Pedaling from the Black Forest to the Yellow Sea

today’s distance: 48km
total distance: 5603km
riding time: 2-3h

Waking up to a wind that makes you feel like your tent is about to blow away isn’t a good feeling. It was fine though, or so I thought until I stepped out of the tent a while later. This was lucky part #1. I turned around to pack a bag when the whole tent was lifted off the ground and luckily came right at me so I could just sort of wrap my arms around it and catch it. The pegs had completely come lose because of the extremely dry ground. After packing up I headed out towards Diyarbakir fighting the wind that was still coming from the side and strangely always would for the next 2 hours despite some changes in direction.

I stopped at a gas station about 15km outside of Diyarbakir to eat a bite and moved on into the new part of Diyarbakir only to find that I had been stupid. I had left my jacket in that gas station. This was bad news … my wallet was in it, i.e. credit card, bank card, ID and my money. This was stupidity galore on my part. What to do? I would need to leave my bike somewhere and get a cab driver to drive out there - pronto. This was easier said than done. After looking around for a bit I was approached by a young guy, asking what was wrong and we quickly resolved the situation. I left the bike in his father’s store, he would translate to a cab driver what the deal was and I would be on my way. Given the wind I wasn’t going to ride out - it would have taken too long I felt. The cab driver was obviously concerned that he would not get paid - we sort of resorted to insha’Allah. When we pulled up at the gas station, the warden came out and handed me the wallet and the jacket. Lucky #2 of the day. I was relieved. Furkan said: “You are very lucky!” I was indeed, and this on top of being able to even do this tour and with the perspective of a great job awaiting me. Heading back into the city, Furkan and I hung out for a bit, talking about this and that. Inevitably here, discussions turn to politics - more about that at some other point.

After a while of talking and eating I headed into the old part of town to look for a place to stay … I will be taking a day off here. Had a wander around town for a while, the city is surrounded by a large wall within which you can get lost in a maze of streets.

Eventually I came upon a little dance party … (things were getting quite intense)

There are a great deal more pictures on the flickr site.

When I left one of the men walked with me towards one of the gates and only later did I really understand why he did that. I talked to someone in a restaurant who warned me about this part of town. “The only thing that I will say to you is to be careful over there.”

today’s distance: 100km
total distance: 5555km
riding time: 6-7h

Early morning it is in the countryside … and I was up a bit earlier than usual. That didn’t mean a really early starting time though. After finding Aslam in the bakery across the street and after having breakfast, I finally headed out after fending of an offer to work in the fields. I think I wouldn’t have been a good farmhand anyway.

Aslan had predicted no climbs … yay. How wrong he was. The day was one of those with the highest altitudinal changes of the entire tour, more than 1400m was what my bike computer told me at the end of the day. It started right after town too. Undulating countryside - it was great visually. But there was a sense of considerable poverty when you take a closer look at the houses.

Once I got to the ferryboat, there was a lot of bruhaha about who would get on and who wouldn’t. The Japanese tour group bus which I had seen taking a wrong turn up Mount Nemrut seemed to be safe, but everyone else seemed to up for grabs. My bike didn’t seem to be an issue and only one car was ultimately left for the next crossing.

The other side greeted me with a major uphill, about 7-8km on the serious side and the remainder until Siverek a sometimes flattish and sometimes undulating ride.

A stop here and there yielded these pictures …

The afternoon was a bit dreary … don’t get me wrong. The countryside was beautiful - in hindsight. Once I got away from Siverek (which felt like a massive furnace), it was all uphill from there. Add to this a very strong and unrelenting sidewind and a lot of traffic (meaning that it was hard to find a rhythm) and you get the picture. On top of that though came some - let’s say - unfriendliness. Already in the morning I had a stone thrown at me by a kid in a village. Not something to make me happy. His mother just stood there watching the scene and didn’t intervene at all. Which made me even more angry I must admit. What is wrong there? In the afternoon, I had a bottle thrown at me out of a van while passing me and hitting me in the back and was also doused with water by a passenger in a truck. Not sure whether the latter was meant as a friendly gesture, but it didn’t feel good. The bottle incident sort of left me speechless and I couldn’t react fast enough to read the license plate.

Towards the end of the day I was simply looking for a place to crash. There was no shelter in sight, just wide open expanse with a lot of noisy traffic. I pulled up at a gas station where two young guys were working. They were adamant that I not go into the village not far away and said to pitch my tent behind the gas station. My hunch is that it has something to do with the minaret missing in that village.

today’s distance: 54km
total distance: 5455km
riding time: 4h

I woke up feeling not so great … not sure what had happened. But I knew that it would be a rather short day. I set out and instead of taking the shortcut to Narince and thus the turnoff to the top of Mount Nemrut, I ended up slogging up the valley I would have crossed and took the long way around. It was tough and I should have known it, but it was very much worth it. I headed in and was taken by how little traffic there was, but also by how steep the road descended only to climb again soon thereafter. That would be the story of the day. In the background you can see the terrain over which I climbed out of the valley again in the early afternoon. Steepish …

I passed an old bridge on my right before turning aroun on the other side of the valley.

It was rough, but I eventually got to Narince, where I stopped in the right place it seems. My question whether I could leave my bike around the store for the time it would take me to get to the top of Mt. Nemrut (I had decided not to spend the night further on up) was met with a yes and quickly things were organized for me to get up quick. Aslan and his family own a store and a restaurant where he offered I should spend the night if I wanted … but first it was up to the top.

After I was dropped off, I hitched another couple of rides, the last one with an Austrian couple going all the way to the top. I was going to ride it up. Not that day and not any day with a loaded bike. It’s really steep though the surface is much better than I thought it would be.

I met Christoph and Agnes again on one of the lookout places for these statues as we both rounded the mountain on different routes. I kept wondering who in their right mind would tell people to heap a lot of material on top of a mountain and then have some statues built there. It just struck me as a strange idea. Agnes also said that the top of the mountain must have been 25m higher in the past, but too many people trampling on the stones have brought it down quite a bit. The views though are trule spectacular and the figure give you an eerie feeling … but see for yourself.

There are lots more pictures of this amazing place on the flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markuswagner) site.

The way down took a bit longer than the uphill, but I got back before sunset - but too late to really go anywhere from Narince. Aslam made sure that I was staying at his place and among other things we got into a discussion over religion. He wanted my take on things and I told him that I am not overly religious - and with the help of a ubiquitous translation program that seems to be on every Turkish computer we managed to have a pretty thorough discussion (and which also produced the title line for this blog entry). What struck me was his “proof” he showed me as to the existence of God - which could have come straight out of a Christian fundamentalist store. He popped in a DVD which had footage that could have come out of promo DVDs for these groups and was clearly inspired from such movies. It then turned to Islamic religion and more Koran sequences which I couldn’t understand, but the professionalism of the movie was quite amazing. Just as I was thinking about food - and for some reason the awesome soup I had in Italy came to mind - we went for it. Funnily enough, we had a stew-type meal, rather reminiscent of that same soup I had been thinking about. Good stuff. So was the whole day … it started out a bit on the rough side, but turned to be amazing.

Some things have clearly changed over the last few days … especially the dresses that people wear. The first place that this really struck me was Adiyaman where I saw a good deal of women walking with a lot more cover despite the sweltering heat as well as the men who wear different-style pants (hard to describe, but I will post a picture in the near future). What has remained the same though is the hospitality that I have received.

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.

today’s distance: 98km
total distance: 5293km
riding time: 5-6h

I was woken up early (say 6am) and chatted it up with Ibrahim before doing breakfast. He told me about how Alevis are apparently persecuted (must have been much worse in the past according his account), including a number of things that I would rather not divulge here on the blog. This was no longer chatting though. Interestingly, he was doing the same with the Sunni majority as people in the other town had done the night before. He said to be careful and so forth … which struck me as odd as he was a person who chose his wording carefully. The time with him and Hane was very rewarding and a big, massive thank you.

After breakfast I headed out into much warmer weather, it was getting hot. It was also getting a bit steep. After a good number of climbs (and downhills) I reached the top and could let myself roll down to Akcardag. On what I thought was the last climb, I was overtaken and overtook these guys several times (they are transporting hay, yet still seem on the verge of collapsing all the time).

From there I headed out to Dogansehir, thinking that I would spend the night in the vicinity, a plan that worked out only partially. I soon arrived at Oeren and asked for a route that would not lead me around the big massive mountain that lay in front of me (it was big, the climb around the Western side clearly hard). Turns out that once in the store, a Turk living in Zurich approached me and helped out. His cousin eventually led the way through corrugated back roads that I could never have found myself and over a few dips and climbs to a paved road that was eventually going downhill and certainly a place that few bikers had been on.

During that downhill I spotted something odd. This will sound a bit strange I realize. But as I was heading downhill, I looked at a house and saw two people in front of it. The man was wearing shorts, which was a bit odd. But even more surprisingly, there was a woman wearing shorts as well. I did a double take … I wasn’t hallucinating. Sure enough, I was called over - the guy shouted in German and as it turned out they are from Karlsruhe, less than 60 miles from where I grew up. I never caught their names unfortunately, but we had a great chat over the course of 30 minutes or so. I eventually moved on and felt that my gas tank was running on empty, but there were few places to resupply. Once I did (in Suerue) I was ready to hit the next suitable place for the night. Alas, I couldn’t find one. Water, fields, too much in plain view … A bit frustrating. As it was seriously getting dark, I stopped to have a drink and unbeknownst to me, I had stopped close to a mosque. The men were just leaving and … as so many times before, there was one person who spoke German. Souli made short shrift of things … no camping he said, you’re coming to my house. Wow … I was floored and similarly tired. I didn’t last long, but the one thing that did stand out was his continuous use of “freilich, freilich” (sure, sure) as he had spent part of his life in Nuremberg. Just as Ibrahim and his wife, Souli also spoke in what didn’t sound Turkish to me … he uses a mishmash of Turkish and Kurdish, but made sure to let me know that he disliked the Kurds and that I should be careful when I am heading further towards the East. Where did I hear that before?