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Planning our route - Troy

After troy we had planned to follow the coast road down to Hierapolis to see more archaeological sights.. Fortunately we decided to ditch that idea and instead focus our riding on heading somewhat directly to Ankara. In doing so we cut several hundred kilometres off our total journey distance. This was welcome news as the heat was forecast to increase along the coast… After a long break at a small cafe just outside of  Troy we had come up with a plan. That plan was to head towards Edremit and on to Kutahya. The plan was to now take 3 days to ride to Ankara where we would get our bikes serviced, receive some packages with some spare parts and organise some other bits and pieces before we embark on the next stage of our journey.

Finally cleaning the Bikes

The first part of our plan was to fill the bikes with fuel.. My bike was reporting on the trip computer that it had less than 2miles of range remaining. Heathers bike had a similar story with her fuel light showing as being on and had done so for about the last 40km… The only problem was there appeared to be no petrol stations along our route. Luckily just as we turned on to a more major road one appeared. We had some kids fill up our bikes while we relaxed for a while. Heather then realised that there was an area for washing cars.. We enquired how much it would cost to use… the response FREE… we jumped at the chance to wash our bikes for the first time since Austria… The thick coating of dust on the bikes made us look even more like hobo’s than usual… It was really just an excuse for us to play with the hose and cover ourselves in a nice dense spray of cool water… oops and clean the bikes.. For the first time we could actually see the plastics properly on both bikes.. The local kids at the service station also helped out in little bits and pieces which was nice. Very friendly.  Everyone loves the bikes the number of people waving at us as we pass has been amazing since Romania.

Shortly after our petrol, bike wash, wet t-shirt competition I was attacked by a wasp while riding the bike.. thankfully I didn’t crash the bike as it stung me several times on the neck. Each time it stung I could feel it go right up into my head.. I managed to pull over and kill the wasp.. Started riding again only to find the pain too unbearable and have to pull over again and put some cream on it… I think its time to start wearing my neck protector…. oh well maybe some other day when its not in the high 30’s… Heather only noticed that something was wrong when she heard a girly scream through the bike to bike communication system… The scenery as we followed along the road was fantastic. With beautiful winding roads and coastal views along large sections of the ride to Edremit.

After Edremit we headed inland heading towards Balikesir along the D230. It was a very nice ride… until we needed to find accommodation.. Unfortunately there was nothing for over 100km. Eventually we got to Balikesir and found a hotel… That was only after we rode along a dual carriage way multi-lane 10+cm deep gravel “highway” for about 20km only to find the road went absolutely nowhere so we had to do a u-turn and go back to Balikesir… We should have guessed when several turkish motorists drove past yelling stuff at us and doing u-turn gestures with their arms out the windows… who could have guessed what they actually meant??… At the end of this mammoth piece of engineering work the road literally stopped and turned into a shitty sand track. It would have cost a fortune to build the “road to nowhere”… we are still trying to guess why the hell the road exists. Maybe the surveyors screwed up and the road went in the wrong direction.. only to realise after they had spent all the money???

A Lake view from the D230 - Anatolia

After back tracking and getting to the hotel we had a relaxing meal and went to sleep early. The next day we wanted to get to Eskisehir which would be a longish day. This was something that worried us as the D230 had just disappeared into the “road to nowhere”…. After a quick investigation the following morning we found the sign post to Kutahya around a corner with no real road name signs. The road was terrible but the scenery was absolutely stunning. The road follows around the side of some mountains a river in the valley with small towns and farms dotted all along the side. The riding style quickly became dodge the oncoming trucks, while trying to avoid the sandy surface and potholes that could swallow your whole bike… It made for interesting yet very slow going. Despite the danger it was an experience I really enjoyed as it made the riding very intense. Every break was very welcome..

The view from our Mountain - Anatolia

After riding for a few hours we stopped for a Turkish bbq sis lunch.. wow it was awesome. And the bill was only 14TL (about £5)… By far the best Lunch I think we have had since we started this trip. It was just near Kutahya on the D230… Sorry forget the name of the place.. I’ll have to get the GPS references for anyone that is interested.  We then started to head on… At about 6pm we had been looking for a place to camp for some time.. Nothing was coming along.. After a while we saw a big hill start to emerge with some tree’s on it.. That looked like something that we needed to investigate. After exploring some random dirt trails we ended up finding a fantastic place to camp.. Being a beautiful evening we decided that we would camp under only the mosquito net.. Something that I have wanted to do for some time. It’s so much less stuffy in the heat and its awesome to look out at the stars. After an amazing nights sleep I managed to get this paparazzi photo of Heather still relaxing under the nets…

Wild Camping - Turkey

The view from our campsite Anatolia

After being in Istanbul for 8 nights it was time to move on. Our route from Istanbul was to head south west along the coast to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. As we started to leave Istanbul the weather forecast appeared to be right, storms. As the storms came in..  we just missed them. We followed the sunshine south. The heat intensified as we got further away

Road to Gallipoli

from Istanbul’s storms.  It reached around 36c.. In the heat we found a place to camp just near the a “beach resort” and bar.. Finally we got our opportunity to have a swim in the sea.. Wow the water was warm but nothing like the 24c that at the Black sea.. If I had to guess it was probably around 20c. Either way it was a welcome change after riding in the heat. It was nice to get out of the water, have a beer and relax… After a beer we went back to where we had camped to find that there was a 100% fire ban.. That included all stoves due to a recent fire further down the coast. No Flameage caused us a few problems 1) no restaurant and 2) can’t cook.. Luckily the guy who ran the beach bar could cook us up some fast food.. In the end we had about 4 double gin and tonic’s while eating some quality chicken nuggets.. hmm healthy food… It was worth it.. until we had to get back into our stinking hot tent… In the process letting loads of bugs into the tent which all had a field day with Heather… we now call her James’ insect decoy. We ended up waking early completely dehydrated, with nothing to drink except a few mouth fulls of water… (Because in the drunken state the night before “we” (Heather) spilt it over James’ sleeping bag.. Oh well.. time to do the

View from a bar on the beach near Gallipoli

next bit of our ride to Gallipoli… This is where our second food saga began.. Unfortunately there was nothing open that served food at 9am in the morning.. a few places served beer but not food.. thinking that hair of the dog was probably a bad idea we just ordered some drinks from the restaurants and had a late… late.. late brunch while we waited for the ferry… Anyway back to Gallipoli.

Gallipoli has become somewhat of a “right of passage” for Aussies based on what we read in the aussie news in London..

Lone Pine Memorial - Gallipoli

Actually when we got there we didn’t see any Aussies.. It seemed to us that it was a melting pot of Turkish people going to see where the Turkish had one of their great military battles of the 20th Century. I am probably guessing that most of the Aussies who come only come around Anzac day.. Every other hotel or motel has some Aussie name like “Sydney Hotel” or “Sydney Aussie Place Hotel”… Most of them seemed from outside appearances to be pretty dodgy.. much like our camp site of the night before..  After our drinks of coke and water for breakfast we headed out to Lone Pine.

View on the Dirt Track to Lone Pine - Gallipoli

On the way up the dirt track from the coast I had just finished saying to Heather over the bike to bike radio’s that this dirt track was likely to be snake infested… bingo around the next corner a big black snake about 1.5 meters long trying to get out of the way of my bike as I rode past… Luckily I just missed it.. It still gave me a rude shock. Lone Pine is one of the key Australian battle memorials of the conflict. Something like 4000 Aussies died for the biggest advance that the ANZAC’s made in the entire conflict. It must have been pretty terrible as soon as they got to the top of lone pine there was yet another ridge higher only a few hundred meters further back.. Bob Hawke opened the memorial there while he was prime minister of Australia. The views from the memorial are fantastic along the coast with the brilliant blue waters.

View from Lone Pine - Gallipoli

After having a small break in the shade at Lone pine we headed back down to Anzac Cove. Having heard the stories about the beach landing its very difficult to comprehend how steep it actually is until you see it in the flesh.

Landscape of Anzac Cove - Gallipoli

The beach is pretty steep just by itself.. Then you take into account that there is yet another 200 meter slope just a short distance further.. It would have been a real shock for the troops.

Anzac Cove - Gallipoli

After our stay at Gallipoli we headed towards the Lunch, Ferry and onwards to Troy.. The Ferry crossing was smooth and quick. Costing us 8TL each for the motorcycles it was nice and cheap. The ride from the ferry to Troy was steaming hot and there is no accommodation  worth mentioning near Troy. It seems most people take Dolmus (shared taxi’s) from the town where the ferry crosses. A guy found us sitting in the shade looking for accommodation and asked us if we needed assistance. He directed us to a place where we could sleep/camp on the beach.. YAY..

Sunset over the Aegean Sea - Near Troy

That was where the fun began. He gave us directions to the beach and said that the French stayed there.. After riding for about 20km along a dirt track we decided to do a U-Turn… Right at that moment a car with French number plates drove past.. we decided to do an about turn and follow the car.. Thankfully we did and found a nice beach where we swam for a few hours to cool down in the late afternoon… We later pitched our tent on the beach… ahh Relaxation. Our second swim for the trip, This time in the Aegean Sea… The water was beautiful and warm. The sunset was fantastic. The following morning we woke early to go and sea Troy before the heat set in… We managed to get there around 9.  We ended up hanging around an official tour so we could hear the inside story. te he he.. After this we headed out by about 10:30 to a cafe near by so that we could plan the next section of our journey.

Ruins - Troy

After 4 days of working to complete all the remaining paper work we now had time to go and do more touristy stuff. First off the ranks was the topkapi palace. This is where the Sultans used to live for many years before they started to prefer more European style palaces which got built further up the Bosphorus towards the black sea. The palace was a really welcome change after we had been “Palaced out” visiting many of the European Palaces over the last 6years.

The view from the Topkapi Palace of the Bosphorus

The difference was immediately visible with open beautiful gardens and nice tile work that really sets the place apart from its European rivals. The view out over the Bosphorus was fantastic. The palace gardens provided a really nice cool oasis in the 36c temperatures which was such a pleasant surprise. The extravagance of the palace was also superb not being too over the top like some other palaces we have seen.

Some of the extravagance of the Palace

After visiting the palace we decided to go and get some photos of the boats moored offshore in the sea of Marmara. We thought that the best time to get some images would be at night to really bring out the sheer number of boats. There must have been at least 300 boats all moored waiting to either go or come through the bosphorus. I personally have never seen so many huge ships in one place in my life. (Click the Picture below to expand the image).  While at the coast taking photos I was amazed to see so many families still having picnics etc in the cool of the evening despite it being 9:30-10pm at night. It was very busy.

Boats on the Sea of Marmaras waiting for the Bosphorus

The following day we decided that we would take a ferry tour of the Bosphorus and see the Asian side. It was interesting on the Ferry looking out to the City that has sprawled along the coast. It really reminded me of what it looks like in Sydney looking at the houses along the Harbour.

Icecream Istanbul Style

The only difference is there are no mosques that I know of in Sydney on the Harbour while they are one of the big features of the Istanbul skyline. The ferry trip took around 5hrs:30minutes as we had a 2hour stop at some tourist trap place which seems to only exist for the sake of an Army Base and a ruined castle / fort right near the entrance to the Black sea. It would be a very strong strategic point that’s for sure. On the way to the Ferry we found a shop which had an excellent range of plates that we found irresistible.

However we didn’t buy anything… until we walked past the same shop on the way back from the Ferry and had another look. The guy discounted the plates by about 50% so we caved in and got two plates.. which lead us to our next scenario… Unfortunately the local post company PTT in Turkey does not ship Ceramic goods unless they are in a wooden box… but they don’t sell wooden boxes and won’t tell you where you can get them from… fantastic.. That lead us to the situation where we didn’t have  a means to get the plates home that we had just purchased. Thankfully just near our apartment there was a UPS office who gave us a special discount on shipping the plates back to Australia… lets hope they get there in one piece..

Topkapi Palace Gardens

Mosque in istanbul

Now its onwards to Gallipoli….

After waking up early to get back to the Kazakhstan embassy after our rather annoying discovery that it was not open on Wednesday…

For anyone interested in getting a Kazakhstan visa in Istanbul the opening times are 10:30 to 12:30am on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for submitting applications and from 3:30 to 4:40 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.. Its closed on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. You MUST have your visa support/Letter of Invite printed out prior to submitting the application.

Sampling the local apple tea in Istanbul.

We ended up riding to the embassy as we now knew where it was… It took us around 30minutes to get to there. Upon arriving there was already a line of people waiting… After waiting around in the line for around an hour only to find that we had to have a copy of our Letter of invite.. We had been told previously that we could quote a reference number and they would have a copy on file.. Unfortunately this was not the case, they ended up being nice enough to take our memory stick and print out the two invites to include in our application. All up it took about 1.5 hours to submit the two applications. We got told to return on Friday between 3:30 and 4:30 pm… Now it was time to head back to our apartment. After a brief lunch while a thunderstorm rolled in we headed out to the Grand Bazaar.. The humidity after the storm was almost stifling.. After arriving at the Grand Bazaar we were immediately inundated with the vibrant colours of the jewellery and home goods, energy and smells of the carpets, spices and leather goods and anything else someone could sell.. As expected we got touted for all these things plus more.. “perfume perfume.. get your perfume..” Luckily for us we had become immune to their touts after our previous trip to Marocco. The Markets in Marocco are much more chaotic and the touts much per persistent than in Instanbul.

Some Arabic script on the wall Istanbul

Personally I enjoyed the markets in Istanbul but they are no match for Marocco. After several hours of working our way throught he maze, seeing some of the same shops several times as we got lost a few times we found our way out on the opposite side… We headed down towards the coast through yet more markets, shops and touting.. In the crowds the heat was intense, it was a welcome blessing to get some cool breeze as we came down the hill. At the bottom of the hill ended up finding a small electrical goods store which had portable multi-band radios.. It was listed at 32TL and after being worn out by the other touts we agreed on 30TL which was hugely in their favour.. Anyway we got our radio and paid around 1 Euro less for it.. ho hum.. We are by this time absolutely knackered from the heat (36c) and the constant walking and avoiding touts.. We ended up finding a small restaurant that served some traditional Turkish food and beers with comfortable seats for us to chill out and watch the world go by for some time.. It was great to be able to sit down after being on our feet constantly in the heat for about 4 hours… mmmmmm beer.. mmmmmm Turkish food.. While we drank and waited for the food we decided to bring out our new little radio.. The waiter had a look at it and laughed saying it was probably only worth 5TL…. He then served us our food..But only after trying to come across as being cool.. and instead smashing the terracotta urn that the food was prepared in.. It all went down a little too easily and after about 2 hours we decided to head back to our apartment and get some more beers on route..

Beer, Radio and Cards.. we ended up sitting in our room watching the world go by on the water as the sunset listening to our new radio (which actually worked) drinking beer playing 10 of a kind… Ahh relaxation…

After a few beers the night before we woke slightly later than usual but it was already baking hot.. It was 30c at 8am. It seems that we are finally starting to adjust to the heat. We had loads of chores to do and chased up many of our missing bike parts, replacement bike tyres, banking etc. All of the pieces in the pie are finally starting to fit together which is another reason why we had to stay for such a long time in Istanbul… After a morning of organisation and preparation it was time to head back to the Kazakh embassy.. after the 30minute ride out we ended up arriving about 25minutes before the afternoon visa pick up opening times… There was already a line of people waiting in the heat it was not something that we expected… After waiting in line for around an hour we finally managed to get into the visa office only to be told that our visa’s had been approved but we now needed to go to a Turkish bank and transfer some money into their account electronically and bring the receipt back to the embassy to pick up our passports. This was great news given that it was already 4:15pm and the office closed at 4:30.. The security guide was nice enough to give us a pretty drawing of the directions we needed to get to the bank.. After getting there the bank issued Heather a number for her in the queue while I parked the bike. There was a long wait and it felt unlikely that we would be able to get back to the embassy in time to get our passports today… which meant only one thing.. we would have to wait until Monday afternoon to pick up our visa.. ouch!.. it was not looking good.. It was great news when 5 people before us in the queue appeared to be no shows so we ended up getting in and paying the money in about 15 minutes it cost us 90 US dollars for two double entry visas (70 US dollars for single) making it with bank costs 320 TL.. That makes it record time for queuing since leaving the UK.. We raced back to the embassy as it was now about 4:45. It was a huge relief when the guard let us back in to pick up our passports despite being after closing time.. yay one for the win.. finally something went the right way..

Our trip home from the Kazakh embassy during Friday afternoon peak hour traffic was something of an adventure. The traffic which during normal times is crazy was actually crazy++. At least being on a bike we were able to filter around for the vast majority of the trip cutting the trip time down from what it could have been to only around 50minutes.. The traffic at the turn for the Sultanahmet was so crazy that they had police to enforce the lights as everyone was just ignoring the red lights and blocking the traffic. It was nice to see the police telling cars trying to push in to get lost…

The Turkish drivers really get angry when you can get in front of them on a bike.. especially if your on UK plates.. ha ha ha.. no match for a bike being able to go between the cars.. even when they try and box you in..

Given that most of our administration tasks had now been finalised we could focus on being tourists.

One of the Mosques in Istanbul's Sultanahmet

After leaving our campsite very early (before 8am) we decided that we would go directly into Istanbul to our accommodation in the Sultanahmet. We had all our maps sorted so that we could get in with the most ease.. We decided to just ride straight down the D100 all the way into central Istanbul. Well that is what we had planned anyway.. it was not so easy.. Unfortunately the traffic and driving in Istanbul was absolutely nuts. With cars going all over the place with no indication of what their next move, buses pulling out without caring who as coming along, it was very hazardous to motorcycles..

We ended up taking the wrong turn initially (I will not point any fingers though it was not James 🙂 and going through Bakirkoy which appears to be a big shopping district only about 10km from central Istanbul.. After this we managed to find out way back onto the D100 and head on our way.. We finally found the exit that we needed to take unfortunately Heather was busy looking at the truck that had over turned right at the intersection we needed to turn at.. oops missed another turn.. lets look for a place to do a U-Turn.. oops there wasn’t one.. 15kms later and fed-up we ended up having to go and cross over to Beyoglu and did an illegal U-Turn across the tram lines.. At which time there was a police traffic man yelling as he ran across the road for us to stop.. oops we just kept on going pretending not to notice.. oh well lets go back and find that exit we missed before.. After finally finding the exit we started to look for our accommodation.. Well that’s yet another case of easier said than done. The directions and the map on lastminute.com was not only wrong but it was completely wrong. After spending 2hours riding around the Sultanahmet in the 34c heat we managed to get some assistance from some Turkish people who knew their way around and they gave us the real location of where the accommodation was. “Easy”.. we ended up finding the accommodation about 10-15minutes later in the place that it was actually meant to be.. WOW!!..

Relaxing in the heat after arriving in Istanbul

This is where the fun with lastminute.com started. We booked our self catering apartment through lastminute.com but we never actually received any confirmation receipt via email like promised… It turns out that the hotel was double booked for the first night. Our apartment hosts found us another local hotel for the first night and helped us park our bikes on the footpath outside the hotel in the old town… This was more than fun. The gutter up from the road to the foot path was abnormally high.. probably at least 40cm high which made getting the loaded bikes up a four person job.. Thankfully we had help from our hosts. We unpacked all our gear from the bikes and left it at reception while we went and checked into the other hotel..

James trying to fix Heathers mess!

In our Hotel room Heathers special ability to break anything she touches came into force.. The first thing she broke was the room’s curtains when she tried to close them she just ripped them down from the roof.. Rails and all… Then she opened the closet door and broke that too… while she was sitting on a glass table wondering what we should do, to which she also cracked that.. yay.. the triple combo. We then got transferred to another room which was much nicer and she didn’t manage to break everything 🙂 The hotel was basic but the staff really made the stay there exceptional. The friendliest hotel staff we have had to date (and with free internet). For some reason Heather kept on asking for other hotel guests keys because she kept forgetting which room number we had.. YAY!!

waiting for a train to the kazakhstan embassy in Istanbul

In the morning we woke early with the plan to head to the Kazakhstan embassy so that we could finalise our visas.. after taking the train to bakirkoy we then took a taxi to the embassy… Only to find out that its closed on Wednesdays.. YAY!!… Whilst stopped at traffic lights the taxi driver got out, went to the boot and gave us some Turkish wagon wheel like biscuits and drove us back to the station. As the journey progressed the taxi driver was popping pills and was getting more erratic than usual, kept wanting to drop us off at a hotel, we said no hotel, titanic hotel, no hotel, hotel, no hotel, hotel, no hotel we ended up just asking to get out, We ended up getting back to the hotel while the cleaning lady was cleaning up the room.. She had packed up all our stuff into a big pile as it was well after check out time.

This is where we made two trips to take our gear back to our now available apartment.. on the return for the second leg Heather tried to go into someone else’s room because she didn’t check the number and just saw that the cleaning lady was in there.. she had a big laugh at Heather which was rather amusing.. Heathers room number skills coming into force again!! Haha..

The view from our Apartment Istanbul

Finally we had our own apartment and kitchen we could settle into our stay in Istanbul and get some relaxation…The apartment has a good view over the sea and all the boats which gives us a nice breeze in the heat making it all the more bearable at 36c…Its amazing how many ships off the coast would say over 50….