WE ARE IN ASIA !!!

18 OCTOBER 2014

It was by crossing the Bosphorus that we first set foot in Asia. We are happy and very proud to have crossed Europe. It is a real emotion that we felt when we crossed this symbolic border.

It is still Istanbul but the rhythm seems different. We go along the sea Marmara to find where to sleep, three fishermen seeing us pass offers us çay (Turkish tea) prepared in a kind of big coal-fired teapot (when we return to France we take care of finding one). We camp in a park where we make a small fire. The police passes and tells us that it is forbidden, but authorizes us knowing that we are French (they do not even ask us the passports) and that it is to make a soup, the next morning we will find near us Pack of cigarettes with a few in it, we think it's them. We imagine the reaction of the police in France with Turks making a fire in a communal park ...

The next morning it left again for the autostop. Barely 10 minutes of waiting that someone taps us in the back: It is Yacup. His car is 100M and he came nicely to get us while his wife is waiting in the car. Great they bring us right where we wanted Armutlu. During the journey in joy we try to communicate by google translation. They spoil us with clementines and cakes, arrived at their destination and even invited us to a Turkish coffee.

Before we leave on the beach where we camp two days, they show us the trade of Yacup where this time he offers us a Turkish flag and a small perfume. The Turkish welcome is not a legend!

The place to camp is great !!! We will finally make the barbecue we were tired of eating cold in the airport. We also can quietly take the shower and do laundry !!! Whahou the luxury !!!

We sleep the tent wide open to enjoy the stars, the sound of the waves and the sight of the boats passing away. It is a real moment of happiness after the hubbub of Istanbul, especially that we continue to offer us coffee, sandwiches, glasses of Cola and even a starfish!

Our tour of the world sometimes is not any rest, but only sometimes;)
A LITTLE OF OUR LIFE NOMAD
21 OCTOBER 2014

We take advantage of this lull in the journey to describe a little our traveler's day.
It is a whole new life that we are experiencing. Strange to no longer have a watch, telephone, keys and all those objects that made our daily existence until then.

We will try to sketch a little of our nomadic life.

Time: Without watch from the start, we are more attentive to our needs, we took the reflex to look at the position of the sun and the time on the dashboards of the cars so as not to be taken by The arrival of the night.

Sleep: A real fight every day! We did not expect to spend so much time and energy to find a place to sleep. A large part of our marches at this beginning of the journey is for this objective, looking for a safe place at best, sheltered in case of rain and close to a water point etc ... You can not imagine the number of different places And unusual places where we slept. This will surely be the subject of a future article.

Meals: So far we have not really suffered from hunger, but the need to move quickly did not allow us to find food at a lower price or free. It will come later.

Impossible to have meals at fixed times, everything depends on the stop and our needs.

Most often our meals are cold, but as soon as we can we use our wood stove or alcohol made by us, each time it is a real moment of joy.

The toilet: Essential for the good continuity of our round the world but rarely simple. Not obvious to be close to running water, not to mention the party that is for us to take a real shower with hot water! But most regularly we do a quick wash at the sinks of the cafes, and shopping malls under the interrogators look at customers.

The stop: If sometimes the waiting is long and experiencing nervously we adore this moment of uncertainty and especially rich in human encounters. We take pleasure in changing vehicles and seeing the scenery without worrying about driving. Besides, we remarked yesterday, that our conduct was not wanting at all.

The backpack and our belongings: Exceptional are the times when we do not have our backpacks, but we found various tricks to lighten us from time to time the back (eg the shopping cart when shopping does not serve us More for the commissions but for our bags, technique that we called the technique of Zézète).

 

As for the laundry we did not imagine that it would be so complicated, rare are the propitious moments to make it and to dry it, especially if the rain shows its nose. We cherish merino clothes that we acquired for our trip.

Organization of the day: As soon as we tried to do it it fell into the water. No relationship with our previous lives, we really have too many variable parameters to predict the course of the day. It is nevertheless nice to live, not to know when awakening under what conditions we will eat, sleep, meet and live.

We are already saying that on our return we will need some rehabilitation time.

LATEST LOOK AT TURKEY
24 OCTOBER 2014

We leave Turkey with this feeling of frustration not to have seen more, but we will keep from this passage full of images, sounds, scents and anecdotes.

Here is a small part of the things we take in our memories.

Already this total change of culture has fundamentally marked us. Finished the Christian world, here it is an incalculable number of mosques of all sizes. If we add the prayer calls amplified by a strong sound that seem to respond from mosque to mosque, we really felt like we were in the middle of a movie.

We were pleased to see that cafes have an important place in social life. They are very frequented, we see some hookah smokers, but it is mainly by a large number of players of cards, backgammon, a form of games of dominoes (in fewer numbers but the women also play there) ... You drink mainly tea (often) at a modest price of 1 Turkish pound (about 30 cents) and the Turkish coffee is not as drunk as imagined, however it is often the drink Which is offered to others.

From these cafes we can often see a strange broom of men carrying huge bags filled with garbage collected from garbage in garbage, watching them a little more, we notice that they sort and only recycle waste that can be recycled. We would have liked to have the time to follow a day of one of these convicts, we imagine that they resell them to garbage dumps or private individuals.

What has also marked us along our walks is the number of shops and the art they have of goodwill, they play as painters with shapes and colors, a real pleasure of the eyes! Trade is not limited to shops, there are an impressive number of small sellers. The equivalent in France would be what are called salespeople on the sly, except that here they do not run away from the presence of the police. Another form of small trade is the sellers in small trailers, the most frequent sell Simits (round bread), but also sellers of corn and chestnuts, chicken accompanied by rice and chickpeas, Customers eat on the spot, the same for the sale of mussels and to finish a number sell pressed pomegranates juice in front of the customer.

The presence of the national flag is omnipresent as is the representation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atatürk. There is in this country a great national pride in their history and culture, for example the americanization noticed in all the other countries that we passed through is much less marked.

We will of course keep a memory of the Turks themselves, a curiosity for us at all times, very many people came to us to ask us questions and many looked at us, but we never felt a critical or inquisitor. Their head shots to say hello is an image that we carry with us like these taxis pushing their vehicles a few meters not that they are down but just by fuel economy. We stop there but we could have filled many other lines, in any case Turkey is truly a country to discover often far from the clichés sometimes conveyed by the media in France.

Photos turkey here