May 13rd – 23 kms, Aksalur
May 14th – 68 kms, Kayseri
May 15th – 56 kms, Hazarsah
May 16th – 60 kms, Kaynar
May 17th – 85 kms, Kuskayasi
May 18th – 60 kms, Gurukbekir
May 19th – 78 kms, Devrigi

We started this week with an early hike through the Gomeda valley, last one we visited from Cappadocia. Before visiting Turkey, we were thinking about take a bus from Cappadocia to Erzurum. Actually, we were loving this country so much that we decided to keep on going with our bicycles. We’ll take a bus in the futur, if necessary. We then cycled about 20 kms above Urgüp, getting up and having a really nice view on the different valleys. During the last uphill of the day, two kids driving a tractor with a small trailer (yes we know, funny scene rather common in rural parts of Turkey) suggested us a ride to spare us part of the uphill. Lovely, but the trailer was way too small. So we offered them some chocolate and they were the happiest kids we’ve never seen 🙂

We camp on a nice hill, having a beautiful view on Mount Erciyes.

Next morning, we got awaken way too early by angry birds – angry magpies actually. We had to go to the big city of Kayseri to see if we could fix the broken screen of Larissa’s phone, which felt. The ride to Kayseri was a beautiful and long downhill with almost every time this impressive Mount Erciyes on the background. However, Kayseri city was rather disappointed – crowded & simply not enjoyable – and furthermore we had to go on the highway to enter inside the city as militaries were doing some exercises on small roads we targeted. We quickly found out that it won’t be possible to fix the phone in Turkey, and then we were actually tired because of entering in this lousy city. So we stayed in a hotel called Ögretmenevi, literally « the professor’s house ». Ögretmenevi is a chain of governmental hotels, offering decent place to sleep with rather cheap price in every city from Turkey. Good tip for travellers.

Leaving Kayseri took us a while, as it was hot, had to stop in a sport shop to find some gas for our stove, bought some groceries for being autonomous for the next few days. This city was just sucking our energies out. After a lunch break in a parc with another friendly turkish guy speaking german and giving us some company, we escaped from the suburb after a difficult 53 kms ride. Back in the wild, we camped in a nice spot, just before nightfall.

Next day, we found back the lovely gravel roads in the middle of nowhere. As we were cycling on one of this difficult road, a truck stopped when we were pushing the bicycles due to slope >15%. What a truck! It was the ice-cream truck, and the happy driver offered us 2 refreshing ice-creams 🙂 We could still remember his so happy face when he opened the trunk of his truck to search these ice-creams 🙂 This was exactly what we needed as this day was very warm due to unstable and stormy weather. It was actually the beginning of a long period where we had at least one storm per day. We had to stop our day too early due to a big storm approaching quickly on us, finding a shelter in a petrol station. We were allowed to camp in a glasshouse behind the station, feeling wet as the growing vegetables.

We then arrived in perhaps the worst part of our journey so far: never-ending false flat plains, with never-ending heavy head wind. The villages were ugly. No tree at all to provide some shadow for resting. Larissa’s mirror broke when her bike felt on the ground during a stop due to the wind. We had a horrible late lunch break as we could not find one single spot under the shadow and/or protecting us from the wind. We named this sad part « the windy plain ». Also, people did not say hello anymore. We do not know if this was because of the wind so they could not hear our salutations. Or if they were just as sad as this area. We celebrated our 2000 kms in the middle of nowhere and cycled 85 kms until we could reach a decent and hidden place to camp. The funny moments of the day is that all the shepherd’s donkeys we saw from flocks decided to run behind us for some reasons. Perhaps the believed we were one of them, laden down as much as they are 🙂

Next day we finally reached the city of Kangal. Kangal is the city where the dog having the same name is coming from, symbol of Turkey and Anatolia specifically. The Kangal looks pretty much intimidating : it is a large and muscled dog, powerful, can easily reach 1m high or so. When they do belong to someone, their owner often add them a pike collars, just to be sure we can understand that the dog is a badass. We saw plenty of them along our road, most of the time they were barking at us like crazy. Sometimes we were willing to pet them, but the fear to lose a hand doing so was still curbing us. So we thought it would be good to see this city. Arriving in the city, we crossed one dog farming place of this little monsters, saw an interesting lego-looks-like castle having nothing to do with the rest of the city, and one « beautiful » status of a Kangal.

We had a Ramadan soup in the city center, and the guys invited Pierre to drink a beer hidden in the kitchen! Did we look so dehydrated? During the discussion, this nice guys told us there are famous fish therapy pools 8 kms from there. We looked at the time and quickly thought « hmmm, this might be interesting to try ». 30 min later, we were in warm source water, getting « cleaned » by multiple little fishes. At the beginning it is not really relaxing: it gives you a foretaste of being devoured by piranhas. It took us few minutes to clear our mind out of this scenario, and then actually enjoyed this 🙂 We ended the day camping in a beautiful spot along a river, having wild pigs as neighbours. We also discovered the flies-that-are-biting-you-without-you-can-feel-anything-and-leave-you-a-5-days-long-horrible-bite.

Last day of the week, we cycled to Devrigi city. The road was pretty nice, we had a lunch on a village were Larissa initiated children to bicycle – one of them cried but this is because she was afraid that her sister abandoned her with the bicycle 😉

Arriving to our destination, Pierre had another flat tire. The flat is actually at the exact same location than the first one he had, as the tire got a bad scar and plenty of dust/gravel can come in. It took us a while to properly fix this tube under a lovely storm, and to find a way to reinforce this lousy tire. While Pierre was working hard on it, Larissa sympathized with a kind lady and her 2 hyperactive kids touching everything on our bicycles. Few minutes later, she invited us to stay to her place. After few minutes of hesitation as we were tired after this long day ending with this flat under a storm, we accepted and joined her place which was 4kms away on the top of a stiff hill. We arrived lately to her place but were warmly rewarded : A good diner, a relaxing shower and a comfortable bed 🙂 Thanks a lot Nurhayat & family for your kindness and hospitality!

After this beautiful cycling through the countryside, we deceided to go back to big citys. Black Sea, here we go!