3568 km Istanbul !!!!!!

Knock knock,

Even faster then we pronounced in our last message we made it to Istanbul from Edirne in just two days. Meaning it took us exactly 40 days to get here. The weather has been nice though it was a bit hot. It seems we are getting somewhat adjusted to the circumstances now. We had a few cases of a bad stomach but are otherwise still going strong. Probably the in and out of air conditioned spaces and the new food are getting to us a bit. So far Turkey has been absolutely great. Everyone we have met so far is so kind to us. When we stop for lunch people spontaneously offer to look after our bikes help us find a nice place to lunch and before we know it we are surrounded by all the local villagers who want to know everything about us. People keep asking questions about are trip and help us in all sorts of ways. We won't mind at all having to stay in Turkey for a lot longer.

The second and last day to Istanbul went quite smoothly as well except for the traffic. Cycling into Istanbul is a big no no, and so far we have not seen anyone on a bike here yet. Quite understandable because we had way to many near misses yesterday (take this as a safety moment for you Lyondellers ;) ) Luckily we have made it in one peace and we are quite happy to put the bikes aside for a moment and admire this truly amazing town.

We managed to find a nice and cheap Hostel here in the West part of town not to far from all the main tourist attractions. We pay around 10 euro a person per night which is a bargain for Istanbul standards. Downside is that the nightlife is very active here and sleeping before 3 am is not an option with the noise outside. So we'll adjust and start sleeping late from now on.

Not this morning though, we got up at 6.30 because we needed to pay the embassy of Iran a visit and apply for our Visa. Not an easy task. Lots of grumpy old men behind their desks not very willing to help at all. After being transferred from desk to desk 4 times paying the bank a visit to pay a hefty fee of 60 euros each going to a copy shop twice after half a day our application is now finally "under consideration" In theory we can still be denied the Visa and we even needed to sign of that in that case we won't get the 60 euro refunded... Very nice people there ;) but we kept on smiling and look friendly and we'll hope for the best. It will take the embassy at least 10 days to check the 3 forms we filled in (we still kept smiling) so we'll be in Istanbul for a while longer then planned. We originally had 5 days in mind but it won't be punishment at all to stay here a bit longer.

In the afternoon we have checked out the main tourist attractions of the city the Aya Sofia the Blue mosque and The Tokapi palace. This city just breathes history and its amazing to walk around in this buildings that played such a significant role of several big empires (Byzantine/Ottoman) In the end of the day we went of and relaxed a bit with a water pipe some tea (chai) and played some backgammon like everyone here seems to do.

We look forward to spend some more time here see all there is to see and also prepare for the journey ahead. We need to update some of the spare parts and take into account that we probably can't buy any decent Shimano components anymore at least until we are in a major city in India. Furthermore we need to buy some good maps of Turkey of the regions we will visit next.

We had some time to finalize what we want to do for our trip now here and it has not been easy. There are so many different things to see and we can't look at them all it would mean cycling 7000km in Turkey alone.... For know we think we will just head east and stay in the northern part either on, or a few 100km from, the black see coast. This means we won't see Cappadocia and also miss out on Antalya and some other nice sites on the southwest. We will go to Bolu then Safranbulu a nice town with Unesco status and lot of old houses then see Samson on the coast. Amaysa (ancient capital of the Hittite empire) Trabzon and the nice nature on the coast around it and then move a bit more south to Erzurum and Iran. But thats all still very far away. We don't expect to make the distances here we have made before considering the temperatures mountains and etc over here so it will prabaly take us a while.

Guess time will tell. For now we are having a blast in Istanbul and enjoying a well deserved break!!!

Talk to you all again soon

Greetz
Erik and Tjeerd

p.s answered some questıons on the last message as well.