Eastern Turkey - the journey back into the tourist zone
6th Oct 2006

When will we learn?
The recurrent theme of finances
A range of emotions around Lake Van
We have yet to meet a dodgy Kurd
Strange places, strange people

Rule number 1

Always get to a border fresh, in plenty of time for formalities and with a clear plan of what you are going to do when you have crossed the border. We knew of a friendly campsite in Dogubayazit and so we met the third criterion but not the others. We’d chosen not to stay in Maku as it was so uninviting and fled to the border before the car-bound enthusiastic money changer could twig that we’d hightailed. So it was that we found ourselves rocking up to the border at gone 6 and following a long day from Tabriz.

We shunned the facilitator who offered to assist us to clear customs for $10 and so got into a laborious trail around several unnamed and frequently unmanned offices. To be fair, one of the offices I would classify as unmanned did in fact have a man but he was asleep at his post. Rousing someone on the feeble pretext of wanting him to do his job is not always the best policy. Never a truer word spoken. When his colleague stirred him into life, he became the biggest pain in the butt, sending me to a couple of other offices on pointless missions only to be sent back to have him finally stamp the carnet. Turkey has got to be easier than this!

I often end up as the sounding board when things are getting a little frustrating. I was sat on a kerb, travel weary and watched the bike. Pat was like one of those weather people that pops out of one door and back in the next, each time he passed he would mutter about the latest hassle and pop back in another door. In particular there was a lot of muttering about computers. Apparently our exit had to be registered on their computer. Fine and dandy but no-one seemed to tell us where to go to do the computer thing, just senselessly repeated ‘Computer, computer’. I entertained myself people watching, coach loads of Iranians seemed to be heading for Turkey, I wonder are these people visiting relatives, on their jollies, escaping, or just nipping over the border on a drinking binge.

How wrong could I be about Turkey? Again shunning the expediter who dogged me at the entry kiosk, I flailed around uselessly. Having managed to get the passports stamped, which involved getting a couple of stickers from a ‘bank’ which resembled a train ticket window but had less useful information, all customs officers instantly vanished leaving me with a big carnet headache. In fact the carnet can be something of a hindrance. When the system works well, there is absolutely no problem; stamp, stamp and your gone. If one can enter a country without using the carnet, leaving is not a big worry as there is no documentary evidence that the bike was in the country so you can’t possibly owe any duties. I thought we might as well chance it and so we packed up and headed for the exit gate only to meet the first alert officer in Turkey. He asked me if I’d been cleared on the computer and pointed at a block 10 yards before his barrier. There was no way I could say yes as he’d just seen me ride past it. We went back to the computer office to find it ... deserted. I rather arrogantly started beeping the horn to try and get some kind of reaction from somewhere. Pat by now was not as his most patient. Nothing. I went back to the efficient one who pointed towards a portakabin off the side of the road. Sure enough, inside were a group of blokes putting the kettle on. With a sadly resigned shrug, one of them got out of his seat and followed me to his kiosk. He punched up the registration into his terminal and came up with an “invalid”. Bugger. So we went back up the hill to the main block clutching a sketch of where the office was.

I was sitting once again on a bit of shade on a kerb. I watched as a row of Iranian women in chadors and headscarves sat on a step, and all sparked up. I joined them in their moment of expression of freedom and unwrapped my head. I saw them smile out of the corner of my eye. We shared a moment of freedom. The headscarf had been a frustration to me. It had taken me over a week to work out how to tie it so that it didn’t shuffle about, and every 2 seconds fiddling with to readjust it to cover those offensive escapee hairs. It cuts down your peripheral vision so that checking for traffic to cross the road becomes a trail, and it is no surprise to me that many Iranian women walk out in front of cars they haven’t seen. (bearing in mind our recent accident in Pakistan, I had spend most of Iran on edge as pedestrians crossed roads testing Allah’s protection) Having to put the thing on even if you are nipping 10m down your hotel corridor, or if the hotelier brings you towels drove me mad. Not to mention the extra heat that the damn thing creates. (Now if all the blokes had to dress up like Ayatollahs then I wouldn’t mind so much, but the men of course get away with t-shirts and short sleeved shirts) You would think I would have no reticence about it’s removal, but now it came to the point that I could go bare headed, it felt weird, still surrounded by Iranians, it felt risqué. Instantly I regretted my rash behaviour, as I became aware that the scarf did a good job of disguising the mess the helmet makes of my hair and stops it blowing in my eyes.

I rattled the appropriate door a couple of times but there was no-one inside. I checked around and knocked on a few doors to wave my carnet at the occupants. Eventually I hit gold and the man from the customs office reluctantly led me to the locked office and opened the door. He entered the registration and got ... “invalid”. Seems the youth in the entry kiosk had entered the registration as
G798 0EA instead of G798 OEA - see, it’s not that obvious, is it? Now my man had to find the hacker who could reset the process. The clock had been ticking and dusk was starting to settle. How long would all this go on? Would we get to Doggy in reasonable time to get the tent set up? At least everything was now in motion. We cleared all the hurdles in quick succession and found ourselves out no the road in about 10 minutes. Remarkable.

Not as cheap as we remember

Parachute camping (the man’s name is indeed Parachute but relies on a Turkish character set to look convincing) is one of the best camp grounds around failing only to have good shelter from the walloping winds that blow around there and rather meagre toilet facilities. Now these could be considered fundamental for a good campsite but Parachute camping benefits from one of the greatest sunset views in the world. Just below the site is the charming Ishak Pasha Palace which has been restored beautifully almost as if to make the view so wonderful. If only someone would demolish a small part of an adjacent mountain, you’d be able to see the snow-clad peak of Mount Ararat to boot. We were just in time to get the tent up before the light went. A satisfying end to a stressful day. We had seen Mount Ararat on the horizon from probably 100 km back in Iran. Couldn’t see an ark though.

Wow, there was a lot of military in the area though. I still find a lot of guys with guns menacing, and here there were tanks and all sorts. Was Turkey always like this or did they know something we didn’t? Or maybe Turks get kicks out of dressing up in military uniform? Generally all a wee bit disquieting.

A couple of Turkish bikers turned up at the camp as I was getting something out of the bike and we fell into conversation. Koray and Baris were on an exploratory ride around the north-east of their country and popped down to Doggy on a strange mission; Baris had done his national service within the confines of the military base at Dogubayazit and had sworn to return some day to see what lay beyond the razor wire. They graciously extended a welcome to us if we should come to be in Istanbul. We warned them that we may have to stay in the ‘bul for a week or so and that we’d probably stay down in backpacker zone. They didn’t insist that we stay for the protracted period which was most sensible of them.

We slept well and in the morning considered what we’d seen on our way into Dogubayazit that had seemed very strange. Hippy put her finger on it; it wasn’t just a teenage girl without a headscarf but it was the fact that she was wearing a full soccer strip complete with shorts and boots. 30 miles away she would have been locked away for flagrant abuse of the clothing laws. I wonder how Iran makes out in the women’s world cup. Poorly, I guess. Very difficult to know where your wingers are when you have such a blinkered vision thanks to your chador.

I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t have a beer until we got back to Blighty. For no particular reason I hadn’t had one in India since leaving Goa (a rare exception was the night before crossing into Pakistan where Hippy kept mentioning it until I couldn’t hold back and we ended up sharing a last Kingfisher). Getting beer in Pakistan and Iran is not completely out of the question but I never really felt the urge and so was quite happy to stick with the plan. When we got to Parachutes, my resolve held for two days and then Hippy asked one of the staff how much a beer was. It was not cheap but simply asking the price had set off an uncontrollable urge in me. So it was that I was officially thrown off the wagon in Dogubayazit.

I think buying the beer broke the ice a bit with the management of the site who had started to think that we would spend no money at all. They taught us the essential card game of Turkey - Pischti and brought us plates of fruit and all kinds of little niceties. Funny how people warm to you when they get their hands on your cash. We were being even more frugal than usual as we’d been considering the future of our budget. We’ve been able, for the most part, to stick to our self-imposed budget of £20 per day. This is based on the income from the house and flat. The house has been empty and un-let for an age and so our budget is somewhat meaningless, we’ve tried to stick to it all the same to see if it would be possible to do the world on that kind of money. Now we were to get the biggest slap in the face; not only have we left behind that lovely, super cheap Iranian gas but we discover that Turkey has the highest priced petrol that we’ve seen anywhere (as best as I can remember). Consider the difference - 3000 km across Iran total cost 20 dollars, first tankful in Turkey 35 dollars. Turkey is really quite a wide country and so we were going to be eating bread and cheese for a while. At least there is huge scope for rough camping in Asian Turkey so we can keep the costs down a little.

There’s a whole lot of other financial stuff to write about Dogubayazit so forgive me while I bang on a bit. Another huge change from Iran is that begging is back. In fact not really begging, more blagging. Reasonably well turned out youths in town were conversant with only two English words, ‘hello’ and ‘money’. There had been a little begging in Iran but it was carried out with clear shame and in silence; mostly older women stretching their hands out pleadingly.

There were a couple of sweet Slovenians on the campground who had come all the way across Turkey with the intention of ascending Mt Ararat. Doggy is really the only place to organise this and Parachute is one of the official guides. They were visibly pale, I mean really in shock, when they heard that they’d have to fork out EUR 250 each to make the trip. OK, so this includes a ride to the base, horses to take your stuff to a high camp and all the required fees. They were obviously expecting trekking fees of a similar magnitude to Peru or Pakistan. No, Turkey is certainly ready to join Europe if its prices are anything to go by. I suppose that Ararat has the religious connection that makes it a draw, but it seems counterproductive to me to hike up the prices so high that some people back out and they end up making no money at all.

Our happiness of staying at Doggy was rather tempered when we came to pay the bill. Rather than the twenty-odd Lira we were expecting, I was told that it would be fifty-seven. It was my turn to be speechless. I asked them to check the bill and it still added up to fifty-seven. I sat down with them and went through it to discover that just about every item had been charged at twice its proper rate. There was not a hint of an apology that they’d been mistaken, just a new total offered which was less than half of what they’d asked before. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this as a place to stay but I warn anyone and everyone to check their bill thoroughly as there’s banditry afoot in Dogubayazit. Terrible shame that this is a first impression when you cross the border from Iran where I’m struggling to recall a single instance of a rip-off. Also the people had otherwise been delightful. We were saddened that we were leaving with a sour taste in our mouths when so easily it could all have been very different.

Van, Van police van, Van Lake and Tatvan

We had chilled for a few days, for no other reason than to readjust to being out of Iran. I had not found it uncomfortably oppressive (bear in mind that we had also had a month in Pakistan prior to Iran) in Persia. But now seeing women wandering around in strappy tops, well in fact seeing foreign tourists in any number seemed strange. This was as far as most foreigners venture, most believing that Iran is full of fundamentalists, or can’t be bothered with the bureaucracy of getting a visa.

Our ride out of Doggy took us South following the border with Iran, sentry gun turrets were perched on every hillock. I was comforted by the fact that most of them were unarmed so they were clearly not expecting trouble, today at least. The landscape was surreal, it alternated between telly-tubby style rolling hills and dramatic chunky black lava flows. It was described as a scenic route on the map, but for some reason I didn’t warm to it. I hoped that this was not the best that Turkey could do for scenic scenery. We whistled through Van and chortled at the thought of the Van Police van that pulled by beside us and waved at the cheery guys inside. Van is a large city, we got confused between sign for Kelisa and Iskelisa and ended up in some suburb of town, instead of at the castle. Hey ho, what’s new. The castle when we found it was appropriately castle like, and perched atop a rocky tump with grand views over the lake Van.

We were only stopping in en route to Adkamer. Kind of mid way along the southern shore of the lake. Adkamer is famous for what you can get to from there rather than for itself; it is the launching point for the island of the same name, which is not only an idyllic little picnic stop for locals but is also the site of a rather fetching Armenian church.

Oh the Lonely Planet, it is it’s own worst enemy. It recommends somewhere probably in good faith and then the place gets inundated with backpackers, the place no longer has to make an effort to please, the prices shoot up and the staff are complacent. We were tired and had made the mistake of going for the easy option and not bothering to check out the alternatives. The next afternoon we found a much more amenable place, up the road a little. A wise man lured us to his camping place with an endless pot of chai, cheaper beer, food and camping. It was not a mistake. Our kebab dinner was half the price of down the road and was followed by gratis fruit and of course no meal is complete without chai. A game of Pischti cemented the bonds of international friendship. The family were Kurdish, and proud of their heritage. Their music was soulful and captivating, their hospitality genuine. We were beginning to find Turkish/Kurdish (we were not sure which) hospitality runs on strange business lines. It goes something like this - I think. That once you (as a tourist) are friendly you become more of a guest to whom it would be rude to charge for chai for example. As a ‘guest’ if the family are eating it would be customary to invite you to sample the food. This all seems a bit weird when there is a clear price list for the items that they are giving away free, it seems to be poor business, when you could make money from your ‘guests’. But then the converse also seems to be true that if you are offhand and cold to people they see nothing wrong with charging you inflated prices. I quite like it. It kind of encourages a level of respect and pleasantness. Sit down and have a game of Pischti with the management and it’s free chai and fruit all day, arrive and be arrogant and you get ripped off.

The Lonely Planet informs us that the water in Van Lake is so full of soda, one can wash one’s clothes without need for soap. The bike jackets and pants were in dire need of sweat removal after Iran and so the easiest strategy seemed to be take a swim with nowt but me gear on and then beat myself with birch twigs. Well, something along those lines. Maybe it was just the excessive dirtiness of our clothes but washing without powder was not fully effective and we resorted to more modern methods. Having a lake to wash and rinse in rather than having to scrabble around for some old bucket big enough made a refreshing change and washing the heavy stuff was quite fun for once.

We did our wee trip to the island on a Sunday, which means that benefited from the cultural experience of seeing full blown Turkish picnicking in action. No picnic site is complete without a samovar bubbling away.

I have been reliably informed by Roel the Dutch trucker that statistically the English drink the most tea in the world. (Not that I know the accuracy of his source) I truly have my doubts, Turks and Persians drink a lot of tea, and I mean I lot of tea. I know when you think of Turkey, you think of the sort of coffee that spoons stand up in and could raise the dead, but in Eastern Turkey, at least, the tea leaf reigns supreme. My theory is that Persians and Turks actually drink more volume of tea than Brits, but that Brit probably statistically buy more weight of tea. We have it stronger for a start, because we corrupt it with milk, and we are inefficient in our use of tea, by using one tea bag to make a cup rather than a cup and a half. They certainly use more time in the production and consumption of tea than the Brits. It’s one of those things that always bugs me about stats, is that they come up with these statements but you never seem to be told what measure they used to decide it. OK whether the Brits drink more or less tea than the Turks is not of earth-shattering importance, to anyone really other than the tea marketing board. It just a small irritation compared to the ridiculous research methods used by many to compile meaningless stats, that unfortunately taint people’s view of the world, or worse people use to make government policy. How can Hippy get so het up over something as mundane as a statistic about tea consumption? I ask you.

Sorry, about that wee digression. Yes the island, picnicking, that’s where I was. The picnicking finished, families settled into singing and dancing, sleeping off their excesses and generally having a lovely time.

The Armenian church was annoyingly shut for renovation, but with a bit of wandering you could see most of it from the outside and if it was anything like the one that we had seen over the border, the inside would not be much to write home about. What the carving lacked in refinement it made up for in clarity. I know little of this early form of Christianity, but there seemed a fanciful element to the carving, fantastical animals; griffins and unicorns that seemed in my ignorance to suggest a link with the Zoroastrian beliefs of man battling with evil in fantasy form. I am sure theology scholars will disagree with me. But hey they’re not here.

At the Western corner of Van lake is Tatvan we pulled up attracted by another overland bike, an oldie Beemer like our own. There was no one who seemed to be the owner, yet the bike was fully laden with GPS and all sorts of thievable items. This man was very trusting. Finally he rolled up, like us he was stocking up on cash. He was heading the other way and needed to cross into Iran that day before his visa became invalid. As we swapped travel tips, I saw a lad lift my helmet off the bike to try it on, I made eye contact, shock my head, more because the helmet is quite revolting now. We chatted, kids gathered asking for money, we let our attention drift for a moment.

Pat sprinting shouting as he legged it down the road, ‘He’s got the helmet’ The little lad had whipped it - the bas.....! This really wasn’t funny. A guard at the bank wandered off his station more out of curiosity than in an effort to help. I waited... youth on a bicycle should be able to outrun a middle aged biker. Shit...... I stood, realising that we had got complacent this simply would not have happened in Iran and Pakistan. No-one saw it as their social responsibility to help. Pat came strolled back up the road, my helmet in hand. When the lad had realised he was being pursued he’d chucked the evidence down on the road and made a quick getaway. Thanks for nothing, let’s not think about the fact that the helmet is now probably defective. It was a rude awakening to being out of safety to the unpleasant growing undercurrent in some of the youth in Turkey

A few encounters with Kurds - all of them very special

We set off in the direction of Nemrut Dagi, with a stop in at Diyarbakir on the way. This town makes claims of having the longest city wall in the world at 6 km, but we know of at least one of 23 km in India and there are probably a dozen more that could beat it in the wall stakes. (An even bolder claim was that this was second only to the Great Wall of China in the wall league premiership) Anyway, we were definitely back off the tourist route. Diyarbakir, in recent year’s has had somewhat of a reputation for hard line Kurdish uprisings, so if there were once tourists there are none now. The town was unremarkable, the concrete modern buildings were punctuated by the odd old mosque and bit of city wall.

Nooooo, what the...... I looked down at my arm. My forearms were covered in lots of tiny blisters. Had I picked up some form of chicken pox, was I contagious? They weren’t itchy, what was it? In a couple of seconds of panic the brain whirred into action. Then, I was fascinated, the sunburn I had got in Doggy had trapped in the sweat and made lots of tiny capsules. I then got great pleasure in popping them like popping those blisters in bubble wrap. OK, so I am a sad woman.

We rather made a mess of compensating for Turkish/Kurdish generosity. We fancied some cheese and so working on the time honoured theory that the stalls at the back of market are less likely to see outsiders and so not be in the practice of hiking up prices, we wended our way to a rather sumptuous counter at the back. This area of Turkey has a cheese we had grown rather fond of, a feta with pickled garlic leaves mixed in with it. We asked for a little. He gave us more (latterly we thought he had very astutely spied the size of our loaf and correctly estimated sufficient cheese) but he insisted it was free. We wanted to give him something, so we decided to have some olives and make sure we pay for them, but he refused our cash for these, too. It had all gone a bit wrong in our eagerness to pay him, he had ended up giving us more. Was this the Kurdish threat that we should be so worried about; it’s benign, it’s subtle, it’s deadly, they lull you into cholesterol overload and wait for their enemies to keel over with heart attacks.

We also saw for the first time a strange game - we thought it was dominoes to start with but then we noticed a distinct lack of dots and in their place A, 1 to 13 and in 4 colours, this was in fact, a tile form of Rummy. We were invited to sit and watch a game in hand, whilst the participants chain drank tea from from small waisted glasses. I don’t want to bring the tea thing back up again but ...as the glasses are so tiddly, it is quite possible that even though the Turks drink more glasses, we drink a larger volume. Whatever.

We had splashed out on a room for the night at 20 Euros with breakfast, but were noticeably shabbily dressed amongst the diners at breakfast. Full of open breakfast, we began loading the bike. Not good news, the back tyre was flat as a pancake. This was the scenario I had been dreading. We’d changed the tyre back in Iran with the intention of getting a decent bit of new rubber in Turkey without knowing that the east of Turkey is rather less developed than all the bits we’d seen on the way through before. I whipped the wheel off and set off with the hotel ‘boy’ to find the local tyre shop. It turned out that the previous patch put on in Iran was leaking at the edge and so this guy put a patch over the patch - not the best course of action but as he put it in his vulcanising press I thought it might come out OK. Meanwhile, the receptionist in the hotel was feeling sorry for me and I was being supplied with chai.

50 kilometres up the road and with a completely flat tyre in the middle of nowhere, I rued the repair strategy. Why didn’t I check around town for a new inner tube? It must have been around this time that I came up with a concept for another long trip - the ‘No regrets’ tour of the world. On this journey, I would never pass up a photo opportunity, I would never miss the chance to buy the perfect souvenir and I would always make the best repair possible rather than take the budget option. There was the glimmer of a silver lining in the cloud, we’d pulled up on the road opposite a quarry where it was possible that there might be a compressor on hand to make tyre repair that bit easier. The God of Travellers was looking after us again.

A half dozen guys were hanging around in the shade of a porch and seemed pleased that we pulled up by them. Out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to break the monotony of greasing the wheels of the rock crusher, a couple of bikers with a flat tyre must have been like a night out at the Palladium. Tea was made (of course) and cheese and bread brought out to fortify the visitors. We struggled to make meaningful conversation, but luckily for us a flat tyre is pretty self explanatory.

As Pat took the wheel off helping hands rallied around finding crates and the like to support Berthette’s haunches. The tyre off it was clear that the inner tube was beyond repair, seemingly weakened by the vulcanising it got in Diyarbakir - a rip had formed along the edge of the patch, even you if managed to repair the rip, you knew another would develop as some as you left their yard.

What to do, what to do...... The guys were muttering amongst themselves. They had the makings of a plan, a lad would hitch to the next town with our wrecked inner tube buy a similar one and hitch back. They sent him off, checking that he knew what size to get. Pragmatically, Pat called after him to get 2 while he was at it. I was dubious that the next little town would have a replacement - this is not the most usual of tyre sizes.

We settled into an afternoon of Pischti with the lads, who seemed unconcerned that we were delaying their work. When we got out some biscuits to share in an effort to repay the chai, bread and cheese, they took it to mean we were still hungry, and brought out halva and more goodies. These guys were Kurdish batmen, or at least they were Kurds from Batman, 20 km away. One knew no English but had gathered that Pat was from Bolton, and sporadically throughout the Pischti game shouted JJ Okocha, (he used to play from Gallataseray or some other Istanbul club)

As the afternoon wore on, the mobile phones came out and they began chivvying along the lad that had been sent to town for us. A guy nipped out and returned with two inner tubes. They could not have done more for us, and it would have been wrong to be ungrateful, but he had got the wrong size, 18 inch rather than 17 inch. What do you say, what do you do? You accept graciously and hope that when you put it back together the tyre would function. We reimbursed them for their outlay, but typically despite the outrageous cost of fuel they would take nothing for their diesel.

As if orchestrated by magic, a truck pulled into the gravel workings equipped with a compressor, just at the point where Pat was giving up hope of getting enough pressure into the tyre to get the bead on the rim. Sorted! Dusk was drawing in. We knew we would be made welcome if we had decided to camp there, we also knew that the guys had already dug into their reserves to feed us, if we stayed we knew they would not permit to feed ourselves and dig deeper into their short supplies, we decided to head on, if only for another 50 km or so, to find a rough camping spot. Berthette reassembled, food was plonked in front of us again, we could not escape their hospitality that easily. It was simple soup and some pasta, but it was a feast, I felt guilty as I ate, that the guys were waiting for their ’guests’ to have their fill before they ate themselves. I am always humbled by such hospitality, and it is embarrassingly often how the people that have the least spare to share that are the most forthcoming in their generosity. I understand that Islamic traditions in hospitality go one step further than Christian ones, beyond sharing what you have to true altruism, preferring to go without and make sure the guest is well catered for.

We felt it was right to give them a gift for their time and to say thank-you, but what did we have to give them. This is where something like Sjaak’s postcards or Karin and Coen little clogs, that they could give as gifts were such a good idea, the Dutch have all the good ideas. Anyway, this does not help us with the immediate problem of how to show our gratitude. We rattled our brains, and mentally went through the contents of our baggage, was there anything that we had that was remotely resembling a gift and was not so battered that it would be insulting to come up with. All we could think of was our inflatable globe, with our route daubed on it. We had been gradually shedding items in last month, either by our own ineptitude or by design. A pair of kurta pyjama trousers had been lost in the bedding of the first hotel in Yazd. Our 1950’s ‘not so safe’ safety razor which had been amongst my father’s belongings when he died, I had been mortified at absentmindedly leaving behind in Esfahan - I had somehow managed to pack the neat classic, bakelite box and had left the razor on the sink. Now the inflatable world we had carried for 5 year’s that had been given to us as a leaving present from my sister, we were passing on to a new Kurdish home.

As we left we were waved on, and we hoped the ill-fitting inner tube would at least last us till a reasonable sized town. We would see. (As we write this somewhat after the event I can report that the back tyre with the wrong sized inner tube made it all the way home!) Immediately the issue was to find a place to rough camp before the light completely disappeared.

Everywhere we looked that initially seemed a good stop, as our eyes focused in the progressing gloom, a shepherd and their flock seemed to appear. It was getting desperate, we stopped by some walls that we could sneak behind and hide out for the night. Closer inspection they were herding pens, we chose our spot on the basis of the one with just a sprinkling of sheep dropping rather than the ones caked in generation of animal faeces.

It was clear as the light finally faded and that shepherds’ lamps glimmered on the other side of road and their dogs barked at phantoms or the smell of a pair of bikers in the area, we were not alone. The lamp scanned the area like a searchlight. They were checking us out I am sure. We heard gun shot. Best lie low. Was the shot to ward of a predator from their sheep; to ward off us? Should we have heeded the warnings made by others about this Kurdish territory.

The night was fitful and tiring. The tent seemed to be plagued by some kind of minute sheep flies who were happy to use a little human flesh as a alternative banquet. In wakeful moments I eased my discomfort by the satisfying squeezing of another couple of new water blisters that had developed on my arm, from the sunburn. We were finally awoken before dawn by the ding-ding of a bell, that heralded the arrival of a flock of sheep, who along with their human leader tramped around our tent and passed on. I think the shepherd probably thought we were more than a little weird choosing the set up camp on a pile of sheep shit for the night, rather than a threat.

Up and down and we’ve made it round

A check of the tyre, suggested it had at least managed to keep air overnight. On to Nemrut Dagi. Via a ferry that connects two parts of a road that still exist despite the middle section being deliberately flooded to create a reservoir.

Dagi means hill, and this is one those hills that is so steep that it beg for a monument on the top. So millennia back a Roman guy did the necessary, leaving a perfect stop for sunset; giant heads lie enigmatically looking out at all they survey. Sadly the altar is now used as a helipad for those dignitaries who feel it undignified or too much effort to walk.

There was the customary power outage at the simple guest house we were staying at. Unusually, the outage was a wholly internal problem rather than a result of poor supply. What was unusually brutal was the approach to the problem. Just hammer the junction box until something happens, bits of plaster flying off in every direction. Whether coincidentally or by hammer technology the power returned. But for how long......

It is hard to say which route up Nemrut Dagi is the more onerous, the East route is cobbled with chunky basalt, the West is as steep as a steep thing that is exceedingly steep. We opted to go down the steep side and half way managed to cook the brakes, it was an excellent excuse to wait and enjoy the scenery. Beautiful. We wandered around Arsameia another bit of Roman indulgence, and had a lovely chat with the owners of the caff who offered free camping.

Eric, the dog, followed us amiably around the site until some more gullible prospective sponsors came along. Why, Eric you may ask? Something to do with its uncanny likeness to an equally amiable dog in the Watson family.

Our intention had been to drop in for a snap shot of an old Roman bridge on our drive out. But as is the way with these things it managed successfully to elude us. This was made unfortunate because we could have done with something to brighten up an generally dull and hot journey.

As we turned north at a junction 22 km from Gazientep we stopped to pause at the nondescript spot. For us this was a huge landmark. Nearly 5 years before we had gone through Gazientep on our way south to Syria. We were in world terms in spitting distance of completing the circle. This was it in East to West terms we were now into overlap zone. I am sure to the people passing by on the road they wondered what on earth a couple of foreigners thought photo-worthy.

As if to welcome us back the landscape transformed into dramatic alpine scenery. We rose and twisted through glorious forest. We should have taken the opportunity to rough camp in the hills, because as we dropped down the cover became sparse and the wind began to blow through. Dusk was drawing in, we found a spot somewhat reminiscent of our campsite in the Atacama, masked from view of the road by a tump and clearly used by the construction workers who had made the road.

It was a lovely windy road, that passed at one point through a salt marsh, where the storks had utilised the electricity poles for their nests. I am sure that now in the highlands of Turkey the storks have evolved to be artful avoid electrocution, or have insulated feet. This was a welcome distraction from the coolness over the top.

It looked like a bicycle that was coming towards us up the hill, but it looked wrong somehow, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. It was too high, but it was going the right speed. .......A penny farthing........a guy in a pith helmet. As we passed him, it could only be a Brit. And sure enough, on the frame a Union Jack. We had biscuits to share and a flask of tea. Time for a break.
The wonderfully eccentric Joff Summerfield (some of his pictures)had taken on the beautifully insane challenge to ride a penny farthing around the world. Apparently this has been done before but not since 1884. His only deadline was to make it to NZ for the penny farthing world championships in 18 months. This was his third attempt the first two had been foiled by injuries and an unhelpful scrape with a truck.

He dislikes cities even more than we do, with the traffic lights and suchlike, he ends up pushing more than riding. He has to push down steep hills as well as up! We pondered what own does is the event of a crash. He tells us that according to the ‘Boys Own Manual’ in the 1880s ‘If you know you are going to crash, aim for a large hedge or a fat woman’. Not sure what is wrong with a fat man. With today’s suing culture, lawyers would have a field day with such a situation.

He had a nice little set up with a little trailer out the back of the farthing. He reckoned on travelling about 70 km a day and stopping for the day mid afternoon and trying to stick to a budget of a fiver a day.

He made our trip seem pathetically ordinary. But I worried for him that he was heading to Nemrut Dagi and we knew he would be pushing up and down it. We later heard that had made it, it took him 3 days but he did it..... fair play and the photos are fantastic on his web site. Sadly, the long distances and travelling at altitude in Iran got the better of him and he has since flown to Australia.

It was a lovely interlude in our journey that day, and watching him ride off up the hill, I warmed to know that the flag of British madness still flies strong, with a young man and his pedal-powered stead. We breezed on with ease on Berthette to Göreme in Capadoccia.

Wow.....we have entered a whole new world. Tourists, thousands of ‘em ...... from here on home things are going to be very different.