First days of the trip in TurkeyBlimey! It's so good to be on the road... After the first freaky 48 hours or so, during which I was thinking "ohmygodohmygodohmygooooooooooooooooooooood what am I dooooooooooooooooooooiiing", I am officially relaxing and enjoying this. A lot.

Being overtaken by a camel (okay, I was in no big rush) was the drop that overflowed the glass, in a very positive way. After that I started being more conscious of all the peculiarities of Turkey and the first few days of this trip. The friendliness of the people, the openness, how everyone I meet introduces themselves, asks me about the bike, the trip, myself, smiles a lot, offers all sorts of food which seems to magically come out of nowhere...

I had the most random non-conversations (language barrier, dammit - when will Esperanto fix humanity?) on a roadside tea-shack with a cyclist who was on the road for 4 days, with a guy working in Germany, at that time in Bodrum on vacation with his family, with people who showed up while I was filling it up with petrol, with a bunch of headscarfed ladies who were selling delicious watermellons on the roadside (luckily small enough to fit in the top case)...

Everywhere I stop, be it a mountain fresh water fountain or a roadside seller, I get offered chai, fruit, whatever is on the table/bag at that time, and sometimes I try to offer back my modest foodstuff (to Ping-Yi's certain distress, I am ticking along just fine with bread, cheese, fruit, rice, pasta and tuna for the time being) to no avail...

Very happy for all choices concerning the bike's preparation so far - I've had to do a bit off-roading and, well, yes, it's not exactly a motocross beast but the tyres and suspension get the job done quite safely.

Got my first traffic ticket too today - quite pricey at around EUR50. I was doing 88km/h on an (apparently) 77km/h seaside super-straight, super-level, super-deserted highway. I pleaded a little bit but they were giving tickets left and right to anyone who dared travel at a reasonable speed, so I coughed up and left. Interesting detail at that point is that I was slightly short on Turkish Liras and another driver who had also been stopped (and fined) told the cops he would cover the difference. That would not have happened in any of the countries I've lived...

The south coast of Turkey is so far quite splendid. Beautiful coasts, beaches, the ever inviting sea and a nice temperature around 30C (well, nice when you're not on the bike anyway). Hitting the water at 7am is not like me, but I did it and it was very good fun. Might go for a night swim tonight if I miss Chimaira (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Chimaera) and find the beach instead. Who knows. While I was relaxing in the water the other day I realised I hadn't been in the sea for a good 2 years! Yikes!

Alright, gotta go grab dinner and get ready for some serious trekking. Uploading photos to flickr takes so long as to be impractical, I will have to figure out something else...

Till soon!

Almost forgot - some pictures:

Daring gravity in the ancient city of Ephesus:

Not being amused by the heat wave, again Ephesus:

The camel that tipped my mood:

As I am on a budget here, I only go to modest, off-the-beaten-track beaches:

The sea:

I censored the quite preposterous underwater pics.