Objective: Istanbul

Awaking to the unexpected sound of bells ringing, I went out of the tent to 'shower' wıth my soft-drink bottle contraption. The ringing emanated from a herd of sheep that had entered our field in the early hours, and was fearlessly drawing closer. There were some cows too, but no sign of guardians or masters.

Then, as I was preparing to brew the coffee a shepherdess appeared on the scene, apparently unfazed by our presence on her grazing turf. After we established friendly non-verbal contact, she held out the bag of blueberries she was carrying for us. All the while, she spoke to us in heavily-accented Turkish, most of which neither Vlad nor I could decipher. She happily accepted the Simit I offered, although I had actually intended to have some of it myself too (she had other ideas!). Then we drank coffee with her and I showed her how to dunk biscuits. After a time, and a lot more shrugging of our shoulders at her attempts to communicate, she went back to her flock.

Another young, male shepherd appeared on the scene soon after, busy texting with his mobile phone. Vlad spoke to him a little in Turkish and Russian, as he was a Turkmen, and he helped me get my bike back across the ford by which we'd entered the pasture the previous night.

The way towards Istanbul was hilly but the roads were fairly quiet. We missed a particular turning that turned out to be rather crucial to our intended route into Istanbul, and ended up taking a big road for a while before exiting in some satellite town of Istanbul. The town was full of half-built apartment towers, mixed with shacks and seeming squats and rubbish everywhere. Chickens and other livestock roamed freely around the streets, and the area had the air of being a lower-density shanty-town.

Continuing on up to the crest of a hill, we saw rows and rows of apartments stretching to the horizon in various stages of completion, a veritable McCıty, and very few inhabitants. There was a little work going on, but nothing substantial - presumably casualty of the Great Recessıon. We managed to find our way out of the development towards the city via a rough track across some waste land, passing gypsies and squatters, before reluctantly joining the highway again towards the airport. These city drivers continued to honk a lot, but were not noticeably worse than highway users in any other given country.

We found the broken glass-littered coastal walkway/cycle track, which abruptly disappeared on reaching Mustafa Ataturk's summer home, to our chagrin, then we got lost a few more times before finding the airport to city cycle route, which mostly kinda follows the single track railway that extends west from Istanbul.

It got dark as we rode, and we greeted some other cycle tourists we passed stopped by the track, ourselves too hurried to stop and chat. They caught us up a little while later, this Russian couple who'd just ridden the ferry from Sebastopol to Istanbul. They had planned to find a very cheap hotel or wild camp in Istanbul, but ultimately settled on looking for beds with us. We tried a very cheap pension fırst, which involved extended negotiations and haggling with a troop of Turkisk men, via the few words of language we had in common. Finally we realised we were just wasting our time and got on our way.

At the next hotel we passed, young children, some less than school-aged, freely roamed the dark streets sans parents, somehow avoiding being run down by cars. Some of the older kids threw a few stones at us as we waited outside, one hitting the hotel front window loudly but not breaking it. They were soon chased off. The room shown us inside was dilapidated and dirty, and Mikhail joked that it had the appearance of an opium den! We laughed as we descended the stairs and headed for the Aksaray area, where Vlad had stayed a week earlier.

Cycling is somethıng that apparently is simply not practised in Istanbul, and in fact even as a pedestrian, negotiating its chaotic roads is somewhat intimidating compared to what I am used to. Nonetheless we reached our target area without incident. It was late by now, and initially all the hotels we tried were full, however we persisted, eventually opting to pay a little more and stay in the same hotel where Vlad had earlier stayed.

The Russians invited us to their room for a tipple of honey-scented Ukrainian vodka and we ate pita bread (Turkish "pıde") and fruit wıth a nice herb tea. Mikhail was naturally a cyclo-camping enthusiast, and his partner Svetlana was along for the journey in spite of a bout of laryngitis. I was impressed at Mikhail's command of English and mild accent, and it turned out we had many more things in common than I'd expected. They invited me to come to Moscow and stay with them a while, then ride the Trans-Sıberian Express to the east - an offer I am still considering although unlikely to take them up on at this point.

Finally we turned in, with some relief, after this day of drama, excitement and not a little frustration!