NINE

TURKEY

20 September – 25 October 2003

Shirley: Greece has been marvellous but it is time to move on and we are looking forward to Turkey. The beauty of the morning just adds to our good mood. And when I change some money at the border, our mood lifts even more. Imagine having 357 million in notes! Okay, it is 357 million Turkish lira, and there are 900,000 lira to the Australian dollar.

Arriving in Turkey is like returning to a friend’s home. It is a country we have visited in the past and loved. And Turkey also holds a special place in our hearts. A relative lies buried on the Gallipoli Peninsula, a victim of the brutality of war.

At the border, there is an obvious military presence, with Greek and Turkish soldiers armed with machine guns facing each other. They look frightening until they smile and wave as we pass.

I don’t know why, but we presumed our visas would be free. Wrong. We have to pay 20 or $US20 in cash. The millions of lira in my wallet are going to do us no good here. We need foreign currency to pay for the visas. Luckily, Brian has a stash of Euros and we are able to get the visas. After a total of 120 days on the road, we finally get to use the carnet. The officials just fill in the forms and slap a few stamps in our passports and the process is over.

When we walk outside we hear the highly unusual sounds of an Australian accent: ‘G’day. Are you on the bike? Is that really an Australian rego?’

The owner of the voice is a very lanky hippie with an unusual assortment of tattoos. He wanders over with his hand outstretched. ‘Dean, the name’s Dean.’

Dean has been travelling for months and is only crossing over to Greece to get his Turkish visa renewed. His German girlfriend is sitting in their clapped-out car just outside the border. Dean is interested in our journey and assures us we will meet again somewhere on the road.

We plan to stop first in Canakkale and the Gallipoli Peninsula, but first we must fuel up. The bowser shows 123,000 and I hand over a 500,000-lira note. We don’t speak Turkish and the man doesn’t speak English, but we don’t need to be linguists to work out we haven’t handed over enough money. The decimal points and the zeros disappear off the counter on the bowser – we owe 12,300,000 lira for the petrol. This currency is going to take some getting used to.

The ferry to cross the Dardanelles costs 2,300,000 lira for us and the bike. This seems like a fortune until we realise it is a bit less than $3. On the ferry are several busloads of soldiers, some of whom look barely old enough to shave, but they have machine guns slung across their backs. A couple of them come up to check out the bike, but one quick order barked by a senior officer and they disappear to the other side of the car deck.

Canakkale is very much a tourist town. The Australians and New Zealanders who come to visit the battlefields of Gallipoli stay overnight. The local youth hostel, ANZAC House, even shows a 1988 documentary of some of the diggers and the movie Gallipoli every night.

The journey to Gallipoli is an emotional one. In 1915 my great uncle, Allan Noble, was killed on the battlefields. He lies in the Embarkation Pier Cemetery, such a long way from the mines of Australia where he worked as an engineer and diamond driller before taking up the call to defend king and country. Allan was my grandmother’s favourite brother; my brother bears his name as a tribute. His death was the great tragedy of the family and led my grandparents to become pacifists. Allan didn’t enlist until late in the year and was only on the peninsula a few weeks when he was hit in the face and chest by shrapnel. The medical officers couldn’t save him. The timing of his death just magnifies the enormity of the tragedy. If the generals had realised the error of their ways in the early days of the battle, Allan and thousands of others would have lived. They may have gone on to other arenas of war, and later been killed, but they would have lived through Gallipoli.

When we arrive at the cemetery we know where to look, but even then we have trouble finding Allan’s grave. The weather has worn down the engraving on the stone slab that marks where he is believed to be buried. Even when we pour water over it, the inscription is hard to make out. I find this very disappointing and upsetting. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission does a great job, but I guess they can’t stop the ravages of the weather.

As I kneel over the grave, running my finger over the faded engraving, Brian, dear Brian, gives me an olive branch to place on the grave and then moves away to allow me some quiet time to reflect on my ancestor who lies here, so far from home.

Australians seem to forget that Gallipoli is the scene of a great victory for the Turkish people and the turning point in Turkish history. This nation became part of the modern world at the end of World War I thanks to the leader of this military campaign, Mustafa Kemal, known by the Turkish as Atatürk.

On ANZAC Day, this area crawls with Aussies and Kiwis. Today, there are busloads of Turkish visitors wandering through the battlefields. At ANZAC Cove the water is calm and the sun shimmers on the surface – vastly different from the dawn of 25 April 1915 when the troops landed here. Even seeing it for the second time it is breathtaking. How did they get so far on the first day and keep such a hold on the place for so long? The leaders of the battle had a lot to answer for, given the number of needless casualties. This feeling is reinforced as we ride past cemetery after cemetery.

From ANZAC Cove we move to the monument inscribed with Atatürk’s immortal words to the families of the dead: ‘Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace, there is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.’

No matter how many times we read these words, we are moved by them. What a great man Atatürk must have been to care so much for the invaders of his country. He was the epitome of graciousness in victory. Many other leaders have something to learn from Atatürk, known as the father of modern Turkey.

Riding through the Turkish countryside, we wend our way amid olive groves and fields of tomatoes. Our strongest memory of Turkey from when we visited in 1995 is the tomatoes. They are brilliantly red and taste like tomatoes used to taste. It is picking time and the women, wearing the traditional Muslim scarf, toil in the fields under the burning sun. The men sit back on tractors smoking and watching the women work. Occasionally, they hand out a bucket but don’t bend their backs or get their hands dirty! This becomes a very common sight in Turkey – women working and men overseeing.

At the end of the day, the farmers rumble past on their tractors with huge trailers loaded with fresh tomatoes, and their women are perched precariously on the end.

Over dinner, we are delighted to discover that the tomatoes are as good as we remember them, if not a little better. We dine on pizza with a huge salad of tomato, cucumber and onion.

Riding into Istanbul, we see the Blue Mosque with its six minarets towering above the city. It is a wonderful sight and gives us something to aim towards on the roads. The closer we get to the city the crazier the traffic becomes. While we have a vague idea of where we have to go to find the hotel and we do have a map, this city, with its population of more than 12 million people, is bedlam. We pull up to check the map and eventually ask a cab driver for help. A passing policeman knows a better way – he orders the cabbie to take us to the hotel. The cabbie’s not too happy about that, but does take us through the streets to find the hotel, leaving us on the side of the road with just one illegal turn between us and the hotel. No problem.

Well, there is one problem: the ‘parking area’ promised in the hotel guide is just a space on the street protected by two brightly coloured cones. The hotel staff bend over backwards to be helpful, putting the bike in a lockable area out the back at 10 p.m.

Brian: The gutter is about 20 cm high and I need to take a run up. I get the front wheel up, no problem, but the road cleaners have been through and the road is wet. When the back wheel hits the gutter it spins and slips sideways. Because the bike is cold, it has slipped off the choke cycle and stalls. How embarrassing! I have a fairly big audience of men watching from a footpath cafe and I know the hotel staff is watching through the window. I have another go and on the second attempt we are on the footpath. The glass doors at the back of the hotel are open, but it is a tight squeeze. There is another gutter so I have to gun the bike again to get it up. This extra speed means I narrowly miss going down a flight of stairs just inside the door. With a bit of manoeuvring I get the bike next to the stairs. It’s tight but we manage. I’m happy that the bike is secure.

Shirley: I like shopping, but the Russian women staying in this hotel must be in their country’s Olympic shopping team.

They stagger back burdened with huge parcels and followed by men with trolleys piled high with even more parcels the size of wool bales. At breakfast these women sit with a rugged-looking man with a tattoo on his thumb … the trademark of the Russian mafia. It’s like being in the middle of a Cold War movie.

A cup of tea with the hotel manager, Ali, answers my questions about what these women are doing. Ali tells us that people from Russia, Kazakhstan and other Eastern European countries come here and buy cheap clothing in bulk. He promises to show us the real story, leading us around the side of the hotel to the back door, past the bike. There is a covered truck being loaded with hundreds of big white bags secured with duct tape. The place is a hive of activity. We go down the stairs under the hotel to a cellar with four huge rooms, each full of more white bags. Men are checking off each one as it goes up into the truck. Brian’s antenna is up. He spies the Russian mafia-looking guy from breakfast and a heap of other tattooed men of Eastern European extraction. Ali tells us that when they are in town they fill the cellar three times a day and then load the stuff on trucks. These people are taking out masses of things – clothing, linen, leather. This has got to be a rort, tax-avoidance or money-laundering scheme. It certainly makes bus shopping trips to factory outlets in Australia pale into insignificance.

One of the ‘must do’ jobs in Istanbul is organising our Indian visas. Finding the consulate in the traffic is a headache.

We cross over the Bosphorus Strait and head into the right general area but can’t find the side street. I jump off the bike to ask a young soldier for directions, and he flinches and looks more than a little nervous when this mad-looking woman with a flip-top helmet approaches. A couple of illegal U-turns later and we finally have to ask police for directions and eventually find the consulate. The policeman guarding the entrance has no problem with us parking on the footpath and is last seen checking the bike out as we head into the building. It’s certainly going to be safe under his watchful eye. The consulate staff are friendly and helpful. We fill in the forms and are told our visas will be ready in 10 days.

Our other necessary job is to get the bike serviced. The BMW dealership in Istanbul is surrounded by a high fence with armed guards. This isn’t that unusual, really, but having an armed guard patrolling the showroom is a little more unusual, and security-conscious to a fault.

The ride back to the hotel is horrendous. We see only two bikes other than those of police motorcyclists. The motorists are not biker savvy or friendly and they don’t move over to allow you to cut the traffic. It is a death-defying experience.

Our discussions at the BMW dealership and with Ali have shown one thing: even in the supposedly progressive city of Istanbul, women count for little and their opinions count for even less. I am becoming invisible and that is not a very comfortable thing for me. Brian thinks it is very funny, he’s used to me always speaking my mind. I know I will have to get used to it, but it won’t be easy.

Turkey is famous for its carpets and infamous for its carpet sellers. We are in the market for a carpet and don’t mind when the friendly man giving us directions to the Blue Mosque tells us he owns a carpet shop. He can’t believe his luck when we readily agree to meet him after our tour of the mosque to discuss the serious business of carpet-buying.

For more than an hour we sit and sip tea as Cengiz shows us carpet after carpet. We see kilims, wool carpets and blends. We see old carpets and new ones, plain carpets and elaborate carpets, small and large carpets. It’s enough to give you a headache.

Then I stand back to let Brian see to the very serious business of bartering the price down from the ridiculous starting price of US$3200: ‘Twelve hundred dollars for the two carpets, shipped to Australia,’ he says.

‘Oh, Mr Brian, that is impossible. I cannot feed my family at that price.’ But then Cengiz comes down to $2200 immediately.

‘No, $1500,’ says Brian. ‘We are travelling east. We will see many carpets.’

I stand in the corner. I love both the carpets, but know it is time to shut up. I hate bartering and just chew my lip to make sure words don’t slip out, words that would stitch up the deal and make Brian furious.

Cengiz leaves us for a few minutes with another cup of Turkish tea and comes back, holds out his hand to shake and says, ‘Eighteen hundred dollars.’ He grabs Brian’s arm to shake on the deal, but Brian isn’t ready to close it.

‘Sixteen hundred.’

‘All right. Half way – $1700 and I will ship them to your home and you can pay with a credit card.’

‘Deal,’ says Brian, and they shake to confirm.

Walking away, we both feel dread that maybe no carpets will turn up at home and that if they do they won’t be the ones we paid for. Fingers crossed it will turn out okay. After all, you have to trust someone.

As well as the local tomatoes, Brian and I have strong memories of Doy-Doy restaurant near the Blue Mosque. Wandering the back streets, we find it and treat ourselves to a magnificent lunch of oven-baked kebab with pistachio nuts cooked into the bread and the special Doy-Doy plate of cheese pide, meat pide and four different kinds of kebab. Both come with couscous and salad. What a feast.

I might not be able to shop like the Russian women but I thoroughly enjoy picking up a few trinkets in the Grand Bazaar. When we walk into this Aladdin’s cave of silk, gold, silver, pottery, leather and tourist junk, a voice rises above the hubbub: ‘You look like Yul Brynner!’ With that, the trader comes up and rubs Brian’s bald head. ‘I love your hair!’ Cheeky bastard!

There is an unwritten rule when travelling and shopping in places like the Grand Bazaar: think about how silly the item will look at home and remember that it will probably look even sillier than you imagine. I can’t help but break this rule when I spy the silliest pair of brocade slippers. They don’t have a pompom on the toe but are over the top all the same. I love them and must have them. I promise Brian I will wear them all the time at home. I get the feeling he doesn’t believe me.

Shopping in Istanbul isn’t just trinkets either. The Spice Bazaar is the place to get Turkish delights and dried fruits that send your taste buds into a spin. The smells are only surpassed by the bright yellows and deep crimsons of the spices. One of the delicacies on sale is ‘Turkish Viagra’ – figs stuffed with pistachio. The shopkeeper is keen for us to buy and laughs when I tell him Brian doesn’t need it. I don’t mention that I don’t like figs!

You can’t walk through here and not buy something – it’s impossible to be so strong-willed. A young Turkish woman tells us the best Turkish delight is a scrumptious-looking concoction laced with double nuts. She is right. And the dried apricots we buy are another winner.

We walk out of the Spice Bazaar and are right on the waterfront. Here, there is another aroma to deal with – barbecued seafood. Bobbing about in the water are floating fish restaurants selling a fish sandwich which is famous. For just 3,000,000 lira we get two of the sandwiches served with more of those wonderful Turkish tomatoes and the biggest chunk of raw onion they can fit into the roll. I have to ditch the onion; the flavour detracts from the delicious fish. Brian loves the onion and is happy to eat mine as well. We sit on the concrete steps and watch the world go by while eating our delicious meal. If the food is going to be this good all the way across Turkey, we will certainly stack on the weight and have to crank up the suspension on the bike.

Brian: It’s Grand Final day at home and I am keen to hear the game – after all, the Pies are playing. With Shirley’s help I try to get online to listen to the football via the Internet but there is no broadcast. The website tells us we need to subscribe to hear it. I hate using credit cards over the Net but pay my $4.95 to hear the game. However, I still can’t hear the bloody thing. The AFL website is complicated. If this is the best they can do to help spread a great game internationally, there is no hope. I am desperate to watch the game, so I call the Australian embassy: ‘Hello, I am an Australian citizen on holiday in Istanbul and I want to watch the AFL Grand Final. Do you know where I can see it?’

‘You know, you are the third caller in the past hour. I’m sorry, but I don’t know anywhere in Istanbul that is showing the game. If the AFL is serious, they should send out this information. Maybe the Australian Prime Minister should do something about it.’

Maybe she has a point!

Shirley: There are so many things to do in Istanbul, we have to work out a priority list. High on it are the Dolmabahce Palace and the Whirling Dervishes – Turkish history from two entirely different viewpoints.

The Dolmabahce Palace was home to the sultans and has such ‘can’t live without’ features as a French Baccarat crystal balustrade on the sweeping main staircase and massive chandeliers. But the pièce de résistance is the Throne Room’s chandelier. Weighing 4000 kilos, it hangs 36 m from the ceiling and is festooned with 750 light globes. If that doesn’t throw out enough heat, there is an underfloor heating system that takes three days to heat the room.

Part of the country’s religious history is the Whirling Dervishes. Outlawed by Atatürk at the birth of the Turkish republic, the group became a folkloric dance troupe. Today they seem to have become a religious group again. Once a month, at the Whirling Dervish Hall or Galata Mevlevihanesi, in Istanbul, this group of devotees whirls in a trancelike state for the tourists, and you get the feeling there is much more to it than just the performance itself.

The haunting music of the Mevlana orchestra and choir sets the scene. Even without knowledge of the Turkish language you sense the tunes are hymns of praise for Mevlana, the founder of the religious group in the thirteenth century. The young men and women play and sing in the main hall before adjourning to the upstairs orchestra stall wearing their tall conical hats and black cloaks, the traditional garb of the Whirling Dervishes.

The chatter dies down when the spiritual leader walks into the prayer hall followed by men and women wearing cloaks and hats. They become absorbed by the music and seem to drift into a trance. Chanting, they circle the floor and then slowly begin turning in circles within circles. They are oblivious to the people taking photos and whispering in numerous languages. The chanting continues and the pace quickens. Slowly the cloaks drop to the ground revealing gowns of white, red, pink and green swirling across the floor.

It seems impossible that these young people could whirl like this without being in a trance. They look into space with their heads to one side. Their arms are outstretched with one palm facing up and the other down. They seem unaware of everything around them, yet they have an inbuilt awareness of where the others are. They move gracefully without a stumble or a bump.

The swirling colours create a wonderful kaleidoscopic pattern. Then the pace slows and the whirling ends, and the pace picks up again. The sweat glistens on their brows, yet they aren’t out of breath and they certainly don’t seem the slightest bit giddy. Within minutes the whole dance movement begins again.

For most of us, it is a tourist experience, but for two local women in the crowd it is a religious one. They sit with their hands on their hearts, absorbed by the encounter.

We like nothing more than a boat trip and the Bosphorus is calling. The ferry takes us past the Dolmabahce Palace, embassies and mosques. The scenery is brilliant but the ferry is a rust bucket that wouldn’t pass a seaworthiness check in Australia.

At the top of the Bosphorus we check out the seafood restaurants for lunch. The fishing village Anadolu Kavagi is home to a fleet that assures the best seafood around. The fleet also feeds a large group of stray cats. It is breeding season and some kittens are doing better than others. I still can’t get used to the fact that no-one really cares about the animals in these countries. They just tolerate them. But as we walk through the heart of old Istanbul, a man appears from a restaurant with a carton of milk. When he appears, so do the cats, which lap the milk with relish. While the younger cats are drinking to their hearts’ content, the man picks up the largest one and produces a small parcel of meat. This cat gets the special treat. Pleased with his good deed, the man goes back into his restaurant. At last there is someone who likes cats!

Then I feel guilty for worrying so much about the stray animals when I see a young Muslim woman sitting on a footpath nursing a young baby and begging. These young women seem to be abandoned by their families and forced onto the streets to feed their children. It is sad to see them compelled to stoop so low.

All the time we’ve been in Istanbul, we believed the bike was safe in the back of the hotel. How wrong we were. Brian goes to check on it and comes back in a filthy mood. People have been mucking around with the bike. All the switches have been flicked, a cover from the injector inspection outlet has been stolen and the cigarette-lighter cover has been ripped off. The damage was probably done by the people who take the parcels into the basement for the Russian shoppers. It is not major stuff, but a hard lesson has been learned. No matter where the bike is, it must be covered and we certainly can’t leave it on the street without keeping it within sight.

But Brian doesn’t notice the worst of the damage until we get onto the bike to collect our Indian visas. When Brian gets to the corner all I can hear is an amazing spray of colourful invective. ‘The bastards! The lousy bastards!’ Before he tells me what is going on he is riding around the block and pulling up outside the hotel. His blood is really up. The indicator control has been snapped off.

‘Not only is it dangerous, it is going to cost me a lot of money to fix,’ he tries to explain to the guys at the hotel. They are embarrassed but, quite rightly, say it is not their fault.

I can’t soothe Brian, so it is easier just to let him calm down on his own. We don’t believe it was anyone from the hotel or even the street. We still think it’s most likely the Russians who have been going up and down the stairs to their business operation. There is nothing we can do, so we head off to the Indian consulate and find it with only one slight wrong turn. We find we have visas until March. At least something has gone right today.

Brian: It is time to move on. The bike has been in one place too long and we didn’t handle its protection well. I was lulled into a false sense of security because of the friendliness of the Turkish people. And just when our spirits are low we meet Kemal, who reinstates our faith in the Turks. He drives up to us in a car and indicates we should pull over. Kemal is a motorcyclist and just wants to say hello. He also gives us some contacts for tyres, as well as his email and mobile number, just in case we need a hand.

Shirley: When in Turkey you should do as the Turks do – and that means taking a traditional Turkish bath. And if you are going to have a Turkish bath, why not in a restored Roman bathhouse in Bursa? This is a new experience and I am not sure what to do. The attendant tells me to get changed and gives me a cloth towel. I do so and she informs me I should go into the pool room. In there all the women have their bathers on. I go back and ask about this and she looks at me as if I’m crazy. Of course you wear bathers! Oops.

The marble pool room is steamy with hot water over-flowing from basins around the walls. In the centre is a plunge pool and two marble slabs. Two women are washing themselves and each other with their own soap and loofahs. They are really giving themselves the once-over. I feel very out of place and just douse myself with water, and then sit and then douse, and then sit and then take a plunge.

After a few minutes, a large Turkish woman wearing cotton briefs and bra comes in and tells me to get onto the marble slab. This woman takes to me with a rough mitt and rubs me all over. There isn’t a dead skin cell left on my body when she is finished. There isn’t much of my tan left either. After a douse with hot water to wash off the dead skin, she soaps me everywhere and gives me a wonderful massage. I laze in the pool for a bit, then wrap myself in a large, soft towel and rest for a while before meeting Brian.

Brian: I want to put the wanton vandalism behind us. Shirley is right – a Turkish bath will soothe the savage beast. When she disappears into the women’s section, I go down a small corridor, past the shoeshine man who has now taken me under his wing. I am directed to a separate room to strip off and given an oversized tea towel to wear. Unlike the women, men are not expected to wear bathers. Apart from the tea towel, it’s au naturel. I am given some soap and head to the bathhouse. You can see the original brickwork laid by the Romans, and there is no doubt that even though it’s refurbished, this is the original bathhouse used 2000 years ago. It is all marble and old Roman columns, with running taps in small alcoves around a large circular pool. I sit down next to one of the taps running into an original Roman oversize basin. I am provided with a small tin basin to scoop water out and pour it over my body. I watch the other men and follow suit. Next I take a dip in the pool. It’s hot, 42°C, and has two levels so you can ease yourself into it. This feels good and I can feel the tension leaving me.

Just as I am about cooked, a strapping Turkish man comes in and beckons me to follow him to another room with similar marble benches, basins and taps against the walls.

In the middle is a round raised marble bench. My Turk is dressed in just a tea towel similar to mine. He grabs a bowl of hot water and pours it all over me. Next he takes a loofah and scrubs my body. And he puts his back into it, too. I can feel my skin prickling. I feel pressure on the back of my thigh. He is using his foot to massage my hamstrings and at the same time giving my feet a workover with his hands. The process is repeated on my arms and then he starts on my back, using his full weight to work every muscle and sinew. I feel him working extra hard on the knotted shoulder-blade muscles. He mumbles something and I think he feels I am tense. He finishes with a more relaxed massage and a soapy rubdown, and then splashes more hot thermal water over me.

I stagger out, all light-headed but very relaxed. I lie in the first room like a piece of pummelled meat.

After we’ve been pampered, it is time for the bike to get some pampering – and new tyres. Kemal gave us the name of a dealer in Izmir, but I am not sure we will ever find the place. With about 150 km to go, we pull into a Shell service station. I ask the people there if they know Serhat Kilavuz’s shop that sells Aprilia motorcycles. They don’t have any idea but are happy to help. An attendant makes a phone call to the local operator, with no luck. He then rings Kemal and gets more details before making another call. Ten minutes later the phone rings. After a lengthy conversation in Turkish, he hands the phone to me and I speak to Ömer Ölcer, who works with Serhat and speaks very good English. We arrange to meet and get tyres for the bike.

I offer to pay for the phone calls, but the service-station attendants refuse politely and wish us well on our journey across the world. What wonderful people.

We come to the outskirts of Izmir and promptly get lost. It’s a city of two million people. The roads have numbers rather than names and go off in all directions. Exasperated, I pull into another service station. No-one speaks English, but one guy knows a little German. We work out we have gone too far and have to backtrack. The owner motions me to follow him. He walks up an off-ramp (against the traffic) as I follow on the bike. Shirl closes her eyes and seems to be praying, but we end up going the right way.

Shirley: We finally find Ömer at a service station and follow him back to his office, where he has some work to do. It is 5.30 p.m. before we finally get to the bike shop. We’ve just organised the tyres when Serhat finally arrives in his racing leathers. It turns out he was a motorcycle champion and has been practising for a race meet at the weekend. He and Ömer are very keen on the idea of Brian joining in the race on the BMW. I don’t think so.

When finally the bike has two new tyres, it is time to see ancient Turkey. We are heading to Bergama and to get there we have to ride through heavy traffic on a very bad road in the dark, something we try to avoid. The road is sealed but the heavy traffic has rutted the surface, leaving holes about 30 cm deep. Brian uses the driving lights, much to the annoyance of the traffic coming in the other direction. I mention this to Brian.

‘I don’t care about blinding the oncoming traffic. This is all about survival,’ he says.

We talk about finding somewhere to stay the night and pressing on in the morning, but there is nothing out here. We finally get to Bergama in time for a late dinner and a couple of Turkish red wines.

Ancient Turkey is an amazing place; marble colonnades stand like sentinels against the clear skies. But no matter how hard we try, our imaginations won’t kick in and bring the past to life – it is so far beyond our world. Bergama must have been a most astonishing city in its day. The 10,000-seat theatre is one of the most beautiful and unusual of ancient times. It is also one of the steepest. The walk down to the bottom looks treacherous and the walk back up would be heart stopping. Brian takes the 162 steps to the bottom, turns and says hello. I hear every word as if he were sitting next to me.

At the bottom of the hill is the Asklepieion, an ancient health resort dating back to the second century BC. This sacred place still bears the symbol of the snake and staff of Asclepius, the god of medicine. It is now the modern symbol of medicine. The Turks recognised the need to heal the soul as well as the body. Historians say the resort’s small theatre, with only 3500 seats, was the scene of concerts for the patients. There is even an enormous plunge pool and a ‘holy tunnel’ used by the patients as protection from the cold when they came out of the healing warm waters and mud baths or as a cooling area before treatments in the hot weather.

Ancient Turkey gives way to modern Turkey when we hear a loud rumbling outside the hotel. Heading down the street are scores of tanks and armoured personnel carriers. It takes more than 15 minutes for the convoy to pass, taking hundreds of soldiers and their machinery to who knows where.

During dinner, the poverty of Turkey hits home. A small boy, no more than four or five years old, comes up to us at the hotel restaurant selling small packets of tissues. He might only be a baby in our eyes, but he picks us as English-speaking tourists and tugs at the heartstrings. ‘Money. I am poor. Thank you.’ It breaks my heart.

Kusadasi is the Turkish shopping experience for cruise-ship tourists who spend only a few hours in Turkey. They shop till they drop. Just a handful of them jump on the bus and head to Ephesus, which is probably the ‘top of the pops’ in the ancient world. From our hotel window, we watch the passing parade of ships coming and going.

In Ephesus, the remains of an ancient two-storey library are awe-inspiring. It is the image that sums up Turkey. This ancient city, which dates back to 600 BC, is mind-boggling. The fountains, temples, mosaic pathways and Odeon conjure up a once majestic life of sophistication and style. When the water dried up, the town died and the residents moved away, leaving their legacy in marble.

It is cotton-picking time and getting past the farmers taking crops to the market is an art. They overload their trailers and trucks to such an extent the cotton bales hang a metre over the edge, putting up an impenetrable shield. You can’t see over them and you can’t see around them. Brian veers the bike onto the wrong side of the road to get past. Once past the farmers we encounter their families. In a barren field there is a group of very grubby children running around. Their humpy village is made from heavy-duty plastic strung across poles. To keep out the chill and give them some privacy they hang kilims over the plastic. In between the makeshift homes are fires on which the old women cook in huge pots, preparing for when the men and younger women come home from the fields. It is a hard life.

The Turkish coastline has offered up many treasures and the best place to see them is the fifteenth-century Castle of St Peter in Bodrum. The museum is set up in the towers, rooms and courtyard of the castle. The main courtyard – complete with peacocks – has an incredible collection of amphoras dating back to the sixth century BC. In the chapel is a reconstruction of a Roman ship discovered off one of the islands near Bodrum in the 1950s. It is scary to think these tiny vessels sailed the wild oceans and seas. The display is so complete it even has cooking implements and the bones of small animals cooked in them. But the most amazing display is an array of glassware found on a ship that sank off the coast in 1025 BC. It is astounding that this stuff has survived through the centuries.

We’ve been on the road for 142 days and it is time for another holiday within our holiday. We decide to spend some time meandering along the Mediterranean coastline and lazing about in the sun before heading inland to Cappadocia. The Turkish coast is a favourite area for British tourists, who can jump on a charter flight and be here in a matter of hours. The larger coastal towns, like Marmaris, are more English than they are Turkish. There we can’t find a pide shop to get a Turkish pizza, but we can get an all-day English breakfast and watch the English football live in a number of bars. Overweight men with very pale skin walk the streets with overweight women wedged into tight shorts and skimpy tops four sizes too small. Their pale skin is red-raw from the sun. We move on.

Fethiye is more to our liking. The centre of the town has a village-like atmosphere and in the heart of the waterfront area is an ancient amphitheatre. Even though it is not restored it is still incredibly majestic. We stop here for a few days enjoying the water, sun and fantastic food. The highlight of the hotel is the ‘swapping library’ and we stock up on new reading material.

Just down the coast is the town of Oludeniz, where people throw themselves off large cliffs strapped to the chests of almost equally large Turks. Paragliding in Turkey is something we saw on television years ago and it became a ‘must do’ on our tourist wish list. Our guidebook says it is a dangerous pastime and visitors should research the company they are intending to use. We get talking to the guys at one tour company, Eurogliding, about our journey before we decide on taking the tandem paraglide. They are very confident about their safety record.

‘We only use very experienced pilots. They have done the jump thousands of times.’

‘But we’ve been told it is very dangerous and people die every year,’ I say with a little nervousness.

‘You are riding across the world on a motorbike and you talk about dangerous …’

Good point. We sign up for a jump.

At Oludeniz we meet Alp, a keen biker who has travelled the world ahead of us, ending up in Australia and working on Phillip Island. Like all the bikers we’ve encountered, Alp is generous with his time and knowledge. He even lends us his maps of the roads through Iran and Pakistan. They are boomerangs – we’ll have to return them – but will be an enormous help to us.

We have a bit of time to fill in before we fly with Eurogliding so we head to the Blue Lagoon national park beach. We pay 3 million lira to get in and park the bike. (After the vandalism in Istanbul, we now cover the bike whenever we leave it unattended.) Blue Lagoon is the most beautiful beach in Turkey. It has water of the deepest turquoise, so blue you would think it had been enhanced if you saw it on a postcard. There is no pollution here; you can see the beach’s sandy bottom. The lagoon is separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a narrow beach. It is so clean we don’t mind paying for the privilege of visiting it. The very fine rocks on the beach are more like sand than anything we’ve encountered to date. The sun is shining and the water is cool. We lie on the sand and watch the tandem gliders and single pilots soaring above us. They are just dots in the sky and then drift closer to the beach. We marvel at their grace and know we will regret it if we don’t fly.

Getting to the top of the mountain is the hardest part. We are loaded into an open truck with all the parachutes packed on the roof – along with some of the pilots. The drive to the top is scary. The twisting road is more like a track, complete with potholes and boulders to avoid. There is no way I’ll back out of jumping. I couldn’t imagine coming back down in this truck voluntarily.

We stop at 1800 m. Because the wind is so strong, we won’t be making the climb to the highest outcrop 200 m above us. There is no time to muck around. The wind is making things difficult and there are so many people wanting to fly we have to be quick. The tandem jumpers – that’s us – will go first, followed by the solo jumpers. There is no time to change our minds now. Our pilots give us very unattractive boiler suits, helmets and a harness. My pilot, Gonay, is barking orders: ‘Just stand up and don’t fall backwards when the wind takes the chute. Don’t hold on to anything and don’t sit down.’ It all seems like a lot to remember. The wind is really blustering and I can’t help but wonder what the hell I am doing here. I look over to Brian and he is deep in concentration, listening to his pre-flight briefing. A Frenchman stands in front of me to help my pilot. He has orders of his own to give: ‘When you take off don’t grab on to me.’

I almost laugh at the thought of the three of us taking off with me clutching the Frenchman’s suit!

At the first attempt to lift off, we are pushed backwards. Within a minute or two we are in the air and soaring upwards. Gonay tightens my harness and I sit back in his lap. I begin to relax almost immediately. Once we are up in the air he takes my helmet off and clips it to the harness. ‘You won’t need this,’ he says, ‘and to be honest if something happens up here the helmet won’t help you at all.’

The feeling of freedom is amazing. We sail above the water and the town, and can see Fethiye and the island of Rhodes across the water. It is the most incredible thing I have ever done. I can’t believe I am up so high, yet I don’t feel scared. Gonay shows me how to steer the sail, pulling down with one hand to make us turn left and the other to make us turn right. All the while he is videoing and talking to me. We can see Brian and his pilot way across the bay. There is only the sound of the wind and Gonay’s voice. When we begin to head to the beach Gonay asks if I would like to spiral. I am not sure, but what the heck, I’m here, I may as well. We turn and turn. I don’t know how many times but it seems like a few and it’s fast. The ‘G’ forces push me back into the harness and the wind rushing past my ears hurts, but it is great. I scream and at the end use that familiar expression: ‘Oh shit!’

We come in to land just behind Brian on the beach and people scurry to get out of our way. In two steps we are stationary. Twenty-five minutes has passed like seconds and I can’t wipe the smile off my face. I would do it again in a minute! What a blast!

From the skies above Turkey we head to the Dalyan Delta, the river where The African Queen was filmed. Floating past the reeds, we expect to see Mr Allnut and Rose appear. The boat trip takes us from the ridiculous to the sublime: first stop the mud baths, second stop the Lycian tombs carved into a rock face around 400 BC.

At the mud baths you pay for the privilege of covering yourself in stinky mud, letting it dry to a hard crust and then washing it off under cold running water. While it seems disgusting, there is a certain amount of fun involved. Brian gets right into the swing of it and covers himself from head to toe before turning his attention to me. The covering is the easy part. The washing off is harder. It takes some scrubbing and a concerted effort to end up white again.

Back on the boat, we cruise through the delta to the Lycian rock tombs. They are from the ancient city of Caunos and date back to between 900 and 400 BC. The towns people abandoned their city when the mosquito plague brought with it malaria, stopping traders from coming. The wealthy carved temple-like tombs into the rock face. The bodies were placed inside and the tombs sealed off until the next member of the family died. Tombs for the middle-class were shaped more like houses, while the working class had rectangular tombs with no elaborate markings.

We have stayed in Fethiye for four days and we only planned to stay for two. Now it is time to move on, but first we must check out Kayakoy, a ghost town a few kilometres away. This was once a bustling settlement inhabited by Greeks. In 1923 the Greek and Turkish governments organised an exchange of nationals, sending Greek nationals back to Greece and bringing Turks back to Turkey. After the Greek people from Kayakoy went back to Greece no Turks moved into their homes – the town was left to fall into ruin. It is an eerie place.

We take the twisty road along the coast to Kas and find ourselves a waterfront room at a hotel with a private ‘beach’ – really just a concrete platform built over rocks with an old, slippery ladder into surprisingly chilly Mediterranean waters. The restaurant and bar are on the top of the cliff.

Kas is not a tourist haven, which is great. We wander the streets and check out the stalls in the bazaar without being hassled. Everything is reasonably priced, except for a day-old copy of The London Times which, at 8 million lira, is incredibly expensive, but I am hankering for a newspaper.

At the back of the local school there is a nest of mausoleums cut into the cliffs. Taking what looks like a public pathway through private gardens, we can clamber up the rocks and look inside. A rock-slab bench where the dead were laid to rest is the only thing in the tomb. The intricate designs carved onto the outer wall have stood through the centuries. It is fascinating to see this piece of history up close.

Back at the hotel, the chef puts on a special treat for dinner – leg of lamb cooked for eight hours with peppers, beans and other vegetables, and flavoured with garlic, thyme and rosemary. We can’t resist this and it is as good as we expect. The meat just falls off the bone. Served with a good local wine, it makes an excellent meal. The table is decorated with garlands of flowers and candles. We share it with two girls from the Netherlands (not Holland, as they are quick to point out) and Malcolm, a Scot who arrives with a bottle of single malt and a guitar.

After one of the best meals we have had on the road, we sip Scotch and sing along to Malcolm’s renditions of songs of the sixties. As the evening should be drawing to a close, the Turkish staff takes over the music selection, and while we should be sleeping we dance to traditional Turkish music and share lots of laughs. And when you dance to Turkish music, you must have a sip or two of raki.

Little wonder we are both a bit foggy and slow to get started when it is time to move on in the morning. Everyone turns out to say goodbye, and there are lots of hugs and kisses. Well, not quite everyone. One of the girls from the Netherlands is in her bed, nursing a very sore head. Apparently, the last raki was the one that did the damage.

Brian: The coastal road from here on is nothing short of spectacular. Think of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, the really twisty bits, multiply the distance and corners by about 20 and you have something close to it. The corners that hug the coast are neverending. There are no safety barriers and in places the asphalt is laid right to the edge of the cliff. We have to be careful and hang wide on blind corners. The road is narrow and tour buses ply their trade here, with more than one liking both sides of the road. I signal to one to get back on his own side of the road. He returns the gesture with the time-honoured one-finger salute. Might is right in this part of the world, so he wins – and doesn’t bother moving over. If we had been in a car, it would have resulted in a head-on collision, or, with evasive action, a flight over the edge to the sea below.

Shirley: It is time to turn away from the coast and head inland to the Goreme Valley in Cappadocia. Coming down a hill, we see a Polis Trafik Kontrol point. We get waved in. We expect them to check our papers and the carnet for the bike and then wave us on. Not today. The very officious policeman tells us we were speeding. ‘Do you know,’ he says in a very thick accent, ‘you were doing 87 kilometres?’

‘But it is a 90-kilometre zone,’ Brian says.

‘Yes, and you were doing 87 kilometres – that is a 64-million-700-thousand-lira fine.’

‘But it is a 90-kilometre zone.’

‘Yes, and you were doing 87 kilometres’.

This conversation is getting us nowhere. Eventually we work out that motorcycles actually have to travel at 20 km/h less than the posted speed limit. This is the first we’ve heard of it. When we crossed the border from Greece, we were told the speed limits were 50 km/h in towns, 90 km/h on the roads and 120 on the freeways. Brian does his best to explain this, but the police just keep quoting the road rules. They are interested that he is a policeman in Australia, but don’t see that as a reason for leniency. There is no way we are going to get out of this one. After arguing the point to no effect, we hand over 65 million and don’t get any change, but we do get a receipt. Lesson learned.

Brian: We hate riding at night, particularly here, where the drivers don’t bother turning their lights on. Night also brings with it the slow-moving tractors and huge trailers piled high with produce. Most have no lights and in the fading light, meeting one travelling in either direction could prove fatal. Cars, trucks and buses regularly swerve violently onto the wrong side of the road to avoid the tractors and, being the smallest thing on the road, motorcycles are expected just to get out of the way. Being in the right and dead is no consolation, so I hug the jagged shoulder of the road.

We decide to try the town of Nigde for a bed for the night and leave the remaining 80 km until the morning. Towns in Turkey are usually big and Nigde is no exception, the sign declaring it has a population of 47,900. It’s also dirty and for the first time kids run along beside us, shouting, ‘Money, money’ as they hold out their hands. I don’t like the idea of trying to hunt down reasonable accommodation here, so we decide to push on.

Light is fading fast and I am once again thankful for the driving lights. I just manage to dodge a large sack of something on the road, which could have had disastrous results for us. Oncoming trucks are regularly trying to overtake each other and more than once I have to hold the lights on full beam to get them to pull over and give us enough room to get past. Cresting a rise with a right-hand bend in it, I see what looks like two trucks bearing down on us on our side of the road. I feel Shirl tense up and hear her scream, ‘Oh shit!’ I brake hard and prepare to take my chances off the road before realising that it is just a trick of the light – the road turned and the trucks hadn’t been heading towards us.

Shirley: Volcanic eruptions centuries ago created Cappadocia and the Goreme Valley. Wind and rain have eroded the volcanic tufa, leaving the most amazing towers of rock. Some, dubbed ‘fairy chimneys’, have boulders perched precariously on top. Christian communities made these rocks their homes, carving churches and living areas into the soft rock.

For centuries many people lived here to avoid religious persecution. Underground cities were home to thousands, living underground with their animals. Today, the elaborately decorated churches and homes comprise an outdoor museum.

We stay in a motel built into caves. Our bed is in an alcove that was once a church and the bathroom is also hewn out of rock. It is unique but just a little cold at this time of the year. The owner doesn’t seem to think he should turn on the heating system yet. He’s not cold. No wonder – he spends all day in the office crouched in front of the electric heater!

A walk in Pigeon Valley takes us through a lush vale filled with ageing fruit trees and grapevines. The walking track leads us up and over hills, clambering most of the way. We find gaps in the rocks that lead us to the caves. They appear too small to have been homes, but there are stone ledges inside that make them a perfect spot to sit a while and look down on the valley.

Swords Valley must once have been home to a large community. There are churches with fading frescoes, burial chambers and homes. We haven’t walked more than a couple of steps into the valley when a man appears from nowhere and begins showing us around. He beckons for us to follow him and takes us to wonderful churches and incredible land formations that resemble animals carved by Mother Nature. When we indicate we have no money, he loses interest and wanders off to find some other unsuspecting tourists. He must be used to rejection if he tries to abduct tourists off the pathway.

The Rose Valley is a little further away and we take the bike. The sandy soil makes it a bit of a rally. We ride it for a few kilometres, slipping and sliding along the track before we find a church carved into the rock – just at the point where the track gives out! We climb into the cave and find wonderful frescoes painted on the walls and an incredible carving of a religious symbol in the ceiling. It is the most wonderful sight. Unfortunately, some of the visitors over the years have carved their names over the pictures of the saints, but on the whole it is incredibly well preserved – and free.

The owners of Chez Galip in Avanos, the home of pottery in Cappadocia, have a most unusual collection in their back room – hair. Thousands of long and short tresses are pinned to the walls and ceiling of a cavernous room at least 6 m long. I have to add my tresses to the collection. Each year they select 10 locks off the wall and put them into a draw. The winner gets a 10-day holiday in Cappadocia. They have to make their own way to Turkey, of course.

We get an email from Alp, the biker we met in Oludeniz. He apologises for not mentioning the fact that the speed limit for bikes is indeed 70 km/h. He has some sound advice for travellers: ‘Don’t pay any fines. Just get the pink slip, which says you must pay in 10 days, and then don’t pay. Just leave the country.’

The restaurants of Goreme have a local speciality – the pottery kebab. Meat, vegetables and herbs are cooked slowly in a pottery jug sealed with bread. After about 20 minutes the burnt bread is removed and the delicious stew tipped onto your plate. Served with the local wine made from grapes grown in the fertile volcanic soil and a yoghurt dip, it is a taste sensation that is right up there with Turkish tomatoes, pide and lamb!

There aren’t many things worth getting out of a warm bed for at three on a cold morning, but the stone monuments on top of Nemrut Dag˘i (Mount Nimrod) are. Dawn and dusk are the best times to see the massive heads and bodies created by a megalomaniac King Antiochus.

We hit the road to Mount Nimrod, and what a road it is. First, it is just tight and twisty through a couple of very small towns. Then it becomes steep, tight and twisty and full of potholes. Finally it is steep, tight, twisty and made from uneven basalt pavers. The road is narrow and falls away to very steep valleys. In the dark it is a bit of a nightmare. Can’t imagine what it would have been like on the bike. Yes, we have to admit that we took the soft option – the tourist bus.

It is freezing when we get to the top of the road. We huddle in the cafeteria waiting to begin the climb to the summit and I am obviously looking like a frozen waif. The owner goes to his home and gets me a warm blanket. Brian thinks this is ridiculous, but is happy to share the blanket.

The pathway to the 2150 m summit is rough with very loose stones and, in part, very steep. I am breathing hard as I am so unfit after five months of virtually doing nothing but sitting on the back of the bike! Brian strides out enjoying the bracing air and exercise. There are times I could hit him!

At first it seems like it is going to be a fizzer. It is freezing and we both huddle under the blanket waiting and waiting and waiting. Dawn breaks and we see the statues in the awesome beauty of first light. Then, slowly the sun appears and it is a truly wonderful experience. King Antiochus built a 50 m high rock tomb and then placed huge rock statues of himself and the gods around the base. He thought so much of himself, he considered the gods his relatives. The statues depict Apollo, Hermes, Fortuna, Zeus, King Antiochus and then Heracles. There are also eagles and lions. Over the centuries, the heads have toppled from their original positions atop bodies seated on thrones. On the eastern temple, the heads stand below their bodies and the bodies are pretty much intact. The sun shining on the statues gives an eerie light – all well worth the lack of sleep and the long trek to the summit.

There are times you just wish you weren’t Australian – like the morning we meet a guide, Sahin, used by Mike Ferris, an Australian running motorcycle tours to Turkey. We check out of the hotel near Mt Nimrod and Sahin asks Brian if he knows Mike. They discuss motorcycle travel for a few minutes, but Sahin’s tourists are keen to get going and so are we. As a parting gesture, Sahin repeats a favourite expression learned from Mike: ‘No Wucken Furries.’ Ferris has a lot to answer for.

Our time in Turkey is coming to an end. Our journey is now taking us to the east, towards Iran. To get there we must cross the Tigris River. The ‘feribot’ is a dilapidated flat-top hulk with a ramp of sorts winched by hand. There’s a wheelhouse and an open deck for passengers on foot and that’s about it.

We have to wait while the buses and trucks load on. Then the cars reverse up the ramp. Each of the bigger vehicles threatens to tip the boat over at the front. The feribot is well settled in the water and there is very little room for the bike. Brian eventually gets a run up and bounces along the ramp, scattering curious passengers. We are perched so close to the edge they can only wind up the ramp about 15 cm. We cross our fingers and set sail across the lake.

Thank God there is no swell or we would be knee-deep in water. Brian can’t get off the bike, so he sits there balancing it. When the ferry docks, with the help of some passengers we push the bike back off the ramp and head on the road for Siverek. Here the landscape is incredibly barren, like a moonscape with huge boulders scattered about and not a tree or shrub in sight. We do, however, see shepherds tending flocks of sheep and goats and cattle eating goodness knows what. There are no fences and they all wander aimlessly across the road – humans included.

Dotted through this inhospitable landscape are rock walls that look like housing without roofs. We watch a shepherd stringing plastic over some walls to form a temporary roof. It’s ingenious and so suited to the nomadic lifestyle.

The outskirts of Siverek give us another surprise. There are piles and piles of ‘fresh’ manure on the road being moistened with water. Village women dunk them in a bucket and shape them into rounds and set them in the sun to dry. The finished product is piled high all around. Brian and I presume it will be used as fuel for their fires.

We are now fairly close to the Syrian border. There is a constant buzz of fighter jets above us. Their engines whine in protest as they simulate low-level runs and what look like dogfights. The closer we get to the border, the more military activity there is on the roads and in the sky. And here in the east the Muslims are more devout. We pass a small van pulled up on the side of the road with the doors open. Three men are praying in the nearby field.

We didn’t intend to go to Hasankeyf, but fate seems to have brought us here. We are first told about it by the manager at ANZAC House in Canakkale. Alp tells us it is a must-see and an elderly woman at dinner the night before said her guide insisted on taking her to see it. When the police advise us to go, we decide this is an omen. We are close (and have taken a slightly wrong turn to get this close), so we should go. This is confirmed in the town of Batman (yes, Batman). We ask the police for directions, but when we come to the end of the road we seem to be off track, so we ask another carload of police. The young driver starts to explain in Turkish with sign language when the boss in the back says something. The driver then grins and makes some more gestures. When I ask if he wants us to follow him, he says, ‘Yes – follow me!’ He then leads us through the back streets and marketplaces of Batman and on to the road to Hasankeyf. He pulls over and we pull up alongside. ‘Go straight for 30 kilometres to Hasankeyf,’ he says. The boss in the back even writes down the name of the town and ‘30 km’ on a piece of paper and hands it to us. Now we know we are meant to go to Hasankeyf.

The road there winds its way alongside the Tigris River. The trucks beep their horns as we pass. A young man on a smoky two-stroke with a huge sidecar smiles and waves as we come up behind him. It is a fun ride and everything is right with the world. Then we see the ruins of a castle perched high on a cliff above the river and an old tomb on the riverbank. As we cross the river into the town we can see where people once lived in the rock caves, and we spot the remains of an ancient stone bridge.

We end up on the riverbank under the towering cliff and castle. On the river is a cafe with dining platforms over the water. These are decked out with carpets and huge cushions. Brian and I decide we must stop here. We take off our boots and stretch out on the carpet, propped up by the pillows. The sound of the river rushing below is very soothing. It lulls us both into a light snooze after a delicious meal of local river fish and it isn’t long before Brian is snoring in the dappled sunlight. It is a blissful place to stop and take a break from the road, but we opt to move on after lunch.

The military presence is increasing the further east we head. Every 500 m or so there are concrete blockhouses decked out in camouflage with one or two soldiers on guard. They all watch with interest as we ride by. And there are tanks on the road. We pass about a dozen during the afternoon. On the last stage of our journey for the day – Baykan to Bitlis, the main road to the Iraqi border – we come across at least 20 jeeps filled with soldiers. They watch as we ride up behind them. As we get close, they react to Brian’s big smile, and by the time we pass most wave and smile back. They all have such young faces. Turkish boys are only 20 when they do their 15 months of national service.

We ride into Bitlis, which has a star on our map indicating a town of interest. It is incredibly busy and dirty. I have my visor open and Brian tells me to close it. We are riding through the business area of the town, and among the hundreds of men on the street there are only a handful of women. We are creating more than a bit of interest.

We continue on to Tatvan on the banks of Lake Van. It is getting dark and we are going no further. We find a three-star hotel in a side street. Rather than do a U-turn to return to the side street, Brian pushes the bike back.

Brian: As I walk the bike backwards the ground slopes away on the left and I lean the bike into the gradient on the right. When my foot disappears down a drain, which has had its metal grate removed, the weight of the bike takes over and I have no chance of keeping it upright. Fearing a broken leg, I kick my foot out, collecting Shirl on the shin as she falls off the back.

Shirl’s up on her feet picking up the pannier. I know she’s all right. I don’t only care about the bike!

I pick the bike up and there is no damage to speak of. The right-hand pannier has sprung off its mount, the crash bars have protected the engine and the handlebars didn’t even touch the ground. I remount the pannier and get angry as I look at the grate with its gaping holes. In the dark, dimly lit street I had no chance, but still chastise myself for not being careful enough. I hate dropping a bike in any circumstances and have gone 10 years or more without doing it, while on this trip it has been dropped three times.

Shirley: There is a magnificent egg growing on my shin – my worst injury to date! Brian is very worried, but I am fine. Mind you, he really shouldn’t throw me to the ground and then kick me while I am down!

Before we head to the border town of Dog˘ubeyazit, we must get to the post office and send home a rug, pottery and other odds and ends we’ve collected.

This has to be Brian’s job, as this country is a man’s territory. He speaks to one man, and then another, who seems to be the boss, comes up. They decide it will be okay. A third man approaches. He drags out manila folders filled with photocopied letters and begins flicking through them. He seems to be looking up the rate for postage to Australia. Now it is time to make sure we are not exporting anything we shouldn’t be. The rug and scarf are unwrapped. They are okay. They eye off the mini-tripod for the camera Nikos gave us, so Brian opens it and demonstrates how it works. We can’t get it to close again! Then they try to work out the pottery. We say ‘pottery’ and ‘Cappadocia’ and eventually they give this the go-ahead after we hold the packets up to the light. Now there is the plastic bag of receipts, a booklet from customs and some photos. One of the men goes through every receipt separately, opens the CD and gives this the okay.

Now the fun begins. They fold up the rug and the scarf and jam them into the plastic bag. They go to put the pottery on the top, but Brian convinces them to put it in the middle. This all then goes into a white canvas sack. The two men get string and tie the sack up. They tie the neck about 10 centimetres above that. They get a pointed screwdriver-type instrument and stick that through the canvas and pull one piece of string through this and then pull it through again. A metal tag is placed on the parcel to make sure it isn’t opened along the way. All very ingenious, I must say. When it comes to paying we discover air mail is the only option, so we are 38 million lira poorer for the experience.

Outside our hotel a small boy tries to raise money by weighing people on his ancient bathroom scales. What he clearly doesn’t realise is that women don’t want to be weighed in public and certainly not when they are wearing bike gear and boots! We give the small boy some fruit. He glances around furtively to make sure no-one is watching and then runs away, presumably to eat it.

Riding along the shores of Lake Van, the scenery is spectacular. For the first time we see green pastures with goats and sheep grazing well off the roadway. The leaves of poplar trees are showing the colours of autumn. We glimpse Mount Ararat with its snow-capped peak across the lake and stop to take a picture.

We climb up into the mountains and it gets colder. I don’t even bother asking Brian to stop, because I know once he is riding there is no stopping for something as stupid as putting on extra clothes. As we ride higher, we see Mount Ararat close-up for the first time. It is massive. The guidebooks tell us it’s 5137 m and the peak is usually obscured by cloud. We are obviously blessed today, because the sky is as clear as a bell and the most amazing shade of blue.

Brian: I am surprised to see villages up here. They look very poor, but the people all wave and give us big smiles. I see a small boy running along the road without shoes or pants and with not a care in the world. They must be a tough breed.

Shirley: There aren’t too many reasons to stop at Dog˘ubeyazit. However, it’s a handy rest stop before crossing the border into Iran and it is our last chance for an alcoholic drink for a while. The shops sell fetching coats suitable for Western women venturing into the land of the hijab but best of all there is Ishak Pasa Sarayi, the partly restored palace of an eighteenth-century Kurdish chieftain. It once boasted 366 rooms, and is still impressive today. The doors and door frames are adorned with intricate carvings and Persian script. There is a mosque inside the palace with frescoes still clear on the dome, and the chains that once held lights still hang from the ceiling. Many pigeons have taken up residence in this room but they don’t detract from the beauty. The library that leads into the mosque is also amazing, with decorative carvings, and recessed shelving. You can stand in the fireplace, it is so enormous. Throughout the palace are more fireplaces, and nooks and crannies bedecked with carved stone. The dining hall is incredible, with columns, archways and carvings. It no longer has a roof, but it takes little imagination to see what it would have looked like in its heyday.

When we walk outside, a minibus filled with young Turkish students pulls up. They say hello and then two of the girls whisper to each other. They come back and ask me my name and where I am from. Then the real reason for their interest emerges: they want their photo taken with the bike. Brian is delighted and before he can get off they are trying to clamber on. He is swamped by young, beautiful Turkish women and some young men all keen to be photographed with the world traveller. I get dragged in for a photo amid lots of smiles and laughs.

We ride down the hill and see a bike with Touratech panniers and two four-wheel drives parked in a camping ground. We pull in to say hello. There is a friendly face among the crowd – Dean the hippie we met at the Turkish border. There is a couple from the Netherlands travelling to Iran and a German couple on their way home. The bike looks like a BMW 80GS that has done 400,000 km. It’s owned by a young man from Singapore, Max Ng. This is quite the world travellers’ meeting. We all chat about where we are going and where we have been, and swap English novels with the Dutch couple and Dean – a three-way swap that gives us two new books to replace the two we have each read!

Brian: Max is an interesting guy, who spent 12 years in the Singaporean Navy before beginning his round-the-world motorcycle journey. He has basically come through Nepal, India, Pakistan and Iran, the reverse of what we are doing. The left side of his bike is damaged. He tells us that on the stretch of road near Quetta in Pakistan there are bandits, and he believes guys on motorcycles were chasing him there so he took off. He got away, but kept going hard and lost the front end on a bad stretch of road. I’m not worried about the road, but the bandit story is a concern. Still, there is no other way – we have to go through Quetta. Dean also tells us that Quetta is lawless, with everyone carrying weapons, mainly Russian AK47s.

We meet Max for dinner and he brings along another traveller, Pek, a Finnish PhD student. We have a great discussion on travelling in this part of the world, and comparing notes. Max offers us an Iranian map he’d been given by two Germans he met in Pakistan. They didn’t need it any more. He felt it was only fair to pass it on to us, as he too no longer needed it.

We have enjoyed Turkey immensely, having explored new sights and reacquainted ourselves with old ones. This land is much misunderstood by travellers too frightened to venture out of their comfort zone. We found the people friendly and accommodating, the sights spectacular, and the country’s opportunities seem to be endless. I hope the people achieve their aim of joining the EU – it may be the first breaking-down of that invisible barrier between East and West, Christian and Muslim.

Now the real adventure begins. With scarf and coat, we head off into Iran.