Turkey two week tour, the female perspective

[bontoa]

Insallah :) I hope you can come to Turkey again. And visit to us in Konya city. (In the middle of the Turkey) and you can eat real Turkish pizza = Etliekmek with us.

Thanks. Bahadir from Turkey.

[BoRaBey]

also you can visit our city Mersin you will agree with research this. in the mean time your report is good

[SpecialAgentNancy]

I am planning on riding through both!

Send me PM's with your contact info.

Here is my post looking for a riding partner for June/July

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=658314

[AGIRABI]

Outstanding journey Nancy,




next time stop by please

[chabon]

SA Nancy, After hearing you talk about Turkey at SILCog4.11 I had to look up your report. Awsome, now I see why you like Turkey so much.

[cinghiale]

That was a great ride report. I've thought about that trip many times. Your photos were great. Thanks for sharing.

[SpecialAgentNancy]

It's the Turkish delight. :)

That's right, I brought back the real Turkish Delight for this motley group on this ride recently and well now that I'm out I have to go back.


http://f650.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=231451

Oh and I had some homemade Serbian Raki that most people were afraid to try. (rightly so)

It's official. I have my plane ticket and will be in Canakkale July 10th starting the second tour of Turkey.

[wingnut11]

I hope you'll give us another cool ride report, and a link to it. Good luck.

[SpecialAgentNancy]

Bahadir

I am back in Turkey and would love to accept your hospitality
I have sent you a PM

Nancy

[SpecialAgentNancy]

Well I came back to Turkey as promised in August of 2011. And I decided instead of starting a new thread about that ride I would continue with my story here instead since it's really part 2 of this novel. Mantan (Manish) turned out to be my riding partner for the trip and everything went according to the original plan.

It all started here http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=658314

We met on a ride to Santa Barbara that started with a freezing miserable day that we found on Chain Gang http://f650.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=231451

At the crack of dawn, my father announced in a foreboding way, "those are ice clouds", a motorcycle rider all of his life who used to ride on the frozen over river in Quebec with the dog on the gas tank in nothing but jeans and a leather motorcycle jacket, I didn't doubt him.

I layered so many clothes that I waddled. The night before, I was at JetDocX house trying to get my carburetor fixed for the trip and carefully hid my gloves and scarf so that the following morning while gearing up, I gave myself the first bad omen of the eventful day that was to come. But I digress, if you want to read about that hell weekend and how Michael Jackson was involved, you'll need to go to that story.

I boarded the flight after haggling with the check in person over 2 kg's too much. I said the magic words of "it's my motorcycle gear" and she beamed, "my brother is a motocross racer". Bag scanned and boarding pass printed at no extra charge. Manish timed it with nerve wracking precision and walked into the waiting area minutes before boarding began. It was as usual a miserable flight over with a stop in Munich where I paid too much for bad food.

Then arrived in the tiny airport of Sofia. The attendants made him wear his helmet on the flight since it would not fit under the seat in front of him.

We immediately started working on the bikes. I had to install my power supply and Manish, had to rebuild his bike from top to bottom.

After one hour, I was packed and ready to go.


Manish was up much later than me.

The next morning, the thing I dream of all year....Luke's AWESOME cheese sandwiches!

This time I made a couple myself and I think other than the 3 lbs of butter and cheese used was that the griddle is never cleaned, sorta like French Chef's swear by their omelet pans.


Then it was off on the familiar route to Mama Zarka's in Trigrad. Had to stop for this photo. Got toilet paper. Factory right across the road.

We stopped at the same little restaurant in the mountains as last time and enjoyed the great meat patties





This man loves stuffed animals...not the cute and cuddly ones.

This jackrabbit just rocked!




Then some lake side stops and finally the gorgeous gorge of Trigrad.

[SpecialAgentNancy]

After lunch we headed to Trigrad where I do my annual pilgrimage, albeit on 2 wheels and not my knees. Although there is also the annual sacrifice to be given to the off road God's and this year Manish paid the price. He crashed on that stretch of off road I call my nemesis and wrote about it here.

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=620469

I decided to take the on road portion since it's just as beautiful a ride and we would meet up at a garage in an hour. I got there and parked and waited, and waited and waited some more and thought to myself, I wonder where he crashed.


Luke is probably never going to take anyone on this section of road ever again!

These guys helped get his bike out


Manish was fine, just a little frazzled with a busted mirror and off we went to excellent food, warm comfortable beds and Mama Zarka!


This year I brought her Mexican chocolate for hot chocolate and pine nuts from China.
She cooked us a feast and as usual the food cost more than the bed.

Her husband commented that I looked younger, he's right, motorcycling is turning back the clock.

View from my room!


Next stop, the devil's throat, a live cave with a long tunnel down and at the end my ancient enemy STAIRS!




Came out the other side and found this neat shrine




Beautiful pots of local honey


Next morning,packed up and rode for Turkey. Our final destination that day was Canakkale but never did hear from the Turk who offered his place as a home stay so we pressed on past it. Beautiful twisty road along the coast just as he said.

After 12 hours of hard riding, finally stopped somewhere on the European side and camped. Arrived just in time for Sunset.



Enjoyed a meat platter to make JetDocX jealous....alone since I just discovered Manish is vegetarian, oh boy, this is going to be interesting!


All night there were packs of roaving dogs howling and barking, if I wasn't so exhausted I would have done something about it, as it were, they were merely a background sound during my dreams. Woke up the next morning and waited for Manish to fix his bags and enjoyed the Aegean sea.


Next stop Assos and riding on marbles

[SpecialAgentNancy]

Took the ferry over to the Asian side but not before stopping and buying some pide from this charming man.



And eagle eyes that I am spotted this shop where Manish found a mirror. His bike is starting to look Ghetto and it's only day 3 of the 3 week ride!


Oh and met this super hot Turkish cutie on an F650 too!



Next we rode the penninsula to Behramkale and Assos and passed many small villages

Goat herder


Now only "problem" with this ride is the whole road was being recovered. So, piles of gravel, dirt and sand on one side of the road or the other, it was semi off road the whole way. Oh and plenty of marbles, this sharp gravel was ricocheting off my tires and hitting the lower part of my legs like crickets on a warm summer night.

We rode for a couple of hours to "Ptink!" and "Ptoing".


Arrived Behramkale. Had no idea it was a tourist site! Pleasant surprise.


View from top.






We made our way down to Club Beyaz and as we pulled on to the beach Manish said "Welcome to Cancun". It was AWFUL.
But the cool white fabric tents made up for it...


Then the awesome beach front bar


Then the good food


Then a dip in the cool water where my swollen feet shrunk back to their normal size!




And this was an end to a very perfect day!

[McFuryMcNugget]

Nice report and pics.

Nice to have a special agent women scope on the pic´s for a change

I see you took part of the Silk route in Turkey.

I have been there 2 times my self.

Have a good second run most off the travelers do Turks twise. Its nice.

My best from Iceland

McFury.

[BlueDreamWay]

Hi Nancy,
Great pics..

[N4pSt3R]

Nice RR...I hope sometime found some of you guys and girl....I stay in north Greece so is easy to find some of you..Stay safe and happy kml.