Bikepacking Turkey - Cultural Clash while cycling towards Middle East

I just realized that Turkey really is a country of contrast. Turkey the country of contrasts. When I entered Turkey by bike a couple of months ago, I wouldn't have thought to have such contrasting experiences. The cultural approach to some subjects or stuff is just so different. But let's start at the beginning. I'm Giant Yurio, a bicycle traveler exploring the world since 2021 and I'm currently on a mission to cross Turkey to reach Erzurum. Erzu what? Erzurum. What's so special about the city of Erzurum? Nothing actually if you ask me. But I'm on a mission to pick up my visa for Iran. 800 kilometers and we will start in one of the most touristic areas of Turkey. Cappadocia. And let's go. I would say we're idiots but yeah maybe we are. But that's also it's the adventure and we want to see the balloons tomorrow. From Cappadocia Timo and I decided to once more cycle together. We both want to go to Iran, we both have to pick up our visa in Erzurum and we both can be a pretty good team. So two solo travelers were now joining forces. Our first mission of the day was to restock our food. So we're grocery shopping and also we need coffee because we we didn't have any coffee left so we really need coffee. Oh yes I really don't function without coffee in the morning. After grocery shopping we just wanted to make a quick stop to buy some fruits. However we were unexpectedly invited for tea and in the end the guy gave us the fruits as a gift. Welcome to Turkey is what he said. Even though things like this happen every day I'm still amazed by Turkish hospitality. These invitations and extremely friendly people continue to astonish me each and every day. We're having a lunch break here and I still didn't check my petrol stop. Let's just see if this thing works again or not and hopefully we don't set this camp spot on fire. Back in Cappadocia I had significant problems with my stove and I spent a lot of time repairing it. A camp stove is a crucial item to have especially when you're addicted to coffee. I mean cold coffee can do the job as well it's just not the same kind of thing you know. Finally it was time to check the effectiveness of my work. Okay looks like this thing works again. Yes that meant hot coffee in the morning. As we were pretty lazy that day we just decided to call it a day and didn't cycle any further. And then once again in the middle of freaking nowhere we were treated with Turkish hospitality. We decided to stay here at this wonderful camp spot. We just moved like 50 meters and came to this field. Yeah so we spent the whole afternoon here, 22 kilometers. We were just about to set up our camp and then a farmer came and he just said hey hello and welcome and he asked us if we wanted to sleep here on the field and we said yes. And then he was like oh come come come over there there's a carpet. So we're having a wonderful carpet but we'll set up the tent anyway just because we don't want any crawling animals or snakes or spiders inside our sleeping bags. So at least the inner tent. Perfect spot to have breakfast. We made 30 kilometers, 30 or maybe 40 already and it's breakfast time now because we didn't have breakfast this morning. And so it's porridge and bananas, just the usual thing. Actually I didn't really talk about our mission. I have a very exciting announcement to make. Timo and I, we are on our way to Iran. It's only 1500 kilometers to the border of Iran and we have to pick up our visa in Erzurum which is a city in northern northeastern Turkey. And so we're on our way to Erzurum now. It's 700 kilometers. So 700 kilometers. We'll pick up the visa and then we will go to Georgia and Armenia to cross the border to Iran in Armenia. Unfortunately we can't go straight from Turkey to Armenia because the border is closed and you can't just pass through. So yeah now it's Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and then Iran. And for now the plan is just to go as far as we can get. As far as we can get. That was the plan. 700 kilometers to Erzurum and 1500 to the border of Iran. This meant pedaling, pedaling, pedaling each and every day. And sometimes you cannot plan what's gonna happen. Sometimes you just gotta take what you get. We ended up on this road. We wanted to leave this road to search for planes like we just want to leave this highway. There's just another highway like there's the next one. We don't like it. We'll just find a spot within the next five kilometers. We didn't find a spot to pitch the tent so it was time to turn on the lights to continue cycling until we finally managed to reach a place where we set up our camp and hit the sheets. This is a typical experience of waking up in Turkey in the middle of nowhere. Good night. Eight out of ten times we wake up to the sound of cows, sheep or dogs being led by their shepherd. It's quite peculiar because sometimes you cycle through modern cities and then suddenly at some point you feel like you've traveled back in time. We just stopped at this gas station to refill our petrol bottle. So the petrol station doesn't have any petrol. That's not an issue like not at all. We don't care. We're just gonna search for another petrol station. But like the picture over there like for us Europeans it's just uh uh it's bizarre because he was sitting there in an office chair like right next to to the the thing and yeah he was sitting there in this office chair, shoes off, smoking and just like chilling and living his life and for us like this would never ever happen. We just went grocery shopping and met a Turkish man from Germany and he just paid for all our groceries. It's uh yeah super impressive. We actually we don't know what to say. And then one thing led to another. We wanted to sit down for breakfast and the unexpected began to unfold. At first someone kindly handed us a massive plate of food. Three minutes later more people joined us, engaged in pleasant conversation. Then another man joined the group. He was from Syria and invited us to share coffee at his home. We accepted his invitation. Google Translate became our best friends helping us to bridge the language gap. When we mentioned our need to continue cycling to find a camp spot he offered us a place to stay for the night in his house. So we stayed and in the process we encountered what some might call a culture clash. I stayed with the women sharing their stories, preparing food and discussing their way from Syria to Turkey. We talked and shared our thoughts but at times I found myself uncertain about the proper etiquette. Everything felt unfamiliar to me. I didn't capture much footage as I wasn't allowed to film the women. I didn't see Timo throughout the entire day as men and women spent their time separately. Honestly I didn't quite get who was permitted to interact with the women and who was not but as a woman I had the privilege of their company. We were welcomed with open arms and our conversations were filled with mutual respect. Timo engaged in extensive discussions about religion and politics but to be honest I was hesitant to delve too deeply into those subjects fearing I might come across as impolite. It's important to meet each other on the same page. It's not necessary to share the same opinion but it is necessary to respect and tolerate each other even though we might not understand each other's way of thinking and living. I have to admit that when diving deeper into some subjects I found it challenging to maintain that respect but let's not dive too deep into that. Despite the differences we had a wonderful time marked by respect and tolerance. It was a truly eye-opening day. So we took off this morning after the invitation of the family of Syria and yeah actually I still have to process our time there because it's just the lifestyles or the cultural approach to some subjects or stuff is just so different. It was the first time in my life that I experienced something like that and that I had the chance to dive deep into a very different culture. Honestly this is exhausting as well but like it's very different to a physical exhaustion and yeah I really have to make up my mind and I have to think a lot and Tim and I we have to talk a lot and yeah it was wonderful. It was really wonderful and it was a day to learn, a day to see things, just a day to observe and get to know other cultures and people. As we continued our journey eastward we couldn't help but notice the growing difference between the modern urban areas and the rural regions. It was here in these remote regions that we encountered people living lives very differently compared to our own. Like once more I just realized that Turkey really is a country of contrast. A shepherd came with a horde of sheep. I don't know how many. How many? 200? 300? He, I don't know, he was staring at us as if he hasn't seen any people in his entire life and he was really confused when we were using google translate to have a conversation with him. He was so confused and he was staring at the phone and he didn't want to talk to the phone and yeah it's really, it's weird and we were trying to ask if he's out here with the sheep each and every day but he he didn't really answer but he asked us if we if we wanted to buy some sheep. Yeah we don't need any sheep. As if we're from two different planets. Like our life has nothing to do with his life and the other way around. It's really bizarre. The further east we go the less common it became to see women on the road and this shift left me with a strange feeling. Wearing my usual cycling shorts I began to feel out of place and my mindset started to change. With each passing kilometer to the east the number of women we encountered decreased. It was a massive contrast to what I was used to and I couldn't get rid of the feeling of being exposed as I was receiving a special attention. I didn't want to go anywhere anymore. I just wanted to stay in nature. Despite everyone being nice to us I felt out of place. I felt like an outsider in a world that was once familiar. I missed seeing women and men sharing cafes and I found myself wondering about where all the girls were. Most of the time we saw boys playing outdoors. Day by day the cultural differences and the influence of religion became more apparent. I was glad to have Timo by my side even though I didn't initially want this companionship because I started to feel dependent on Timo and that made me feel small and incapable. During these weeks I really was into reflection and introspection. It became clear that this trip was no longer about me. It was about the people we encountered along the way. It was about exploring the unfamiliar and trying to understand the perspectives of those in distant corners of the world. It was about learning from others and offering the gift of my time because most of the time time is all I had to give. In the end we successfully obtained our visas which was another milestone of the trip. So now we'll go further and further. We'll go as far as we can get. you