We arrived back on DoraMac on the 13th and after a rest and a visit to the Thursday Market to restock the frig, I am now trying to catch up writing about our adventure. This email is a sneak preview with a few photos from each stop. We had a great time!
Ru
Fifteen Hundred Kilometers ( 900 miles) Motorbike Ride through Turkey: Marmaris to Egirdir to Beysehir to Konya to Seydisehir to Kemer to Kas and back to Marmaris: July 4 to July 13, 2011.
Those were our night stops. We also visited Isparta and Guneykent, and made stops in Antalya, Demre, and Xanthos.
We had a super great trip through Turkey’s beautiful “Lake District.” I never would have imagined myself preferring the mountains to the sea, but I just love the stark, rugged mountains of Turkey. And the lakes were quite beautiful too, but it was the mountains that I will miss the most now that we’re back on DoraMac. We had left Marmaris with a plan, but again it was “serendipity” and the “kindness of strangers” that made our trip so memorable. In this email I’m going to send a few photos from each stop and then I’ll write more each individually. I took a zillion photos (but not enough) and want to share them all, but of course, can’t.
We left Marmaris early July 4th heading for Isparta known for its carpets and its rose oil and rose water industry. We actually continued on to Lake Egirdir (pronounced Aer (roll the r) dir) and stayed 3 nights!
Climbing the mountain overlooking Egirdir town and biking around town along the coast road.
Thanks to “serendipity” and lots of really warm, friendly, helpful people we visited the rose fields of Guneykent, a village farm where rose water and oil is distilled, (we were given a large bottle of rose water as a gift) and were treated to tea, cookies and a lovely lunch. I’m saving that whole story for later.
Stop two was Beysehir, and the mountain journey to get there was a story in itself.
Mountains in the distance, 10,000 ft tall still had snow.
We’d been warned that “away from the coast” would be hot! But you can see Randal in his jacket and we needed wool blankets at night to keep warm! The weather was just about perfect; only about a half hour of rain late one afternoon that we could wait out. We had to putt putt over tall mountains and ride over dirt roads under construction. We had to make way for cows and goats and chickens! It was great!
In Beysehir they have a beautiful old mosque with wood pillars and we walked to the older part of town to see it.
Beysehir has a very beautiful mosque and I’m being helped to dress properly to enter.
Next stop Konya for carpets, the poet Rumi (Mevlana) and the Whirling Dervishes.
From Beysehir we biked to Konya, with a city population of over 1,000,000, one of the largest cities in Turkey. So even though Randal had studied a Google Earth view and a Lonely Planet map it was nice to have a “biker buddy” lead us to our hotel! We’d asked him for directions at a stop light but Ibrahim decided it would be better if he just showed us the way. Then he and Randal talked “bikes.” We made lots of new friends with the motorbike, kind of the way bicycle people gravitate to each other. Cars enclose and separate people; motorbikes and bicycles make contact easier and curiosity about tourists traveling by motorbike attracts people.
Ibrahim and Randal comparing bikes.
The amazing Whirling Dervishes!
I became fascinated with the dervishes in India so wanted to visit Konya where their order began. It was an amazing performance to watch. We also visited the tomb of Melvana, St. Paul’s Church and the Ataturk Museum which was annoyingly closed for renovation. I’ll try to explain about them in my Konya email.
From Konya we went to Seydisehir to visit the nearby Tinaztepe Cave and to break up the longish ride to the coast to Antalya. We never did make it to the caves and actually spent most of our time in Seydisehir sleeping. We really were tired and though the people of the town are very welcoming and curious about visitors, there isn’t so much to see, especially on Sunday when most shops are closed. One man invited us to his home for tea! At that point we were supposedly on our way to the caves so declined and we also didn’t want to impose. Too be honest, at that point we were too tired to try to interact with no common language since I know about 20 words in Turkish and Randal about 2 and most folks in town spoke only Turkish. But everyone, everywhere was glad to meet Americans.
From our hotel room window you could watch the nesting storks on the mosque and the buildings around town. I was fascinated. Wish we’d had binoculars.
This photo could have been anywhere. Dad had gone back into the store for something and the younger boy had dropped the piece of chocolate off the top of his ice cream cone. He was picking it up off the sidewalk and older brother was telling him not to, that they weren’t supposed to eat anything that had fallen to the ground. I’ve eaten those chocolate topped cones so knew how disappointed the small boy was to have dropped his. I wanted to yell “5 second rule” but figured I’d better stay out of it. If dad had not been there, I would have bought the boy a new cone. In my head I can hear the older boy speaking, telling his brother to leave the chocolate on the ground, but they must have been speaking Turkish so experience must have been translating the words in my head.
Seydisehir to Kemer
We left about 7 am to make our long ride to Antalya on the Mediterranean Coast. We nearly froze on our way over the mountains that morning. I could at least hide behind Randal, but his legs in shorts were freezing and our jackets barely kept our top halves warm. At the bottom of the mountain we couldn’t get our jackets off fast enough it was so hot along the coast. What a difference; and not a pleasant one either. The road to Antalya had lots of traffic and the closer we got the more it looked like 419 in Roanoke around Christmas time. There was a construction detour with no directional signs and we hadn’t expected the confusion and fast multi-lane traffic so missed our turn to the older part of town. We stopped for lunch and decided it was easier to go on to Kemer, a small marina town, than to go back into Antalya with all of the crowds and heat. Kemer was our least favorite stop. It seemed a more crowded, more touristy, snobby, smaller version of Marmaris. Our small pension had no wifi (breakfast either) so we spent most of our time at a nearby restaurant having cold drinks and then dinner. The owner, chef and waiter were all very nice and in another setting, like Egirdir, we would have really enjoyed their restaurant.
Kemer to Kas
On the way to Kas we stopped in Demre to see the Myra Ruins and the statue of St. Nicholas who died in the town of Demre. The ruins were impressive but crowded without the space and beauty of Patara. One could by lots of Father Christmas kitsch in town, but we didn’t. The good thing about motorbike travel is that you have no room to accumulate “stuff” though that actually is the bad thing too. Stuff can be fun.
Myra necropolis
Another new bike friend, Omer Geres who is planning a ride to Syria with some friends.
He gave us a suggestion of a pension in Kas but it turned out that one room was too big and one too small but we found our pension next door so it was a help. Both are actually listed in our Lonely Planet Guide.
Ani Pension in Kas…wifi, ac, hot water…everything we needed for cheap.
We left Kas about 7 am and arrived back at the boat mid-afternoon. A long ride. We did stop in Xanthos to see some ruins since they were just about on our way.
Once the capital of Lycia.
According to Lonely Planet most of what is seen today is a recreation; the original was carted off to the British Museum in 1842. There was more to see up the road but we didn’t take the time since we just wanted to be home.
And then we were back in Marmaris and back on Doramac. Our friends Bud and Nita from Passage had kept an eye on her while we were gone, rearranging lines that had chaffed a bit too much. Always good to have friends. Good to get away. It’s good to be back “Home” but I wish we could take Doramac into the mountains!