After 3 glorious days cycling on the beautiful island of Samos, we caught a ferry to the Turkish port of Kusadasi, where we were immediately immersed in a new world of bazaars, smoky kebab stalls, and a 'relaxed' approach to the rules of the road.
After two days exploring the city, we began our cycle journey across the Asian continent, leaving at 6am to beat the 40-degree midday heat. After climbing almost 600m (followed by a glorious downhill where we whizzed at 53km an hour), we arrived sweatily in a small town, and it was here that we first experienced the incredible hospitality and generosity which has come to characterise our journey in Turkey. Entering a dimly lit café we were greeted warmly by the young man behind the counter, who brought us two aromatic cups of Turkish coffee, accompanied by a stream of interested questions about ourselves and our trip, before refusing any payment for our drinks.
Leaving the coffee shop happy to have met such a lovely person, we were immediately beckoned over by an older man sitting on a bench. While he spoke no English, and we spoke no Turkish, we communicated via hand gestures and he insisted we swap phone numbers so that we could call him if we got into any difficulties. As we were sitting in companionable silence, a checkout girl from a nearby supermarket appeared and presented us with two cans of coke to see us on our way. Before we could depart, however, our friend surprised Harriet by taking his cap off his head and presenting it to her as a gift. We headed off feeling both elated and slightly embarrassed by the kindness which we had been shown by total strangers.
After another hour the sun had become so hot that the tarmac had begun to melt and form oozing puddles in the road, so we retreated under the shade of a tree to eat our lunch. A brief foray back into the blistering heat ended pretty quickly when we were beckoned over by a group of older men sitting and drinking tea. We then spent several hours being gently pressured into consuming vast quantities of tea, juice, watermelon, nuts and cheese, while the owner repeatedly refused any payment.
In return, we amused the rest of the clientele with pictures from earlier in our trip of Jonathan without a beard, and Harriet with a fat face. Slightly surreally, the owner also appeared with a pair of nail clippers and insisted Harriet trim her nails by the side of the road, in full view of the tractor drivers parked opposite. Groomed and full, we asked the owner if there was somewhere nearby we could pitch our tent and he immediately offered us his own room, whisking Jonathan off on a moped to inspect it. Not wanting to take the bed of a 72 year old man, but not wanting to offend, we compromised by setting up our tent inside the cafe.
Since then, not a single day has gone by without someone generously buying us a drink, pulling up beside us to offer us fruit, sharing their lunch with us, or simply beeping and waving as we cycle past. Every night we have camped for free because of the kindness of those we have met, often setting up our tent in the grounds of the local petrol station where we have been given free tea (and sometimes even dinner).
We have also been overwhelmed by the beauty of the country we have been cycling through. From Kusadasi, we headed to Pamukkale, where the ancient site of Hierapolis sits on top of incredible white terraces and mineral pools.
After a relaxing day pottering around the ruins and wallowing in the pools, we headed east towards the Turkish Lake District on a rolling road surrounded by wheat fields, where we encountered some reptilian friends (and rescued them from certain roadside squashing).
We arrived in the beautiful lakeside town of Egirdir to be greeted by gloriously blue water, a wonderfully cool breeze… and news of Brexit.
Strangely, events during our two-day stay at the lake mirrored our thoughts about the referendum result. Like most of the 48% of remain voters, we woke up the day after Brexit feeling a little like someone had pissed on many things which were important to us. Unfortunately, in poor Harriet’s case, this was literally, as well as figuratively, the case: as she was drifting off to sleep, angry thoughts running through her head, a tom cat crept under the tent flap, turned his bottom towards her, and forcefully sprayed urine all over her back and hand. We named the cat Boris.
From Egirdir, we headed to another Lakeland town, Beysehir, where we camped by its beautiful waters and made some more new friends as we watched the sunset.
The next day we experienced our first rainstorm in Turkey, which we thoroughly enjoyed as a break from the scorching heat, something which we couldn’t have comprehended back in February when we were cycling through sleet and snow! As we moved further from the coast and higher into the mountains, we were also surprised by how Scottish the landscape looked, with craggy mountains, pine forests and drizzle all adding to the effect.
Before the day ended, we had experienced another example of Turkish hospitality, when a restaurant owner presented us with a mouth-watering piece of honeycomb topped with creamy yoghurt, a typical way to break the Ramadan fast. As we sat with him, we watched news of the terrorist attack on Istanbul Airport, and he asked us whether we were worried for our safety in Turkey. He seemed pleased when we told him that our experience in Turkey had been nothing but positive, and that we felt safer here and had experienced more kindness than we had anywhere else on our trip.
The next day we climbed two peaks, before dropping down into the 7th biggest city in the country, Konya. We were expecting a city of around 200,000 people so were somewhat surprised when we cycled into a metropolis with a population of 1.7 million, with skyscrapers stretching out to the horizon (we blame our out-of-date Rough Guide for misleading us!)
Here we were welcomed by another great Warmshowers host, Mehmet, and his brother Fikret, who were incredibly generous in showing us the city and taking us out for food and drinks. Jonathan was especially pleased when Mehmet introduced us to the Konyan speciality, Etli Ekmek – a two-and-a-half-foot long dough base topped with minced lamb and herbs.
Harriet had cheese.
Konya is renowned as a very religious city, and on the last Friday of Ramadan the mosques were overflowing, with worshipers spilling out onto the streets of the bazaar. It is also a place of pilgrimage, particularly as it was the home of Rumi, the founder of the whirling dervish movement. During our stay we visited the Mevlana museum which houses Rumi’s tomb, before watching the beautiful and moving Sema, or whirling, ceremony.
We also saw a very cosmopolitan side to the city, with trendy restaurants, fast cars and playstation cafes. This blend of tradition and modernity could be seen in the way many young women dressed, merging the hijab with converse trainers and jazzy camouflage trousers.
After two days in Konya, we said goodbye to the city over a breakfast of the special Ramadan bread and Nutella, and set off for our next destination: Cappadocia.