Day 82 (Turkey): Koluk - Kahta

today’s distance: 108km
total distance: 5401km
riding time: 6h

Souli must have been up way before I was - but my body needed the rest and so I let it take whatever it needed. After a good 9 hours of sleep I got up at 7 am and we did breakfast - fried potatoes, homemade cheese and bread and as always olives and tomatoes. When I took off, lots of kids gathered around us and waved me off. The road continued up the valley and then very steeply dropped off into a little plain, sourrounded by high mountains.

At the turnoff to Adiyaman I briefly stopped at a gas station and the warden made clear: “I know where you spent last night.” News travel fast around here it seems. I looked at him kind of puzzled. He said that I had stayed at Koluk and pointed at his chin, indicating that I stayed with someone with a beard. I laughed and couldn’t believe that five villages later, this was still something that people told each other.

The ride towards Adiyaman was … hilly. A short uphill was followed by a long downhill which I found thrilling only to see the road climbing steeply on the other side of the river. Ufff …. and that was the story for the next 3 hours.

The surroundings were amazing and I was enjoying the very small number of cars that passed me on the backroad I had taken. It was great. It was also hot though and I went through a lot of water in a short period of time. When I finally reached the pass I could see the Ataturk Lake (man-made) in the distance, far below me (and barely visible in this picture).

This long downhill was interrupted by a number of climbs that were quite challenging, but I eventually got to Adiyaman. On the way down I could feel wave after wave of heat coming at me. I dropped a lot of altitude and it was getting seriously hot now.

Once out of Adiyaman (after a longer break to wait out a bit of the heat during which I talked to Rob from www.14degrees.org over instant messenger; it was his birthday a few days before - if you have some time, head over to his extremely interesting blog as he is skating across China at the moment), the terrain became undulating and when I was finally in Kahta, I was done for the day. The city is dusty and not interesting, but I really needed to just lie down and not do anything for a while. This I did and soon enough I was good again.