nhb's Blog

Istanbul ...East
Date: Mar 25th, 2010 2:23:37 pm - Subscribe


Thursday, March 26, 2009

Istanbul ...East

LONG TIME NO UPDATE!

So I do not have the time to make a more detailed acount of my travels...simply too much happens every day! I spent probably too long in Istanbul with my sister. Two weeks in any city is probably too much for me..even amazing city like Istanbul.

We hugged the coastline as best as we could. Everyone who hitches out of Istanbul has a story...no one does it the same way. And of course. 15million people? pfff too big! But we made it ok and apart from the creepy truck driver whose 5th and final word of english was to creepily say 'SEXXXX' to my sister. We spent some time in Bursa where I entertained myself by doing backflips. Then we went to Cannakkale and visited Gallipoli which was actually really nice. We stayed with a french alcoholic which was not so nice...and managed to get lost while checking out Anzac Cover but we found eachother...and ended up going to a Turkish cartoonists house for tea! Then we went to Izmir which was pretty tourist town. Stopped in at Bodrum and Fethiye too. All mediterrean cities...

Solo

In Fethiye we found out our parents are getting divorced. So my sister made the only decision that she could and went back home to help mom out. Dad iniated the divorce so we seemed to be doing ok. She was hoping to surprise my mom, even took my house key which I had had with me since 2003...but then it snowed in London. Messed up all her flights so she spent more than 48hrs in Istanbul airport...had to wake our mother up to use her credit card so no surprise.

And for me...I kept heading east. I made it as far as Adana before I got annoyed with Turkey and then headed south to Syria!

Syria!

One morning I made the snap decision to hitch hike to Syria. No plan. Did not know the arabic numbers...or the exchange rate just. Just that I was going to Syria. I walked out to the highway in Adana and just kept saying "SYRIA SYRIA" to my drivers and 10 rides later I was at the border. The horror stories of crossing into Syria were simply not true for me. I just got hasseled as to if I was going to Israel..and after waving around my Azerbaijan visa application form and ranting about Kazakhstan they left me alone. First night I slept in an olive grove and didnt set up my tent. So of course there was a thunderstorm and I got soaked. The next morning started off what turned out to be an amazing month of traveling!

I hitched a ride with some border guards, got taken into their home and fed a traditional Syrian breakfast. Met my supposed host but of course he couldn't host me so I stayed in a hostel for the first time in months. But I met up with a bunch of other couchsurfers and checked out so amazing ruins as you can see below!

The next day was followed by hitch hiking to some dead cities with 3 other couchsurfers before I went to the coast and then made my way out to the desert, visited even more amazing ruins in Palmyra and went back to Halab and stayed with Yahya, the crazy guy who hosted 5 guys but should have only been hosting 2! Then I went to Damascus and meet up with a Syrian guy I had met at a couchsurfing meeting in New York! But first I stayed with an Iranian I met on the street...ah Iran. If only I could get a visa. .. But I spent almost a week at a monastery called Mar Musa...I could have spent a month there. So many interesting people...such an interesting place...and the monks were soo funny! couldn't believe it!

I started to head back to Turkey after deciding that it would too expensive visa wise, hassel wise with an Israeli passport stamp and I would be cutting my time in Central Asia short by spending more time in the Middle East...so I hitched more than 500km in Syria in one day which is a lot for Syria. Tried to go to a border post that did not exist (I just wanted there to be a border there). But of course while asking where to buy bread I got invited to breakfast at a Shiek's..and then driven 70km to the border. It was so strange because I had no idea what to say to him...and I just started laughing at his turkeys which started to make the noise "gobble gobble gobble" and then we were all laughing at the turkey...

Turkey...Iraq? ...Turkey

From Syria I went back to Turkey..and well since my sister left I had started to dream of going to Iraq. So after one very random night spent under the roofline of a carwash in Turkey I crossed into Northern Iraq...Iraqi Kurdistan. I was trying to hitch around Mosul (the most dangerous city in Iraq) and I let myself be turned around by a nice Kurdish man who was yelling at me that it was not safe. I have since found out that it would be safe to hitch around Mosul...just not to go into the city. But I didn't know that at the time...so I let myself be turned around and spent the night with him and his family. I guess I took meeting him as a sign...I will have to go back to Iraq...because I only spent one night there before crossing back into Turkey.

Eastern Turkey

So I hitched along the much disputed area from Sirnak to the Iranian border post at Esendere. This is where the PKK operates...the Kurdistan revolutionaries. So there were more police checkpoints than in Iraq! Every 50km at least! But beautiful mountains...was so happy to sleep beside the river there. Then I had a lot of confused wandering back forth between Erzurum and Van and back again...trying to find someone to couchsurf with. But got to see the tallest mountain in Turkey which was nice. I then headed to the Black Sea and was so excited to see it for the first time! Visited a monastery near Trabzon and then went along the coast and then to Ankara. I stayed with a lovely Turkish girl that I had met in the craziness of hitching in Syria. Really enjoyed 4 days with her before I went to Cappadocia!

Cappadocia to Georgia!!!

Like everyone else I can say nothing but good things about Cappadocia. I mean...really it is a special place. I spent 2 days exploring around there with a lovely Swedish/Lithuanian couple and it was amazing. It is a place that ranks highly amongst the places that I will seek out to visit a 2nd time. From Cappadocia I had a 2 day hitch hiking mission to get to the border before my visa expired. It was about 9pm at night and hitching shining a flashlight on myself was not working so hot...I was hungry...wanted to ask for foor at a petrol station. When what do I find? an abandonded fruit stand filled with apples that were only 1/2 rotten! 1/2 I SAY! So I gorged on apples...slept in the fruit stand which strangely hand windows and a door and was super snuggly...then made it all the way to the border with Georgia!
From roof of where I was staying

Arriving in Georgia it was raining of course because of the Black Sea. So I spent 2 nights in an abandoned restaurant waiting out the rain. The first night I was woken up by a local coming to get water from the waterfall near I was sleeping. We had a confused conversation in broken russian...I am not really sure what happpened but he seemed happy and shook my hand 3 times. I then went into the touristy town of Batumi and had a blast walking around in the sun and talking to some university students playing football. Spent the night at a construction site in a giant pipe which was awesome! Then hitched 400km to Tbilisi and am having a couchsurfing meeting here before going to a hitch hikers camp out in the hills!
This is the hand that gets me my rides..

WELCOME TO GEORGIA!

Really I will try to update this more often...this took so fucking long to update!
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