Central Turkiye (day 72-78)
Day 72 - 78 (23rd -29th Oct)
7,113 miles
Istanbul - Cappadocia - Gobeklitepe - Nemrut Crater
I woke shortly after sunrise as the light undid any prospects of a lie-in, and I wanted to make some decent mileage having only done a short distance out of Istanbul the previous day. The hostel I'd booked in Goreme was 670km away so would be my biggest day's ride since I set off from the UK, I peaked out the tent and was greeted with a cloud inversion below me, smothering the city of Izmit. I've wanted to camp above a cloud inversion for a long time, there's a few popular spots in Derbyshire you can see them but you either need to be able to read the weather conditions very well, or be lucky, or both! It was so pretty, its like floating above the world, being let in on a little secret that actually the day is gorgeous, when everyone below you thinks its grey and miserable. I spent a fair bit of time taking photos and enjoying the moment as the sun slowly burned off the cloud below revealing industrial docks and ships littering the estuary.
When I was in Oslo many moons ago, I watched what I could consider "an anorak" of a senior bikepacker, the type who wears socks and sandals.. you know who I mean - wipe down his tent with a cloth before packing it, in the rain. I watched him thinking he was ridiculous with his poncho, but actually - its genius (or I'm now an 'anorak' too). Doing it in the rain is still ridiculous, but wiping away the moisture with a microfiber on the outside to remove the majority of the water, and the inside to remove the condensation from the night, means the tent dries much quicker whilst you do a few other bits then pack it away. So - as is now part of my routine after a wet (or cold) night, providing its not raining the next morning, I wiped down the moisture so the sun would cook the tent quicker as I had some breakfast (bowl of granola) and got everything else ready to go.
I rode down the hill and set off toward Goreme, leaving cities and built up Turkiye behind. The scenery started to change and become more sparse, open, and less managed. A few times I noticed a smoke hanging in the air from open fires, either management of crop to start a fresh for the next grow, or destroying rubbish in large piles. Its unusual to see so many open fires with black smoke dotted around the countryside as I've travelled and it hangs there held down by varying pressure layers creating long distance layers of smoke in the sky. After a few hours I stopped for lunch, there was very little traffic on the wide open roads in the sunshine so the miles were coming easily. The service stations on the stretch of road heading east from Istanbul are huge, and seem to be designed for coachloads of tourists at a time. In the UK you pull off a motorway on a fairly narrow slip, park up in a designated car sized space and go get your prawn sandwich and fuel (other sandwiches are available). In Turkiye, you stop almost whereever you like in the multi-football field sized patch of tarmac with a few lines drawn but largely open to interpretation, and go to the canteen building first which is long before the fuel station, sometimes 1/4 of a mile away down the service road, and they have hundreds of seats and a shop inside with loads of touristy souveniers, and a school style canteen with trays of food to choose from. There would be no bottle neck if you tipped up with 5 x 72 seater coaches, but when there aren't any coaches there, it feels bizarrely overkill and quite empty. I had some tasty chicken type thing for lunch then continued, not actually needing fuel that time and wanting to reduce the number of times I fill up.
I continued on for another few hours until I was 2 hours from the end, and stopped to fill with fuel and get a coffee to sustain me. If I had a supercar and wanted to play with it on open roads, Turkiye's motorways east from Istanbul are where I would go, down past Ankara. A few times I was sat in lane one at 70mph when something blasted past at a disconcerting speed, but the roads here are empty, wide, smooth, its sunny - why not.
The sun was setting as I got to the edge of Goreme so I caught the town from the hillside looking down toward it as the fairy lights came on and the place began to glow, what a bizarrely attractive town in the middle of a sandy desert setting. When I got to the hostel, one of the guys who runs the place was engrossed in watching a football game so I had to steal his attention away to check me in which was an amusing conclusion to the journey, prompting each step of the process as unseen players tripped over grass and snapped their limbs (or so it seemed from listening to the crowd's reactions from the back of the laptop). The temperature had dropped steeply from leaving Istanbul, and I was glad to find the cave dorm room buried into the rock was warm and cosy.
One of the main attractions in Goreme, Cappadocia - aside from the bizarre and ancient fairy chimeys, cave dwellings and underground cities built into the rocks inhabited for thousands of years until as recently as 1950s, has become the daily spectacle of hot air balloons launching for the sunrise. The pricing of getting in a balloon.. is just as bizarre. If you book early, online, you will pay around 300-400EUR, and you may still get a cancelled flight if the weather is poor (read: raining). If there is a cancellation, the following day prices are steeper, but they fluctuate. There are 18 companies launching some 200+ balloons every morning, each taking around 28 passengers. There are ground crews who run around all the accommodation, collecting the guests in the darkness before dawn, to take you to a field where other ground crew inflate the balloons on their sides with huge petrol powered fans until they are podgy enough to take the 8ft jets of flame from the burners which quickly finish the job of getting them upright.
When I arrived at the hostel Islam asked what I was hoping to do in Goreme, and a balloon flight was one of the things I was keen on if I could get a decent price, he rung up his contact and said the price is 180EUR, at 7pm the night before. I wanted to check in and sort myself out before I planned anything so left it at that, got a shower, sorted my stuff out and went back to say I'd be up for it, he rung again at 8pm, the price had dropped to 160EUR - excellent. I went to the cash machine to get the lira equivalent then handed it to Islam who would text me a pickup time later on for the morning - such an adhoc process.
Two nights before I'd left Istanbul I met another guest, Kiera, at the hostel and discovered we'd both be in Cappadocia at the same before she flew back to Istanbul and continued her travels around Europe. Having secured the balloon flight and got my pickup time of 6am, I found Kiera and spent the rest of the evening drinking 'hot wine' (not as good as mulled wine or vin chaud or gluhwein, but the evening was very cold, so the hot wine was welcome!), chatting and enjoying the DJ's attempts to create a rowdy night scene in a quiet bar, whilst the rest of the town gets an early night to continue the cycle of extracting thousands of euro from tourists every morning - it was a really good night and a shame it was curtailed by my early start and her ridiculously early bus transfer to the airport.
My alarm went off so I got up, sorted myself out and was by the road ready for my pickup just before 6am. There were two of us there, so when the first van swung by and didn't have a name of its guest, the other chap hopped in and away it went. Another bus arrived shortly after looking for a name I didn't recognise, hung around a little, had a turkish tea with the hostel owner, disappeared. I checked my watch at 6:20am and messaged Islam asking if he knew whether there was an issue or not. The other guy and first van then returned, he hopped out declaring he was in the wrong van, but the driver didn't actually know who he was supposed to pick up and I didn't have any company details at all, just a time and a price. After a few more pre-dawn turkish teas, I got in the van anyway and we headed to the launch site past fields of balloons inflating and some starting to drift up slowly, with twilight shifting into dawn. It was ballistically cold, for the first time since leaving the UK I was in trousers (excluding the times I'm in bike gear) and hat, wishing I had brought some gloves. Even the logistics of getting 5000+ people out of bed and into baskets below bags of hot air is impressive, nevermind the transport of trucks towing trailers into random spots around the town and the pilots of the balloons attempting to steer and navigate everything when they're airborne, it really is a wonder, visually, logistically, financially, everything!
The balloon flight itself was really cool, I didn't headcount the basket but there could easily have been 28 of us in there with 2 pilots, as we slowly drifted off the ground and spent an hour floating around without any latent wind effect, watching the sunrise and the wonder of all the other balloons in the valley. I'd never done it before and glad I came to Cappadocia to do it. Its not exactly a high octane activity, I probably wouldn't be drawn to do it again if I had to pay but it was a really good experience and afforded some stunning photographs of the moment. When we got down and eventually back to the hostel, it was 9am but I felt a bit disconnected having gotten very little sleep and woken early so wasn't sure how to spend the rest of the day. I got some turkish breakfast then had a wander round the town a little before heading back to the hostel and bumped into Katie and Katya who had also been at the hostel in Istanbul. Katya had a sunset horse ride booked and I had planned to ride around the fairy chimneys by bike in the evening sun and offered Katie to come with if we could borrow a helmet so we went for an explore round some of the caves and dwellings. The craftsmanship and amount of effort to have produced some of the intricate chambers which included internal supporting pillars, alcoves and different levels inside, all done by hand is phenomenally impressive. That evening a few others in the hostel joined us in the terrace chatting and drinking then we got some food in the cafe downstairs whilst a domestic between family members raged upstairs, fuelled by a few stolen beers from our group which was a little uncomfortable but c'est la vie.
The next morning most of us got up early to see the balloons launch from the viewing point above the town which was really peaceful and interesting to see from the ground, then 4 of us got some breakfast and split into various relaxed plans for the rest of the day. I wanted to do some more exploring of the caves and chimneys by bike so set off in the afternoon to see if I could do some off-roading around the moutain on the horizon. After contouring some single track trails around the chimneys which gave stunning backgrounds to be riding amongst, I found a little hop-up I wanted to try on the GS. It was a narrow boulder launch up a half meter step, reminicent of the terrain I had got wrong in 2019 and led to ACL reconstruction in my knee and 18 months of physio and pain, on a much easier bike. I worked out my approach to the kicker, set the drone up to capture the moment for entertainment either way, and stole myself to just go for it. I rode up to the boulder and bottled it, circled around and repositioned for another go. Thinking through some of the stuff I'd watched on endless videos about body position into and through obstacles on a bike, and remembering some of what Sam had talked through when I'd been riding with him in the past too, lean back, carry speed, compress just before to get the spring effect helping lift the front wheel to get it over the obstacle, then throw body weight forward through the obstacle to get the back over once the front is on track. Relatively straightforward if you watch someone else do it, but a lot of moving parts with critical timing to do yourself.
So.. I set off for a second time - rode up at a steady pace, compression, lent back for the front wheel impact, threw my weight forward, and didn't end up on the floor writhing in pain, win. I had a fairly awkward loose terrain hill to climb after that so walked the route to clear stones then scrambled the bike up in a switchback motion until I was up, on a single track and riding again - such a good feeling to do some technical off-road riding and exploring on rolling hills with no boundaries to stop you. This is some of the riding I had been hungry for in foreign lands and was so glad to get the chance, especially without being fully laden having left the luggage at the hostel. After a few hours of playing around I headed back down to the tarmac and rode the long way back toward Goreme when I noticed a trail heading straight up the back of the mountain I had seen the previous day. I followed the trail for 5-6 miles up some steep technical ascents until I was at the Turkish flag, overlooking Goreme and the valley below, 20 minutes before the sun was due to set.
I returned to the hostel in the dark and discovered the others had spent the afternoon together and got a Testi Kebab (traditional clay pot cooked) dinner which I had been keen to try. I went out and found somewhere still serving a little later than intended and had the performance of dinner being brought to me on a burning dish with a clay pot in the centre that gets smashed open to reveal the tasty stewed meat and veg within. It may have been more fun to enjoy in company but I was glad to have had the traditional dish in the region of its conception.
I packed up and set off the next day bound for the southern coast. I had taken some advice from Can at the hostel in Istanbul to go visit Gobekli Tepe and from Islam in Goreme to see Nemrut Dagi so aimed for the Mediterranean. I got to the shore of the sea, riding through shanty towns and tarp-constructed huts where various farm workers and refugees were living, as the sun set. Another poorly planned evening on my part. I had a look at the map and could see a trail which ran parallel to the shore for a few miles through woodland and farmed fields so I thought I'd see if I can find somewhere secluded to camp away from potential problems.
Dark had fully arrived when I found a little track that led to the beach, obstructed by a bulldozed mount of soft sand to block off vehicle access. Land-side of the dune was farmed land, so I wanted to get onto the beach and hope I could be concealed enough to safely camp, I took a run at the mound and buried the bike so well it stood self-supported in the sand. Bollocks. Having ridden down from the chilly plateau of Cappadocia, it was now 25 deg at 7pm in the dark, with a bike stuck in deep soft sand miles from anywhere with multiple sets of eyes reflecting back at me from the woods by the beach. I took the luggage off and dragged the bike backwards out of the softest sand then spent half an hour changing the gradient of the slope by kicking and dragging it around, and had a second run. The bike sailed over and I continued to do a loop and bring it back close to the dune, but got it stuck in the wet sand by the edge of the water. Bollocks, again. I checked the tidal range where I was and noted it was essentially at max already and only varied 20cm from max to min, so no major stress with getting the bike washed away. I managed to drag it backwards again until I could power it around and eventually parked it near the dry sand I could camp on, water side of the dune.
The multiple pairs of eyes watching me from afar convinced me that cooking dinner this evening was a bad idea as I'd draw unwanted attention from scavangers, so I had some cold snacks from the bike instead then set about making a shelter from my tarp, to have a quicker get-away the next morning and keep my footprint small and discreet. If you've never tried putting a peg in sand before, its kind of like using a chocolate tea pot. To get the ridgeline of the makeshift bivvy to stay where I wanted it, I dug holes with my heel into the sand until it was so deep I got to wet sand then shoved the peg in deep with the line attached, and backfilled. With the other end secured to the bike - it held tension and seemed to be working. I threw the tarp over the twin ridgeline to keep it off my face, wrapped it around like a cacoon so I would be sleeping on it as well as under it, off the sand, and pegged the edges down in a similar fashion, finishing by loading sand onto the edges of the tarp to make it draft-proof. The triangle shaped shelter with opening close to the bike was done, I put the roll mat in alongside the helmet and tank bag down one side, and slept fully clothed in bike gear for warmth, sand protection and to ensure no one nicked it my loose items.
At 4am, I woke to truck lights shining at my shelter. Shit. Doors opened, multiple voices, why the hell are people here, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I lay there for a while trying to gauge the number of people, and whether they were getting closer to me or not, the truck lights still on and shining at my shelter but I couldn't see what was happening. After 20 minutes or so, another truck arrived, more people. My heart sunk, I have no idea whats about to happen but nothing about my set up is quick enough to escape, and even if it was I have the soft sand mound to tackle anyway. I stole a glance out the opening of the shelter and took a photo with my phone, 3 trucks, maybe another slightly out of sight, at least 8 people, more out of sight. They weren't getting closer, and occasionally they were laughing, the mood didn't feel as dark as I first thought, but even crim's laugh. Light started to break the darkness and I figured I just needed to get out and address the dynamic, whatever it was. As I crawled out of the shelter and looked out.. there were 10 guys stood with waders on spaced out in the sea, fishing.
I had found the hotspot for locals to come and fish at the break of dawn, in the middle of nowhere. Idiot. Massively relieved I started packing up my sleeping stuff and un-doing the tarp as someone came over to ask where I was from and where I was going - really nice old guy, leathery orange skin, not a word of English but Google Translate demistifies these encounters nowadays. I shifted the luggage to the other side of the mound, did a similar job of levelling the gradient and run-up to give the bike the best chance and sailed over first time, loaded the kit and headed east before 8am.
Aiming for Gobekli Tepe along the south of Turkiye I came within 12 miles of the Syrian border - which to me feels like an insane concept. I've ridden so far from home that I am now 12 miles away from somewhere I only ever hear about in the news suffering from conflict and unrest. The terrain and landscape in this portion of Turkiye adds to the distant feeling from home with its arid, desert like hills and adapted way of life for the environment. Its really hard to remember this is actually the same trip that saw me on the Swedish islands taking refuge from the rain or in Norway on a boat fishing by sunset. Those memories are so different and so long ago and far away they feel like separate parts of my life, but they were 2 or 3 months ago, and I haven't been home or seen a familiar face since. Kind of similar to the way you can convince yourself its not "tomorrow" until you go to bed even if you stay up past midnight, that still counts as "today" - I've not been home yet so its all the same trip - but its been a very long day. This isn't the longest I've been away, but it does seem that there are dramatically seperate chapters of the adventure punctuated by events which add to the feeling of time passing.
I arrived at Gobekli Tepe which was bizarrely a mecca for humans in an otherwise empty part of the world. Cars, buses and coaches were being ushered into a car park 'off site' to prevent traffic clogging up the site but I was waved through and rode the last section with the shuttle buses to the visitors centre. De-robing my riding gear and tucking it away onto the bike I bought a tourist-priced ticket (genuinely, two prices, one for locals one for not) then spent time in the museum part of the site being reminded of language Rach used to describe aspects of her anthropology studies about Mesopotamia, neolithic civilisation and the techniques used by early humans to exist. I then joined a ridiculous queue and was reminded how poor the etiquette some people have with queuing - it really is true the British know how to queue. In the end I realised it was for a shuttle to do 2km but that was only apparent very close to the front, either way I fought my way out the queue and walked the track to the archaelogical site..
It was incredible. There is a large awning protecting the active dig site from weather, for the archologists to work predominantly in the summer months uncovering buildings in a close cluster which, along with the tools and findings of the site have re-enforced the belief this is the oldest known settlement of humankind, 9500BC.. 11,500 thousand years ago. There's still active debate on whether people settled to farm or farmed as a result of settling, but ground radar surveys have indicated there is a lot more of the site to uncover still - approx. 90%, so the research being conducted will hopefully add insight on how we got from travelling hunters to where we are today. At risk of speaking out of turn and getting it wrong or not doing it the justice it deserves, all I can really say is that its an amazing place to visit, and is so well preserved by the actions of the neolithic people thousands of years ago that you can see the workmanship of people who existed just after the last ice ace. It's insane - an absolute highlight of the trip so far.
I walked back to the bike and was getting ready to leave as I was quizzed by a tour guide who wants to relocate to the UK, on the best places to retire for a Turkish person - not an easy thing to answer having not done that myself or knowing anything about him. Through some questions to understand a bit more about him and what he wants in life, I recommended Northamptonshire as somewhere commutable to London but not too expensive, maybe it was helpful, maybe it wasn't.
This far east in Turkiye has meant the sun was now setting at 17:00 which curtailed my day of riding quite significantly, and was already past by the time I left site. Since Cappadocia I'd been riding with the tinted Pinlock in my helmet to avoid faffing with sunglasses all day and was really enjoying the benefit in the bright sunshine but night riding was now even harder as I either couldn't see or my eyes stream with tears from the wind and bugs battering them in twilight. I had a quick scout on Google and found some woods 20 minutes away on a hillside to aim for. After a few minutes I was riding along some woodland the other side of an opencast quarry and saw a track which would take me round the quarry and into the woods on the hill so I went for it, being much closer than my original target.
The track led away from the road behind the quarry and into the open woodland but gave obscured view from civilisation, which was my bag. I took a little trail off the side and ended up riding through open field looking for a flat spot. Riding is probably a stretch though, the unmanaged land here is very bouldery and choked up with obstacles ranging from the size of a fist to a beach ball, so a couple of times I had sketchy catches of the bike but eventually concluded I wasn't going to find flat easy land to use the tent but my hammock would be perfect. Forecast to be dry and clear all night I was content to risk it without tarp so set up camp between two trees, cooked some rice and tuna, then went to sleep by 20:00.
Forgetting I was in a hammock, I woke with the sun cresting the horizon in front of me in the warm golden glow of the morning, it was an incredible way to wake up and conicident I had arranged the hammock to get the view on a south facing hillside. I've slept in a hammock a few times before, its rarely the best night's sleep because the banana effect of sliding in the night or becoming very cold, but the night's sleep was deep and restful, which was massively appreciated after the disruprted cramped beach episode of the previous day. A swift pack up and breakfast saw me rolling again by 09:00, heading for the next recommendation I'd had to visit Nemrut Dagi a few hours north. As I rode the temperature shifted down a little as I climbed higher onto the plateaux of eastern Turkey, where 'ground level' was a few thounsand feet above sea level. Eventually I took an easterly turn from my bearing and headed up to Nemrut, ignoring the 1hr 50 remaining on Google navigation and electing to follow roadsigns instead which told me it was 24km away. It paid off and wouldn't be the first time Google had been considerably out of date for the central and eastern parts of Turkey, where new roads, bypases and routes have emerged that don't exist in Google-space. I got my ticket and rode to almost the very top of Nemrut Dagi, 7,000ft (2135m) up then walked the final section to see the 2,000 year old sculptures and monuments of eagels, lions, Greek & Persian gods which were dragged to the top as part of a worship site for a king in 60BC. There wasn't a lot of information for tourism in any language at the site, nor at the visitors centre which had more interest in selling mugs and food rather than any historic education, quite a difference to the site at Gobekli Tepe.
I suited up and made a start east from here, but decided I had sold myself short a few times recently with rubbish accommodation options by being caught out early with sunset, so as I rode toward the lake and vast bridge that brought me to the foot of the moutain and was enjoying the view for a moment, I thought well the sun sets in just over half an hour and this is much prettier than somewhere on arid dry land in a few miles. I could see a track that concluded at the edge of the lake so went in search of the other end to get down to it. I discovered the start of the track had been covered by land-spill of loose earth with a very steep gardient, then became the rough boulder covered track. I figured I probably could manage getting down it but coming up tomorrow would be hard, I found another access route out if I needed it along the edge of a farmed patch but would have been through very loose earth the bike would wash and wallow in. Content I had an alternative for the morning I went down the steep track, engine off in 1st gear using the clutch as a fail-safe rear brake and arranged myself by some trees near the waters edge for another hammock camp.
Awoken again by the glow of the sunshine poking over the hills in front of me I got up and packed away then had breakfast and prepped myself for the monster climb. I rode to the foot of the steep section and walked the route, clearing boulders and fist sized marbles which would kick me sideways off the ridgeline and create qutie the drama if I got them wrong, then put the drone up thinking it'll either go well or not but both would be entertaining, I let Ali know I was about to tackle some complicated riding so that somoene was aware I could be in trouble shortly, then slipped the clutch and set off. Leaning over the back wheel to keep traction high and revs up I tackled the boulder track and onto the loose earth, bounced sideways a little but was at the top and without drama in less than 15 seconds. It doesn't look like much on the GoPro or drone, but the climb was steep and loose for your average off-road lightweight bike nevermind a fully loaded adventure bike. I'm proud of the capability of the bike, it gets a lot of stick for being a 'sofa' and its not helped by the fact that most GS owners use their bikes for gentle day rides or motorway hacking, but they are capable adventure/off-road bikes with the right tyres, suspension set up and rider attitude!
My plan for the day was to continue north with the intention to get to Georgia by the end of the week, and Tom had found a chapel built in the name of Saint Thomas that he suggested I go visit which took me 450km east and set me up well to go due north from there through the town of Van, so I plugged it into the navigation and set off. The ride was largely uneventful aside from a couple of spectacles on the road - a transport lorry with a bloke in the back holding the cargo together, a small flat-bed transit van with a tractor jammed onto the loading bed, filling every inch of it and compressing the poor van's suspension to the floor, and a military convoy which announced itself long before anyone could see the vehicles. After a few hours I stopped for a fanta at a little stall on the side of the road and drew the attention of the motorbike shop owners next door. I greeted them in Turkish (merhaba) but was informed that I was now in Kurdistan, despite it being in Turkey, they spoke Kurdish predominantly (as well as Turkish) so learned a few words of greeting and gratitude to be placed in my short term memory and forgotten a day later. I sat and had tea with them, discussed my travel and their aspirations to go to England, all through Google Translate and some broken English from the younger lad at the bike shop too. I was offered to stay with him and his family that night and to have some food but it was only 14:00 and I wanted to get more miles done in the remaining afternoon sun so politely declined, finished my gifted tea and contniued on my way.
I was a couple of hours from the target location and figured I'd be getting there around dusk so would probably try and stay there or nearby. As I rode through Tatvan, 5,500ft above sea level I spotted a dominos, and doubled back. I'd been eating whatever random food the cafes had produced, or rice and fish at my camps for the last few days and it had been a long time since I'd had a good pizza. Surprised to have seen the branch out in the boonies I went in and ordered, as I was sat there Tom was tracking me online and noticed a crater nearby and sent a link, which I saw also had camping options in it. I figured I could have an early dinner then go to the crater, find somewhere to camp and continue early the next day, visit the chapel on the mountain and turn north for Georgia after that. The pizza wasn't anywhere near as good as dominos in the UK, I'd even go as far as to say I was disappointed with it, and the lack of garlic dip too, but it filled me up. Looking online at Nemrut Crater photos and information was the first time I realised Turkey had bears as most of the photos are of brown bears taken by tourists in and around the lake of the old volcano. Surprised by this I looked into what other creatures Turkiye was harboring and it turns out there are black widow spiders, scorpions, snakes, wolves, wild boar, bears, there was plenty of anti-social creatures to choose from and I had been fairly ignorant of it until this point so I figured I should be a little more careful with my camping choices from now on.
I rode up to the ridgeline of the crater as the sun was setting and stopped to look at the view before descending down into the crater optomistic I'd find somewhere decent to camp. The cobbled road which had led up from Tatvan continued down to a car park at the end but I'd noticed a rough track which departed the 'road' and cut left directly for the lake so took that thinking fewer vehicles would handle the condition of the trail. The expanse of the crater was huge, the lake is 5km miles long and 2km wide, the opening of the crater is almost 10k in diameter, its a huge area with trees and rocks and a few smaller lakes by the north end of it. The north facing side of the ridgeline was covered in snow, reminding me how cold it was at 7,500ft at the end of October. After riding about 4km from the road I came to a small camp spot elevated from the edge of the lake with flat ground, I found the flattest part to pitch the tent then went on the scavange for wood with my axe to build a fire. I'd not had a campfire so far on this trip as I mostly just get somewhere, pitch the tent make dinner and sleep, but I'd already eaten, it was incredibly cold and the early sunset meant I had plenty of evening to fill first anyway.
I spent a few hours playing around making photographs with the campfire illuminating my face and the sky full of stars, managing to continue only from the warmth of the fire as the dew fell on the tent and bike quickly coating it in frost. I pulled out the thermal leggings I'd bought from Budapest, the Norweigian military top I got from Geir that I've been using on colder nights, and crawled into the sleeping bag with hat and socks, ready for a chilly night but feeling toasty in my nest.
Before actually sleeping I noticed I had zero phone signal on either my UK or Turkish sim card, not even for emergency calls - it was as good as being switched off. I thought this was a prime chance to test the Garmin inReach Mini 2 satellite messenger I've been using to track my progress since setting off. I sent a message to Ali, Pa and Jax letting them known I was okay, I had no phone signal and I was testing my satellite messenger - it worked, pretty cool you can message to another part of the world through satellite without any domestic phone signal.
