Thanks to my warm sleeping bag, I slept well in my tent and I was ready to roll (literally, downhill) by 7 am. It was a cool, but beautiful morning, perfect conditions for a good bike ride. I was high up on a plateau, so was offered a wonderful sunrise.

Sunrise from the plateau

Not long thereafter, at some sort of a summit, I was awed by more beautiful views.

Takeoff in 10 seconds...

I made good distance, and soon I reached the vicinity of the border. On the freeway, Istanbul was just 265 kilometers away, but then I am not allowed to ride on the Autobahn A4.

Istanbul getting closer

Still in Bulgaria, I spent my Bulgarian Lev on some supplies and now I was headed to the border crossing. The area was unmistakably Balkan-like.

Balkan-like crossing, including the non-stop sex shop

Again, I used my bike-ace-border-benefit, cutting a rather long line and as such, it did not take all too long to make the crossing - and I was greeted in Turkey.

Welcome to Turkey - which is spelled Türkiye (note: in all languages they just put Türkiye at the end, irrespective of the alphabet - whatever...)

One worry I had was that there was a 2-by-2 lane highway ahead of me and I was wondering if I would find nice, quiet roads like in Bulgaria (spoiler alert: nope, not really). A truck was about to start as I was passing it, when I noticed that the vehicle was from Hungary, so I signaled the initially irritated driver to stop. When he found out I spoke Hungarian, his stance changed and he became rather friendly. It was actually a good idea to ask him to stop, he gave me a good tip where I could change money, Turkish Lira, at a good rate. He also told me he did not think there were any smaller roads (my mother warned me about the same fact) and that the weather would turn quite bad. As I would later learn, he was pretty right about things he had said.

Anyhow, I went into the restaurant/shop/bar he recommended and got a very good rate of 37 Lira to the Euro. I exchanged €300, which is over 11,000 Liras. The issue is that the highest banknote denomination is 200 Liras, meaning I had some fifty-five notes, instead of just three hundred-Euro notes...so my wallet looked as if had won the lottery.

Next, I tried getting a SIM-card for Turkey. At around €50 for a month, I found it to be very expensive, this was when I thought about the advice I had gotten from Katharina, who is a fellow traveler I had met in Georgia in May - to use an eSIM wholesaler, called Airalo (note: in the meantime, I found even better alternatives). I bought 5 GB of data for $12 for a month.

Now equipped with money and a working SIM card, I set off in easterly direction. I did not really know what was ahead of me, it was a town called Edirne, but I knew for sure I was getting hungry. There I spotted a kind of a BBQ restaurant with a large garden, it looked very appealing, so I entered it and ordered a Shish kebab. I was a bit surprised about the price level, it was well over €10 - and while it was quite tasty, it was not the largest portion I had ever seen.

The garden of the restaurant

After the late lunch, I reached Edirne itself. As said, I was somewhat (not just somewhat) unprepared for what was awaiting me - looking back, it was a bit comical. You see, Edirne used to be a mighty city under the Ottomans, it was even the capital for almost hundred years until 1453, when Constantinople, today´s Istanbul, became the capital of the Ottomans. After each sight, I thought to have seen the main highlight - and every time I thought it was time to leave, the next, even more majestic highlight would pop up in front of me. I am not kidding, this is exactly how it happened.

Let me give you the story with my pictures:

First, I spotted an ancient bridge, an old mosque and the remains of Turkish baths. When taking a photo of the baths, two men laughed at me and said I should go to the center and take photos there - they knew better...

...then I found a beautiful mosque, here thinking this must be THE major highlight...

...but then I found a large underground bazaar, with a pedestrian street...

...not far from which was a synagogue...

...from where I found yet another wonderful mosque...

Thinking I was done with the city, I said an emotional good-bye, went around the corner and was shocked to see the real highlight, a major site, the Selimiye Mosque, built in 1575 and designed by Turkey's greatest architect, Mimar Sina. It is the most important monument in the city and has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 2011. It used to have the highest minarets in Turkey, at around 71 meters. Sinan himself believed the dome to be higher than that of Hagia Sophia, the former Byzantine Orthodox Cathedral in Istanbul, but modern measuring methods seem to suggest otherwise. The mosque is named after Sultan Selim II, who commissioned it, but did not live to see its completion, the mosque is decorated with Turkish marble and magnificent İznik tiles. I could not see too much of the interior, as renovation works were ongoing.

Well, I made a mental note to dedicate more time and energy to UNESCO highlights, this one I had messed up a bit. The one thing I do not regret is not standing in a very-very long line in the center square, it was for restaurants serving ciğer tava, which is fried liver - I never did like liver.

Next to the mosque was a tourist office and I asked if they could recommend a road for my bike leading east. It was quite an unusual request for them, though I have to say they were rather poorly equipped, having just one map of the area, one they could not give away. They did their best to come up with a couple of smaller roads, but told me not to take a certain road due to the wolves. What the heck, wolves...?

Well, now it was really time to leave the town, there was not much of daylight left. At first, I had an incline, where I got into a shouting fight with a motorcyclist, who cut me off. I cursed at him in Turkish, something I had learned about 30 years prior from my Turkish girlfriend back then, he was about to trash me, but his passenger calmed him down.

Then I rode downhill and asked some people for directions. They wanted to steer me onto a major highway, but - back then, outside Edirne - that was something I wanted to avoid. So together with the help of Google Maps and some local advice, I started off on an unpaved and rather bumpy road, riding midst agricultural fields, with hopes of catching a smaller road the tourist office had recommended.

To make a long story short, I did reach the main road, leading next to slums that would make India look like a developed country, it was quite sad to see people living in a relatively wealthy county in such poverty. The paved road I had finally reached was very narrow, no shoulder and was sort of a roller-coaster, crossing a hilly countryside. Traffic was quite vivid and every time a car passed, I prayed to whoever not to knock me over - especially as the drivers going the opposite direction (i.e. east) were riding directly into the setting sun. One thing that I did find somewhat comforting was to see a fellow bike rider, who was en route from Istanbul to Edirne - he spoke hardly any English, so did not get a lot of advice from him.

As it got darker, the traffic became quiet and I ended up reaching a small town, called Süloğlu. Here I was riding next to a large fence and this is when I encountered something I would see many times in Turkey - on the outskirts of towns, one would find a military base, which are pretty well guarded. The first people in town were these military policemen, I asked if there was a hotel, they told me there wasn´t. This was confirmed by older men hanging out in the middle of town, drinking tea, playing cards. Someone told me I could pitch my tent next to a petrol station, but it did not sound like an appealing idea on a very narrow green spot, in midst of petroleum smell. Someone else suggested they would ride me 30-40 kilometers to the next hotel, I thankfully declined.

Google did mention a restaurant, but it turned out to be in the middle of the military base, which was out of bounds for civilians. I came across a soldier, who recommended that a water reservoir was about 10 kilometers to the north, where I could find some green place. Wow, no, riding in the middle of the night, in darkness, was not really an option. I found a big meeting room, probably belonging to a school, which was being cleaned, I tried to talk my way into sleeping there, they did not really understand what I wanted. Hmmm....I was running a bit out of options.

There are not only military bases in the towns, also gendermarie bases. One guard spoke some English and described there was a summer camp of sorts with cabins and green area next to a lake. While he was talking, there were stray dogs barking next to us, not so much at me, but at a dog that was inside a base. First, he pointed into the wrong direction, but when I showed him on Google Maps that it would be the opposite way, he apologized and sent me off in the seemingly correct direction.

Even in complete darkness, I somehow stumbled on this summer camp next to a lake - and as the month of October is definitely not in the summer, it was deserted...well, almost. There were some movement there and the movement belonged to dogs, which started barking loudly. I was secretly hoping they would wake up a caretaker, but no humans were around. I did see that there were a number of cabins further up the road, but I did not dare to go deeper into the camp, for the fear of being attacked by these dogs. The cabin I did see did not look very appealing, the windows were broken, the doors crooked, so entering the cabin was also not an option.

On a patch of grass in front of a cabin, I started pitching my tent, on this trip for the second time in a row - this under the watchful eyes of one of the dogs. He actually got closer and closer, his eyes glowing in the light of my (somewhat unreliable) headlamp, but not so much threatening,, more begging for some food. I hade some snacks and when I threw some at him, the dog caught these in flight - quite a feast in the darkness. We became best friends - or so I hoped.

I cleaned up as much as I could, laid into my sleeping bag, when a concert began. Remember the warning about the wolves? Well, I guess an entire pack must have been about a mile or so away, this is how it went: The alpha male would beging to howl, followed by the rest of the pack, down the hierarchy, finally, the young ones would join in - this was pretty clear to decipher. As soon as they were done - and it took about a minute, which seemed like an eternity - all stray dogs in the area (and there were lots of them) started barking wildly and loudly. Then it was quiet for a few minutes, when the alpha mail would start again...wash, rinse, repeat. This went through pretty much the entire night, memories of my night in the Apennine mountains becoming vivid, about 10 years ago. Heck, I survived that night back then, sure I would survive this one as well. I did, it was not my best nights ever, but I think I did manage to doze off in one of the quiet breaks between the howlings.

I was a happy fellow when the day broke.

I rode about 115 kilometers that day with roughly 750 meters of altitude gain...here you can find the map.