Bergama-Çanakkale, İstanbul

238.5 km, 2751 vertical metres, 4 days

Tuğba saw us off from Bergama with some lemon cake and boiled eggs, while her husband recommended we try the cafe at the top of the hill.

And what a hill it was! As we rode out of the city, Shreyas pointed out some arches on the ridge, the remains of an aqueduct. There was a river twirling through the valley, bouncing little pools. It started warming up, and my conviction that we should go for a swim to break up the ascent became stronger. There are several granite quarries in the area, so we started being passed by trucks with huge pieces of stone in their beds. I found this very encouraging, because I wasn’t hauling any stones up the hill. Comparison can be so great sometimes.

We stopped for some water at a charming fountain (I love when they have cups attached) then found a point for a mid-July river swim. It was honestly more of a ‘river roll’ (by this point the river was knee deep) but nonetheless made me less hot for the next 10 minutes. After 20 kilometres of climbing we saw a welcome sight in the top of the hill…but an even more welcome sight behind us. Two bikepackers! Going the same way we were!!

Lisa and Théo are French chemical engineers, taking 8 months off to cycle around Europe. We had met them in Turkey, their most eastern and southern stop. We rolled up to the recommended cafe and drank çay and ate biscuits for an hour, covering bikepacking set ups and national energy policies. Finding that we were relatively compatible in speed and budget we rode together for the rest of the day. I found it so fun to have an extended conversation in English about careers and family with Lisa, I love talking to Shreyas but it turns out it’s extremely nice to speak to someone at a similar life stage who you haven’t spent seven weeks talking to exclusively! A huge cruisy descent, a lake, a view of the sea…and lots and lots of agriculture that meant we had to pay to camp at a restaurant.

It was interesting to observe Lisa and Théo’s set up, they have different equipment to us and I think a nested, closing pot/pan and some cooler bib bike shorts might be on the list for future trips. I realised how much the biking and camping has become a rhythm, I do the chopping, Shreyas does the stirring, I put the poles together, Shreyas slots them into place. In some ways it felt strange to be part of someone’s else’s rhythm, both pairs of us edging politely around the other routines. But it was also a really nice change.

We have had remarkably good weather in Turkey, for all the complaints about the temperature – there have only been a few times we have been rained on, and that was mostly during the night or on rest days. I didn’t bring waterproof pants and this economy totally paid off! The following morning, however, there were dark clouds looking on the horizon, and a thunderstorm (11mm in an hour!) predicted for the afternoon.

In the end the rain came early, fat drops suddenly a flurry. We were close to a town, and, with Lisa and Théo, holed up in a bakery. There was a purple flash light and thunder a second later, the temperature dropped about ten degrees in as many minutes, then the lights went out. Oh the drama of the sky! I was particularly thrilled to spot an electric line of bolt lightning (I can’t remember the last time I saw it) and also happy to be reading my book inside, with my bike securely on the balcony. Sadly, I was just 50 pages from the end of the 1300 page Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell when it was sunny enough to keep going.

Within 5 kilometres, there was another delay: I had a flat tire caused by a splinter of brown glass. Lisa and Théo decided to eat lunch while we repaired it, then kept going, as our routes were going to diverge and they had more distance to cover. Wheels reinflated, I stopped again to chat to a man with some distinctive pink paniers on the bike path. He told us he lived nearby and was very into mountain biking, following dozens of trails near villages in the hills. Great intel for future trips to Altınoluk!

We hadn’t been in many fishing area so far in Turkey, so I liked seeing all the fishing boats and their nets lined up on the shore, before we diverged inland for an ice cream stop, a brief swim on some slimy rocks, and a fruitless search for a free campsite. Instead, we found a rundown paid campsite with no other customers, operated by an old couple. The woman showed me how she was splitting olives to prepare them to be salted, and at about 9 pm, after we had eaten dinner and were going to sleep, the man knocked on outer tent and gave us some food he had made, which was very generous.

The sense that our time in Turkey was over kept hitting me, but as I twirled in the Aegean ocean for a (post) sunrise swim the next day, I felt full of gladness for all the roads we had taken to get here. As we turned inland, I kept checking them off: last Turkish swim, last Turkish tortoise, last Turkish lizard tail disappearing greenly into a bush, last Turkish town on market day eating gözleme while looking out on a square filled with stalls and flowerpots.

My bike was clearly experiencing this finality, but expressing it by giving up further. My disc brakes were squeaking, and after removing the wheel, the pistons were totally imbalanced, and the pads worn down to the metal. The next town was 15 km away but had a secondhand bike shop, so we followed the highway to get there.

I loved the little bike shop with its trays of parts, and the mechanic was very helpful – although I definitely got stressed when he started messing with the hydraulics, which didn’t help and dropped mineral oil over my handlebars. There’s a weird sense of guilt that I haven’t treated my vehicle well enough, or that I should know how to do things myself, or that I should be more attentive to my bike mechanisms. I love mechanical brakes (mechanical disc brakes are the GOAT) but even possessing these sorts of opinions isn’t enough to have a perfectly smooth bike at all times.

Our final camp was basically perfect, by a quiet gravel road, 300 metres above sea level so not too hot, some goats ringing their bowels as they walked home and the odd tractor. Final stove meal (inspired by Lisa and Théo, we had bulgur wheat with cucumbers, tomatoes and halloumi) and a walk in the yellow sunset. At this point I was probably annoying Shreyas going ‘its over! How do you feel? What will it be like next?’

We had another bikepacker encounter on our last morning riding into Çanakkale, a fast British bikepacker who was planning to ride back to London in a month (by comparison, Lisa and Théo took 2 months to ride from eastern France to Türkiye). He zoomed off before we caught his name, but if you meet a freelance photographer from Lewisham who does actor headshots, tell him we say hi.

The glowing green fields and spinning wind turbines became the highway into Çanakkale town on the southern side of Dardanelles Strait, opposite the Gallipoli peninsula. It’s a big part of the Turkish national mythology too – founding father Kemal Mustafa was a commander, and there are hills emblazoned with the Turkish flag, and it’s crossed by the 1915 Çanakkale bridge. It’s the longest suspension bridge in the world (opened in 2022, costing 2.8 bn euros – similar to the City Rail Link for the transport infrastructure heads). Our journey ended at the Çanakkale bus station, where a loss (the first toilet we had to pay for and a ridiculously expensive lunch at the only lokantası) turned into a win (a third seamless Turkish bus experience – we never had to wait more than half an hour for the three buses we took during the trip!).
We ended up doing some riding around İstanbul, joining in on a bike lesson (another Warmshowers success), discussing anarchism and radical films with bike-box-finding HERO Cengiz and carrying our bikes up some stairs and over several huge roads. Taking the bus to the city was a good idea – based on what we saw from the bus windows, the mess of motorways would have been hellish to enter on two wheels.

It was strange to be fully in tourist mode again, without the visible direction and purpose bestowed by a bike. Our lovely vehicles won’t be in their cardboard prisons too long – there is more biking to be done in India – but for now, here is a best of Türkiye list, compiled while sipping nutty Kurdish coffee in a lovely İstanbul cafe.

Favourite day
Shanti: the day we biked through the kanyon – so surprising, luminous, warm. My two other perfect days were biking into Fethiye and climbing out of Bergama.
Shreyas: the day before the kanyon, when a gnarly, cold gravel climb became a glorious asphalt descent.
Favourite food/drink
Shreyas: Çiğköfte, spicy cooked bulgur aimed to replicate raw meatballs which were banned in eateries across Türkiye. Comes with tomato and handfuls of crunchy lettuce, pickled peppers, and dürüm wraps. Ayran, a salty yogurt drink perfect for hot climbs and recovery from exercise.
Shanti: breakfast staples gözleme and menemen (saucier scrambled shakshuka). Also, I want to investigate bulgur wheat further.

Favourite swim
Shanti: the third kanyon river swim. And Datça beach for being sooooo relaxed.
Shreyas: Çirali, our favourite Turkish beach by a mile. Super clear and salty Mediterranean water and the day was hot enough to keep wanting to go back in.
Lowest moment
We both hated riding into Ankara and Antalya. Busy highways are horrible, but navigating busy four-leaf clover intersections are even worse.
Worst meal
We had a sad dinner of a single packet of soup and single pear dipped in hazelnut spread in Beyşehir when it was raining and we were too tired to leave the hotel…
Favourite historical monument
Paid: Çatalhöyük, so fascinating and so well presented. We spent the longest amount of time here, there was so much to learn. It was really accentuated by seeing some of the treasures from the site in the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations first, since most of the artefacts are not at the site itself.
Free: the Virgin Mary Church and other fairy chimneys around Selime in Cappadocia (Shreyas); the Blue Mosque in İstanbul (Shanti). (Sidenote: we didn’t end up going to the Hagia Sophia, because queues and it being very expensive but it is HILARIOUS how there are like 8 very similar looking mosques in the area… clearly they knew hanging domes were on to a good thing!)

Favourite campsite
Shanti: camping next to a stream after our perfect descent to the kanyon, and our quiet goats in a field campsite near Xanthos.
Shreyas: the orange grove campsite at Olympos – no one else was there, great facilities, the price was haggled, and unlimited fruit.
Favourite meal
Shreyas: making noodles in Kokarkuyu, where we were entertaining and being entertained by half the village, we got given fresh eggs to add to our noodles and tangy sheep yoghurt and our stove was admired for its efficiency.
Shanti: leeks, eggplants, pine nuts and garlic-dill-yoghurt-cucumber at an ‘art cafe’ in İstanbul with an absurd number of cats and an owner complaining about how people kept coming in to her cafe and she was sick of opening it. Post-rain golden sunset illuminating a queue of boats waiting to enter the Bosphorous Strait. Great food, better experience.
Favourite animal encounter
Shanti: an owl briefly popping her head out of a chimney in Kokarkuyu, small and mysterious
Shreyas: Hasan’s feisty dog-like cat in Söke because it was very funny watching Shanti try to lure it out from underneath the bed.
Favourite plant or flower
Shanti: the poppies! literally couldn’t stop photographing them
Shreyas: the orange trees because you can smell them while biking, a great chance to activate that sense while riding.

Favourite photos
Categories: best photo we took, best photo of ourselves, best photo we took together, most evocative of the experience.