Discovering Turkey and Georgia

After 1.000 kilometers and an elevation gain of 10.000 meters I arrived in Kayseri. First mission accomplished! What hasn't been on the blog so far... A lot of things are not mentioned or visible on the blog. Of course, I mainly posted attractive (and edited) photos and wrote about great encouters. But besides that, there is a lot more to Turkey and to this trip. First of all and most importantly, I didn't have any uncomfortable encounters here. They were all positive and I always felt safe. There where moments when I struggled. Not knowing where to sleep, whether there would be a tiny shop in a village, whether I'd manage the ascent or just having a bad day... Sometimes I asked myself why am I doing this? A few hours later I knew again why ;-).  And I had supporters in these situations: a lorry driver stopping and offering a lift, some farmer waving with a loaf of bread or someone at home whatsapping with me. Besides what can be seen on the images, there's a lot of pov...

The alarm went off at 4.45 am, 45 minutes before sunrise. Sunrise is the moment to watch the hot air balloons rise and fly over Cappadocia.  I went back to the Love Valley and have never seen that much traffic at 5am - maybe I just haven't been on the street a lot that early ;-) It's spectacular to see all these balloons in the air and that was the perfect way to leave Cappadocia behind. The rest of the day was cycling in the direction of Kayseri. 24 °C, burning sun. The landscape changed from a nice quiet rivervalley to solitude to lots of traffic.  Broken bridges are not unusual here  Integration of old and new(er) Where is the next tree? I wasn't in the mood to stay in the city of Kayseri and put my mind on camping at a winery. I had contacted them on Warmshowers but did not get a response. I thought a winery would in any case have a spot for a tent. After 65 kilometers and feeling pretty empty, I approached Handan in the winery and asked whether I could pitch m...