Yesterday we were heading into the mountains again for our last track through Turkey to the Iranian border.

Weather wise the past four days were completely in contrast with the previous 48 days. Storm, rain (not just a couple of drips but literally cats and dogs) and substantial lower temperatures forced us to bike on high speed and without long breaks in order not to catch a cold. On the bright side, this resulted in the highest average speed from our journey so far (25,4 km/h on 2 consecutive days).

Also, we are happy to have the “Ortlieb”-bags, which are indeed waterproof, providing us with dry clothes in the evenings.

The fact that we had our haircut done in Samsun comes in handy in these weather conditions…?!

Furthermore, we will become famous in Turkey as we were interviewed by a local journalist and a lot of people are curious about our roots and goal of the trip.

It’s very easy to get into contact with them as most of them approach you whenever you sit down… A phenomenal happening was when an oncoming car just stopped on the other side of the highway, walked up to us and asked whether he could help. As a matter of fact, he was a little disappointed when we told him we were just fine. Also the language barrier seems nonexistent. The people just start talking talking to you in Turkish (or Bulgarian) and after a while we have the impression that we actually understand them, also due to the non-verbals of course.

Talking to locals gives us a lot of valuable information on nice camping spots, restaurants, market places, do’s & don’ts and a lot of unexpected but interesting situations and conversations. You could say rather than using an app, we use locals as “Trip-advisors”!