Day 98 - With the truck to Ankara


As the pictures of the last blog post show we had some good weather in cappadocia - next stop Antalya and the mediteranian sea. That was the initial plan - but the weather forecast said rain, rain, rain for the next week in this area.
Its not fun to ride in the rain -especially when there are beaches and stuff but you cant really enjoy, because the weather sucks. So we decided to skip the southern area of turkey and with it the the old roman city of ephesus. Its a shame. But its not getting warmer in europe and we still hope to get a little bit of beach action in greece and italy.
So next stop - Istanbul!

Toz Gül at the Horizon
Toz Gül at the Horizon

Should be two days of long riding trough Ankara and then to the Bosporus.
But first we wanted to have a short stop on Toz Gül - the salt lake.
But our time in Turkey wouldnt be complete with another problem on the bikes. We where almost at the lake, Chris and me where just chatting on the intercom what would be the best area to approach the salt flats when Chris said: "Oh, I think my bike is off...-yeah. Its off"
So we stopped and checked the bike. All lights where off and it wouldnt make any noise - which is bad for chris bike as it normally makes a lot of noise. It seemed to be an electronical issue. Electronic problems where our worst fear as they can not just be fixed with duct tape or zip ties and our experience with fixing anything electrical is next to zero.
We checked battery, fuses and cable connections.
No issues - so next resort was going to the closest little town 2km away and see if there is a bike mechanik.
There was none so we had no choice than to get a truck to load up the bike and deliver it all the way to Ankara where they have some good mechanics. The guys in the town where very helpful and after a few hours of bargaining, tea drinking and strapping the bike onto the back of the truck chris was on his way to Ankara.
Kim and me followed him.

Bike is secured

Normally we wanted to avoid ankara as people we met told us that there is nothing special to see but now we found ourselves in the middle of the rush hour at dawn in a five million populated city that we dont know the way around - not fun!
We arrived 5 mins after Chris at the 444 motorbike shop.
Yeah! One more spot on our gps collection!

The guys from 4.44 Motor in Ankara
The guys from 4.44 Motor in Ankara

The guys where pretty confident that they could find and fix the problem next morning and so we checked into a hostel. A little later also the rain arrived in Ankara and we didnt go out anymore. But surprise! Martin, the dutch guy with who we drove together to Batumi was also in the hostel. We had a few beers and called it a day.

Martin is back again
Martin is back again

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