Enter Charlie

I was awakened before dawn by the muezzin and got on the road pretty speedily in the hopes of catching Charlie. We exchanged a few text messages, and after some 80 km or so I caught up to him in İzmit, where he was stopped at the roadside repairing a very nasty puncture.

We got underway together and after some time stopped for a bit of lunch at the roadside, finding a nice area of very green grass, where an old man tried to sell us some random stuff which we politely declined. A little later he started gesturing to us quite excitedly, though we were both at a loss to what he was trying to communicate. We soon found out as our lawn picnic was soaked by sprinklers which popped up from nowhere and started soaking the entire area, including our peaceful picnic. We did our best to get out of their way and then after 5 minutes or so they receded silently back into the lawn and left us to finish eating.

After a few hours' riding the daylight seemed to be running out and so we started to look for a place to doss. We took a rural road, got a bit lost and did a circuit before coming across a graveyard, where we found a quiet corner and pitched up, cooking a meal of lentil dhal with pasta which really hit the spot after what had been a 130 km day for me!