D25 – 42 kms, Bursa (04/25/2019)
D26 – 40 kms, Aksu
D27 – 62 kms, Kinik
D28 – 72 kms, Eskişehir
D29 – Visiting Eskişehir

Now it’s time to leave Istanbul, after a week in this wonderful city. We took a ferry to avoid the trafic and enjoy our last day seeing the Marmara sea. After many reflections regarding the itinerary to take – Turkey is so big with a lot to see, Black See, Mediterrannean cost, center Turkey – we finally decided to head to Bursa and later Eskeshir direction Cappadocia. A tour through non touristic, in some rural parts. Original, with loats of locals and almost no one speaking english. It’s the way we like to travel, and we really want to see Cappadocia.

As we arrived in Bursa by night, we realized this city is actually quite big (>2 millions of people) with quite some traffic. We got slightly lost. All of a sudden and coming from nowhere, a gentleman – Erdogan – arrived on his rusty bicycle, asking us if we needed help/food/whatever. He accompanied us for the evening, invited us for some delicious food, showed us the right roads to take until we reached our host, Ayson place. We actually had to take the metro as it was already late and takindg the highway in the middle of the night wasn’t exactly our dream. Erdogan came with us, talked to the people from the metro stations to allow us to get in with our bicycles, insists to pay our tickets. He refused any money and was a kind of a guardien angel in our way. He just left us when our Warmshowers host welcomed us. We were wordless to thank him when he left. Have you heard about the Turkish hospitality?

That night, we were received by Aysun and her lovely familly. As we arrived late, we just talked a little bit and then we felt asleep. The next day, we had a delicious breakfest with all the family. Than we spent the morning visiting Bursa and enjoying a turkish coffee with Aysun and her beautiful daughter, Lorin.

Bursa is a beautiful city, full of trees. Its proximity with the surrounding mountains gave the city the nickname of « Bursa the Green ». Bursa has also a very nice and antique blue mosque, attracting many people. It was also the first capital of the Ottoman Empire.

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After made our farewels to Aysun, we followed her advice and took the road to visit a very small and picturesque village part of the UNESCO, Cumlikizik. The village is indeed very nice. And full of visitors coming from all over Turkey.

Later, while we were looking for a spot to camp on the evening, some dogs run after us – common scene here and we are used to it. However, one of these dogs seems to be so happy, was not barking at all, and followed us running like crazy behind us during 10 kms. At the beginning we wanted this dog to leave, but he was so friendly that he actually gave us some company for the evening. This lovely dog stayed with us the entire night, watching on our tent and bicycle. He was just loosing control when he heard some shootings – probably hunters – and wanted to enter in our tent. No way.

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Awaking the morning, the dog was still here, happy to see our morning faces. We tried to escaped from his company by giving him some bread, but he was still following us. We said goodbye and left, feeling very sad for not being able to adopt him. Luckily – or sadely actually – the road was down hill and the dog did not manage to follow us with the speed we had. He then probably came back to his stray dog life, sad but so common in Greece and Turkey. We are lucky to have association taking care of abandonned dogs and cats in western Europe.

We deceided that we were going to avoid the highway. The problem is that the secondary roads were in the middle of the mountains.The itinerary went then 1100m uphill on a quite stiff and direct road. We are happy to see that there are many fountains along the roads and villages, with clean and drinkable water.

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While we were cycling and enjoying the nice countryside during the late afternoon, a car stopped and called us. It was a farmer named Hussein, who invited us to share a tea with him, his wife and his dogs. Drinking tea – called çay in Turkey – is perhaps one of the most cultural activity here, and is drinked at every moment of the day – morning, lunch, break, diner, evening, everytime. Turkey is actually the #1 of global tea drinker, above China!
As we were discussing with Hussein, he allowed us to camp on his garden. Later during the evening, he showed us how to prepare yogurt, white creamy cheese and Ayran from raw milk he just had from the village cows. Very instructive and gastronomical evening 🙂 This cool place is the Baran organic farm.

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Sunday arrived. Husain, the owner of the farm, told us that they were serving a home-made breakfest on weekends. We had nothing to eat and we thought that it might be cool to taste all his organic products. We had a delicious breakfest, full of good food. While we were eating, we talked to a family. In the end of the meal, the owner said: « My friends, you are invited by this family for your breakfest ». Once again, impossible to argue, they really wanted to pay for our breakfest. The generosity of Turkish peopl is very touching. Thank you again!

We took the road a little bit late and with some extra kg. I think that it was a problem for our tires. Puncture-proof tires? My ass. We had our second flat tire of the trip, not even after 1000 kms. Pierre’s rear wheel got flat on km 987. Well, actualy the piece of glass is so big that we can understand it damaged the tube, even with our heavy duty tires…

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Due to the fact that Turkey is developping quickly, many roads are not mentionned on our GPS. By mistake, we arrived one more time on a highway, where we celebrated our 1000 kms, just before a thunderstorm. Yes, what can be more da1ngerous for a cyclist than cycling on a highway? Cycling on a highway during a thunderstorm obviously! Well, it was not funny. Actually, after a flat tire and being wet from the sotrm, we were really tired.

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But, one more time, we were lucky. Fortunately, we arrived on the evening in Eskişehir, wamly welcomed by our kind Warmshowers hosts Melmet & Fathi, who offered us a warm shower, cooked a delicious dinner, laundry, and so kind and cool company.

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The next day, we spend just visiting the city, discovering the « buva », a drink made of fermanted corn and weat. We also ate some pastery, kebabs and borek. Eskişehir is a very beautiful city, with an historical neighbord, with lots of students, very open, with many bicycles also. 🙂

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Our hosts were great, very warm, openminded, smilling and kind. We stayed in their place for 2 days and were really feeling like home. On the evening, we welnt out for dinner and had the best künafe so far 🙂 Künafe is a delicious dessert, made with hot cheese, pistachios, usually served with icecream. Larissa was almost crying, because it was sooooo delicious. We went back home with our bellys full of good food and have a good resting night.

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