nomadic wonderings: 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

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.