It was the hottest day so far
and even hotter than last summer's trip to Greece where I clocked up a brief 40 on the way from Zagohoria to Athens. It was 43 today and I loved it! It makes up for living 11 months of the year in the English weather.
I woke up early and packed away the tent
but my hosts weren't going to let me get away so easily and I spent another hour or so repeating Kurdish phrases before getting on the road. I then dropped the bike trying to turn it around on a steep mud track. It happened to me last summer in Italy at a services - in fact it's happened to me quite a lot: 7 times over 2 bikes in 6 years, usually when I'm tired or not focused. But today's I got a kick from because, for the first time, I managed to pick the bike up without help. As suggested on YouTube I took off the aluminium cases then stood with it behind me and lifted it up while walking backwards. I was so pleased with how easy it was I almost wanted to drop it again to have another go.
I dithered for a while about whether to go further east but in the end decided that the slog to get to Mount Ararat on the very east side would leave me exhausted and having to ride ridiculous numbers of miles in a short time to meet my deadline in Athens. So, with a slightly heavy heart, although not as heavy as usual when I turn for home in a holiday as there's still lots of exciting (and new) things to come, I decided to head south and then west - a grand U-turn.
So it was over a pass and past a spectacular lake to get to Dayarbakir, to the south east,
and down onto a desert-like plain which is where the heat really started to build up. The things I was seeing reminded my of photos I've seen of Syria and Iraq, neither of which were very far away, Syria in particular, but I'd been warned to stay away from the cities in the very southeast of Turkey where the Kurdish terrorists are up to no good.
Having originally decided to head next for Sanliurfa near the Syrian border, in the town of Siverek I saw a signpost to a ferryboat which would take me into the apparently beautiful Nemrut area, so I followed that road instead, back into the mountains.
Here's the ferry - it's great how motos always get to the front of the queue!
Then I found a very quiet camping in a village called Damlacik, near Kahta, which is where I am now. It's so quiet that, although it has wifi, it doesn't seem to have a power point that I can use anywhere so I'm drawing this post to a hasty close to get it online before my battery gives out.
