We leave Turkey today - what a fantastic country. We will definitely be back. We thought it was fitting to have the final photo of the boys with Ataturk: the father of modern Turkey. His image is everywhere. I need to read more about him, but so far have been quite taken with the fact that he had blue eyes.
We wandered around for ages looking for somewhere to have our last meal in Turkey, and stumbled across the famous Pudding Shop restaurant. I'd heard about it years ago - it used to be a hang out for overlanding hippies going from Europe to India. It's not so celebrated any more, and there was no sign of any hippies, but it's still cheap, the food was good, there's still a noticeboard for travellers to use and the waiters were very friendly. This is a picture of Turkish tea with cute little packets of single sugar cubes.
I love these Turkish taps! This one is inside the Blue Mosque (which is so beautiful) but they are everywhere - in hotels, on street fountains ... I saw some for sale and wish I bought some.
We arrived in Istanbul today! Here is the Blue Mosque. We're staying in an apartment in Aksaray and this afternoon went for a wander around the Grand Bazaar which we liked a lot but didn't buy anything - shopping in Istanbul is expensive!
Lots of fantastic old cars in Turkey including this Renault 12. There's an estate version too which is also fab. Lots of bright yellow ones although I didn't manage to get a photo of one.
We had a lovely day today. We're staying in Dalyan, which we're not hugely convinced by - too many (other) tourists - so went for a drive around some nearby places. We visited Akyaka, which we serendiptiouosly read about in the paper last weekend (see here). We had a trip up the river on a boat and the boys did some swimming in the river and then we headed back towards Dalyan to visit the hot springs and mud baths: totally brilliant.
We left our beloved Kabak today to head to a small town on a river: Dalyan. On the way we stopped at two sites of ancient Lycian cities - Pinara and Tloss. This is the theatre in Pinara, from about 550 BC. There were also some amazing rock tombs - I'll try and post a photo of those later.
Here is a guest post from Louie: "Today we went on a boat to butterfly valley with two new friends. On the way back we stoped near a waterfall and had some fun diving off the boat. On my first jump I was pretty scared but on the ones afterwards it was a lot of fun!"
We're in Kabak - a small beach near Oludeniz but a world away in terms of development. It's so beautiful here. We're staying in a place with little wooden huts about a five minute walk up the hill from the beach. We're daydreaming about making this a regular stop on our summer trips from India back to England.
We set off for the beach from Antalya today and after much discussion decided to take the (shorter) high road through the mountains, rather than the low road around the coast. It was really beautiful and mostly deserted. Where are all the people? We stopped for a picnic here and saw no one at all, nor any animals. After India, this takes some getting used to.
Four airports, two cities and fifteen hours later we arrived in Antalya in Turkey. We celebrated with a plate of delicious mezze. It's nice and cool here (relatively).
In all my trips to Chennai, I've barely managed to see anything of the city. All I ever see is the hotel, the office and the traffic. There's a beach apparently, but I haven't managed to get there yet.
Summer holidays and it's so hot in Delhi that it's hard to think of anything to do other than hole up in the air conditioning and go swimming. The boys have started building 'bases' in an attempt to pretend that they are somewhere other than in the flat.
We're all back in Delhi now, but here's one last photo of their trip. The boys are riding Jembo and Sunil is guiding them. Sunil and Jembo went with them for the whole three day trek ... the boys were very sad to say goodbye at the end.
One more from Bangkok and then I'll let the boys take the limelight again ... love these zebras. No sign of any protests by the way - it was very much business as usual as far as I could see. Even the curfew didn't seem to be being taken very seriously.
Meanwhile I'm in ... Bangkok (!) for a two day meeting. So lovely to be back there. I stayed in Siam Square but made it down to Sukhumwit one evening. It has changed a lot but it will always feel like coming home.
Ed and the boys are near McLeod Ganj where we went last June. This time they've walked / ridden up to a place called Triund, near the snow line - 2875 metres up.
While I have been continuing my ridiculous tour of Asian cities with a trip to Hyderabad, Ed and the boys have headed for the hills. Ed was very keen that I include this photo of a packet of crisps, perfectly illustrating the effects of high altitude and low pressure (?) on things packed lower down on the plains. Doubles as a pillow when times get tough.
This matchbox says 'My India' at the top (India written phonetically in Hindi, as opposed to the Hindi name for India - Bharat) and at the bottom, slightly oddly, it says 'big size' even though the matches are quite small.
Bike shop #12. He's selling various different types of fruit. I particularly like the umbrella attachment - very important given the 45 degree heat we've got at the moment.
