Tuesday 29 September 2009

Tercan to Erzurum

Weather continues to be cold, hovering between 3C and 8C today, but I've made my stopping point of Erzurum. Erzurum is a town of around 360000 people in the North East of Turkey, with an altitude of around 1900 meters. This is where, all being well, I pick up my Iranian visa and sort out more Euros. Then it should be three days cycling to Doğubayazit which will be my final stopping point before the border. According to the forecasts the weather will be sunny from tomorrow but they've been wrong for days so I don't expect them to be right now. As you can see from the picture it's been grey skies and snowy peaks of late.


People continue to be great, although you need a strong bladder round here because of the amount of çai you're given. Go to buy a loaf of bread in the morning? Sit and drink three cups of tea with the baker. Stop for a tea at a service staion? Have three on the house. And a bit of cake. Bit nippy out? The tailor and Pirelli dealer in town (yes, as in Pirelli tyres, made for an interesting shop that did) will invite you in, pour tea down your throat and show you how pockets are made for trousers, as in the photo below. One interesting thing (interesting to me that is, you may not find it so but if that's case go get your own blog!): sugar in tea. I'm moving out of sugar cube territory and into the sugar rock zone. Instead of dissolving it in your tea you put the sugar in your mouth and drink the tea through it. I gather this is the Iranian style, and whilst not everybody is doing it the further east I go the more prevalent it becomes. Talking of which I haven't been able to get The Kinks Have A Cuppa Tea out of my head for weeks! Hope the link works, youtube is banned in Turkey so I can't check.


And finally, where would my blog be without a down? The dogs are getting more worrisome as I get further east and back onto high plains sheep country. Mind, they also guard the cattle. Had a couple of minor incidents today, one when I on a downhill (heh heh, so long sucker!) and in the other the shepherd was around to call them back. Just hope I don't wake up to three of the sods ripping into my tent in the middle of the night.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

hi bill
notice the comments have gone a bit thin on the ground so thought i'd check in. I haven't missed a single post yet, and am becoming extremely enthralled in your travels as you move further east. Its like reading a very slow moving book, but then thats bikes for you. having said that i can't believe how relatively little time it seems to have taken you to get so far. I'm getting really quite excited now about the chapter where you enter iran. Lots of very exciting things happening in iran at the moment, so it'll be amazing to see it from the inside.

keep your end up and your head down, and if you do get up close and personal with one of those giant dogs then go for his balls. or is it their nostrils, can't quite remember now..any way, take care.

6:49 pm  
Blogger Bill said...

I think it's a finger up the jacksy... the dogs, that is.
Mind, I'm hoping that by following the E80 highway, carrying a dog dazer (ultra high frequency deterer thingy) and a bloody big stick will all help avoid that.
I was thinking about adopting a cute ickle kitten and carrying it in my bar bag. Just toss it to the slathering hounds if needs be but then the thought occured that it mıght be difficult to prise it off my arm in that case, and it'd probably just add a whole new world of hurt to things.

10:49 am  

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