TURKEY III: goereme/cappadocia - kilis

3610 km, aleppo (SYRIA)

leaving goereme on a steep but short cobblestone road, countless buses and minibuses, full of tourists, are passing by. but when we left the main roads in uerguep going to develin, suddenly all signs of tourists disappeared. just some locals and 2 bikes used the small and quite roads through the mountains from now on.

the whole route to the syrian border is covered with a lot of mountains. we reached many, many passes. signs of late autumn are everywhere. the leaves of the trees turned to yellow, brown or red. wonderful! the nights were quite chilly, somtimes even freezing. passing by the about 4000 meter ercires vulcano was terrific. the peak was covered with snow (it is also a wintersport-location) the area round the mountain was flat and wide, like a steppe in kasachstan...

while cycling through turkey we ate chocolate-creme from UELKER, various biscuits from UELKER, drank softdrinks from UELKER. without UELKER (a big turkish foodstuff company) cyling would be quite impossibel for us...;))

behind develin the climb-up of the first pass of 2000 meter started. the road was climbing steadily. it was quite and the mountains amazing. cycling was very much fun. the last part was just gravelroad, but work was done soon :)

later on landscape was changing. the valleys were getting more wide, and therefore there was more space for fields - for huge sugar beets fields. the farmers were currently harvesting them. we saw places, where thousands of tons of this kind of fruit were stored.

before we reached a bigger road, which led us to the syrian border, supplies like bread or meat was hard to get. in the 300.000-inhabitant-city of kahraman maras we took a hotel. in all the other nights we mostly put our tent up - beside the road or at gas stations.

the day of election was coming closer. the collaborators of the various political parties were getting more and more fanatic. they used traffic signs and even the road as public advertising space - for free of course!

going to gaziantep, bine and i expected the mountains to disappear. but failed! instead of this, stone throwing kids - the first of our tour - were annoying us. this reminded me of my bad experiences in tibet. and makes me nervous, when i think about jordan. we passed gaziantep and went straight on to kilis, the border town to syria. we stayed there one day.

although we were keen on getting into a new, totally different, country, leaving turkey meant leaving a friendly, beautiful and familiar country for us. the last 7 weeks cycling through turkey was very good, it is an ideal land for cyclists!