embassy to apply for a visa. Turns out the embassy is miles away from the center of town and I didn't make it there until after noon, and they were closed until 3. At about 3:15 the guy showed up, and told me to come back tomorrow morning to apply for the visa.
Tomorrow I went back and it was the same guy who handed me the application, so that was rather frustrating. I then made my way 25+ miles all the way across town to the Uzbek embassy, where of course they were also closed from noon to three, so I waited around for a while only for them to tell me that I should have printed out the visa application online and they don't have a single paper application. So that was a mostly wasted day. The embassy wasn't going to be open over the weekend or Monday, so I decided to skip applying in Istanbul and apply elsewhere, probably Baku.

While riding around town I got to enjoy Turkish drivers, and by enjoy I mean hate. The Turks may be nice, but not when you put them behind a wheel. It's impossible to go more than 30 seconds in Istanbul without hearing a horn honk. It's like all Turks are two year-olds who found out their car has a horn and they honk it every chance they get. They honk if you're in their way. They honk if you're near them. They honk if you're not moving out of the way fast enough. They honk if it even looks like you might do something to inconvenience them. They honk at every chance they get.

Next day was the first real day of playing tourist in Istanbul, and oh boy are there a lot of tourists. The blue mosque had a long line to wait to get in.

So did the Hagia Sofia:

And so did the Basilica Cistern:

The rest of the day was spend on a Bosphorus cruise which didn't even go up as far north as I had been the day before when I rode to the Uzbek embassy. Bike > boat.
Saray Palace was the focus of the next day. This was the home of Ataturk for much of his life:

Totally not supposed to take pictures in there but here's a few:

That was the last day in Istanbul before flying to Izmir while waiting for the visa, and I will do a separate post  or that.

Sofia + Bulgarian bureaucracy

So I arrived in Sofia with no host lined up after getting having a few people decline. I love it when you can see the start of a city:

I checked into the "Hostel Mostel" which is a nice place with lots of people, and for about 10 euros they have all you can eat breakfast and a bowl of pasta + 200ml of beer for dinner if you so desire. They offer a daily tour to the Rila monastery which is about 120k south, and up into the mountains. Since it cost 20 euros I opted to pay to make it a day trip rather than spend 2-3 days riding there with all my gear especially since there is only really one way there and it's mostly highway. It's the most famous monastery in Bulgaria, and there were quite a lot of people there.

They yell at you if you take pictures inside, so these were taken sneakily:

 This is a new art style I've never seen before. The halos and hands on many of these figures are actual metal (silver or gold?) nailed to the painting:

We returned from the monastery just in time for me to catch the free bike tour around Sofia, which lasted 3 hours and took us around lots of monuments and landmarks, including many monuments to the soviets that apparently many bulgarians don't like and they're constantly debating about removing/destroying them.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. The golden domes can apparently be seen for miles on sunny days:

This guy is pointed right at the parliment building and he's supposed to be watching over them, but I guess the joke is the actual deliberation rooms are underground, so the officials are hiding.

The guy in the middle here is a Soviet, protecting the weak Bulgarian peasants:

A chunk of the Berlin wall:

I had dinner with the three other people who showed up to the tour who happened to be students at a university in Istanbul.

The Next day I rode out to the Boyana Church, which was fairly underwhelming. It's a UNESCO heritage site because it has tons of old frescoes in it, and surprise surprise they also don't want you taking pictures in it.

After that I returned to the city to get some closer looks at the things I saw on the cycling tour.

Such as the Ivan Vazov Theater:

The inside of the Nevski Cathedral:

That night I was out grabbing food around midnight, and I had my wallet stolen. Luckily I was able to change all of the coins I had been hoarding for months, and with breakfast and dinner included in the hostel I had plenty to eat. I also had just been to the grocery store to buy food for the next few days of travel. However since I hadn't paid for the three nights in the hostel up front, and I didn't have the cash to pay for them, I was stuck in Sofia waiting for a replacement ATM card. I spent about 6 hours filling out a police report on Friday, and spent most of saturday, sunday, and monday sitting in the hostel. I did however enjoy riding around Sofia late at night, to get pictures like the Nevski Cathedral at night:

The old communist party building at about 1am:

Today my replacement card arrived, but I got to enjoy the circus that is Bulgarian bureaucracy so I wasn't able to get a copy of the police report until 3:30, and I wasn't even able to visit my own embassy without an appointment. Tomorrow I will visit the embassy, and after 8 nights in Sofia I will finally head towards Plovdiv and Istanbul.