Distance: 136km
Elevation: 586m
Breakfast was at seven. I was the only guest. That is probably due to the Kurban Bayram festival, which keeps hotels mostly empty this time of year.
I was on the road by half past eight. The goal for the day was simple: stay outside for the night. The weather held well, blue sky from start to finish, and the cycling was easy. Rolling hills, a mix of highways and back roads, but nothing demanding. What continues to impress me is the infrastructure. Gas stations, shops, farmers selling their produce at the roadside. Starvation or dying of thirst would take real effort here. There were fewer fountains today than yesterday, though, and the surroundings felt a bit poorer overall.
The first thing I noticed leaving town was a kind of motorized farm carriage, engine sitting completely exposed at the front, no roof, no cabin. You start it by cranking a wheel by hand and sit in the open air while it moves. Farmers use it to transport everything that needs to go from A to B, including family members. It is loud, the way a tractor is loud but more so. The German word „Eintakter“ comes to mind. They are fun to watch. I also saw women driving tractors. One stood out: headscarf, sunglasses, cigarette in her mouth, driving full speed over a speed hump without flinching as the whole machine went airborne. I laughed out loud.
I had been noticing that women in traditional clothing generally did not look at me or greet me as I passed. I was starting to build a theory around that, something about cultural distance or unfamiliarity with a lone foreign cyclist, when a woman in traditional dress driving a trike overtook me and made it clear I should grab on so she could tow me. She said it all in Turkish obviously and I did not catch a word, but the meaning was obvious enough.
Her driving style was hard to predict, though, so I decided against holding on and sat in her wind shadow instead. We rode together like that for about ten kilometers. When she eventually turned off, we waved and that was that. It was a good reminder that a theory built on a few observations does not always survive contact with the next person you meet.
Due to a navigation error, I ended up in Bolvadin and stopped for lunch.
After my break, I felt the urge to call my wife Carolin to hear her gentle voice and see her beautiful face. I pulled over by the roadside and we had a short video call. While we were talking, a gentleman stopped on his scooter, apparently thinking I was in trouble. It turned out he spoke German. His name was Hatir. He was born in St. Gallen, Switzerland and had since moved to Turkey. The three of us ended up having a small conversation together, my wife on the screen, Hatir and me standing by the road. A few minutes later, another scooter driver passed and shouted a greeting in German. After ten years of touring, you can still have a first. That was one.
Something else happened during the day that I had not anticipated and had not experienced before in ten years on the road. It comes down to what belongs in a travel blog. When I started, my assumption was simple: this is my diary, I can write whatever I want. Over time I learned that more and more people do read it, and that it matters to them. That changed how I think about certain things.
One question I had asked myself before: what happens if I write something unflattering about a person and then meet them again? My answer to that has been to write about my own feelings and reactions, not to make character judgments, and then live with the consequences.
The political question is harder. I like talking about economics and the financial situation of people on the ground. It is one of the ways I connect with people, entrepreneur to entrepreneur. But on this tour I have had to learn that people here are sensitive to what I write, particularly if it could be read as critical of the government.
Someone I had met in the past days made the effort to translate the blog, read it, and then reach out asking me to delete a post. I did so immediately, no questions asked. Looking back, the mistake was mine. I had mixed factual background with a specific conversation in a way that made it look as if that person had said things they had not said. The lesson is clear: always separate contextual background from the words of actual people. No one should end up in trouble because of something I wrote. That is the one rule that overrides everything else.
So here is the background on the economic situation of Turkey as summarized by Claude:
Turkey has been dealing with very high inflation for several years, driven largely by a sharp fall in the value of the lira. The root cause is unconventional economic policy: President Erdogan held the view, against mainstream economic thinking, that high interest rates cause inflation rather than contain it, and for years he pressured the central bank to keep rates low and even cut them while inflation was rising. The result was a currency in freefall and prices that at their peak were rising at over eighty percent a year. After a severe economic crisis and elections in 2023, Erdogan reversed course and allowed the central bank to raise interest rates sharply, bringing in orthodox economists to manage the situation. Inflation has come down since then but remains high, and ordinary people are still feeling the effects in the cost of food, rent, and everyday goods.
Later in the afternoon I reached Aksehir and tried to buy a beer. That turned out to be more complicated than expected. There are very few shops that sell alcohol here, and the ones that appear on Google Maps have often disappeared. I eventually found one that also took bets on horse racing and MMA fights and had an atmosphere to match. When I asked the man behind the counter if I could also buy water, he looked at me as if I had said something deeply inappropriate. I bought the beer and found water somewhere else.
As I approached my spot for the night, the German „Spiesser“ in me took over and I felt I needed to ask permission before putting up the tent. Wild camping in an unknown field felt like disrespectful to me. I found a shop owner nearby and, with Google Translate working poorly and the connection dropping in and out, eventually managed to make him understand what I needed. He did not just point me somewhere. He had someone escort me to what turned out to be a kind of central gathering spot, but it was not quite what I had in mind. I went back to the shop owner and explained the misunderstanding, then asked if I could instead pitch my tent about three kilometers away in a field near the main road. He said yes without hesitation and, on top of that, handed me a drink free of charge for the night. A beautiful gesture of hospitality.
I found the spot through iOverlander. Someone had marked it, and the wind had already flattened the weeds down enough to make it workable. I set up the tent, washed up, and felt that particular kind of happiness that only comes in front of a tent at the end of a day. It is hard to explain to anyone who has not experienced it, but it is real and it is reliable.
It got chilly quickly and I put on several layers of clothing.
The night was not entirely smooth. I had developed a sore throat at some point during the day and woke up several times. You sleep lighter in a tent. That is just how it is, and you get used to it. By morning I felt rested enough.
Looking back at the day, the lessons are straightforward. Kind people turn up in unexpected places and in unexpected forms. What you write has consequences, and tiredness is not an excuse for carelessness. Nothing that goes into the blog should misrepresent someone or put them in an uncomfortable position. And asking for permission before camping is not just about avoiding trouble. It is a sign of respect, and it opens doors.
And … I reconfirmed that nothing beets staying outdoors on a sunny day.