May 28th – 56 kms, Rize
May 29th – 84 kms, Arhavi

The overall landscape and atmosphere completely changed after we passed the mountains separating western Anatolia to the eastern Black Sea cost. Here everything is much greener, the air is wetter and warmer. It looked we arrived in a tropical country. Sometimes we felt like if we were in Brazil.

As we cycled towards Rize, we observed many tea trees being cultivated here and there, so as many trucks carrying tons of tea leaves. There are many tea factories along the road, many of them being quite famous in Turkey. The road itself simply smells tea.

Actually, most of the tea produced in Turkey is Rize tea, a terroir from Rize Province on the eastern Black Sea coast, which has a mild climate with high precipitation and fertile soil. This tea is usually processed as black tea. In 2004, Turkey produced 205,500 tonnes of tea (6.4% of the world’s total tea production), which made it one of the largest tea markets in the world, with 120,000 tons being consumed in Turkey, and the rest being exported. Furthermore, in 2004, Turkey had the highest per capita tea consumption in the world, at 2.5 kg per person—followed by the United Kingdom (2.1 kg per person). Thanks, Wikipedia.

Arrived in Rize, we stayed at the famous Mustafa’s tea house. Mustafa is part of a cyclist group in Rize, and, as an owner of a tea house, is welcoming many cyclists here and offering free tea. Quite nice actually 😉 Here we met Flo, a cool and funny German guy cycling a loop from Berlin to Bishkek all alone. Flo was the first (and the only one!) « cycle traveller » that we meet in Turkey.Together with Mustafa and some of his customers, we shared tea, Ramazan food, and good discussions. It was a lovely evening.

By the way, what is a Tea House, or kıraathane? It is a kind of coffee where it is served tea. Just tea. You will most likely find an old fridge in a dusty corner with sodas and other fancy drinks, but no one pays attention to this here. You come to a Tea House to drink tea, play some Okey and converse with your men friends. Yes, you will barely find any woman in a Tea House the only one was Larissa). Not to be mixed up with a Tea Garden! There is a Tea House in every town, city and village of Turkey. It is part of all the establishments that go into making up a community.

It was interesting to be in such a place during Ramadan. Right after the muezzin call around 20:00, clients started to come here. Drink a first tea. Then a second. Then, easily 10 or more cups during all the night. The last customers left at 2 am! We found kind of impressive to see all these guys playing okey and spending their evening drinking… only tea! We slept in the fisrt floor of this Tea House, hearing the sounds on the dies, the laughs and feeling a good smell of tea in the air.

Another interesting aspect of Turkish culture was to observe their relation with the Sea itself. Just get the background in mind first : the Black Sea is a beautiful turquoise color Sea just inviting for a dive, rather clean and not that much boats in front of the coast. The weather is warm and wet, the heat is though, and… almost nobody is enjoying the sea! There was simply no one in the water. Not a single person. Actually, we haven’t seen a real beach at all. Instead of having beaches, coffees and other “beach like” infrastructures, here in the eastern Black Sea coast you have just a big ass highway right in front of the bay… This is something we could not get as European (and specially Brazilian) minds.

Our last day in Turkey was a long ride along this stupid highway following the coast. While we stopped after 85 kms along the road, realizing that the place we planned to stay was 30 kms further away as our supposed host just announced it, we could hear someone calling us. We were rather pissed due to the situation – one more time it seems evaluating the distance is not their forte here (it was initially announced 70 kms) – and this guy was insisting on calling us. First, where this guy just popped from? We are in the middle of a highway. Second, why is he calling us and insisting? We were actually not very symaptic with him as we were pissed and tired from a day full of cars, honks, and pollution. But he insisted on keep on saying « Hello! ». Lastly, while we were evaluating a potential place to camp nearby, the guy just decided to join to us. And he was so lovely. He explained to us that he has a house “here” and we could be his guests for the night. It took us a while to understand where his place actually was. We couldn’t see any house or whatever here, just a highway. Murat has actually a kind of garden house at the water edge. We crossed the highway, passed the security rail, walk 5 meters and here we were: a shack hidden by multiple fruit trees. Within 5 minutes to realize the place itself, Murat prepared us an “apero” and started to cook a dinner for us. It was completely spontaneous, funny and surprising. Murat quickly comforted us as we apologized to our first host, explaining we could not ride further 30 kms as it was nightfall, offered us a shower, food, a bed for the night and very good company.

Murat has already hosted lots of cyclists and everyone writes a small message in this small house. We also did it. Turkish hospitality struck one more time! What a good way to spend our last night in this country and say bye-bye to Turkey 🙂

Recap

Distance travelled inside the country: 2063 kms
Flat tires: 2 (Pierre’s rear wheel, the 2 on the same location).
Cay: +100. Per person.
Pasta: 4 kgs
Chocolate bar: around 30
Nights with locals: 13
Bivouac: 15
Hotel/Guest Gouse: 16

What did we like?
– Turkish hospitality. Simply astonishing. France has good lessons to learn about this. So do Brazil, by the way.
– Diversity of the landscape: plains, snowy mountains, tropical or desert parts.
– Delicious food: local specialities, very good desserts, excellent tea, bread, vegetables, kebabs, coffee…
– The roads: they were usually in a good shape, and some alternative roads to avoid the Highways. It was very plasant to cycle here and the cars were almost always very respectful.

What did we dislike?
– Sometimes, highway is the only way to connect easily two cities together – not funny by bicycle.
– You won’t get invited to drink tea on the highway. Either on Ramazan.
– You can find here a chewing-gum without any taste. It looks like chewed chewing-gums re-arranged as new ones. We could not understand this.
– As you probably know, there’s a lack of freedom of expression in Turkey. Reporters are not allowed to criticise the gouvernement, the religion and Turkey. If you do so, you can go to jail. Also the democracy has been threatened. While we were there, the elections of Istambul were recounted and than cancelled, as the opposition party won. We only felt comfortable to post this article after having left the Turkish territory.
– Sometimes, Larissa felt imcofortable about men in Turkey. Some simply ignored her, others, let’s say, gave too much attention… After a few days in the contryside, she was not wearing shorts anymore and was somehow avoiding to talk to man. This feeling is shared by other cyclists, specially those who are traveling alone.

What is growing?
Almost everything. From the parts we have seen, among others: olive groves, apricots, tomatoes, apples, pears, figues, multiple peppers, onions, cucumbers, courgettes, eggplants, grapes, pomegranates, strawberries, mulberries, wheat, barley, melon, watermelon, beans, tea trees, goats, cows, tons of stray dogs. You have actually in this country many fields, many people (also young) farming and many shepherds. This appears to us as a wealth, it is not the case in other countries.

Curious facts we learned
– Cats can eat (and love!) cucumber.

– As we crossed many rural areas, we observed it is often the women having the back bent in the field, and the man driving the tractor, drinking tea or smoking.
– Turkish creativity to create delights. They even created a dessert made of chicken breast (!), sugar and milk. It is called “Tavuk göğsü” – a must taste.

– Wikipedia is blocked in Turkey since 2017. On 29 April 2017, Turkish authorities blocked online access to all language editions of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia throughout Turkey. The restrictions were imposed by Turkish Law due to the English version’s article on state-sponsored terrorism, where Turkey was described as a sponsor country for ISIS and Al-Qaeda, which Turkish courts viewed as a public manipulation of mass media. This just shows how tough and stubborn can be the government here.
– Mustafa Kemal Atatürk represents to the Turkish people what George Washington represents for the Americans. And much more. Atatürk portrait can be found on every house, Tea House, coffee, institution, petrol station, farm you will cross. To make it short, Atatürk is the founder of the Republic of Turkey, and modernized the country by its politics on many aspects: made primary education free and compulsory, opened thousands of new schools, introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replaced the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet, Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk’s presidency, earlier than most other countries in the world. If you want to learn more about Atatürk, enjoy the fact that Wikipedia is most likely not blocked in your country.

– In 2019, it seems that the population is highly divided between people supporting the current government (pretty close to a dictature) and people supporting the opposition. This can lead to some tenses.
– There is a reason why Turkish people are drinking so much tea: at the urging of Atatürk, Turkish people turned more to tea as it was easily sustainable by domestic sources. This allowed to make the country independent from coffee importation. Tea only became the beverage of choice in Turkey in the 20th century. It was initially encouraged as an alternative to coffee, which had become expensive and at times unavailable in the aftermath of World War I. Upon the loss of southeastern territories after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, coffee became an expensive import.