Turkiye, Country #13

..Edirne to Istanbul..

What an awakening for us to enter Erdine on a very busy Friday, after leaving the quiet roads of Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece!

About two weeks ago we entered Türkiye near Edirne, our 13th country since leaving the UK.

Communication on the road was mainly done by pushing ones way in every available gap on the road; every vehicle frequently hooting; accepting travelling is at a pretty slow pace.

The good thing about this is, all road users appear to be pretty equal. Pedestrians, mopeds, cars, vans & trucks seem to follow the same rules: Fill every available gap on the road but don’t hit any other road users! And in the middle of all this, were Rebecca and I, slowly slowly getting used to the Turkish ways of using a road…

And if you ever come here, keep in mind that about 90% of drivers do not stop when you are standing at a pedestrian crossing…be careful!

To get ‘our bearings’ with Türkiye a bit more, we’ve stayed an extra day in Edirne!

I always find, when visiting a new country, a good thing to do is to sit back, relax and observe. Simple things like getting to know how the supermarket signs look, what’s available in local shops, where ATM machines are positioned, what local people drink and eat at different times of the day etc helps getting in the groove of things!

There was always some trepidation when we were talking about cycling through Türkiye into Istanbul. Mainly for 3 reasons:

..1 Dog Roulette for Bikepackers..

Dogs – since entering Serbia, wild living dogs were always a concern of cyclists we met on route. Whilst we didn’t have any ‘big’ issues with dogs in Serbia and Bulgaria, we quickly realized when we arrived in Türkiye, the dogs here are of a much bigger kind and the yappy bark from smaller dogs we've got accustomed to changed all of a sudden to a thunderous and somewhat frightening bark from tall, meaty looking dogs...

The only time I dared to take a picture of dogs was when they were asleep...

Carry a stick, pick up rocks, keep your bike between the dogs and yourself, was the given advise from most cyclists. We went a step further and still back home, I bought a Dog Repeller for a tenner. The ultrasonic sound is not detectable by the human ear and therefore it feels a bit like waving a finger in the air when a dog furiously approaches and saying “you naughty dog, please back off!”

And sometimes, the Dog Repeller wasn’t doing more than that…

When it worked though (and it did work on smaller and larger dogs), it worked a treat!

Dogs would furiously run towards us, barking like mad and when within 2/3 meters, they literally would go from being mad and fast running to a full stop without barking and just stand there, looking stunned or turn around and trot away…

However, about half the time the Dog Repeller didn’t make a difference. My advice in that case: Keep calm and pedal fast…

 ..2 Approach to Istanbul..

I’ve read many blogs about cycling into Istanbul and how nightmarish it is due to the horrendous amount of traffic, the sheer size of the city, the absence of proper cycle paths, the lack of parking spaces and the mixed, not always very smooth road surface conditions.

..And 3, the Heat..

Summer was definitely on the way since we’ve left Serbia and temperature often went well into the mid 30’s. The British/Irish part of our team didn’t enjoy that too much as there’s nothing nicer than a British summer at 18dC…

..D020..

Anyway, we decided to take the D020 from Edirne to Istanbul. On Google Maps it looks like a ‘normal’ main road and Komoot was very keen to take us on it too!

It was an amazing road to cycle on. For some shorter parts it is a one lane main road. However, for the larger part of the distance, it is a dual carriage way with a wide hard shoulder and for some shorter sections it even changes into a three lane highway!

For most parts of the way, there was hardly any traffic on the D020 and on the dual carriageway trucks would overtake leaving the lane next to the hard shoulder to give us extra space.

And there was lots of friendly hooting and waving going on, on route. One driver even stopped on the dual carriageway to give us a bottle of ice cold water! It felt great to be part of the Turkish overland road community with that wide and quiet road stretching far in front of us!

..Scenery..

The daily profile of the route was mostly cycling through undulating, vast, arable expanses of land with little distractions! No more storks and their chicks entertaining us, only very few personal interactions with people on route and the landscape was often pretty much the same for long periods of times. Huge fields of sunflowers (not yet in bloom), cattle feed and wheat. And occasionally a herd of sheep or cows with their shepherd moving along the roadside.  

A tat soul destroying and boring for one part, and a challenge and mental strength building exercise for the other part of the team!  However, thanks to the D020 which by-passes most villages, we didn’t have many encounters with mad dogs and it also helped us to keep going forward instead of ending up on small gravely and sandy tracks, pushing our bikes…

The downside was that we occasionally missed out on the village cafes and a regular supply of cay!

..And slowly, we approached Istanbul..

And we didn’t get disappointed!

All those blog writers where absolutely right in what they said! 25 kilometers of cyclists’ nightmares welcomed us!

We were mostly on a two lane main roads towards the city center with both lanes being very busy. Parked cars on the inside lane and everyone trying to squeeze pass, side traffic pushing their way on to the main road, lots of traffic lights where often cars or scooters were still rushing through when already on red, pedestrians crossing without looking for traffic, car doors opening in front of us and getting in the way... You name it, we've seen it!

Crossing several ‘spaghetti junctions’ with several feeding lanes going on and coming off the freeway were an absolute nightmare and dangerous to navigate too!    

On top of that, we clearly were the novices amongst all other road users, acting about as confident as the ‘L’ drivers around Norham Gardens in Oxford (my former work colleagues will know what I mean)!

Taking pictures during those hours of cycling wasn't on our minds...sorry!

It’s not an understatement when we say those last 25 km into Istanbul were the worse kilometers of our whole journey!

Drained, exhaused & tired we arrived. There's no winning without suffering...

But we made it!

On our 100th day of travelling and cycling a total of 5,110 km we arrived in Istanbul!

What an achievement for Rebecca, the tennis aficionado turned cyclist so we could do this trip together!

Whilst we are celebrating our achievement I can feel a slight nervousness creeping up my back, thinking that I still have another 15,000 km to go… 

..And in case you wondered..

We only saw ONE cyclist on our last 25 km into town – maverick Tarik!

A keen cyclist who has circumnavigated Türkiye on his bike in the past. He caught up with us and we had a chat!

Are the rest of Turkish people less maverick and more sensible, we think?

And as Tarik waved his way at speed through the traffic and disappeared in the distance, we reverted back to our ‘L’ style of cycling…