Day 125 to Dogubayazit, Turkey, 23km, 10,277 to date, 298m up,  1522m end. 

An uphill climb to the border.  The border crossing was slow but uneventful.  We are now into our final country of the tour, Turkey.

The morning pre-ride prep:

Another country, another currency, the Turkish Lira is called a Try, with 2.97 Try = $1US.  At the border, I needed to get some local currency, I managed to get 2.85 to the dollar, better than most others than changed money.  I expect a better rate in the bigger cities.

We were initially warned that in the area where we are staying tonight, there are some groups that are very unfriendly to tourists, so the plan was to camp on the grounds of a hotel away from everything, looking at Mt. Ararat.  We would be constrained to the hotel grounds whilst there.  But, then we heard last night that there was an uprising in the area between the PKK (The Kurdish Workers Party) and the Turkish Gov’t.   10 people killed.  There is a bit of detail on the  Anadolu Agency website. The article references wounded being taken to the Doğubeyazit hospital, that is the town we are just outside.  The area we are in is predominantly Kurdish.  So the decisions was taken that we would be bussed from the border to the hotel, we are staying in the hotel (it was specially opened for us as the tourist industry has totally collapsed in the area) and tomorrow we will be bussed directly to Kars.  Kars is outside the area that is predominantly Kurdish and outside the area of potential conflict.

The following was copied from another of the riders blogs (Steve’s):  I found another article about last night’s attack on the Hurriyet Daily News site, plus a few more details on the military response. This (relatively old) BBC article helps to put things into context a little, as does this Al Jazeera story about the recent removal of 24 democratically elected majors with suspected links to PKK, all of which paint a complex and unhappy picture.

Back to being a tourist: 

So far the views of Mt. Ararat have been blocked by clouds, maybe a clear view in the morning.  Since we have all day here, I considered going of a hike up Ararat, however I found out access is closed by the military.  No searching for really old wood bits.

Yesterday we had a long fast descent that had some tighter turns.  I had noticed that the road was a bit wet and from past experience have learned that a bit of rain when it hasn't rained for a long time is very very dangerous.  I slowed down but not without a bit of sliding around, luckily I had no troubles.  Unfortunately two of the riders weren't so lucky, both had only slight scrapes, however the bikes didn't fair so well.  One simply slid off the road and destroyed the front wheel of the bike.  The other rider went off the road a bit faster into a rock wall.  The bike (see below) is destroyed, he is very lucky to escape with only some minor scratches!