Barking dogs surrounding our tent, are waking me up. If I did forget for a moment where I was and what I was doing, their barking pulled me back into my reality. An expedition through wast and empty lands. The sun didn’t rise yet. I am already awake, after a few short hours of sleep.
We are about to cross the Taurus mountains in Turkey, north to south east, by bike.
How far am I now, from everything I know? My reality is here somewhere in the wild unknown, we are on our own. Welcoming strangers and our own two legs and bikes are all we rely on.
Far away is everyone I know, nobody hears me. Only the huge mountains around me listen indifferently to my screams of exhaustion and my tears of joy.
As the sun rose and a new day commenced, we pack up our tent and prepare to leave the place we called home for the night.
The sun starts to burn hot already. We follow a little road winding it’s way along a huge lake, of which we can’t even see the opposite shore.
My mind switches between exhaustion and admiration for my surroundings. Until we surrender, to the invitation of an ancient oak tree on the side of the road, to take our morning coffee in his generously offered shade.
Between two cars passing, the silence is vast. The view inspires us with endless conversations.
How did we get here?
The possibilities of this life are endless...
...but the morning hours aren’t. Pulled back into the present and the reality, that we still have a lot of kilometres in front of us. We pack up the breakfast and cycle on, towards the next town.
Endless beauty and suffering follows. Hours of up and down, admiring the shapes of the earth, smiling strangers, occasional petrol stations to fill up water. And the merciless sun burning hot.
When we reach the town it is afternoon, once again we didn’t manage to have a siesta. Maybe pushing to our limits works fine for a while, but it will always catch up, sooner or later.
We sit on a bench and don’t move for at least two hours.
Discussing where and how we should try to find a sleeping spot for the night.
Sooner than expected the evening starts to creep up the air gets fresher and we have to accept that there won’t be any further cycling that day.
Is it luck or destiny, hazard or a present of the universe? As we get out of town we find an old aqueduct on a hill, overlooking the land.
Quiet, old stones tinted red from the setting sun. We eat our second “Tavuk-Döner” that a lovely lady prepared for us earlier on in town.
We set up the tent just in time before the last light of the day disappears, proud to have made it in time. Felicitating ourselves that we managed to eat and set up camp all before the night falls. What an achievement. We should try that again tomorrow!
Watching the golden lights of the nearby town flicker in the dark, listening to the muezzin singing into the night, and as his prayers echo from the mountains all around, I fall asleep...
Thank you, everyone, for passing by! And enjoy your Weekend!
All photos and words are, as always, my own.
[//]:# (!pinmapple 38.27603 lat 30.76775 long Crossing the Taurus mountains by bike (part II) d3scr)