Well this is very sad: Chai?

March 2, 2014

The next morning I said tearful goodbyes to Hanna and watched her disappear on the bus back to Istanbul. It was all so terribly sad and premature. She was supposed to have cycled with me all the way to Georgia, to Armenia, and it felt like she had only just arrived, and now she was gone. I knew it was for the best though. Her health was the most important thing, the only thing that really mattered. But it was still all so terribly, terribly sad. I walked alone back to my talking bicycle and looked at it and opened my mouth to speak. "Don't start!" it said.

I'm usually quite happy cycling on my own (that's why I spend most of my life doing it) but cycling alone feels horrible just after cycling with someone. Suddenly you notice that they aren't there. There was no longer a small blonde girl to talk to and to laugh at my bad jokes, no longer men staring lustfully at something just behind me, no longer anyone to stroke the hair of as they lay asleep in the middle of the road. There was only me and my stupid bicycle.

I was heading south again, having decided that I did just about have time to get to Cappadocia now after all. There was a very long climb up (Hanna would have loved this) to the town of Keskin where I decided to stop and check my emails. I didn't really need to check my emails but I thought it would distract me and the Internet cafe's in Turkey cost peanuts. I stopped and asked a couple of men in the street and they pointed me the way, but first it was absolutely obligatory for me to come with them and have a tea at the tea-house across the street. It was quite a warm day and there were several men sitting drinking tea at tables outside. "Chai? Chai? Chai! Chai!" they all said to me. "Seriously guys, don't you have anything better to do?" I said back.

But this was one of the better tea drinking sessions, as there was a young man named Ahmed who actually spoke relatively good English (as he explained, he wanted to be a captain on a ship, so needed to speak English.) Ahmed therefore acted as a translator and I sat and fielded questions from the men who were very interested in my journey. The best thing was that the interrogation soon veered away from the obvious questions that I get sick of answering every day, and moved on to more interesting and obscure ones, such as "aren't you afraid of snakes?"

By the way, if it looks like my pants are falling down its only because Hanna stole the cord for them. Thanks Hanna!

This was the local madman and for no apparent reason he sat away from the rest of us, next to my bike. "I don't know why," said Ahmed, "I think he just likes your bike."

When I had finished my first tea another was immediately placed before me and after I had drunk that I decided I had better make a dash for the Internet cafe before any more was forthcoming. I was followed inside by some young boys that had been loitering at the tea-house, watching me intently, and who had followed me here. One of them had been in the photo above and asked if I could show him the picture on the computer. I told him I would send it to him on Facebook and gave him the keyboard to type in his name so I could add him as a friend. His eyes lit up and he had a massive smile at the prospect of being my friend. Once he had done this the next boy stepped up with equal delight to the computer to write his name in so that he could be my friend. By the time they had all done this I had enough young boys as friends on Facebook that I would probably have to do some serious explaining to the police.

I left the Internet cafe still surrounded by a crowd and almost forgot to pay the 17 cents it had cost me. I said "bye-bye" to all the kids and cycled off, soon realising that I should have taken a photo with all of them and put that on Facebook for them. But the road out of town was uphill and I looked back and saw that several of them were running after me anyway. So I stopped and took their picture with the bike. They were such great kids. When I carried on again, still they ran after me. I was reminded of a passage in my favourite book 'On The Road' when Sal and Dean met some children in Mexico who ran after their car: 'They hated to see us go. For the longest time, as we mounted a straight pass, they waved and ran after us... "Ah, this breaks my heart!" cried Dean... "Would they follow the car all the way to Mexico City if we drove slow enough?"

"Yes," I said, for I knew.'

Talk about a pick-me-up!

Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 13,902 km (8,633 miles)

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