Nemrut - Gaziantep, 3/3; 22nd September - From Aqtau

Nemrut - Gaziantep, 3/3; 22nd September

22nd September

Just by the river -- Roman ruins recently placed on 'stands'

We left the campspot and headed towards Rumkale. We passed some pistachio plantations along the way too -- it was the first time I'd seen pistachio 'fruit?' before -- on the outside, soft and fleshy -- this isn't supposed to be eaten but tastes strongly citric. Underneath this flesh is the pisachio shell we see in the shops, and within that the seed.

A few kms from Rumkale we passed some farmers collecting the pistacho fruit and exchanged waves. A big downhill towards the ruins, and when we got to the carpark at the bottom we asked the parking attendents if we could leave the bike there, to avoid going down even further.

We walked to the pier by the river and enjoyed the magnificent view of the ruins:

After a short walk up the cafe where we enjoyed a couple of coffees and cake, we took some photos from the official viewpoint, collected the bike and went on our way back up the big hill.

As we passed the pistachio farmers again, one of them flagged us down. We said hello and he indicated that he wanted to give us some pistachios. We happily got out a small bag to which he started shovelling large handfuls of the fruit inside -- in was far too much for us to carry so we negotiated it down to just a small handful. In exchange we gave him a pack of biscuits from the shop we visited the day before. He handed it to his young son, who seemed pleased.

We continued onto Gaziantep along mostly smooth paved rooms across undulating hills. In order to avoid the busy highway, the last 10kms or so was on gravel roads with some slightly more intense ups and downs.

We managed to get to the outskirts of Gaziantep having entirely avoided the highway; however, we got to a point where it seemed unavoidable. We discussed what to do, looking at Google maps to see if there was an alternative. A couple of police officers stopped and started talking to us. We asked them if there was an alternative quite road into the city, but they couldn't help us. We asked if they could give us a lift in, to which they said the bike wouldn't fit, which I doubted.

Tired after a long day, we decided to cycle into the city on the road we had just come off. This proved to be a mistake as we were shortly hit by a car.

The road was not too busy and not too fast, so partly we were unlucky, but we also took too big a risk by cycling on it.

What happened was, a van started to join the road from a sliproad, but he didn't check the lane before joining. This meant I veered to the left to avoid him, which put me in one lane across. The car that was in that lane braked as hard as he could -- the brakes screeched for about five seconds, which felt like a very long time knowing that we were almost certain to be hit, and hit us the car did.

A concrete moat surrounds Gaziantep. X marks where we were hit, travelling east to west.

This was taken before we were hit -- the spot where we discussed what to do and had a conversation with the police officers. There was actually an interchange controlled by traffic lights not too far north of this interchange which would have been a much safer junction to enter the city in.

Luckily it was not a high speed impact. We both stood up pretty quickly and checked each other over and hugged, both knowing that it could have been a lot worse. The van stopped, the car that hit us stopped, and another car behind stopped.

We had about a five minute chat about what to do, all cars parked on the live lanes. The guys in the car that hit us were apologetic, but considering the circumstances I didn't really think it was their fault. They wanted to take the bike to the shop to fix it. I knew no shop could fix the buckled wheel. Instead, we asked if the van could give us a lift to a hotel. The driver phoned ahead, we put all our luggage and bike inside and headed off.

We got to the hotel and the owner and the van driver helped move all our bage and the bike inside. After checking in, MayLyn and I went to get something to eat. I was walking quite gingerly, as my lower back was sore.

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