The Mad and the Bad

A rare day of peace and quiet as we are staying at the flat of some friends we made very briefly while assembling our bikes in Antalya, a couple of fellow bike tourers, one of whom lives in Adana which is directly on our route. This is incredible luck and for a day and two nights we are out of the heat and noise and are living the high life (the 9th floor but above the din of traffic). Michael took his earplugs out for the first time in 10 days. He’s been wearing them night and day. I tried wearing them myself in traffic but it seemed dangerous, but I’ve used them for several nights. The sound of the Muezzin, eerily omnipresent even when there is no mosque in sight, seems to have been factored in by my brain and it doesn’t disturb me, but there is always some unexpected nighttime prowling or visitor or otherwise totally unpredictable noise no matter where we camp. And we’ve had some interesting and varied campgrounds, such as behind a restaurant on a hillside (see photo above), where someone tried to get in to the restaurant in the middle of the night, banging the door so hard he broke some glass. The restaurant owner, on whose rear balcony we camped, slept through it all. We could see the madman banging on the door but decided he was not the axe-murderer people always warn you about before you set off on a camping trip. He was pretty mad, though. We never found out why.

Another evening we totally ran out of options and begged a restaurant to let us camp in their grounds, but they only allowed us a sort of gazebo where we camped in close quarters with my tent tied to the posts. The guard dogs serenaded us all night. We camped in a hotel being refurbished, next to the swimming pool. Another night struggling to get the tent pegs into solid concrete – glad I brought a tent that has to be pegged out to stand up…. actually I love it, but I’ve had to tied the guy lines down with stones more often than not. But the great thing was that people let us camp for free lots of times. Not that we needed the money, in fact we often offered it, but they refused and that’s what’s great about Turks, at least those Turks not involved in the tourist industry. They are very generous. We stopped to chat to a trucker fixing a bulging tyre. No, that’s OK, we don’t need any oranges. No, none, no space. Ok just two, well, no, really, OK, just the three kilos. I cut and passed around as many as I could, and when he’d gone I gave the bag to some shepherd family nearby living in a goat-hair tent. They had one of the fabled east-Turkish guard-dogs, a mastiff of some kind. I should have gotten closer to take its photo as it was tied up, but it was so ferocious. I’ve read about these, indeed written about them, and this was the first I had actually seen. Deadly, deadly, deadly. It wouldn’t give a toot about your Dog Dazer, I promise you that!

So how’s the ride going? Very tough so far. We like the coast, it’s beautiful alright but the grades are incredible in places, I told Michael I thought it was much steeper than in Tibet and those places. It’s marked as 12% in places on the map, and we walked a fair bit. On top of that, the traffic has been hard to bear. Where there’s a shoulder to ride on, the traffic’s speeding by and deafeningly loud. On the narrow roads, we’re all sharing the same limited space, some overtaking on the way up, those others racing down towards us overtaking on the corners. I had my saddle set too high the first few days and somehow my shoes dug in to my ankles, giving me tendonitis in one leg. I rested two days in Alanya, another great coastal town backed by sheer mountains, and we moved on slowly. It’s hard to shake off the tendonitis but with stretching, massaging and occasional ice-downs, it’s not getting any worse. I was starting to enjoy the hills too, standing up on the pedals to give some muscles a rest and then sit down a minute or two later (that’s all I could manage for each burst) and keep pedalling. But it’s probably not good therapy for my tendons. So when we reached the town of Mersin, we took the train straight to Adana where we have a place to stay. Our hostess Kathy hasn’t noticed yet that I managed to get the tent pegs into her parquet floor, but don’t worry, she’s moving out soon.

And how’s Turkey? Any scathing remarks there? Not really, though if I say the country reminds me of Mexico, I suppose that’s damning with faint praise. Turkey’s a Big Flag country. North Korea is the archetype, and Mexico has a lot of huge flags, and so does Turkey. I can’t figure out why but it doesn’t seem healthy to me. I can think of some reasons but I don’t really know Turkey. It doesn’t feel that free politically, but I’ve not been here long and it’s not to do with religion, things seem relaxed on that front. At the moment. Nor do the statues of Ataturk everywhere put one at ease. Is there no other Turkish hero? Does Suleyman the Magnificent not get a look in? Ataturk gets the main street in every town named for him. There was Childrens’ Day last week, someone told us “Ataturk gave us that holiday”. But the Turks themselves are angels, especially relative to Mexico. The generosity has all been in their favour, they will share everything with you and only in the most jaded tourist spots are foreigners over-charged. We’ve had so much given to us, endless cups of tea. On the few back roads we took, they were shouting to us waving food. It never stops. We particularly like the gas station free teas. It’s a chance to chat and joke with the pump attendants and take a break from the traffic.

On our last night camping up to now, we found a real, public campground which we had to ourselves all night, or so we thought, as you’re never really alone in Turkey. People come and go during the night, cars come, people stop for a smoke or whatever and we pray they will see us and not drive over us in our tents. I swear some people came to sing the Muezzin’s call outside my tent in the night (the first call is always around 5am) as I could see no mosque and the singing did not sound recorded or as morose as usual. When we woke up, a few cars had come into the park and were indeed heading towards our tents. A sound system was going up – it was another festival for Ataturk and families were coming early to stake out the best spots. We got up amid what looked like the beginnings of a big concert party, with families offering us food and chay and the usual ‘what is your name?’ type of questions. Although it was a Sunday and everyone was dressed for a sunny holiday, there was one Man in a Suit. There’s always one Man in a Suit no matter what the occasion. This character has been showing up in my life for many years now, on top of Cairngorm was where I first saw him 30 years ago. Then I worked with him and his clones for a dozen years or so. Now he’s here, still following me. Later we saw this cautionary sign: