Earlier during this trip I wrote my blog posts in the evening of the same day. Now that routine has changed and I tend to write the day after instead. It is so hot during the day that taking a break to avoid cycling during the hottest hours and instead do the writing, photo management and other administrative things such as cycling and budget follow up seems to be a smart way to use our time. This time I just can’t avoid showing you how I am sitting writing this very blog post at a cafe in the town of Akcakoca with the Black Sea below me. There is however no internet here so the picture will be old when you see it.

Back to Day 42 – the day of the neverending rollercoaster.

The hilltop we camped at was at 75 meters altitude. Immediately after starting cycling we rolled down to 25 meters altitude and stayed there for only a few meters before starting climbing towards 200 meters where we also stayed for only a few meters. The day was characterized by numerous small hills that took us up and down without any really flat parts in between at all.

The climbs were not very high, but they were many and very hard in the mid day heat. We like to cycle in mountainous regions, but all short climbs today were on hills and not mountains. Going up to immediately go down again made us feel like never getting anywhere and everytime an uphill struggle ended with a quick descent we said to each other

– “is this downhill really necessary? Can’t we stay at the altitude we’ve just gained?”

Not long after we started and were racing down a hill we saw a stone on the road. The one who rides first always warns the one riding behind for upcoming obstacles on the road such as potholes, large stones or crushed bottles. This time I was cycling first when I saw what I thought was a stone in the middle of the road. I pointed at it to warn Wej but when I got close to it I saw it was a turtle. Being in a curve in the middle of the road where sometimes large trucks pass is not the best place to be if you are a turtle. Wej who like most other Thai people consider turtles as sacred animals carefully carried it to the side of the road and released it in the grass close to a little pond.

After some 30 kilometers we needed a break and found a small gas station. We love gas stations and if we had counted all stations we have visited so far I think we would be somewhere around 150 by now. This station was not as fancy as many others but it had the free bathrooms for visitors to use and a tea house where the villagers sit and drink tea, gossip and play cards. Now the villagers were sitting outside, but being a little bit cooler inside we prefered to stay there. The owner was a young man and like at so many places before in Turkey he served tea and coffee free of charge. It seems like the hospitality of the Turkish people has no limits.

The last few nights we have cooked our own food on our multifuel stove. The fuel bottle was almost empty and this little gas station with the very personal service by the owner himself seemed to be the right place to buy 0.5 litres of petrol. The cost was 1.82 Turkish lira (7 SEK or about 80 euro cent) so the fuel price is not much different from in Sweden. We will see how long this bottle lasts but if we only use it a few times per week it will last for a month until we need to refuel.

We stopped in the town of Kandira to have lunch at one of the döner restaurants in the city centre. I really enjoy going to restaurants and try to communicate what I want to eat and then compare if I got what I tried to order or something else 😉

At the main square of Kandira there was a fountain with drinkable water. We filled our bottles and also rinsed our caps, gloves and sunprotecting sleeves. We put them on all wet and it was a relief that lasted less than half an hour when everything was all dry again.

It seems like a majority of the people in Turkey smoke. Someone said to us that smoking is in the blood of the turks. I guess that all that smoke brings other stuff into the blood as well but at the square in Kandira I found a sign that appeared to be part of some anti smoking campaign.

It seems that the Turks have taken measurements to keep their energy costs down in these times of ever increasing prices for oil and gas. Solar collectors with panels on the roof to let the sun heat water for use in kitchens and bathrooms seem to be very popular and can be seen on many roofs both in towns and on the countryside.

After a long break to have icecream, update our blog and finishing a huge two litre bottle of sprite (we wanted the bottle itself since it fits perfect in my large bottle cage) we continued to buy some vegetables to use in our dinner. The dinner is usually spagetti with canned tuna, tomatoes and some fried onions. Not very delicious but simple to make and cheap.

It was much cooler in the evening and when we finally got close to the coastal road along the Black Sea we started to search for a good spot to pitch our tent. It was not hard at all. On one side there was a huge road construction going on and we could easily have put up the tent there, but we would have been very visable to everyone passing by. Instead we opted for the opposite side, close to the forest and among some low bushes. The ground was flat and nobody could see us, nobody but half of Turkeys population of mosqitous which forced us to make a quick cooking and evening procedure.

Taking week long breaks upset our morning routines. After our brief visit to Sweden it took us a few days to get them back. Our week in Istanbul had the same effect. When we left the city we intentionally started to cycle at 2 PM to avoid the morning rush hours and we slept so long that we almost missed the hotel’s breakfast times.

Yesterday we planned to camp but ended up in a guesthouse because of the late start from Istanbul and late arrival to the town of Sile. This late arrival once again meant late bedtime followed by a late wake up.

We used our camping stove to boil some eggs in our room bring along and have as us lunch together with sandwiches. The guesthouse was located in a small square in Sile and had a partial view of the Black Sea that looked very blue this morning.

After only 7 km we got hungry and decided to keep our eggs and sandwiches for dinner instead and stopped for lunch at a small restaurant in the next village. We had ”Gözleme” which is a flat bread wrapped around cheese or meat and then fried. Very tasty indeed.

The first big upphill section started not long after our lunch break. The road took us up and down between 50 and 200 meters altitude. It also had lots of sharp turns and resembled a giant rollercoaster. It was a bit hard to ride but the surroundings were so beautiful that we didn’t think much of tough it was.

We had been told that this part of Turkey is very green and indeed it was. After we left the farmed areas and entered into the forest we felt like being somewhere else. The lush forest still had a light green nuance that certainly will be dark green in a few days. At some sections of the road oak trees dominated the forest and with all yellow and white flowers on the ground it looked quite a bit like southern Sweden during the peak of the summer.In other parts of this beautiful road pine trees dominated and we got a feeling of being high up on the mountains of northern Thailand.

We saw a lot of cattle along this way. Sometimes the walked around freely and ran into the forest when we cycled by. Other times they had bells and grazed the grassed fields. Their ringing bells that told their owners were they were a nice contrast to the sounds of the Harley Davidson motorbikes that went past us at regular times. This road seem to be good for not only cycling but also riding motorcycles.

We really loved the 20-25 km of cycling through the forest between the town of Sile and Teke village and we hope we will see a lot of similar landscapes further on.

We decided to quit cycling early today in order to be able to go to bed early and get back into normal morning routines. In the next town (Agva) we stopped at a gas station to go to the bathroom and while there we met two guys on motorcycles who we had tea with and talked to for more than an hour. One of them worked in the medical industry and had lived i Copenhagen for half a year. In Agva we bought some fresh vegetables to have with the spagetti dinner we intended to cook.

There are a few villages just outside Agva and after the last one on a hilltop we found the perfect spot to pitch our tent. The villages was within sight and after dinner when working with tent a flock of some 20 storks flew past our hill at low altitude. They are magnificent when they come sailing towards you at low speed and land on the tree tops below the hill. We don’t know much about storks, but maybe the trees on this hill was their bedroom. They took a few more flights around the hill in the sunset before they finally settled for the night. I have never seen so many storks flying at the same time and never so close. It seemed like they were playing around before going to bed and we really enjoyed watching them from a close distance.

I am writing this in the tent and as mentioned there are a couple of villages not far from this hill. Late in the evening and with only a few seconds time difference we heard the calls for prayer from the mosques in the surrounding villages. I have lived in an area of Bangkok where a lot of people from Thailand’s deep south live and I then got used to hearing calls for prayer from mosques, but even in that area the Buddhists were still the majority. Being in a country where Islam is the major religion and calls for prayer can be heard from various directions even when staying in a tent on a hilltop is truly exotic.

Isn’t it amazing how much trust people can put in a total stranger? Deniz invited us to stay over night and before leaving for her job she said that we could stay in her apartment as long as we needed.

The evening before Wej had told Deniz that we often use a hospitality network for touring cyclists (warmshowers.org) to find peple who would like to host us for a night. She then told about the similar but larger network coachsurfing for ordinary travelers. Deniz then asked Wej if it isn’t dangerous to stay with total strangers…..

Dear Deniz – weren’t we total strangers to you when you met us at the gas station…? 😉

Anyway – we would like to express our gratitude towards Deniz who invited us – two complete strangers – to stay a night with her. Deniz is the perfect example of the famous Turkish hospitality and this kind of unplanned meetings with nice and interesting local people is one of the highlights on a trip like ours.

Besides having a half broken bottom bracket, Wej woke this morning with a a sore throat that made her unwilling to bike long distances. After sending some mails and talking to the owner of the bike shop we decided to go back to town, check in to a hotel and stay one more night in Istanbul while the bikes were repaired.

We booked a hotel via internet and started to cycle there to arrive when it was open for check in. The hotel looked nice and had a sauna and swimming pool that we planned to use, but never got time to.

As soon as we had checked in and put our luggage in the room we cycled the 9 km along the cycle path in the park that line the shore of the Marmara Sea. Normally our bikes are loaded with heavy panniers and we had not cycled without heavy load since 16th of February when we started our journey.

The bikes felt very strange. The stability we had got used to was completely gone and now they were light, lively and almost hard to control. Then one should know when at home I normally think that this bike is very stable and un-lively compared to the other bikes I have.

We found the bike shop and parked our bikes outside. The mechanic knew we were coming and took Wej’s bike inside. Since my bike was going to be parked outside while we were in the workshop I decided to lock it. In the same moment as I heard the click from my lock I remembered that the keys were in our luggage back at the hotel 9 km away….

Stupid, stupid, super stupid….

The process to exchange Wej’s bottom bracket took 20 minutes. The mechanic then turned to my bike and offered to cut open my lock and sell a new cheap lock. I was tired and angry with myself and was about to accept that offer when Bülent, the owner, called from the European side to talk to the mechanic about something else. The mechanic told him about my lock and Bülent then said:

– ”why don’t you let him borrow any of our rental bikes”

A really smart suggestion and both me and the mechanic felt stupid to not have thought about this before…. I am glad this suggestion came up before we cut my lock. If it had come later my anger would have reached a new dimension.

In the evening we had dinner on the hotel’s roof terrace. It was late and we only wanted something light to eat and ordered the soup of the day. After a week in Turkey we finally ate something we didn’t like. The soup had a too strong mint taste and I think the recipe was 3 parts water and 1 part Colgate tooth paste…. 😉

The toothpaste soup was back on the breakfast table but we then went for all other delights the hotel put up.

After breakfast it was time for me to finally accept the punishment for being stupid yesterday. I cycled the 9,5 km back to the cycle shop to pick up my own bike and then back again. Meanwhile Wej relaxed at the hotel – the privilege for not doing as dumb things as I do…

We set off at 3 PM and took the same route out of town as last time. It was even easier now since we remembered the way and soon we passed Deniz house and continued towards town of Sile on the Black Sea coast.

The road was a major highway with two lanes and a wide shoulders and some really nasty hills that were a bit tough for us who had not cycled for a week. It was not the most interesting road to ride on but since we deliberately left Istanbul late to avoid traffic it was our only option if we wanted to reach Sile in the same day.

Our plan was to camp either on the beach or just outside town. Sile was however bigger than we thought and since it was late and we had no food to cook we decided to check in to a guesthouse instead.

This is written in our room while we cook breakfast and prepare lunch sandwiches while enjoying the view of the Black Sea that looks very blue today.

The decision from the evening before was to make a slow start after having been idle for six days. We took our time in the morning and had a long nice breakfast with the family, packed our bags and brought them and the bikes down from the 5th floor in the small elevator.

It was a lovely day with around 21 degrees and sunshine when we started the second segment of this trip at around 2 PM. I was wearing shorts from start and I was very happy for the weather.

Due to our experience when cycling into Istanbul we had been a bit worried about our exit from the city. It soon got evident that navigating out of Istanbul’s asian side was ten times easier than entering the European side. We also think that the timing in the early afternoon helped.

Our GPS’ map covers Europe and Istanbul but not so much more in Turkey so we took this last chance of getting electronic guiding. The cycling went very smooth, the hills were not so steep and the traffic limited by Istanbul standards.

After some 10 kilometers Wej complained that the sound from her bottom bracket was back. I listened to it and sure there was a sound, but not the same scratching sound. This time it was a clear clicking sound and it was too loud for us to ignore. As you understand we were not happy running into this problem with newly serviced bikes, but we were at least happy to be in Istanbul where we can solve the issue.

We turned into a gas station to inspect what was wrong. When grabbing the cranks firmly and rocking them a bit I could feel there was a play – the cranks felt loose and I could even see them moving. I tightened the bolt and the play decreased but didn’t disappear. I now got quite sure that the bottom bracket after all was was worn out and needed to be replaced. The problem was only how to arrange the replacement.

It was 4 PM and we were at one of the last suburbs of Istanbul and we needed to deicde to whether to turn back or move forward. Bülent – the owner of the shop that serviced our bikes had said we could contact him if we had any problems and he would direct us to other good shops he knew throughout Turkey.

We wanted to e-mail Bülent and our Istanbul friends and I went in to the gas station to ask if they had any wifi that I could use. The cashier told me there was no wifi, but that I could borrow his private ipad to send my e-mails. Wonderful people….

Calling with our Swedish phone in Turkey is really expensive so we really needed to again check our e-mails and we couldn’t use the guys private ipad the entire afternoon. We needed to be somewhere where there was a wifi and we decided to cycle back to a gas station we had stopped at some 2 km earlier and that we knew had wifi. Fortunately we made a misstake and took the wrong way there and ended up at another gas station. It didn’t really matter – we only needed some wifi so Wej went in to ask if they had.

I was standing outside watching the bikes and saw Wej talking to the people behind the counter, then to another lady who seemed to be a customer. They had a long conversation and when Wej came out she said that the woman lives nearby and knows there is a bike shop in her area that she would like to show us the way to.

We cycled behind her car for about a kilometer and when we came to the shop we met an empty window of a bikeshop that had moved elsewhere.

We still had not checked our mails to see if we had got any answers and we needed to get to the internet somewhere. The lady then said we could follow her home and use the internet in her apartment. We rode behind her for another 500 meter and entered a gate to an area of nice looking apartment buildings. She lived on the first floor and had her private lawn outside her living room where we could park our bikes.

The lady introduced herself as Deniz, ran into her house for some orange juice and and asked us to sit down in her little garden. Deniz are a few years younger than ourselves and she lives in this apartment with her young daughter, who this day was away with her father.

Once again we got a proof of the hospitality of the Turkish people as Deniz offered us to stay overnight in her house which we gratefully accepted. We had a nice evening together with lots of interesting discussions and laughs. Wej and Denice cooked the dinner while I tried to read on the internet to understand more about our technical problems and contact my turkish and Swedish cycling friends to try to settle the problem.

Anders at Veloform – our local bike shop in Göteborg – kindly sent e-mails late at night trying to make a diagnosis according to my description. Our Istanbul cyclist friends Gökhan and Burak helped in giving us addresses to other shops in Istanbul and finally I managed to get in contact with Bülent from the shop where we serviced the bikes on his private home telephone.

Bülent had two suggestions. Either he sends a service man by car to see us and do the repair on spot or we bike to his other shop on the asian side. Both have their advantages and in the time of writing this (early morning) we have not yet decided which option to go for so stay tuned in and you will know.

Istanbul is a great city. It is huge, bustling, very old and due to its historical and strategic importance it has many interesting attractions to visit. The city sits on two continents with one leg in Europe and the other in Asia. In what other city can you leave your home on one continent in the morning to go to work on another and in the evening return to your home on the first continent? In that sense Istanbul is truly exotic.

We had three days to discover the city. We spent the first day to find the bike shop, planlessly walk around and sleep in the hotel room. The second day we went to visit the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sophia museum which are a must to any visitor to Istanbul.

Many of you have already been here and I won’t go in to the details about what to see in the city of Istanbul. I would rather like to tell about my impression of the city.

When in Istanbul we get the feeling of being at home in Bangkok already….

Just like Bangkok Istanbul can seem to be very messy with intense traffic on the streets and crowded footpaths. The sheer number of people and cars causes me to get a feeling of being one single ant in a giant ant colony that is not my own! I don’t know what to do and where to go… In Bangkok that is not the case, but here it definately is and I guess first time visitors to Bangkok get a feeling similar to the one I have now.

Just like in Bangkok a lot of attention seems to be paid to food and a lot of delicious things to eat are sold everywhere in everything from simple food stalls to expensive looking restaurants. We want to try everything but once our stomachs are full we can only look at the delights. Besides that, we do not know how the system of eating works, what food goes with what and so on and we feel we need a guide to the local cuisine.

Just like in Bangkok, the spiritual world is always close. In Bangkok there are all the temples and other places of worship and here in Istanbul are the many mosuques from whose minarets the exotic sounding call for prayer is sounded regularly. This ever present mix of spiritual life and the everyday life on the busy streets seem to be carachteristic for both cities.

Just like in Bangkok, the city’s nerve is a busy watercourse which the local people are proud of. Of course the Bosphorus is much bigger and busier than the Chao Praya river, but life seem to be centered around these two rivers in pretty much the same way. River cruises to admire the city are as popular in Istanbul as in Bangkok. Important historical buildings as well as fancy homes and restaurants are located side by side along the Bosphorus just like they are along its thai sister.

After three days in the city we made an appointment at our hotel with our friend Gökhan. He came and met us on his shining white Pinarello road bike and guided us when we slowly cycled towards the ferry that would take us away from the European side and on to the Asian continent. Normally we fly between Europe and Asia and the change in weather and culture is abrupt. This time it only required a 25 minute ferry ride across the Bosphorus to leave the European continent and on the Asian side it looked pretty much the same as the European side albeit a bit more quiet. It is hard to believe we are now on the same continent as Bangkok.

Neither Gökhan’s bike nor our own stayed shining clean for long – after a few minutes on the cycling path we ended up in a muddy construction site. Gökhan’s shining white bike got brown and ours too. We stopped at a beach side cafe to team up with our second turkish friend Burak who we would stay with for a few nights.

Gökhan and Burak stayed with us during their cycling trip in Sweden last November and it was great to have a re-union with them in their city.

Our plan was to stay with Burak’s family for two nights. He introduced us to his family and we immediately got very good contact with his mother Özlem. Had it not been for the language barrier I am sure we would have got very good contact with Özlem’s mother who lived in their apartment too. Now someone had to act as translator which slows down the communication. Wej is however picking up lots of Turkish words while they don’t seem to stick to my brain. Before we leave Turkey I bet Wej will be able to communicate quite a bit.

We ended up staying with the family for three nights and we immediately felt like being at home. We cooked food together, went for walks and had coffee and tea at cafes. Being close to each other in age Wej and Özlem seem to get extra close and were talking to each other non stop for three days

One thing I particularly liked was when Özlem taught me to prepare Turkish coffee and some turkish dishes. I then realized I have not worked in a kitchen for more about 2.5 months and I didn’t know until then that I had missed it.

One of the evenings Burak and Özlem took us in the car to the Bosphorus shore where we sat down on pillows on the river bank and had tea. It was a bit cold and windy, but it was a great feeling to sit there and see the lights from the busy centre of Istanbul’s European side while large ships sailed past us like giant shadows.

The family has their business in another town and the father Volkan was away when we arrived but came back the last afternoon. He was a jolly man always joking and he and Özlem took out Wej and myself to have tea and Turkish desserts at a fancy cafe on the main shopping street in Kadiköy on the Asian side. We ordered four different puddings and put them in the middle of the table and Wej and I still argue about which one was best. One thing is for sure though and that is that all four of them were wonderful. I wish we could find that sort of dessert puddings in Sweden too.

To sum up our stay in the great city of Istanbul we can say that it is a city we will surely return to. We have seen far from all we want to see, but we have got our bikes serviced, rested and stayed with our friends and made new ones. We will come back but maybe not for the tourist attractions, but to see the friends we now have here.

We want to extend our big thanks to Gökhan for booking our rooms, arranging the service of our bikes and guiding us over to Asia. We would also express a big thank you to the Yalciner family for taking so good care of us during three very funny days. We hope to see you all soon again 🙂

Our bags are now packed and we are leaving Istanbul within one hour. We have had some very pleasant days here staying first at a hotel and then at our friends’ house.

We are lagging behind in our writing and our intentions was to do a bit of writing when we were here. We have some drafts but we will publish them later, maybe tomorrow (Thursday) so please be patient with our slow updating.

We have spent 6 days in the city and they have generally been rather cold. Now when it is time to leave the weather looks great. +21 degrees and sunshine with the weathermen’s promise that it will get warmer the coming days.

A trip like this will take us both through populated areas with easy access to well stocked bike shops and through less developed or unpopulated areas where the supply of spare parts is close to zero.

When planning the trip we have carefully gone through what tools and spareparts to take along. We obviously carry spares for things that are very likely to break such as innertubes, brake cables and pads. Apart from that we have also decided to bring spares for items that although they are not likely to break, will cause a major problem if the really do break and are not heavy or bulky. Examples of such items are spokes, pannier hooks and derailleur hangers (swedish: växelöra).

A few parts on a bike are expected to last very long, require special tools for mounting and are either bulky or heavy to carry. We have decided to not carry spares for them and if they break it will be a showstopper. The perfect example of such a part is the bottom bracket (swedish: vevlager). To reduce the risk for any problems both bikes got new bottom brackets before we started.

A week ago when still in Bulgaria we cycled on a countryside road where the surface suddenly changed from asphalt to cobble stone right in the middle of nowhere. All cyclists hate cobble stone as it is truly unpleasant to ride on. After a couple of kilometers, the surface changed back to asphalt. I got happy again while Wej got very concerned since her bike had started to make an unfamiliar noise.

It was a rattleing noise that appeared for every turn of her cranks. First we suspected the vibrations on the cobble stones had moved her front derailleur slightly causing it to touch the chain. We checked the chain line, but no – that could possibly not be the problem. We continued to cycle and tried everything we could think of until we simply gave up.

The following day we spent a rest day in the Bulgarian town Elhovo and I cleaned her drive train and changed chain. When we started to ride the day after her bike was silent and we were happy again….. for about 15 km when the got noise back.

With 300 km left to Istanbul we thought that even if it was the bottom bracket that was causing the noise it would easily last until we reached the city. Wej’s bike continued to make sounds and especially when going uphill. Knowing that there were good bike shops in Istanbul we couldn’t care less – the bikes were scheduled for a major overhaul there anyway.

The first thing to do during our first rest day was to find the bike shop our local friend Gökhan had adviced us to go to. We walked there and after getting lost in the Egyptian spice bazar (nice place to visit by the way) we found the shop not far from the Galata bridge.

The shop was small but we immediately saw it was filled with high grade cycle parts and when we sat down to talk to the owner Bülent he told us he used to be a mechanic for the Turkish national cycling team. All this seemed very promising and Bülent offered us a total service for a very reasonable price. The service included cleaning the bikes and the drive trains, opening up all the hubs to clean and grease the bearings, taking out and inspecting the bottom brackets and adjusting things that needed to be adjusted.

I have a dynamo hub and before we left I bought a transformer that when connected to the the hub will provide 5 volt in a USB outlet that we can use to charge our cameras and GPS. We left our home in a rush and I had no time to mount it and since special tools are required I have kept it until it was time for service. I showed it to Bülent who immediately replied:

– ”power plug – that is a simple thing to mount”

When we returned the following day, the bikes and drive trains were shining, our handle bars had new tape and my bike had the 5 volt USB outlet mounted on the stem. Best of all is that the noise from Wejs bike is gone. Bülent said the bottom bracket looked good but some dirt probably had god in and caused the noise. He also mentioned that he has good contacts with bike shops throughout Turkey and if there is any problem along the way we should contact him and he will direct us to the closest one.

For other touring cyclists who go to Istanbul and need to get to a good bike shop we can recommend the one we used. The contact details are as follows:

Pedal Bisiklet Sportif
Mimar Kemalettin Cad. No. 29
Sirkeci, ISTANBUL
Phone 0090 212 511 06 54
E-mail: mail@pedalbisiklet.com