Istanbul, Turkey.18th August 2023.

I’d popped over to Thailand while Shakti was on the high seas. A late take off and a subsequent delayed flight saw me arrive at Istanbul at 06.00. No hassle from the officials, which is good when you’re tired. An expensive SIM got me 100GB of data, valid for three months. I tried an ATM, which didn’t give me any cash. I was pleased about that because the fee would have been 400TRY (Turkish Lira)). That’s £11.75! Another ATM gave me some, fee free as far as I could tell. Welcome to Turkey. Ongoing, I found that the Turkish Post Office (PTT) ATM’s gave cash with no fee.
I found my way to the Metro and bought an Istanbul Kart. Preloaded, it worked on the metro, trams and buses. Three changes to get to my hotel, but at least it helped me to learn the system. I’d booked a hotel close to the tourist area, but at the bottom of a steep hill. Once I’d made contact with somebody there I was able to get to my room and go to sleep for a few hours. The hotel was a bit shabby but relatively cheap.
In the evening I walked around and found a place to eat. I was shocked by the prices. I’m used to India, where I can get breakfast and a simple evening meal for less that £2. This is not India! European prices, such as £10 pizzas, were the norm, especially as I was close to the tourist areas. Some adjustments to my budgetary expectations were definitely going to have to be made.
After I’d eaten I walked around the local area. Pavement café culture is very much to the fore. People sit and drink chai while they socialise or play games. One group of guys invited me to sit down with them, giving me a glass of chai. They were playing a board game where numbered tiles were placed on a rack, as in Scrabble, then laid out in some particular order on the board. How it worked was beyond me but I believe it’s called 101.

First impressions of Turkey? It’s a very European country, at least in Istanbul. Prices are relatively high. Everything seems to be well organised, with tidy streets and a good transport system. I’m very much looking forward to exploring this country.
A plan, I must have a plan. Which I did. I was going to spend some time in the tourist area and then find a hotel close to the port.ready for when my bike arrived. I’d been tracking the ship my bike was on and it was at Izmir, a big port on the south west coast. Next time I looked the ship was heading for Valencia, in Spain. What about my bike, I thought? But all was OK. It was on another ship, still heading to Istanbul.
It was a steep walk up the hill to where all the tourist attractions were and I stopped for breakfast on the way. From there I walked along a pedestrianised area which had a decorated column half way along called the Obelisk of Theodosious. It was made in the 15th century BCE in Egypt and came here via Alexandria. It was originally 30 metres high but lost some of its height during transportation or re-erection. The carvings on it all relate to Egyptian victories in war.

I came to the main square, which is pretty much surrounded by historical buildings, interspersed with small areas of garden. Just right for weary tourists to relax in. Spookily, there always seemed to be a coffee stall nearby.
My first target was the Blue Mosque, more correctly called Sultanhamet Mosque, and one of the city’s star attractions. And that’s no surprise because it really is magnificent. Very big, as befitting a capital city’s main religious building. There were large circular columns supporting a beautifully decorated roof, with one main, central dome and four others at each corner. The columns are also decorated on their top half. The windows have blue stained glass in them, giving the mosque its more common name. It was built in the early 17th century and at that time Istanbul was the Ottoman Empire’s capital city under the name of Constantinople.I do enjoy looking at religious buildings and this one was quite special.

On the same theme I visited the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) Mosque, another beautiful example of its type. It’s different to the Blue Mosque as it has no columns supporting the roof. The main dome in this one is smaller but there are several smaller domes around it. The theme in here is gold and, once again, it looks beautiful. It was built in the 6th century CE as a Byzantine church and was converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. Both mosques use decorative tiles to form the patterns that are so striking.

The third visit that day was to the Architectural Museum, which had displays going back to Greek and Roman times. Plenty of statues, sculptures and similar. The sarcophagi were interesting too.

Next day I visited a place I’d really been looking forward to seeing, the Basilica cisterns. Having queued for a while yesterday and given up, I got up early and was one of the first to go in. It is a truly amazing place. The cathedral-like structure gives an ethereal air, enhanced by subtle lighting. It’s purpose was, of course to store and supply water to the city. It was built by the Romans, who also constructed aqueducts to deliver water from the surrounding hills. It is one of many that sit beneath the city.

The Romans never seemed able to pass up an opportunity to make mundane infrastructure as decorative as possible. And they surpassed themselves here. The roof supporting columns must be thirty metres high, at least, set on big stone blocks, usually decorated with various themes. Two of them sit on blocks that have the head of the goddess Medusa carved onto them. One of the heads faces sideways and the other is upside down. It’s reckoned that they arrived like that and it was simply too difficult to turn them the right way up.

I don’t know how high up the walls the water would have once sat, but nowadays there’s just half a metre or so sitting in the bottom. Its function seems to be to enhance the eerie effect of the lighting, which changes colour at intervals. The result is to provide a glorious light show around the walls and the arches of the ceiling. A veritable photographers’ dream.
That evening I walked out further and found a small plaza with several roads coming off it. The whole area was dedicated to eating and drinking. The many cafés had tables spreading out onto the road, welcoming the evening diners. Musicians wandered around, serenading people as they ate. Café society at its best, with a real Mediterranean feel to it all. I enjoyed an open air meal too.

Another early start saw me outside the Topkapi Palace just as it opened. This was a big place, the former Sultan’s home, now a museum. Most of the displays were very good and I learned many things. Some examples. The word “Harem” simply means a private area, guarded by eunuchs, were the sultan and his family live. It includes his concubines. The important women in his life are his mother and the mothers of his children. He doesn’t have a wife as such.

It was the Ottoman empire that brought coffee into the mainstream. It originally came from Ethiopia in the 16th century, then slowly spread around Arabia and Europe. The displays included lots of coffee paraphernalia, and descriptions of how it evolved into the drink we know today. But all the time I was in Turkey I never drank a Turkish coffee. Far too strong for my taste.
The Ottomans, despite being Sultanate rulers, seemed to have a surprisingly egalitarian approach. Their appointed officials, known as Viziers, administered the various regions, with the Sultan maintaining an overview. But these people weren’t aristocrats, as might be expected. Young boys were selected, from various area around the empire, and were educated ready for promotion into administrative roles. They learned different languages as well as being trained for their jobs. A surprisingly meritocratic system for those times, where family connections usually meant more than ability. It took me about three hours to see everything but it was time well spent.

Over the next few days I didn’t really do much apart from catching up on writing. I met a Russian guy I’d been chatting to on Facebook, for a coffee. Alex has lived away from Russia for many years and currently travels on an Irish passport. He’s lived in England as well. He and his bike will be heading to Bulgaria so we might meet up again. On the way to meet him I walked through the Grand Bazaar, a building of high, domed roof walkways, filled with shops. These days they mostly sell things that attract the tourists, including, of course, Turkish carpets.

I’d visited all the tourist places that I was interested in so I was now just killing time while my bike arrived. I caught up on my blog, which had been getting a bit behind. The area I was staying in had some usefully cheap food outlets, helping me to adjust from Indian to Turkish prices. Just along the road was a delicatessen, that would make me a cheese and salami baguette sandwich. Salami? Yes, pork in a Muslim country. Beer was readily available too. A takeaway just across from the hotel sold pizza, among other things, so I was able to enjoy all the unhealthy, but tasty, comforts of home.
I needed to get a couple of documents printed so I went out for a walk one day, looking for a place to do it for me. I really struggled to find somewhere and walked all around the area. It was something of an education, with a surprising mixture of small shops selling what could be described as ‘everything’. Food, fashion, hardware, car parts, all seeming to exist cheek by jowl quite comfortably. At one point I passed a bus station and was fascinated by the list of places they went to. Everywhere from Poland to Iran. North, south, east and west. Istanbul really is the crossroads of Europe and Asia.

I found a small chai house in a backstreet and enjoyed the first cup so much I had a second. Turkish made chai, unlike Indian, has no milk in it but still tastes delicious. It was even poured from one glass to another, Arab style. And it costs next to nothing too. On the way back to the hotel I did, finally, find a place to print my documents.
It was time to change hotels. I was nowhere near the port area so I’d located a place that was better located for the next stage of the Istanbul adventure – getting my bike. This place cost the same as the other one but was cleaner, brighter, with AC that worked and a kettle in the room. I was close to some good places for cheap food too. Being away from the tourist area certainly had advantages.
So here begins the sad and sorry tale of fighting bureaucracy in order to get my hands on what’s rightfully mine – my bike!
I’d been recommended a customs agent in Istanbul named Aykut, by another traveller. He was very experienced and spoke good English. He had two tasks. Get my bike out of the clutches of customs and arrange some insurance for riding in Turkey. The insurance part was easy, the rest of it not so much.
When a container arrives in a port it has to be unloaded from the ship, taken to a warehouse and then the contents removed. They are then stored until customs clearance is obtained. Some of this cost is included in the shipping charges, some of it falls upon the customer, i.e. me. A separate company deals with most of this and I had to pay their charges. Aykut’s role was to deal with customs. He had quoted me a fixed price for this of 300USD. I was happy with that as I’d had far higher quotes from other companies.

The first problem was that the bike arrived on the Tuesday but Wednesday was a public holiday. The handling company sent me what I thought was an invoice so on Thursday I went to their bank to pay it. It turned out to be a proforma invoice so wasn’t acceptable to the bank. I’d spent all day trying to sort this out but annoying as it was, it did me a favour.
It’s now Friday and I went to see Aykut. He noticed some incorrect charges on the pro forma, amounting to 600USD. I immediately contacted Mustafa, at Seco, who said he’d contact the shipping company. The issue was resolved surprisingly quickly and an amended pro forma invoice was issued by Eastrans, the handling company. But I still wouldn’t be able to use it to pay money into the bank. Aykut rang them and asked them to make the invoice out to his company, so I could pay the money to him. They refused. Stalemate.
I decided to go to their office, which was more than an hour and a half public transport journey across Istanbul. I got there at 16:30 and met the most unhelpful people I’ve ever come across. They wouldn’t take any money off me (I wasn’t surprised at that), they refused to make the invoice out to Aykut’s company again. Worse of all they then came out with some nonsense about how it was a commercial import and I had to obtain a Potential Tax ID – whatever one of those is – from the British Embassy. It was now 16:55 and they told me I had to leave because they were closing the office. You can imagine how angry and frustrated I felt. But nothing could be done until Monday. A load more hassle and two more wasted travelling days.
I had messaged Mustafa with the sorry story and on Monday morning I rang him. He got onto it straight away and by Monday afternoon Aykut had received an invoice made out to his company, which he immediately paid and was sent a receipt just before 17:00.
On Tuesday morning I went to Aykut’s office where I paid him the monies, drank chai and ate some cake. Then one of his colleagues took me to the port where we met a guy named Mustafa, who would deal with customs. First we went to the Eastrans office to get the clearance paperwork, but they had just closed for lunch. Mustafa bought me lunch while we waited. Then we went to the customs office for more from filling. Eventually we went up to the bonded warehouse but the customs inspector was elsewhere. By the time he returned it was too late in the day to do anything. Another day goes by and still no bike.

To cut this long story short it was 5 p.m. on Thursday before I finally got my bike out of customs, just before they closed. It had to leave there in a van (more expense), firstly because customs regarded it as ‘materials’ and secondly because it had run out of fuel. The warehouse guys had been very helpful in assisting me to put the bike back together when it came out of the crate, but customs had been slow and obstructive. Mustafa had done his best, as far as I could tell, but I had been left sitting around for hours not knowing what was happening.
Finally, on Friday morning, I went to Aykut’s office for the final exchange of money. We took some photos and away I went, heading south out of Istanbul. The lesson from all this? Do not ship a bike into Istanbul, either the port or the airport (more about that later).

I took the opportunity to ride across the long bridge that spanned the Bosphorous, correctly called the July 15th Martyrs’ Bridge. I was heading to the town of Bursa. There was a national park area near there, that looked worth visiting, but there wasn’t really much there in the end. The town had a nice central area, with some good places to eat, of which I took advantage. It had been a useful first day on the road in country number thirty four of this trip. Turkish drivers are quite well behaved, although they do like to undertake and overtake a bit too close. I was mostly on good quality, dual carriageway roads. Well signposted and well maintained. So far, so good.

I headed further south, in warm and sunny weather, to a place called Frigya Organik. It’s a homestay and campsite run on organic lines. When I arrived I found a crowd of Turkish bikers, who invited me to share their lunch of goose, plus salad etc. A nice bunch of people, some of whom spoke English, so I was able to chat with them. They rode a variety of big bikes, mostly BMWs.
After a while another two bikes arrived and, to my surprise, these were UK registered Royal Enfield Himalayans. Mike and Jackie air freighted their bikes from Cape Town to Istanbul, having toured around southern Africa. Like me, they were slowly heading back to England in time for Christmas. Also like me, they had problems with customs in that they had to pay a bribe of £200 per bike and customs then lost their carnets. At least I only lost time rather than money. The carnets did turn up eventually, but after they’d left Istanbul.

We got chatting to a young German couple who were also staying there. Later on the father of the guy who ran the site invited us down to watch him harvest seeds from sunflowers. A bit of a random activity but it turned out to be very interesting. There was a trailer full of sunflower heads which were thrown into a kind of threshing machine. It shook the flowers enough to separate the seeds out. They dropped onto a plastic sheet and were spread out to dry. The flower heads were shovelled into another trailer and were taken down into the village. There, we watched as some cows were milked while being fed the flower heads. Sunflowers are clearly a good cash crop, with several different uses.

I didn’t sleep at this place but I ate there and spent some time with Mike and Jackie. Frigya Organik is surrounded by an area of exposed limestone rocks which rise out of the ground like remnants of a lost world. We went for a walk around them, very impressed by the effects that millennia of erosion can create.

The Turkish bikers had told us about the Royal Enfield One Ride event, something that’s organised by all Royal Enfield dealers around the world. It was due to take place the following weekend from a shop in Antalya. We agreed to meet there to take part. I’d never been to an event like this before and it sounded like fun.
This part of Turkey is crowded out with the ruins of ancient cities. Most of them were Greek, then Roman, although many pre-dated both of those. This area has been occupied for thousands of years.
I headed down to Sagalassos. It was a very nice ride alongside Egirdir Golu (lake) en route, with the blue water looking very tempting for a swim. This ancient city goes back to 1,400 BCE and was conquered by Alexander The Great in the 4th century BCE. Eventually the Romans took it over. It was a thriving and rich trade centre across that period but was effectively destroyed as a trade centre by the departure of the Romans and two devastating earthquakes in the 4th and 8th centuries. The population moved down the hill to live in the valleys below.
A surprising amount of it still stands. The central forum has columns and walls, with statues still on the pedestals. Plenty of bas relief carving remained as well. It was my first visit to one of these places and I was impressed. I sat down for break before getting back on the bike and going to the hotel I’d booked in Isparta.

The hotel was in an area of auto workshops. Next door to it was a beer shop and around the corner was a takeaway that provided a very nice kebab. Healthy? No, but very tasty. I was relaxing nicely until I went to get something from my backpack and realised it wasn’t there. I’d left it behind at Sagalassos, probably on the bench where I’d sat down. There was nothing I could do at that moment. The problem was that a couple of bank cards were in the bag and you can imagine the consequences of those going missing.
I had the idea to go online and check to see if the cards had been used. If they had, I’d get them cancelled. But they hadn’t been, so I took the chance and took no action. A sleepless night ensued.
Next morning I left in time to arrive at the site when it opened. My hope was that someone had found the bag and kept it safe. As I turned off the main road towards the site, I remembered that I was low on fuel. I had noticed it last night but planned to fill up in the morning. Events drove that completely out of my mind. I knew there was a petrol station not far from the site and I hoped to get there. You can all guess what happened, of course. I ran out!
What to do? My hope was that a bike would come along that I could flag down and maybe buy some petrol from them. But this was quite a lonely road with not much traffic and no bikes among it. I turned round so that I was facing downhill and started to roll downwards as best I could. I was hoping to get back to the main road where there’d be more traffic. But eventually I ground to a halt as the road went up a rise. I waited at the side of the road but not a single bike came past.

After an hour and a half of waiting a van belonging to the Jandarma (police) pulled up and, once I’d explained my predicament, they agreed to help me. We managed to get the bike off the main road and they took me, with my fuel bladder, to a filling station. Back at the bike they insisted on pouring the fuel into the tank and I was on my way again. There is a strange situation in Turkey where it isn’t possible to buy petrol in cans because of security regulations, unless you have police permission. I’m guessing that’s to prevent the creation of  Molotov Cocktails.
I filled up the bike on the way to Sagalassos and when I got back there I was both relieved and delighted to find that my bag had been found by the woman who runs a small coffee stall by the entrance. She’d given it to the ticket office for safe keeping. You can imagine how happy I felt. A coffee and biscuits from her stall were very much in order.
On the way back to the hotel I visited Isuyu Caves, to look at the fairly unimpressive limestone formations. Back in Isparta I went to the Natural History Museum. Their main display was centred around the remains of a mammoth that had been found nearby. Nice but not very inspiring.

There were some good places to ride to in this area. The first of these was Pamulkke, an area of calcified hot pools. Another sunny day, great for riding across country and seeing the landscape. A lot of this area is quite dry but there are areas where crops are grown. I have to confess I didn’t know what they were.
Pamulkke is very touristic and was suitably busy. I could see a chalky slope above which were the hot pools. I walked up to the ticket office but turned back again as soon as they told me the entry fee for foreigners. 7,000 TRY, equivalent to £21. No thank you! I’d seen hot pools before and as I had no plans to bathe in them or otherwise spend much time there, it just wasn’t worth it.
After a coffee I rode out to see Lake Salda. As the name suggests, it’s a salt lake, with white shores and water of deep blue. Lake Bardur is another lovely stretch of water, with a nice perimeter road to ride around.

By the time I got back to the hotel I was feeling distinctly unwell. I had a temperature and ached all over. Along with this my waste functions were somewhat off kilter. I spent the next couple of days resting up. I remembered that I had some antibiotics with me and as soon as I started to take them I began to feel better. I think the hotel I was in was aimed at families, and for longer term stays, as my room had a washing machine in it. I took advantge and washed all my riding gear. I didn’t feel well but I could make good use of the time.
It was Saturday and the Royal Enfield ride out was on Sunday. Time to get to Antalya. Although I felt much better I still took things gently. It was dual carriageway all the way there, for which I was grateful.

On the way I stopped off at another ancient site, called Kibyra Ancient City. Two interesting things about this one. It was ruled and fought over by ancient peoples from this area, the Lydians and the Pisidians. It also seemed to be ignored by the Greeks and was handed over to the Romans. Its spread up the side of a hill and its key feature is an entertainment area (Odeon) that stretches for 200 metres and could have held 20,000 people. It overlooks the valley below the city and must have been quite a place in its heyday.
In Antalya I’d booked a small hotel, down a dingy side street. Once I’d settled in I went for a walk and to my surprise after a short distance found myself in a busy tourist street, brightly lit and with a tram running down the middle. After walking in one direction I came to a section with expensive boutiques. In the other was a plethora of bars and restaurants, busy with people on this warm evening. I enjoyed a draught beer and a very nice spaghetti bolognaise.
Sunday dawned and I headed over to join in the Royal Enfield One Ride event. It was hosted by a business called Take It Easy (TIE) Tours. They aren’t an Enfield dealer but they have ties with Enfield in Turkey as they use Himalayans for their customers to ride on. I was the first one there. The shop had laid out a nice breakfast spread of small rolls, cakes etc. Plenty of tea as well. Mike and Jackie arrived and some of the people we’d met at Frigya Organik did too, including Seda, a nice woman we’d chatted to.

I got talking to another woman, whose name I forget, who told me I was handsome. When I’d finished laughing she said it comes from within. OK, I was prepared to go with that. We had a nice chat about life and attitudes, as well as riding. TIE was lending bikes to some of the riders who didn’t own a Himalayan, and in the end there were nineteen bikes with twenty two riders, seven of whom were women.
We set off and before long came to the ruins of an ancient Roman Viaduct.The owner of TIE is a real tech freak and had a drone following us around some of the time. Another rider was a professional photographer who got us riding up and down bits of road and posing, just so he could get a good record of the day.

We went off road for a while, just for a bit of a challenge. The day ended at a venue that was next to a river and where a really good BBQ had been laid on. Turkish meat on skewers and in buns, lots of nice salad to go with it. Some of the riders took the bikes down to the river to ride across it and cool down in the water. Mike, Jackie and I were treated like royalty and enjoyed lots of chats and laughs with the local riders.

We got back to the shop after dark, drank more tea and finished off the breakfast leftovers. What a great day, with hospitality beyond measure and good riding to go with it.
I had a couple of issues with the bike and the mechanic at the shop, Mali, had said to come down and he’d help me sort them out. My Double Take mirrors use RAM mounts and the rubber balls they mount on had worn out. I had spares but I just couldn’t get one of the old ones to come out.
Mali wheeled the bike into the shop and with the use of his vice we managed to remove the recalcitrant item. But it turned out that the mixture of left and right handed replacements I had just didn’t fit onto the adapters that were on the bike.
The other problem was that the air bladder inside my comfort seat was leaking and had defied my attempts to repair it. I wondered if he could get some foam to replace it with.

He took me upstairs to the seating area we’d been in on Sunday, gave me some coffee and told me to wait for an hour or two while he went to get parts. Eventually the photographer from Sunday came in and we chatted a while. He had work to do but later on he sent out for lunch, for both of us. When Mali came back he had all the parts to fix the mirrors, and some foam, which he cut into shape. I was delighted with the results. Cost to me? Nothing. What wonderful people.
Later on I went for a walk down to the sea shore. The route went through a park, complete with skateboarding area. It had statues of various types and info boards explaining what the trees were. At the harbour I watched the sunset before walking back to the restaurant area, through the old town, for a coffee. Another great day in Antalya.

Oh, and what’s the title of this blog all about? Istanbul is fondly know as ‘Stumble’.