We woke up a little groggy the next morning. The SIM city 2000 theme was ringing out through the interior of the Fiat Doblo, and it was high time to resurrect ourselves and head over to the Kazakh Embassy. So I leaned my seat forward and started the car, backing out into the hotel parking lot and driving off toward the embassy. It was close, so we arrived before anyone had even fully woken up. We picked up our passports, newly christened with Kazakh visas, and split without a hitch.
Our next destination was to check into a rental apartment that we had found in Istanbul through our favorite online peer-to-peer accommodation booking tool, AirBed & Breakfast. Claudia had not gotten a chance to drive the Doblo yet, so we let her take the wheel as we set out looking for a certain Italian fellow by the name of “Marco Marco.†It was not easy to find the guy, though, and as it slowly crept past the time that we had promised to return the car, we continued searching, driving in circles around the same streets, calling him from time to time, and becoming increasingly lost in the tangled byways of Istanbul.
Find him we did, however, and he climbed into the car with his well mustached friend, directing us to drive into an alley that quickly began to climb uphill at a 40-degree angle. Due to a poor choice of gears, Claudia stalled attempting the climb, and from there things became difficult. In her defense, the 1.3 liter diesel engine in the Doblo had very little low end torque, and we were attempting a very steep uphill start. But with each jerking stall, we fell further and further back downhill. Everyone in the car began screaming and when a car pulled up behind us, Marco Marco had a vision of disaster and asked to take the wheel.
Having honed his skills over many years of practice in underpowered Italian economy cars, he managed quite effortlessly to pilot us to the apartment where we would be staying. And so we unloaded our things and headed up.
The apartment was gorgeous, with a stunning view out over the water, and plenty of room to relax. We were excited to have a kitchen and a full size fridge (for all the Red Bull of course), plus the place was equipped with pretty darn fast wireless. Who could ask for more?
First thing we did was get Alp on the horn. He began to rage for us in Turkish, and managed to arrange for Claudia’s passort to be put on the next bus from Cappadocia to Istanbul. It appeared it would make it in time for her flight the next day.
We headed back out then, to return the car. After that was completed, Scott and I parted ways with Claudia and Diane as they headed off to do some more shopping. Meanwhile the two of us headed back to the apartment to do some blogging and wine drinking and eventually met up with Alp, hero of Claudia’s passport, who we were just thrilled to have in our lives again.
All concerned dug into the food and generally attempted to blow off steam.
The next morning Claudia and I headed out to the inter-city bus station, which was no trivial journey from Marco Marco’s place, and after much bouncing around between Turkish bus drivers and lot attendants, finally were directed to the luggage counter, where we picked up a thin paper packet with Claudia’s name on it and headed triumphantly back toward the rest of the team, passport in hand.
When we arrived back, Diane had made a great breakfast for us.
The entire group, Alp Included, sat down around the large dining room table, and we all dug into eggs, olives, bacon, fried tomatoes and peppers, and bread. Diane is a splendid cook and the entire meal was magnificent.
It was then time to engage in the sad task of packing up Claudia’s Vitesse D7 for the long ride back to the States. And it was with a heavy heart that we headed out to put her on the next bus for the airport. I placed my Panama hat on her head, asking if she might take it back to the States with her. “Your Panama hat!†she exclaimed!
Scott’s had been lost, I replied, and perhaps that was a sign that a new chapter was opening. Going forward into the Stans and Russia, we would be carrying only the Vietnamese motorcycle helmets. Though somewhat aghast, she agreed to ferry the hat back to America.
Outside the bus, we all hugged Claudia goodbye, loaded the folding bicycle into the luggage compartment, and, just as suddenly as she appeared into our lives two months ago earlier in Dubai, she was gone.
The rest of that day was spent strolling though Istanbul with Diane, chatting with archeologists,  buying Turkish delight, mailing off project K9 Ibriks, finally eating some of those street side fish sandwiches that we’d sworn to revisit, and generally savoring the last bites of Turkey.
After waking up in the clean and sunny comfort of our rooms at the Dora Motel in Cappadocia, we decided it was high time for the entire team to take a wheel together. So we unfolded our Dahons, and walked them down to the market, where we had seen people renting bicycles.
In the market, we ran into a fellow selling Turkish IDs, press passes, and other printed and laminated images.
We stopped to take a look at his wares, and as I was noticing that his sample ID, taped on his printer, looked startlingly like my father, the proprietor took a picture of me with his DSLR, smiling at me and offering to make me a Turkish driver’s license. I politely declined and we moved on to find a cycle.
The fellows renting bikes were quite interested to see that we’d mostly arrived with our own cycles, and we were more than happy to let them take the Speed TRs out for a spin. Their offerings, on the other hand, were none too impressive. In the end, we ended up selecting a cycle, but the brakes were so poor and the transmission so finicky that Scott volunteered to ride the thing, leaving Claudia on his Speed TR, and Diane on the Vitesse D7.
And from there we set out, into the blazing sun, the unforgiving desert, and the jaw-dropping geology of this place. We quickly turned off the main road and onto a sandy side path, heading into one of the clusters of “cave†dwellings.
It was not easy to ride through the sand, but we managed for a time, eventually giving up when the path turned into a savage uphill climb toward the cluster of cave houses.
From there, we continued wheeling through the sandy washed out roads to the next archeological site.
There, we proceeded to do the same thing. We wandered through the cave dwellings, climbing around on the rock, and generally having a gay old time.
We wandered through a ancient and deserted city, now re-inhabited by tourists, stumbling upon old churches and cryptic wall carvings, the whole while, just sweating like maniacs in the midday heat.
We returned once again to the main road, heading on toward the pottery town of Cavusin, where Diane purchased a slew of pottery, which we duly divvied up and strapped onto our cycles.
You can see Diane here with the man who made the pots. He would look better with a mustache, don’t you agree?
From there, we wheeled on, heading uphill. Diane’s hat kept falling off, so she re-purposed its purple bow into a fastening system.
The road was wide and empty, spilling out before us, and beckoning us forward. We were happy to oblige, spurred on by the promise of more ruins and bizarre geology.
We then proceeded to, perhaps naively, pay our way into an “open air museum.†The museum ended up being just another archeological site, like those we’d toured previously, though perhaps a little more densely populated with ruins.  Oddly, we encountered this sign posted in English on the ticket booth.  What could they be talking about?  What audience were they targeting, and why here?
Considering all the free sites around us, it might not have made sense to pay our way into this one, but once inside we were determined to get our money’s worth.
We thoroughly explored, bouncing in and out of the “cave dwellings†and generally enjoying ourselves.
That evening we returned thoroughly exhausted and hungry from our wheeling and traipsing, and most grateful to have some clean air-conditioned beds to collapse into.
That next morning in Guzelcami, we pulled ourselves out of bed just in time to catch the large group breakfast at the Ecer Pension.
We spent the first part of the morning wandering through Guzelcami’s market and running little errands. The market had some truly stunning products for sale:
After the market, we headed to a certain healing sulfur spring outside of town, dedicated to the god, Zeus, which proved startlingly crowded. Regardless, we decided to hang there for a while, taking a dip in the spring and having a picnic of all the leftover foods from yesterday’s picnic.
Having eaten and had our sulfur baths, we found ourselves at a crossroads. What to do next? Where should we go?
We had heard many good things about the beaches farther south, but we had also heard great things about the fabled inland city of Cappadocia, where houses are built into the stone faces of the local geology. Call it the Petra, or the Pueblo of Turkey. In the end, we decided that we’d seen enough beaches, and that Cappadocia was the move.
So off we went. We drove for hours, listening to NPR’s Radiolab on compact disc.
Our next stop was to eat again, this time at a very interesting food truck we spotted off the side of the road, in a rather industrial part of the city of Denizli. They were serving up some wicked pressed sandwiches, and were more than happy to give us a knife to cut the melon that we’d bought earlier that day at the market.
It was well after midnight by the time we arrived in our final destination of Konya, where we had booked a room at a hotel recommended by the lonely planet, but we had still another two hours of driving around to do before we actually found the place.
When we did, the owner was standing in the doorway looking sleepy and waiting for us. Claudia and Diane headed in and began to handle logistics, which Scott and I drove off to find a place to park the car amidst the maze-like alleyways.
It seemed like we had only slept for two minutes when it was all of a sudden time to leave in order to adhere to the 11:00 am checkout rule. I scarfed down some bits of sandwich and some coffee in the lobby and then we headed out into the city.
Konya is an amazing place, highly recommended – one of my favorite that we had yet visited in Turkey. It was much poorer and much more Arabic than any Turkish city we’d been to yet, more like Syria. Scott and Diane went off to mail a package to a friend, while Claudia and I headed over to investigate a nearby event raising funds to support Muslim causes; it was broadcasting some entrancing Arabic music.
We wandered around looking at the gallery of posters explaining the fundraiser.
Most of the causes were things our government would describe as terrorism, but were here being presented as God’s work. It was a very interesting perspective to experience.
As Americans we felt totally welcome to visit the stand, and view the materials. When the fellows running the fund raiser found that Claudia could speak Arabic, they even gave us free lighters bearing the name of the Chechen Separatist Movement.
We spent a few more hours wandering around Konya, looking at some of the amazing goods for sale, like these variously shaped heating coils before getting in the car and heading off toward Cappadocia.
We stopped part way to Cappadocia to snack on some pide in the town of Aksaray, where we found an amazing place, featuring this fantastic poster illustrating the journey of man through life.
The place was run by goofy teenage boys and pide was delicious.
We stopped at a small bakery for some sweets and the owner came outside to let us know that one of the tires on the Doblo was getting flat. So we stopped and filled it up a little more before splitting. We had to wait in line behind a man filling his bicycle tire while we did so. We felt proud.
Our next stop was a monument to all the leaders of Turkey. We wandered around viewing the busts of each leader. It was startling how many of them were Mongols. We took a moment to consider how important a place Mongolia was. We were excited to wheel the place. It was not far off now…
Meanwhile, imminent arrival in Cappadocia was being heralded by some very interesting changes in the surrounding geology, which continued to get stranger and stranger. Soon we were surrounded by giant towering phallic-like structures. This must be the place, we thought, as we pulled into the town of Göreme.
We pulled the Doblo into the center of town and turned into a construction site to investigate the lonely planet pdfs, and collect addresses and phone numbers of potential hotels. Scott raged on his computer while the rest of us lazed and attempted to look useful.
After some brief comparison shopping, we ended up checking into The Dora Motel.
After throwing our stuff down, we parted ways, Claudia and Diane heading off to do some shopping, and Scott and I heading out for a little inaugural wheel of Cappadocia.
The wheel consisted mostly of a savage uphill climb through the striking geology. These bizarre towers were all around us, and now that we could get a closer look, it was obvious that most of them had been carved into homes and businesses, evident from the windows and doors scraped out of the rock.
We wheeled all the way over to the next city, where we found plenty more hotels, both conventional and those which allowed people to rent carved out “cave†rooms. We also noticed this classic car, the brand of which has no Wikipedia page, hidden behind the window of a repair shop.
Anyone who can shed more light on this vehicle is heartily invited to do so in the comments.
We continued to wheel on, past ruins, “cave†houses, and finally through the town and back into the countryside.
With the sun setting, we decided it was time to call it a wheel and head back to reconvene with the rest of the TurkLaunch team.
We woke up the next morning in Assos, and Claudia’s tooth was no better. She had woken up a number of times during the night in such pain that she was unable to sleep.  We had administered some painkillers, and over breakfast Scott, Diane, and I were discussing what the best next action was. We decided that it was worth getting in touch with insurance and finding a dentist. Just as we were about to leave to go try and find Internet in this one horse town, Claudia appeared, looking none too hot.
She nibbled on some bread, but didn’t eat much. I hung back with her while Scott and Diane went to go find the Internet. As we were discussing her swollen face, a man appeared. He introduced himself, and asked us about ourselves. Claudia did a good job of sucking up the pain and being cordial. Once we had explained AsiaWheeling, and to the owners of the hotel (who showed up half way through the conversation) that indeed there were still cowboys in the USA (though you needed to go outside the cities to find them), we asked our new acquaintance about his own life and profession.
Low and behold, the man was a dentist.  We asked, most humbly, if he might look into Claudia’s mouth. And so he did, spending some time poking around and examining the issue from all angles. In the end, he explained that all she needed was some antibiotics. We asked him what kind. “Azithromycin,†he said. I ran back to our room and sure enough we had them ready to go in the mobile pharmacy.
Claudia took her first one, and we headed out to find Scott and Diane to deliver the good news. All concerned were happy to hear that we had a solution that did not involve us all driving to an unscheduled city and Claudia going under the knife.
From there we drove up to an outcropping overlooking the sea.
The Mediterranean lay beautiful and blue beneath us as we followed the winding road down to the water.
Part way down the hill, we parked the Doblo, and headed out on foot to investigate the water more closely.
We cut through a resort and began exploring the rocky coastline.
Eventually, we decided to just strip down to our Exofficios and jump in.
The water was cool, crystal clear, and beautiful. We climbed out quite refreshed and headed back up to the car.
A little way down the road, we stopped at another beach-side restaurant for a delicious meal of fish, fresh bread and vinegary salad.
These tiny, eat-em-whole, deep fried Turkish fish were really becoming some of my favorite food of the entire trip.
We bought a bunch of giant bottles of water not far from the restaurant, and kept rolling.
I was driving through gorgeous Turkish semi-arid agricultural land; Scott and Claudia were snoozing; and Diane was reading to me aloud from the Wikipedia article about the Armenian genocide.
I could not have asked for more. Giant statues of Ataturk were everywhere, along with huge patriotic Turkish flags.
As the sun was setting, we pulled into the town of Çesme. It turned out we had arrived at some kind of tourist peak time for the city, which boded poorly for our ability to find a hotel. Even the filthy flophouse we found was holding out, trying to sell its last room for US$75. A normal, none too fancy hotel that we wandered into was asking for over US$1,000 for a night. This was maniacal and hilarious.
Luckily we had an ace up the sleeve. Â One we had hid in the Gulf and pulled out more than a few times. Â We decided it was high time to pilot the Hotel Doblo. But first we needed to eat. Alp directed us via phone to his favorite Pide Place, Dost Pide.
Pide is a kind of Turkish baked flatbread. It can be filled with cheese, or meat, or both.
With bellies full and the sun long down, it was time now to sleep.
We drove outside the city and up to the surrounding hills. When we found an empty clearing of talc soil, we folded down all the seats, locked our bikes and bags to a rim of the car, and crawled into the womb of the Doblo.
It was no Previa, believe you me. But sleep we did.
We woke up bright and early once again, and rushed upstairs for a quick, olive heavy breakfast before heading down to find our new Fiat Doblo waiting for us. We’d had Prevlaunch. Now it was time for Turklaunch 2010. So we loaded our stuff in the back, a tight, but manageable squeeze, and we were off.
I took the first shift driving and piloted us toward the Kazakh Embassy. Part way through the drive, we realized the tank was completely empty and pulled over to fill up. That was our first encounter with Turkish gas prices, which are some of the highest in the world. We paid well over US$120 to fill the 50 liter tank. Admittedly, we were buying some more expensive variant called Euro-Diesel, but that’s really no excuse. We just hoped this tank would hold us for a while. The Doblo reportedly got amazing gas mileage… we’d have to see.
We got to the Kazakh Embassy and dropped our stuff off. This time we were introduced to the Kazakh Consulate General himself, who also coincidentally favored pink shirts, and personally reviewed our papers to see that they were in order. He decided they were and thanked us for our submission. We resisted the urge to give him a huge high five, and left.
Back on the road, we spent some hours battling Istanbul-related traffic before we hit the open road. The Doblo had a CD deck and we were listening to Wu Tang’s Enter the 36 Chambers like the good old days, and just letting the little 1.3 liter engine of the Fiat Doblo eat road.
We stopped for lunch at a little roadside diner, where we were treated to our first affordable Turkish meal of rice pilaf, kebabs and salad.
Claudia’s incoming wisdom teeth were becoming infected. We’d been monitoring it for some time. It had been waxing and waning in its severity, but today it was getting bad. Her face was beginning to puff up, and she was quickly chewing through the AsiaWheeling supply of pain killers. She was, unsurprisingly, no big eater at that meal. When we headed over to a nearby grocery shop to find some more painkillers, we unfortunately found none and were forced to resist the temptation to just fill the entire excess capacity of the Doblo with Vitaminli drink.
So teeth swollen and stomachs full, we pulled back onto the road.
We began driving through sunflower country, just endless fields of sunflowers in every direction for hundreds of kilometers. It was enchanting.
When we reached the city of Gelibolu, we purchased tickets for the Doblo on the ferry to Lapseki and began our crawl across the sparkling blue Marmara Sea, toward Asia Minor.
Once we hit land again, we worked our way across some more sunflower country until we reached the coast. We stopped for dinner that night at an amazing restaurant attached to a small seaside guest house. We feasted on fresh fish, octopus, squid, and salad, and watched the sun set into the sea. The bread was a little moldy, but so good were the sauces on the rest of the dishes that we all happily sopped them up and ate heartily. The lights periodically went on and off as we ate, which also helped us ignore the mold. We considered briefly staying there, but decided to move on into the night.
It was plenty late by the time we crawled into the cobblestoned town of Assos, where we were able to find a room at a small guest house called the Siday Pansiyon.
We had successfully made our way into Turkish wine country.
The next morning Scott and I woke up at the crack of dawn.
We headed upstairs to enjoy another traditional Turkish breakfast, heavy on the olives, and then downstairs to hop the bicycles. Our destination? The Kazakh Embassy. We knew they would be open today, and we were damned well going to be there.
We wheeled straight down to the shores of the Sea of Marmara, where we picked up the same bike path that we’d ridden with Diane the day before. This time we took it in the opposite direction heading west toward the neighborhood of Florya, where the embassy was located.
The wheel was long and very fast. The path was mostly deserted, so early was it in the morning, and we just let the Speed TRs eat road. Meanwhile, as we pedaled along, hundreds, perhaps thousands of boats bobbed just offshore, moored there waiting to gain access to the port, or for their owners to row back out to them.
On we went, wheeling hard, as the sun began to burn the morning fog out of the atmosphere. At one point we took a wrong turn and ended up at a fully fenced off dead end, culminating in this sign, which we invite any Turkish speaking readers to translate in the comments.
A few tiny bottles of water each later, we climbed back on the Speed TRs and hit the road.
We kept on wheeling, finally reaching Florya. Now, we suddenly realized, we needed an ATM. The Kazakhs would certainly be charging us for these visas, and it was highly possible that the amount would be no chump change. We pulled over to a convenience store, but they were only offering to do some kind of expensive credit card forwarding maneuver, so we decided to move on to a real ATM. They were happy to give us directions, and even happier to pose for this portrait.
We decided then it might be most prudent to part ways, with Scott heading out to get in line and begin filling out any additional paperwork, while I headed out in search of money. The directions that the fellows from the convenience store gave us turned out to include taking a giant and terrifying highway, so I forsook that in favor of moving more intuitively. I began wheeling like a true maniac, very fast and sweating profusely, stopping from time to time to frantically ask pedestrians in sign language where I might find an ATM. Eventually, I began to zero in on a banking zone, as evidenced by a convergence in the responses to my sign language.
Next came a long, slow climb uphill and into the center of Florya. Finally, I began to see banks, and darted into the first one I saw with an ATM. I got out way more money that we could ever need, figuring we had plenty of time left in the land of the lira, and jumped back on the cycle, hoping I’d catch Scott before he had been asked to pay them.
When I arrived back at the embassy, positively drenched in perspiration, Scott was just getting to the front of the line. I strode up to the window and began talking with the fellow.
He began asking me all kinds of questions:
“What do you want to do in Kazakhstan?â€Â “How long will you stay?†“Who do you know in the country?†and many others. Once he was satisfied with my responses, he told me that I needed to write all the responses down on a piece of paper and address it to the consulate general. I explained that we actually already had a letter of intent, printed and signed, ready to go (you see, we had done our research).
This should give you, dear reader, an idea of the kind of back and forth, which continued on for a while between me and the fellow. The whole ordeal culminated in a somewhat reluctant acceptance of our documents. We were thrilled.
Then the documents were handed right back to us and our hearts fell. “That will be US$60.00 for both of you,†the popped pink collar said.  I reached for my wallet, which contained much more than that in lira and tried to hand the documents back to him. This was great, much cheaper than we had expected. “Can I pay you in cash?†I asked, grinning.
No you must go to this bank and deposit the balance in this account. He then wrote “Türkiye İş Bankası†on a piece of paper, and an account number, and then motioned toward the door. Bring the receipt back with you and we’ll consider your application.
Fair Enough. “We’ll ride there now,†I explained, “Will you be open when we return?â€
“Maybe,†he replied. We close at noon.
And then we were off again, in a man vs. gravity race to get to the bank. We were raging on the cycles, just tearing back up that hill. We passed the bank I had taken money out of, then continued on past bank after bank. Where was this place?!
Then finally we saw it, at the end of the street, and Scott sprinted inside while I locked the bikes. He was already part way through the transaction by the time I came in to support him with capital.
While we were finishing the transaction, I convinced the security guard to refill my water bottle from their staff bubbler, and just as he returned with the bottle, Scott snatched the receipts and we were out of there.
Back on the road, we didn’t let up. We had only 20 minutes, but we could so this.
We arrived back at the embassy at 11:53 and ran up pouring sweat and panting to find the door closed. They’d knocked off early! In full knowledge that we were on our way back…
With grumbling proving useless, we climbed back on the cycles. They of course opened back up at 3:00, but by then we’d need to be on the other side of the city meeting with Red Bull.
We began to discuss other options as we rode back to the city. As we pedaled, we called Claudia, who was just waking up at Alps House. She spoke to me groggily, and I responded in a lighting fast stream of data, screaming it into the phone as I rode. She seemed overwhelmed. Fair enough. I hung up and we called Diane.
She was doing no better on the overwhelmed front, with the rental car issue still far from solved, and new confirmation just in that any car big enough for all of us and the cycles was actually illegal to rent in the country of Turkey. She had found a black market renter who was willing to rent us his friend’s car, but without insurance. Fair enough.
Part way through the wheel, we realized we were starving, but not wanting to waste time, as our meeting with Red Bull was already entering a zone of proximity in which we would almost certainly be late, we stopped at the quickest looking and nearest joint we could spot.
It was a place by the name of “park büfe.† We had a meatball sandwich there that took me back to my experiences at Grinnell Middle School’s Cafeteria and then hit the road, riding hard and fast, back toward home. When we got there, Diane was in a state of nervous delirium over the lack of rental car. “You know we’re planning on leaving tomorrow, right? And we don’t have a car, right?†We nodded and I inadvertently looked at my watch. “This is not what I want to be doing! I’m on vacation!†Fair enough.
We tried to explain that it was okay, that we would take on this task, but just as soon as we’d met with Red Bull. Then we rushed out the door, hoping Diane would heed our advice and cease her work on the rental car front and enjoy herself until we’d returned to throw our efforts into the mix.
Then we were wheeling again, hard. And talking to our Red Bull contact, Bilgehan. He was cheerful, and seemed very forgiving of our admission that we would be tardy.
When we reached the ferry, we fumbled with the machine to produce two plastic tokens, and jumped on.
We then had about 15 minutes to relax, as the ferry made its way across the Marmara over to the “Asian†side of town.  The water was beautiful and blue, and we savored the moment of relative still in this frantic day.
We watched the city of Istanbul roll by outside the windows. Man oh man was this city beautiful. Then we reached the landing and it was time to split, and so we rolled the cycles off the ferry and headed over to the large line of cabs.
We told the cabby the neighborhood and then put Bilgehan on the phone with the man. Our cab driver was amazing, drove like a maniac, and listened to fantastic music, like this song about Facebook.
He also fielded a call from his wife while we were driving. When the phone rang, he turned down the stereo using the controls on the steering wheel, and picked up.
As their conversation continued, he began to perform all kinds of ridiculous pantomime, holding the phone away from him like it stunk, or reaching over and putting it to my ear, giving me a brief burst of Turkish, then whipping it back to his own to add something to the conversation. Quite a fellow we’d found.
Then we arrived at Red Bull’s Turkish HQ, and what a building it was! We knew we were at the right place when we saw some of the Red Bull sampling girls across the street getting the Red Bull Mini Coopers ready for a run around the city.
I’ll spare you the commentary our cab driver had concerning them.
After a bout of miscommunication with the security guard, Bilgehan showed up downstairs and helped us to check in. We stored the cycles behind the front desk, and turned over our passport photocopies to the woman running the show in exchange for ID badges.
Upstairs we met with Bilgehan, where we were introduced to the head of Red Bull Sports for Turkey, Cuneyt. Here too, there as a huge focus on motorsports, which they explained to us was what the culture here was interested in. We toured their offices, and spent quite a while discussing Red Bull’s business in Turkey overlooking the warehouse district of Istanbul’s Asian side.
Speaking of motorsports, we headed, downstairs to grab the Red Bull we would need for the road trip through Turkey. But before that Bilgehan wanted to take a ride on the Speed TR, and we were more than happy to oblige.
Then we grabbed the rest of our Red Bull, loaded it onto the back of the bikes, and headed back downhill toward the ferry terminal.
When we got to the ferry terminal, we realized we were starving again, and decided to purchase a couple of “toasts,†which is the way the Turkish refer to grilled cheese sandwiches.
It was definitely a middle school day for the AsiaWheeling diet.
We then prepared to wheel our Red-Bull-laden cycles onto the ferry. It was true they were ungainly, but we were able to slug them on board. From the safety of the passenger cabin, we radioed home letting the rest of the crew know we were inbound.
And Diane was on the other end with great news: She had solved the rental car problem, and we would have a Fiat Dobro ready to go the next morning, manifested through black magic. On our way out of the station, hopping onto the cycles, we noticed these fellows cooking up fish sandwiches and made a special note to revisit them for lunch on our way back through Istanbul before our flight to Uzbekistan.
We had been frantic that whole day, but Istanbul continued to be relaxed around us. As we struggled to ride our cycles laden down with 72 cans of energy drink each, businessmen had just gotten off work and were enjoying playing with their dogs. Â Vendors by the water fried up delicious fish at bargain prices.
That evening we met up with our Turkey advisor, Mr. Asher Kohn. He took us to one of his favorite restaurants, a place called Abracadabra where we feasted on tiny fried fish, more chewy Turkish bread, a plate of roast lamb with yoghurt sauce, and a large salad.
After that he took us for a stroll around the neighborhood, pointing out bits and pieces of history or folklore. Then we went out for gelatto, a desert of which I am always skeptical.
We woke up the next morning to a truly luxurious breakfast at the Park Inn in Istanbul.
It was the classic Turkish breakfast of crispy baguettes, tomatoes, cheeses, olives, and had boiled eggs. We took it with plenty of cups of milky coffee and with a view of the Blue mosque off to our left, and the great pink Hagia Sophia mosque on our right.
We munched away and made plans for our time in Turkey. Everything was coming together for this part of the trip, except for one vital piece: the car.
After having such a blast traveling through the gulf with Mr. Jackson Fu in the Toyota Previa, we had decided that we should attempt to do Turkey in a similar way. And it was thus that we began investigating rental cars, with Claudia and Diane taking a central role.
In the meantime, Scott and I had another vital mission that needed to be completed before we exited Istanbul, and that was the acquisition of Kazakh visas.
There was much to do and not too much time here in Istanbul, so we were quick to get moving. Claudia headed off with to meet her friend Alp while Diane, Scott, and I headed out towards the Kazakh embassy on the Istanbul city tram.
At the end of the line, we hopped into a cab and began driving around aimlessly asking people for directions to the Kazakh embassy. We must have been in the right neighborhood… either that or the Kazakhs threw really great parties, for everyone we asked seemed know where it was. Yet despite receiving many directions, the building continued to elude us. But finally, after a fair bit more random taking of turns, and asking of lounging cigarette smoking apartment security teams, we pulled up to the place.
We spoke to the guard outside, who, though it was closed, happily unlocked the door and let us in.
Inside was a kind of manicured garden area, with a nice cobblestone path that led up to a cottage, with a cutesy, residential style door. We had all our paperwork and passports ready, and we knocked on the door with every hope that we might be able to drop them off right there and then. But this was to be our first window into the world of post-soviet insane bureaucracy which we were poised on the edge of. The door was answered, by a tall and rather Korean looking fellow in an American eagle bright pink polo shirt and tight jeans who was sorry to inform us that while it was a weekday, they were unfortunately closed and we had better come back tomorrow. “Could you just take these forms and put them in an inbox?’ We asked. “That would be impossible.†He answered in interestingly accented English.
Fair enough, we thought, walking away from the place. At least we had found the place, and that was step one.
We took a picture of the sign to remind us of exactly where it was, and hit the road on foot.
As we strolled we investigated the cars parked along the street, making a list of models which we thought might accommodate all of us for the upcoming ride across Turkey. We would, of course, prefer a Toyota Previa, but research had suggested such a car was tough to find, perhaps even illegal to rent here…
We continued on, past a deserted school where a single child rode on his training wheels threw an empty playground, and then past the airport, which sported a fantastic logo on their fence.
From there we made our way down to the water, where we strolled along the sea for a while, playing with the community exercise equipment, and generally goofing around.
Soon we found ourselves at a community beach, where I found myself struck, as I had been by the female luggage scanner, by women wandering around in their bathing suits. It’s just not something that one sees in the middle east. And it had been quite some time since we’d been outside the Middle East. I found myself ever so mildly scandalized. It was really quite wild.
Eventually, we walked back up from the beach, stopping at a grocery store for some water, and then climbed back on the commuter rail, bound for town.
Back in town we collected our cycles, and head out for a ride. It was to be Diane’s inaugural wheel with the team, and we were excited to put some Turkish kilometers under our belts. And so we headed out, through this very ancient and interestingly part-European and part-Arab city.
It was not long into the ride that we began to conclude the European part was certainly dominating over the Arab. People dressed like Europeans here. EU flags were proudly placed around the city on flag which called it “European Capital of Culture. â€
We looked a little into this European Capital of Culture proclamation, and as Wikipedia explains it:
The European Capital of Culture is a city designated by the European Union for a period of one calendar year during which it organises a series of cultural events with a strong European dimension.
Good one.
It was not long into the wheel that Scott’s Mother caught one of her front wheels in the ditch through which the trolley rails run and went flying over her handlebars and into the street. We screeched to a halt and headed over to see if she was ok. Thanks be to Jah, she was unharmed, but rather shaken, none the less.
One of the trolley attendants lent us the use of his little officer’s hutch, where we could take stock of ourselves and help Diane to calm down. They gave us a towel to clean some of the road grit off, and after a spell, walked over to a nearby park and sat down. It had been a very intense experience for all involved. The whole trip flashed before my eyes as Daine went sprawling into the street, including when Scott had done the same in Bangkok and I began to realize how lucky we had been to have had so few accidents. Not even a single flat…yet…
AsiaWheeling’s guardian angel aside, we explained to Diane that we would understand completely if she wanted to lay off wheeling for the rest of today. But she refused. After a couple more minutes of collecting herself in the park, we were back on the roads, and wheeling up a storm.
And let me underline, dear reader, that Istanbul is not an easy city to wheel in. Traffic is fast here, and none too used to cyclists. The roads are also full of obstacles like, very old, bent, widely spaced grates, and the tramline that had caught the front tire of Diane’s Speed D7.
We continued, past the blue mosque and down the cobblestone streets towards the shores of the Bosphorus. On the seashore, we were able to get onto a bike path, which was of great relief to all involved, for we now only had to worry about traffic consisting of pedestrians, roller bladers, and the occasional fellow wheeler.
Diane was doing very well, wheeling fast, and with a smile on her face. We made short work of that chunk of coastline, making our way by this very interesting turbaned statue, and eventually being dumped out into a part of town which was just littered with, of all things, bike shops.
We even stumbled upon the Turkish Dahon distributer, who unfortunately spoke none of the languages that we knew, but emitted general supportive body language.
From there, we took a bridge across the Bosphorus, and onto the side of the island where Alp lived.
Once on the new island, we began working our way uphill towards a place called Taksim, which is a giant square surrounded by a shopping and hotel district.
We spent some time wandering around there, poking our heads into car rental agencies but not finding much in the way of vehicles large enough for 4 people and 3 folding bicycles.
We even stopped into good old EuropeCar, a company that had served us so well in Abu Dhabi, but alas, the office here in Istanbul was staffed by grumpy and unhelpful characters. So much brand equity was destroyed in our five minutes of interacting with the Istanbul EuropeCar office, that I left the building feeling sorry for the company and wondering how it could have gone so far down the wrong path.
As we continued to poke around Taksim, we eventually got a call from Claudia and Alp, who were ready to meet up for Dinner. Alp ended up leading us to a fantastic joint, though to call it a joint is perhaps unfair.
It was more like a high class restaurant, built for sophistos, another Meze place, where we feasted on a fantastic assortment of dishes.
It had been quite a wheel and we were thrilled to be eating.
Fresh greens, yogurts, spicy fried shapes, crispy French tasting rolls, pickled mushrooms, sweet raisiny chicken pieces. It was a glorious walk through a world of very small portions of very scrumptious things.
After dinner, Claudia traded with Diane, joining us on the cycle to night-wheel home. As we made our way back down hill and across the bridge, I could not help but find myself startled at how quickly the trip had changed with the addition of Diane. Turkey was certainly an interesting chapter, and a delightful experience, but was it going to be AsiaWheeling?
For ages, the hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women, has been a symbol of the East, a symbol of modesty and mystery. The practice of veiling has deep seated religious roots, originating when the wives of the Prophet Muhammad veiled themselves from worshipers who came to visit their home (which was converted into the first mosque). However, the hijab is an avenue for political expression as much as a religious garment.
Many think (and have thought) of the Middle East and the West as two opposing spheres of thought and cultural heritage. Despite the gross over-simplicity of this idea, the belief has been and is being used in conjunction with the practice of veiling to support political movements and rally people around nationalistic ideologies in the Middle East. Kemal Atatürk, in his campaign to westernize Turkey in the late 1920s dissuaded Turkish women from wearing the Hijab.  For the garment was seen as a cultural artifact, alienating to the West. Today, with an awareness of the cultural connotations of the hijab, some women use the garment as a socio-political tool and veil in tacit rejection of the West, be it of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan or of past damage to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and then Palestine during the period of colonization and systems of mandate.
It is certain, though, that many women today still wear the hijab for reasons of perceived chastity and modesty. It seems that veiling can at once empower women and strip them of identity or agency. But there is no doubt that it is an injustice when women are forced to veil or not to veil for social reasons.
One way the veil can empower women is by allowing them to move freely within public spheres and escape sexual harassment on the street, a growing problem in the Middle East. It is thought that women wearing the hijab are harassed less because they are “good Muslim women,” mothers and wives who project an air of modesty. So we can consider the veil as a tool that allows women to be treated with respect in public spheres, rather than as sexual objects open to verbal or physical harassment.
But the question I have is: what came first, the chicken or the egg? Do women veil to escape harassment, or did the trend of veiling prompt widespread harassment of unveiled women?
A strange concept, certainly counter-intuitive, but bear with me. The veil, in religious terms, serves the purpose of covering a woman’s body in order to quell the devious thoughts of men. Perhaps extreme, but there have been campaigns which push women to veil that promote just such an idea. The caption of this add reads: “A veil to protect or the eyes will molest.â€
This poster characterizes women’s bodies as sweet and tempting, and men’s eyes on them as spoiling. It seems that the consensus here is that a woman’s body is inherently sexual, something to be desired. The act of veiling springs from this belief, and attempts to counter the issue by obfuscating the temptation of the body.
However, it seems to me that wearing the hijab reinforces, intensifies, and to some extent creates the belief that women’s bodies are sexual objects, cementing this belief as a culturally accepted conviction. This phenomenon fits in with the sociological theorem “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.†In this mode of thinking, if veiling is accepted as the norm for women’s dress, a woman who chooses not to veil is automatically deemed immodest, and, however unfairly, can be seen as fair game for harassment. In this vein of thought, the hijab desexualizes individual women, but sexualizes the concept of “woman,” possibly creating issues for women who do not veil.
Others would argue that veiling at times has an effect opposite to that of quelling temptation directed toward the covered woman. Veiling can give women a more subtle power as sexual agents. As Scott and Woody can attest, there is a certain allure and eroticism associated with the garment. Furthermore, when someone sees a veiled woman, one’s imagination can create the woman as attractive, unbounded by how she may actually appear behind the façade of cloth.
No matter how veiling is perceived — by foreign men as alluring, by foreign women as confounding, or by its wearers as preserving or political, the veil will not be lifted any time soon. As religious conservatism gains momentum in places, more and more women are choosing to cover. With global tides carrying people and Islam across borders and seas, it is becoming all the more necessary to understand the implications of this sartorial phenomenon.
The next morning I was feeling slightly better as we packed up our things and headed out from the hotel in search of more breakfast. We decided to sample one of the competitors to the simple hummus and flatbread restaurant that Samer had taken us to two days ago. And we were able to find one without much trouble. It was the same basic idea. Maybe not quite as jaw-droppingly amazing, but deserving of a very solidly applied seal of approval. I was unfortunately unable to eat much, but even sickened and without much appetite I was able to appreciate the love that went into those pastes.
We left that place and continued wheeling. It felt good to be back out in the sunshine. My energy levels were low, but pedaling felt good, breathing felt good, and Latakia was beautiful. I found myself swallowing curses at my illness for robbing from me a day of wheeling here.
We spent the afternoon exploring the city, poking our way through spice shops. Claudia had gotten the idea into her head that decorating her dorm room with sprigs of Syrian sun-dried objects would be the move.
And so that became our mission for the day. It brought us into a number of very interesting shops, and interactions with some fascinating members of the Syrian spice retail sector.
As Claudia was running into yet another shop, we stopped another bicycle coffee salesman, in order to procure some more lucidity. The fellow was very old, and nearly unable to speak. There was also a little bit of Popeye in the guy… at least in his hat. His coffee was quite good, though, and we felt confident that we paid a price easily four times the norm per cup, so we hopefully parted ways with him in good spirits.
After meeting back up with Claudia, we all began to make our way toward the Hotel Safwan, where we had stored our things. With all our belongings loaded onto the cycles, we headed back the way we’d come and arrived at the train station just in time to catch Samer, who had somehow figured out which train we were on and arrived there to wish us safe journey. We exchanged the warmest regards with him and climbed onto our train.
The Syrian railway was amazing. It was startlingly cheap, very clean, and luxuriously comfortable. The staff were amazing, and gave us a special place in the children’s play-car to store the bikes.
The children’s play-car was something like a McDonalds Playplace on the train, where your kids could let off a little steam, while you relaxed and watched the countryside fly by. And that was exactly what we did.
We arrived in Aleppo just as the sun was setting, and quickly unfolded our cycles right there on the platform.
We then wheeled right into the city. Our Syrian flashlights had now been determined to be total duds, useful only for a single ride, and long ago jettisoned. So we were once again without substantial lights. Luckily Aleppo too was very well lit.
All our Syrian friends to date had explained that all of their country was warm and hospitable (a fact with which we heartily agree)… except for Aleppo. For one reason or another, Aleppo was not popular with the rest of Syria. Hossam had explained to us that we needed to be careful walking at night there, and that the people would not be honest and would not respect women.
So it was with much interest that we took our inaugural wheel in this city. So far it was none too scary or grimy. In fact it had quite an affluent vibe.
When we saw a restaurant with a large picture of a drugged-looking cartoon bunny on the outside, we decided to stop to eat. It was true we had not found a hotel yet, but it had been way too long since we’d had that breakfast of pastes, and the search for a hotel and subsequent bargaining would be much more palatable on a full stomach.
The staff at the place was thrilled to have us around and busied themselves arranging places for our bags and cycles. We ordered a delightful feast of salads, pastes, and falafel sandwiches, and I did my best to put food in my body while Scott and Claudia ate hungrily.
Having eaten, the task of finding a hotel felt much more manageable, and it was not more than 20 minutes of wheeling later that we found ourselves checking into a very small, very clean, and splendidly affordable hotel in what appeared to be the tires and automotive parts district of town.
To find joy in our hearts at savage surprise
Rido seats how they twinkled, Big Apples how merry,
