Year: 2007

It seems far longer than 6 months — but at the same time it feels like we left yesterday!

It’s an odd feeling, but I think I can pin it down to the fact that we have removed almost all trace of routine from our lives. I begin each day with little real idea of what will happen. Usually (but not always) I’m pretty sure it’ll involve some cycling. Today was no exception, but we were using our bikes to get around Trabzon, rather than having a long day’s slog on the road. In the previous 4 day’s cyling, we’ve covered over 350km and we’re having a couple of days off.

We’ve spent three weeks since leaving Istanbul following the Black Sea coastline. Yesterday we completed the very hilly northern stretch, arriving in the peninsular town of Sinop. It’s a charming place with some of the friendliest people we’ve met in Turkey so far. Already we’ve been fed lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch again, taken clubbing, given baklava to take away with us, and lent a fishing boat to sleep on. To round things off, today’s weather has been gorgeously sunny and even warm enough to spend the day exploring in only a T‑shirt.

Ten days have elapsed since we made our way hesitatingly out of Istanbul after nearly a month off the bikes. We were expecting hardship; cycling and camping in the cold, wet, and mountainous climes of northern Turkey.

I know you like reading about our misfortune. It’s dramatic stuff. I like writing about it, too, trying to commit the experience to words and take you to that place and time. I hope that the results are entertaining, but also resemble the reality of what happened, too — exaggeration and artistic license are not for the non-fiction of a travel blog.

But to put things into a wider context, it’s sometimes good to write about the times when things do go our way!

Andy and I have been soaking up Istanbul for a fair while now. We’re both itching to get on the road again, and I’m excited and a little apprehensive at the prospect of seeing through the winter in Central Asia. But we’ve had more than our fair share of hiccups, and they are still preventing us from leaving. So here’s a run-down of how fate, or the process, or luck, has treated us in recent weeks.