Goreme – Ankara

8th September 2014     18-28℃      190km
Goreme – Ankara

I was up at 4:20am, ready to be picked up to watch the sunrise from a balloon over Cappadocia.  While I seemed a crazy hour to be awake, it all proved worth it, at the sight of hundreds of balloons covering the horizon as the sun rose.  It was a truly spectacular experience.

On landing, there was cheap, sweet and nasty bubbly wine, mixed with purple sugar syrup and served in a thick rimmed glass.  Lovely.  I might have been riding a motorcycle for months, unshaven and unwashed half the time, but there are some finer things that I still appreciate and should be done properly. Champagne is one of those things and this morning didn’t tick any of the boxes on that front.   At least the flight was awesome.

I headed back to the hotel, packed my gear and rode out of Goreme, towards the Turkish capital of Ankara.  But on the way a massive storm appeared, dumping torrential rain.  It was the serious first rain I’d seen since Mongolia, over two months ago, and it was cold.   I stopped in a petrol station and waited the storm out, drinking tea with the service station attendants, all of us sitting around on oil drums on the driveway, trying to stay warm.

On reaching Ankara, the traffic was madness, and I came close to being knocked off a few times, usually by taxi drivers or people texting while driving.  This seems to be a universal practice in Turkey, people get in the car, pick up the phone and don’t put it down until they stop.   So they are never actually looking at the road at any time, only ever the phone.

I found a semi-decent hotel near the centre of town and was offered underground parking, which was inside a car lift, which was broken.  I questioned the wisdom of parking inside a faulty lift, especially one that sank 4 inches when I rolled the bike inside.  But the receptionist at the hotel assured me it would be fine, as he pulled the doors closed by hand.

I explored central Ankara on foot and managed to obtain a haircut, although it was not what I asked for (not having a single word of common language between the man with the scissors) but it is shorter than when I walked in.