I was now 135 kilometers away from Istanbul and set it as a goal to reach the capital by that evening. In none of the other days had I ridden 135 km, but I did around 120 km, so 15 km more sounded reasonable, especially if I started early.

So I did, started early, I was on the road around 6:30. I left Saray towards the north, then the road turned east. It was rather chilly, below 10 degrees, but after sunrise, it got warmer.

My first stop was in the small village of Safaalan, I found the setting there quite impressive, the mosque with the rising sun behind it.

Chilly sunrise

Somewhat later, I saw a rather amusing road sign, it warned me of cows, then on a supplement, of stay dogs. In Cyprus, there would be a road sign warning of donkeys. I can´t wait to see a warming for kangoroos.

Woof!

Yes, indeed, there were some dogs, but usually minding their own business or looking at me in a mix of awe, anger and fear - I would not be chased again by these four-legged creatures.

It definitely got warmer and I stopped to take off my jumper - and suddenly I heard a greeting. It came from a fellow biker, as it turned out from Scotland, also en route to Istanbul and even to Georgia. His name is lost in history, let us say it was Alastair (it was not that, for sure), anyhow, we chatted for a few minutes, he was about half my age and had half my luggage, so he overtook me soon. It was still nice to see someone else crazy like me trying to ride through Turkey in the fall. He told me he would stop for a coffee and after about half an hour, I did spot him sipping a morning coffee.

I stopped, asking him for some help, the mudguard, despite having been fixed by the policemen, was still giving me issues occasionally, he was kind enough to help me. From that point, we rode together for a couple of hours, chatting about our current and former bike trips. He was headed for the airport in Istanbul, to meet his girlfriend, they were to spend a few days together, then he would continue his ride to Georgia. I was curious whether we would meet (alas, we would not).

There was a small town where we rode through, versus cycling around it, but that turned out to be a smaller mistake. The main road veered around the town (which we did not ride on) and merged into a larger, divided highway and there were road works going on one side of the highway, all traffic being diverted to the other side of the division. For a while, we rode on a completely empty section, with no traffic due to the construction, but we eventually caught up with the road workers, who were busy laying the asphalt. We then had two options - one, to turn around, go back to the town, ride around it and merge into the part of the road that was not being built, or somehow haul the bike over not less than two barriers and get to the other side of the road. My Scottish friend went for the first option, however, I dislike backtracking, so I elected the second one. I asked two workers to help haul the bike over the divisions, which they did, now the challenge was getting to the right side of the road in heavy traffic. As luck would have it, there was a gap in the traffic in both directions, so I quickly ran over and was now able to continue my ride.

Alastair, who was much faster, caught up after a few kilometers, so we continued our chat. After a big incline, we looked to the left (i.e. towards the north, as we were riding east) and we both cried out - "look, here is the sea!". Yes, we were riding in the region called Thrace, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, where the land gets thinner and thinner - and eventually, there is room just for one city - Istanbul - connecting Europe with Asia.

First view of the Black Sea

It was quite a good sign, confirming that I was making progress. The next good sign was the sight of a town with large buildings, shooting out of the ground, this was a satellite town of Istanbul, address unknown, as Elvis would sing it (it might have been Arnavutköy).

Outskirts of Istanbul

Here it was time to bid farewell to Alistair. He was headed for the airport, which is in the north, for me, it made more sense to turn towards the east. Looking back, it might have made sense to continue on the main road to the north, then veer back south, you will soon see why.

I was now some 35 kilometers outside Istanbul, so 100 kilometers were behind me and it was just around 3:30 pm - I was pretty sure to make it to town by sunset or a bit thereafter. Well, there were a few factors I did not take into account.

It was no longer a divided highway, just a regular two-lane road, with very heavy traffic on it. The issue was that the road was rather bumpy and curvy, with lots of inclines. Similar to the road coming out of Edirne, there was hardly any room to veer out of harm´s way....but then no harm was done, luckily.

I did get to the vicinity of the town I saw from far, called Arnavutköy, here my busy two-lane road morphed into a very busy 3-by-3 (or was it 4-by-4?) road, with lots of tunnels and speeding cars. I had no issues so far, but now I was no longer sure if I would stay safe, especially in the tunnels, where there was no sign of a shoulder. Time for Plan B.

I was sure there would be some other option to reach Istanbul - and there seemed to be some sort of a smaller road. Google Maps is sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse, it was both at the same time - blessing, as it did show there would be a Plan B, curse, as it was very unreliable in finding out which direction I would have to start in. The town, similar to many other towns in Turkey, was built on a hilly area, many streets were extremely steep and no matter which direction I had started on, I got a beeping message from the GPS that I should turn around. It was really very frustrating, especially as I was sooo close to my goal of reaching Istanbul. Anyhow, finally I did manage to find the correct way to "somewhere". This somewhere was a very-very tiny and winding road ("The long and winding road" by Beatles) next to a river, it did not look promising at all whether I would be able to ride on it. It was quite deserted, but I saw some field workers, them telling me there were so many stray dogs, that they would attack me. I stopped one of the few cars and asked "Istanbul?", they said yes, so I tried my luck and pushed on.

Well, now I know it was actually not the worst choices I had ever made, but back then, I had no idea knowing how this adventure within the adventure would turn out. There was sign in Turkish language, which I translated to English (with the help of Google Lens, no, I am not getting any money from Google), warning there were explosions in the area and indeed, I got to a large quarry, but the driver of yet another car told me to continue on this now unpaved road. It was quite nice weather, but the daylight was definitely fading. The area was actually quite picturesque ("gözal" is the word in Turkish) - however, there really were smaller packs of stray dogs, which, thank God, minded their own business. At one point, I saw a large motorway crossing the valley high above me , I guess it would have been better riding there - but then not sure how I would have gotten there in the first place.

Modern metro line

The first thing that struck me was that we were very-very deep under the surface, I used the escalators with my loaded bike and if I recall correctly, there were seven or eight levels to ascend to. The journey on the escalator was longer than the three stops on the metro and I just wanted to get out and breathe fresh air.

I realized I was still not on the surface, I was in some sort of tunnel for buses, but despite some employee yelling at me, I jumped on my bike and started riding in this tunne, wanting to reach the center of Istanbul. Hmmm. why are all the bus drivers yelling, honking and flashing their lights at me? They have plenty of space to bypass me...I stopped to check what Google would say, it generally speaking did not disagree with the direction. Now a bus driver stopped next to me, opened the door and started saying something about police. And yes, after a couple of hundred meters I did meet this threat, which it really wasn´t - it was a cop, all right, but with a bright, friendly smile on his face, he told me I was headed the wrong way, onto a major motorway leading out of Istanbul. So I asked him what to do, he told me to simply turn around and ride back on the shoulder, for 3-4 minutes, according to him.

Well, it was more like 15-20 minutes and I was riding against the traffic on a six-lane highway. It did not disturb any of the cars as they were backlogged in a huuuuge traffic jam, however, the motorbike riders were less than pleased with my presence on the shoulder, this is the exact space they wanted to use to bypass the traffic jam. So with some opposition, I slowly made my way back to where I should have been from where I definitely should never have been. I actually felt rather privileged, as I had a wonderful view from a bridge onto the surroundings of Istanbul by night.

I felt actually quite privileged to have this view

When I finally got back to the normal place (as mentioned, this took over 15 minutes), I was awed by the beautiful mosques and other buildings I saw at this evening hour.

Taskim Square with taxis (ha-ha-ha)

Finally, after lots of trials and even more errors, I found the alley of my accommodation, left my bike in the corridor and rode up the elevator to my "suite" - which turned out to be a windowless hole. For about 4 seconds and a half, I thought of washing and going to discover more of the city, but I felt such a feeling of tiredness that I had not felt in a long time, laid down on the bed and was more or less unable to move. I did collect some craft to take a shower, then I was in a deep, deep slumber.

It is a bit hard telling how much I had exactly ridden, until the metro, it was about 115 kilometers, but then in Istanbul it must have been another 15 or so...here is a map. Yes, I was disappointed for not making it all the way to Istanbul, but then I was happy to be in the city. With over 500 kilometers behind me, I was now "only" 1250 kilometers from Batumi, with 14 days to go - some sort of "buffer" started developing...