Istanbul had been calling to us from the beginning. Back in March we’d sat round the kitchen table making wild calculations about when we could feasibly reach Istanbul. Wild because we didn’t know how far we’d be able to ride each day or the specific route we’d take.
We also had to factor in May Day, Levellers Day and Ramadan, so our window of opportunity was pretty short. With this in mind we agreed a date, 8th May, to meet Ali and Sue (aka Jamie’s parents) for a week in Istanbul.
Anyway, we could always get the train if we needed…
However, with much sweat but very little blood or tears, we cycled several thousand kilometres and sailed in to Istanbul from Bandirma*, negotiated the traffic to arrive on the doorstep of our apartment moments before Ali and Sue arrived in their taxi. Perfect.
The previous week had not been our finest. Apart from the wonderful encounter in Edirne we’d had a bit of a rough time, cycling on main roads in the rain and wind. The scenic route we’d taken – down to Gallipoli/Gelibolu then along the south coast of the sea of Marmara would have been superb had the weather been kinder. However, we made it, if muddier than we would have hoped.
Istanbul was great.
I’ve spent a little time in the past in Istanbul, mostly as a child, and there are massive Turkish influences running through my life. Istanbul is full of those memories and connections for me, much like the city itself in which the past is all muddled into the present.
I was pleased to be able to act as a tour guide, surprising myself with my memory of the mosaics of the Chora Church, or snippets of history gleaned from many tours round the big sites.
We visited some of the famous working mosques – Sultanahmet, Süleymaniye, my favourite little one just round the corner the Sokullu Mehmet Paşa mosque.
We meandered through the grand bazaar, the spice bazaar, through the little streets filled with shop after shop selling the same stuff and things. A whole street selling headscarfs. The next all swimwear. The next full of tutus.
Ali and Sue had done some excellent research so we found some new places, we had a loud but fun evening down in the fish restaurant quarter where musicians stroll up and down the square bustling with hundreds of locals ordering fish from identical menus. Some of the troupes playing traditional music, some playing pop songs to the delight of the crowds.
We took a walk along the old walls, through the residential neighbourhoods, feeling much further from the tourist trail.
Towards the end of the week we braved the public transport system – we should have done it earlier – taking tram, ferry, bus, underground on a little tour of the different sides of the city. Over to Uskudar to eat at a favourite restaurant from my childhood, back across to Istiklal Caddesi to see the grand shopping streets, up to Taksim Square and then back to our flat in Sultanahmet.
We befriended the man who sold baklava at the bottom of the road, encouraging us to devour more treats than we should have. We lingered long over indulgent breakfasts on our fantastic balcony overlooking the south side of Sultanahmet down to the sea of Marmara. In the evenings, when it wasn’t raining, we enjoyed the lovely sunsets with an Efes before setting out to find a quiet little corner to eat a kebab, some kofte, a pide.
Over the week we rested our weary bodies, we put on a few missing pounds, we basked in the company of our good friends and left Istanbul better than it found us.
In amongst this we had serious business to do. Visas. Routes. Bikes.
Visas
We decided to apply for our Uzbek visa in Istanbul, and pick it up in Baku. From all we’d read the Uzbek visa was a pretty simple process. Apply in Istanbul, pick up and pay in Baku.
It was simple, but it took us a long time. Firstly we made the mistake of cycling**, rather than taking the trams. Had we arrived earlier we might have got through the system quicker. As it was we arrived a little before 12 and got away by 3.30. The official bit of it lasted a couple of minutes, standing outside what was basically a shed behind the Uzbek embassy (which is a house on a residential street). The rest of the time was spent trying to get our paperwork to the guy to start processing. He was in another step with a window on to the railings at the front, you needed to catch his eye and wave your handful of passports and paperwork at him through the railings. Queues aren’t really a thing, but my British conditioning doesn’t allow for pushing to the front – and then hanging around on the pavement waiting for our names to be called. We met a nice French exchange student with whom we had a chat.
Checking now it appears our visas have been processed and we’ll pick them up in Baku.
We also applied for our visa for Azerbaijan, which is an evisa, which we were able to apply for and receive within 3 days.
As Georgia and Kazakhstan are visa free for us we’re sorted now until Tajikistan.
The big one now is China. The internet seemed to tell us that the easiest place to get it is Tbilisi. We will see.
Bike repairs
The big issue was always going to be Jamie’s rim. We’d noticed on the run in to Istanbul that it was a bit warped. The rim had got wider at one point. This didn’t seem like a good sign, so after a flurry of emails to various friends and colleagues we’d ordered a rim from the internet to be delivered in 1-3 working days.
In the meantime we also decided to investigate why Jamie’s Rolhoff was leaking a little oil. We discovered that the gaskets behind the external shifter box were little more than scraps of oily nothing and needed replacing.
Jamie got in touch with Dave at SJS cycles, who informed us that there was a guy in Istanbul who could help, and that there wasn’t anyone else further east who was Rohloff trained until SE Asia.
So we removed the wheel and this time broached the public transport. Tram and ferry then bus took us over to Asia and into Kadıköy. We found Gursel Akay Bisiklet and immediately felt at home. Some bike shops are just like that.
Jamie and Gursel tinkered with the hub together over coffee and cake and replaced the gaskets, before we set off back to Europe again.
We got increasingly anxious as the rim itself didn’t appear. Eventually we discovered it was in Turkey in customs. On what should have been our day of departure from Istanbul with the wonderful help of the brother-in-law of our host we managed to pay the customs charge, get the rim released and get them to hold on to it rather than send it out to be delivered – goodness knows what chaos that might have caused. The following day we – on the advice of a local – wheeled our fully laden bikes on to the train and tram (down some escalators, much to my alarm) and then cycled out to the freight depo at the airport. This is not a scenic journey, and not one I’d recommend. However we got it, and cycled off again to catch the ferry from Pendik to Yalova and then up in to the hills to rebuild Jamie’s wheel – which looked like this:
Jamie: I’ve been thinking about the rim and why it failed… And I realised I used this wheel to test whether I could set up the schwalbe marathon supreme tubeless.
A long story short it doesn’t work very well. The sidewalls are too porous despite what schwalbe say! I think I was having a issue with the double eyelets stopping the rim tape from sticking properly.
Anyway I think what did it for the rim and why it crack bed like this was using the airshot on it. I think banging 200psi into the tire repeatedly on a rim which is quite old now anyway (6 years or so) could cause this spreading. I’ve seen it on xc MTB rims before.
Route planning
With our eyes firmly set on Istanbul we had given little thought of what was to come afterwards. With a few guidebooks to hand and some time off the bikes we were finally able to start planning our route though Turkey. It was (and still is) an incredibly hard decision. What to take in, what too miss? We drew routes that took in as much as we could including Pamukele, the Lycean Way, the mountains in the east, and we considered the shortest route that hugged the black sea coast.
Eventually we settled on the middle way, heading south east to Cappadocia and then back north east to Trabzon and following the coast from there.
*Arrival by ferry
By all accounts cycling in to Istanbul is horrendous. Too much traffic shoehorned on to massive roads. I’ve read accounts of people doing it, and some have found better routes than others, however we decided to take the long way round skirting the west then south costs of the sea of Marmara then sailing in to the heart of the city – I can highly recommend this approach. You can get the ferry at three points – Bandirma, Bursa and Yalova, though this last doesn’t take you into the centre but to a suburb Pendik.
**Cycling in Istanbul
It would have been remiss of us not to attempt to cycle in Istanbul a little bit, and so we took to the road on our visit to the Uzbek embassy.
It’s an experience. The traffic in Istanbul is famously chaotic. You need to hold your nerve as cars, buses, trucks, mopeds, taxis negotiate the space with little regard to what we think of as the rules. Everyone just forces their way in to the space – often non-existent space – no-one indicates, except occasionally at the last minute when they are about to stop in the middle of the road and all the passengers will pour out.
All I can say is thank goodness it’s slow moving. And that it’s not my commute.