Steppe'n into Asia - İstanbul to Kapadokya

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Through the gap in the hood in my sleeping bag I can see its still pitch black, and even inside the bag its cold now. I don’t need to pull my arm out to check my watch for the time though, as the second “Allah Akhbar, Allah Akhbar” (God is Great, God is Great) echoes across the empty steppe - it must be about half past five in the morning and time for pre-sunrise prayers. Not for us though and I roll over and bury my head in an attempt to warm up and return to sleep. The last line of the muezzin informs us in Arabic that being awake and in prayer is superior to sleeping, but right now the latter seems much more preferable. Waking again half an hour or so later I can now tell its starting to get light outside, it is still freezing however and will remain so until the sun actually rises and hits us. I pull some extra clothes inside the bag to warm them up and try to get another half hour’s kip. By then the sun is up and its still freezing, but we know it will be warmer to get up and sit in the bright sun outside as it burns away the frost and ice that has covered everything during the night. At least it will be warmer once we are outside with several extra layers on; and so begins the race to get out of the sleeping bag, into your clothes and then out of the tent as quickly as possible. Easier said than done however, especially when the tent is covered in a thin layer of ice both inside and outside. Once outside, however, the morning sunlight in the crisp, clean winter air turns the sea of brown earth and rock a radiant golden colour, and the earlier proclamations of the muezzin seem spot on.

This became our morning ritual as we made our way slowly across the enormous and empty steppe lands of central Anatolia towards Cappadocia. During the day the temperatures rose to be only quite cold when on the bikes, whilst at night they dropped to sub-zero. We know this because water bottles left on the bikes froze solid. Fortunately the roads are good and quiet and the landscape is flat and makes for fast easy cycling. And whilst the steppe can at times seem dull and inhospitable, to say the least, there is something quite awe-inspiring about being in such a huge wide open landscape with a seemingly infinite horizon, but which is almost completely empty. Perhaps it is this wondrousness combined with overwhelming Turkish hospitality - which has meant the occasional free meal and invitation to stay, and regularly being invited in to drink çay and warm up beside a stove, that has made crossing this landscape bearable and at many times enjoyable.

In order to get into the steppe in the first place though we first had to leave İstanbul; having meant to spend only one night back there after cycling in from Lüleburgas we ended up staying for five. This did give us time to get hold of some international student cards - quite expensive mind but they look good (they are in fact the real thing) and should save us a fair bit by the time they expire. We also hung out with a great bunch of travellers and semi-residents at the hostel and discovered we could eat for free at the Government provided Ramazan tents every night - Hallah Hallah!. This was a bit of a cheat seeing as we are neither Muslim nor fasting but nobody seemed too bothered by this and the women dishing out the food seemed most amused and happy to see us there night after night. The weather was also a major factor in delaying our departure into Asia - it was getting colder each day and night and raining all the time. We kept deciding to leave in the morning if it had stopped raining but it never did.

Finally we could put it off no longer and so on a very wet Monday morning we loaded up the bikes, said some rushed goodbye’s, and set off in a downpour to the ferry terminal. Soaked already the day got better still when we arrived 5 minutes too late for the ferry and so had a 2 hour wait for the next one. Optimistically we thought this might give it time to stop raining… It didn’t. We saw nothing from the ferry except foul weather and driving rain and it was no better when we got to Yalova on the other side of the Sea of Marmara. By the time we had bought lunch the rain had eased a little and so we set off uphill into Anatolia. After an hour or so of hard wet slog I arrived at a junction and stopped to wait for Erika. She didn’t appear. In the end I cycled about 3 km back up the hill I had just sped down to find her with a puncture. Fixing this in the rain took ages and by the time we got back into town the short daylight was already fading. We loaded up and set off toward Iznik looking for a camp.

Everywhere was orchards or olive groves and the ground was muddy and wet. Still without having found anywhere good Erika got another puncture. It was now too dark to see to fix it and it was raining again. We knocked on the door of the nearest farm to ask if we could camp in their muddy orchard - No they replied, our house is your tent, come in, come in! They took is in and hung up our wet stuff by the very warm stove. As they had just eaten we eventually managed to persuade them to let us cook and eat our own food, though they insisted on also providing us with a salad and then lots of fresh fruit from their trees afterwards, along with copious quantities of çay of course. By this time their neighbours had also come around to see us and we managed to have a pretty good conversation in broken Turkish and English, though talking about different types of fruit and vegetables turned out to be dangerous as every time we mentioned the name of something they took this as a cue and shot outside to return with it freshly picked or uprooted - we were then obliged to eat it of course. It turned out we were to sleep in a spare room in the neighbour’s house. And so we were guests of Yaşar Bey and his wife - who he referred to as ‘Queen Elizabeth’, for the night and it was definitely more comfortable than camping in a wet tent in a muddy orchard.

In the morning they made us breakfast and çay despite the fact they were still fasting, and then Yaşar and the neighbour helped to repair the 2 punctured tubes before we set off into the unpredicted sunshine for the day. After another 2 punctures we finally found and removed the shard of metal that was lodged into Erika’s tyre but this did massively delay us again. It was nice that the rain had stopped but it was cold, especially once the sun started to drop. Stopping for food supplies in a tiny village in the hills we were greeted by half the folk living there! Erika asked in a shop if they had vegetables and the lady pulled her out the back to uproot some of her onions ands give us other stuff out of her own store-rooms, and then refused to take any money for it! Another guy ran off to his house and brought out some freshly baked giant pastry things (bit like an Aberdonian buttery but 5 times bigger). We enjoyed camping that night even though it was freezing - but a couple of hours after dark the rain started. It didn’t stop for over 36 hours and we didn’t move either. Thanks to the ridiculous amounts of free food bestowed on us the previous day we could sit inside the tent all day long without going hungry, and so we did.

The following the day the rain had stopped but it was driech generally with low grey clouds and the air was damp and it felt and looked just like a damp autumn day back in Britain. It was the first day of Bayram here though - the 3 day feast/festival to mark the end of the holy month of Ramazan. This meant finding a shop open when we got to Yenişehir was a bit of an effort - and when we did there was no fresh bread of course. Not to worry - the shopkeeper got on the phone and in a few minutes his brother appears with a loaf for us from their stash at home! We arrived in Bilecik for lunch and found more shops open here. After a few minutes off the bikes though we were very cold and when a guy called Mehmet offered us some çay we agreed. All the çay houses were closed though, so he invited us back to his very warm and modern, western style flat where we met his wife and young son. Here we were treated to not only lots of çay but also some delicious walnut cakeand sugared almonds and we warmed up nicely before saying our thankyou’s and goodbye’s and setting off out into the cold again.

The rain continued on and off all the time we were in the hills, but the following day we dropped down the southern side and into the steppe - rolling open grassland and farmland all a dull shade of brown. We followed a fast road into the city of Eskişehir before swinging south again across more rolling steppe towards Seyitgazi, finding a camp on a wooded ridge of juniper trees where we got a tiny bit of shelter from the strong, bitingly cold wind.
We took a small road from Seyitgazi and left the open steppe behind for conifer clad hillsides, though patches of snow lying under the trees hinted it was rapidly shifting from autumn to winter around here. The road was very quiet and after a big pass we sped down and into a tiny village called Sukranli where I was met by a line of men standing across the narrow road waving me to stop. 'Yemek, Yemek' they gestured (eat, eat) after the usual welcomes, and seemed desperate to get us to come into the yard behind the house. I then noticed one of the cars parked outside was one that had just passed us on the road and so they had been standing out here deliberately to wait for us! We followed them round to find the yard full of huge tables and loads of chairs and all laid out for a massive feast - and it looked like half the village was already there. We learned that this was the annual village feast for Bayram and that we were honoured guests. Seeing as it was freezing, hot food was a much nicer option than cold bread and cheese and we gladly joined them. Erika was even allowed to sit outside with all the men - the village women and girls all seemed to be huddled inside one of the buildings. Hot lentil soup, bean and lamb stew and rice with lamb in it and lots of bread and halva. We tucked into everything including the lamb (specially slaughtered for this feast) and thus can no longer still call ourselves veggies. Damn fine it was too!

We left the feast as the other half of the village arrived, many of those present had returned to the family village from distant towns and cities just for Bayram. We cycled on southwards past strange rock formations some of which had been carved by man into tombs or shrines or had some kind of inscription on them. We arrived at Midas city - a large hill of soft rock with many ancient houses, tombs, altars and other things carved from the rock, including an enormous and elaborately patterned shrine on a huge vertical slab of rock, and a throne and alter near the summit - reached by steep stairway cut into the rock on the mountainside. This was the home of King Midas who, according legend, had his wish come true that everything he touched should turn to gold. There was no gold left when we visited but a fair covering of snow, which meant we made a fairly fast tour around before getting back on the bikes and heading for lower ground towards Han. We had been discussing earlier in the day about how open the landscape was and how harsh the climate is - in summer there can be nowhere to escape the relentless heat, and now in winter there is little shelter from the cold or driving winds. Then we spotted a sign for an underground city near Han and it made perfect sense - move underground and stay cool in summer and warm in winter! We hid in our tent instead as it turned dark and it started to rain again. The weather was still foul in the morning and it turned out that a lot of the rain in the night had actually been slushy snow. We spent another day inside the tent trying to keep warm.

The next day was brighter though and from Han we crossed another ridge of wooded hills and then entered the full on steppe - wide open plains with views to the odd distant snow covered mountain being all there was to remind you that the entire earth is not really totally flat, smooth and brown. We sped along during the day though and passed through Emirdağ and Duvulga before heading out into more open country again looking for a camp. A Jandarma van passed us and screeched to halt and waved for us to stop. Last time we were stopped by the police was in Germany and they wanted to see ID/passports and I reckon if we hadn’t been foreigners they would have searched us too. The Jandarma in Turkey are the rural police force but actually they are part of the army - however they wanted only to welcome us to Turkey, ask where were from etc. and then their commander - called Erdal - told us there was a cheap hotel in the next village and invited us to eat with him in a café there. We declined a lift and cycled on to find the van outside a little restaurant where he bought us some food and told us he would arrange for us to sleep in the hotel and he would pay! There was no çay in the restaurant so we went back to the Jandarma station/barracks and sat drinking çay in his office while he pressed buzzers and saluting soldiers appeared at the door with more hot çay! Here we met his two daughters and then his wife and mother-in-law and Erika also spoke to his brother by phone as he had better English and could act as a translator! We were then invited back to the family house next to the barracks where we had more food and çay and spent a great and amusing evening with Erdal and his family. The ‘hotel’ turned out to be the kind that has no reception or facilities and you had to get the key from an old guy across the road. By no facilties I mean none - no wallpaper on the bare concrete walls and the hallway area was half flooded due to a dodgy roof. The toilet was definite contender for the worst toilet in Scotland too, although the beds were comfy. There was also no heating so Erdal had one his soldiers drive over a heater from the police station and then got him to carry our bags upstairs and run out to get us drinking water for the night! Given Erdal’s position in this community I doubt he had to pay for the place at all. It was very nice of him to put us up here all the same and it was much warmer than camping.

Our route from here took us even further into the empty centre of Turkey and each day the steppe would get even bigger and even emptier, or so it seemed. The distant mountains had vanished too leaving you with only subtle and small changes in the ground, shading and rockiness to measure your progress against. I don’t know if the Turks have lots of different words to describe these minute differences in the landscape or not - but I can appreciate why the Innuit have so many words to describe snow and ice. After a couple of nights camped out in the freezing cold we arrived cold and tired in Cihanbeyli one afternoon. We planned to load up with food and water and ride out towards Tüz Gölu - a massive salt lake in the emptiest and most barren part of Turkey - to camp for the night. In town though we were welcomed by a friendly schoolteacher called Şerif who quickly described himself as ‘Kurdish people’ before inviting us to stay with his family for the night. We followed him home with his young son Fulcan who was clearly going to be as tall as his dad given his size at only 3 years old. Şerif told us Kurds are generally taller then Turkish people and it turns out that a lot of the villages in this area are Kurdish. At his house we met his father Mahmud who is about 90 years old and was wearing the traditional Kurdish shalwar baggy trousers (and I mean baggy), along with his stepmother and his wife Nesibey who is also a teacher but is Turkish, not Kurdish. Because she married a Kurd her family did not speak to her for about 3 years and boycotted the wedding! They were a great family though and we spent another very warm and welcome evening as their guests and were made to feel completely at home and part of their family for the night. Şerif spoke excellent english and so we were able to learn a lot about both Kurdish and Turkish culture, their shared history and conflicts and about his hopes and fears for the future of both Turkey generally and the Kurdish people in particular. Unsurprisingly he is not a nationalist and doesn't think the Kurds will ever acheive their own state within Turkey - he is against terrorism but did concede that if some Kurds had not taken up arms then they would probably not have many of the freedoms they have gained in recent years from the Turkish state. His hopes rest on greater and more widespread education (he is a teacher after all!) and Turkey becoming a member of the EU as this will secure greater freedoms for all people in Turkey, including the Kurds. He was also worried that, given years of heavy state control, the Turkish people would not use any such freedoms to their best advantage, and may use greater political and religious freedom to become more fundamentalist - something that has been supressed by the secular state since the creation of the modern republuic by Ataturk in the 1920's.
Şerif had also just finished writing his first book and hopes to be a succesful author - I look forward to reading an english version one day. After a very welcome hot shower we had a great nights sleep and then an early breakfast with lots of specially home-made halva to give us energy for the day ahead on the bikes, before setting off as Şerif and Nesibey went off to school for the day.

Perhaps it was the halva or the earlier than normal start, or just the exceptionally flat and featureleass steppe that day but we had easily covered over 50 miles by lunchtime and stopped in the remote town of Eskil for lunch. The place was busy but there were no women to be seen anywhere - not until we set off again and found them all working hard harvesting the sugar beets in ther fields surrounding the town. Sugar beet is the main crop in this part of turkey and you pass huge mountians of the stuff beside the road awaiting loading onto trucks. We passed Sultanhani later that day with its ancient Caravanserai and then followed the main road toward Aksaray and Neveşehir - an upgraded version of the ancient silk road. We camped by an electricity pylon that night as the lack of trees makes finding something to lock the bikes to a bit difficult.

At breakfast the next day we had chance to be hosts and give some fresh hot coffee to a passing shepherd who in return hacked up the only bit of vegetation nearby - some dead looking low scrubby thorn bushes - before setting them on fire so we could warm up. Once he had a pile of glowing ashes he raked them to the side and beckoned us to stand on the scorched earth to warm our feet up - very nice! He then to run off at speed as his errant donkey was leading his sheep back towards the busy main road!

After Aksaray the terrain got a bit hilly again but the distances and lanscape were still huge and it took us another day and a half of hard graft to reach Neveşehir and Kapadokya/Cappadocia - the region of volcanic soft rock right in the centre of Turkey. After days in the wide open steppe Cappadocia is a bit mindblowing to say the least - it is as if whoever designed this landscape concentrated all the interesting bits into a tiny area leaving thousands of square miles empty and featureless. Cappadocia consists of a layer of soft volcanic tufa that sits several hundred metres thick. Erosion over the years has left a lanscape with deep valleys cut into this tufa and all kinds of ridiculous free standing rock formations and outcrops. For centuries people took adavantage of the soft rock and dug into it to create houses, tombs, churches and entire underground citiers in many places. Many of these people were early christians and by virtue of their underground churches were able to survive well beyond the muslim conquest which took place all around them.
We have been staying in Göreme for the best part of the last week, enjoying a rest from the bikes and having a warm bed inside the cave dormitory at our pension, and touring around the bizzare landscape on foot and by bike. Trying to decribe the views and rock formations is too diofficult so we will leave you to look at the photos and see for yourself. The turks call the big towers of rock "fairy chimneys" but they look more like giant phallus or in some cases like giant magic mushrooms in my opinion.
The whole place is very otherwordly and at times it is hard to believe it is real - it looks like some kind of fibre-glass or plastic moulded filmset. Perhaps this because it has been used in several films such as The Flintstones, and also in Star Wars to depict desert moons and such like. At various times you have the strange sensation that you have seen this view before somewhere.....
This sensation was made even more weird when we arived a valley called Pasabaği in the twilight one evening and discovered a set of fairy chimneys that looked just like a patch of enormous magic mushrooms. While wandering around in amongst them a huge white rabbit hopped across our path and Erika stood still for a couple of minutes in disbelief asking me over and over if I could see it too and was it real? We fully expected to find a giant caterpillar in one of the Nargyile (water pipe) bars when we got back to town!
Walking around this landscape under a full moon with the moonlight reflected off the pale rock everywhewre is even more eerie than walking around during the day, and the convuluted nature of the rock and the valleys means the call to prayer takes on a supernatural tone as it bounces and echoes off the canyon walls and mixes with more distant muezzins in a way that would be hard to re-create on a huge mixing deck.
One day we cycled south to the town of Kaymakli and visited the underground city. By refusing to pay for an official guide for a half hour tour we were able to spend an hour and a half underground exploring by ourselves with our own torch - including heading off down some unlit tunnels which went deeper and deeper down into the blackness. It must of been really wierd to live under here centuries ago with no electric lighting and with people cooking on fires and stuff. The place was well engineeered with food stores, kitchen areas, wells, wineries and a huge ventilation shaft running vertically down into the deep. Many of the tunnels were really narrow and low and you had to crouch down to get along them, but the place was amazing, though it was nice to return to the sunshine and fresh air of the above ground world.
In the evening we went to the bar in town to watch the big match betwen Turkey and Switzerland - the Swiss being the only visitors to recieve a slightly less than warm welcome to Turkey! We arrived 2 minutes after kick off to find the bar deadly silent as people stared in disbelief at the screen - the Swiss were 1 nil up after a first minute penalty. Fortunately the Turks soon got back into it and the place went mental after the second and third goals. It was a great match to watch but a shame it didn't end well for the Turkish side, though peple didnt seem too upset at the final whistle.

We are now planning our route onwards towards Syria and hoping to set off tommorrow.

Well time for me (Erika) to have my say. Robın has pretty well set down what we have been up to ın the last couple of weeks or so.

Wınter has fınally come and we are stıll cyclıng! I can tell you all that I have had many a moment of "what the hell am I doıng", but I just keep on pedallıng and the mıles keep goıng by and I keep followıng my strong man across another contınent. The maın moments of doubt have been when ı keep thınkıng too much about the vastness of the road ahead. Thıs was dıffıcult not to do ın the mıddle of the steppe where you feel so small and ınsıgnıfıcant compared to the massıve landscape all about you. Cappadocıa has felt lıke a dream, ıt ıs amazıng to be here wıth such fantastıc sureal scenery after all that barren brownness. However don't get me wrong I have not been bored, ıt ıs amazıng how ınterestıng brown can be! Our days on the bıke are ın rhythym wıh the daylıght and the clear aır and the ever shortenıng sun hours. I have had quıte a few tımes of soul searchıng, all the good thıngs about beıng on the bıkes, the fact that we get such good reactıons from people, see small places we would not otherwıse see on the normnal backpacker route and are totally free! sometımes don't seem so good when I thınk about a warm coach coverıng the mıles ınstead of my own pedal power. Stıll I have not gıven up yet and after a great long rest ın cappadocıa feel ready to set off east! We wıll try to stıck ıt out campıng for a bıt longer and ıt should defınıtely be warmer ın Syrıa, however from now on the hotels should be gettıng a bıt cheaper so the odd warm nıght here and there wıll be good too.

In Turkey our most commonly used word has been thank you, people here are so hospıtable and love to tell us that ıt ıs because they are muslım and they have a sayıng that ıf they have guests then God wıll provıde the food. Thıs ıs a great phılosophy.
Also another maın dıfference here ıs that people love to talk. We have really notıced the dıfference from western Europe, here people don't go to pubs, they consume a lot of tea ınstead and debate the ıssues of the world whılst doıng so. Turkey ıs a very ınterstıng place and we are havıng a great tıme.

Hope you are all well at home, ıt ıs great to hear from you all from tıme to tıme. Any more of you been ınspıred to cycle- even once a week - go on you'll love ıt.


We have tasted our fırst ever quınces, learnt that you must not eat olıves straıght from the tree! ( they are totatlly dısgustıng that way!) and wıtnessed a wıld hamster! (very cute)

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Photos

Steppe it up, Steppe it up, Steppe it up
Typical road across the empty steppe of central Anatolıa

Sculpted Rock
Wave formations ın the soft tufa of Cappadocıa

Pasabaği Faıry Chimneys
Giant phallic symbols or magic mushrooms? Also the home of very large whıte rabbits....

Wombling Free
Erika in one of the tunnels in Kaymakli underground city.

Bowels of the Earth
The seemıngly bottomless ventilation shaft ın Kaymakli. Use the zoom to see possibly the first ever photographıc proof of the existence of goblins!

Comments

[eelco]

great story! really funny to find so many similarities between our two trips, but that might ofcourse also be caused by the fact we sort of took the same route anyway ;) will be leaving allepo just today, riding to crac de chevaliers over the next three days, then hopping a bus to palmyra, and returning after two or three to head into lebanon; maybe see you two down there! have fun! Eelco

[g]

happy to see u r still on d road. u can go from time to time to the http://bassein.hit.bg webpage to see me and the rest of your friends here... Your WE DID IT photo is hanging on my seiling

[mum and dad]

from punta arenas
can even keep track of you from the other end of the earth! glad to hear all is well. We are just back from the land of fire and back on mainland america.

[ben]

hey hey.
Managed to read your web-site its well cool. I'm in Hama and have the shits. Been in bed 2 days, luckily have English TV. Have to go now as the Linda McCartney Story movie is on TV. What a hard cycling life!