MO2W #46 - Camping in a secret Cave in Cappadocia

A few days ago I had reached Cappadocia and I found myself very lucky to be here during winter. Somehow everything looks just magical while it's covered in a white soft coat of snow and those crazy rock formations add plenty more craziness to the whole scenario. The area is huge and mostly famous for the hot air balloons flying during the sunrise. The last two days I stayed in a hostel to warm up, have a shower and charge my electronics. So I had spent two days here in the cave hostel and I've got a message from a fellow bike traveler from Italy who told me about an abandoned cave with a stove inside and he sent me the location. I'm going to try to find it and the plan is to stay there one more night and enjoy tomorrow the sunrise with the balloons from this spot. I just got a little bit lost for a second because it's really hard to actually see the roads. That's the road I'm gonna take now. Wow, deep snow. I have to follow this way and somewhere down there it should be then the cave. Eventually after following that snowy path which I believed could be a trail, I really found that little secret abandoned cave home. And look at this, that's awesome. A small room, maybe three by five meter with an oven, an armchair and a couch. That's all you need. And since it was still minus six degrees celsius outside I was very keen on making this place a little warm. I want to crank up this stove but for this I need wood. I didn't see something obvious yet but here a lot of bushes. Look at this small cave here, let's check it out. Holy maloney, who would pass for this? Wow, it's literally just about my size. Okay, let's keep searching for wood. It's perfect to start. Ouch. Okay, I have no idea how I should get up tomorrow here because it's quite steep, covered in snow. It's gonna be difficult. Where is wood? Okay, I think I just have to search all these little bushes if there's some dead wood around. Something here? No, just keep roaming around with open eyes and hope to find some decent wood. Here we go. Dead wood, dead wood, everywhere dead wood. Perfect. That was a really good find now. It's gonna bring me through the whole night nice and warm in this cave. I can dry up my shoes because they're already wet again. And yeah, awesome. I went past a hovershoe. Come on, come on, come on. You can do it if you really want. No, it's dead. I need more of the very fine stuff. I'll use this, that's perfect. Oh yes, three to one go. There we go. Now the oven was on and since that small stuff wouldn't last that long, I now had to cut the bigger ones into smaller pieces. The thing is, I don't carry a saw, but I did buy a quite big knife back in Tbilisi in Georgia, which I haven't used yet. And now it's basically the best tool I had on me to get this sort of job done. After the stove was on for a while, I could even put my pot on top of it and use that heat to slowly cook my dinner. And as it got dark, I stopped filming and started taking photos of this beautiful place and went then to sleep. For breakfast, I warmed up my leftovers from last night's dinner and added my last two eggs for additional nutrition and energy. And that also saved me a solid 120 gram of weight that I otherwise would have to carry. Well, actually, technically my total weight wouldn't change until I would go to the toilet, but I love to believe that the sophisticated weight distribution enabled me to get up this hill. I think I made it back to the trail. It should be easier, but it was really hot now. Once back on the road, I kept pedaling west towards Konya. So I just took it out of Nevshe here and I found something on the road. A potato. Awesome. I'm just gonna peel it and gonna eat it. Here's another one. Lucky days. You could certainly say like, what the ****, dude? Why do you pick up potatoes from the street? But I think, why not? I mean, if I peel them, they will be perfectly fine. And it's like a fridge out here, every night, the temperatures were still dropping far below freezing. And because of the snow, most things would just take more time. Also, my toes started to feel a little bit different, and I kinda knew that it was just about to get frostbites if I wouldn't change something. Also, my time until I would have to reach home again was also coming closer. So I started to accept the fact that I have to use other means of transportation in order to make it back in time and to avoid frostbites. Therefore, my plan was to make it to Konya and from there see what I can do. So we've got 50 kilometers to Konya left and the sun is going down. I'm not sure if I will try to find a spot to camp or if I will push all the way to Konya today. So if I make it today, I might make it perfectly in time to catch a bus, but I'm not sure. Let's see. And just as I was hoping, I arrived in Konya and could directly hop on a bus towards Istanbul to save my toes and time. I made it. I arrived in Istanbul and I'm absolutely lost. The sheer amount and complexity of roads paired with just too many cars make it really hard to cross Istanbul by bike. Even though the bus dropped me off a few kilometers west of the Bosporus, it still took me a full day to actually get out and the traffic just didn't get less busy. And some moments came even close to a near-death experience like this one. But 50 kilometers later, I finally made it out of the dense traffic and spent the night on a public beach. So I'm just about 50 kilometers, 60 kilometers west of the center of Istanbul. And now going to Çorlu, which is another 50 kilometers from here and I've got a friend who's got a bike shop, so let's go. It's such a nice weather here. Compared to before, it feels like summer for me almost. 50 kilometers to Çorlu and there we'll finally have a shower again after 11 days now. It's kind of an average by now. Don't tell it anyone. 17 kilometers from here to Çorlu and I've noticed that my bottom bracket is just coming loose. Unlucky me, the guy I'm visiting is Meli and he's got a bike shop, so no problem at all. I already texted him if he has got the right bottom bracket and he has, so perfect. Oh yes, I'm pretty much now in Çorlu and now I just need to find my friend's place. And it's absolutely beautiful with the sunset and birds. Wow, look at this. I'm not sure if you can see it in a small camera, probably not. Wow, there's probably a few hundred birds. Here we go. That's his shop. The owner of the shop is Meli, who himself did quite a fair amount of cycle touring and actually he's got his own brand for touring bikes. What you see here is the first bike frame he designed, but right now he's working on a more modern geometry. Since Çorlu is pretty much near Istanbul, I can only recommend visiting his shop in case you are on your way to Asia, coming from Europe and you need to get something fixed. He really knows his stuff and is just a cool dude. So after fixing my bottom bracket, we just went to the next door to the neighbor's shop, gave my bike a well-deserved shower and then I was ready to hit the road again. Also I had to go because I'm allergic to cats, deadly allergic. I think it's going to take me one or two days to recover from the allergic reaction to cats. They're like kryptonite to me. My eyes were swelling a little bit. I was sneezing my soul out of my body. I started to get an asthma reaction basically from the cats. They have the power to kill me. But anyways, I think it's going to be fine in a few days. Let's go to Tekirdag, Ipsala and then Greece. So and just in front of Greece aka Yunanistan, this episode will come to an end and with my last words, I'd love to point out how much of a great country is Turkey for cycle touring. You should know that Turkish people are among the most welcoming and generous people that I've ever encountered. Thanks for watching and you know the drill, subscribe, like and leave a comment. Cheers!