A mountain of dogs
İ get back this travel feeling.
İsolated on this huge plateau, we are now pedaling on long straight road, the worned asphalt is shining like an old polished coins.
We haven't seen tourist for more than one week, when we are crossing this ignored villages, which are not on the map, some effervence around our bikes seems to show that foreigners are not common.
Here no site to visit, nothing else than petrol station, grocery or many small shops selling plastic can, pans, clothes peg, piping, rope, there is a lot of garages everywhere, some disused hotel in a state of neglect but still open, and a few pub but they only serve tea...
Somewhere betwheen Erzurum and Agri.
The two same questions are following on : ''where are you from ?'' and ''what s your name ?'': And nobody understands why a japanese girl (everybody thinks Estelle is japanese) and a beared guy ( me now), having a belgium flag (the flag of Anne Marie and Benjamin, the bike's owner) are french.
They don't neither understand why we are travelling by bike, here you are riding a bike when you can't by a moped or a motobike or a car, i mean everything with an engine which is noisy.
Having a bike looks quite degradant and because ''Europeans are rich'', '' why are they travelling like poor people ?''.
On our side, we do not understand many things :
why this 6 men stayed seated in a petrol station in the middle of nowwhere without talking or drinking tea for hours ?
Why so many turkish people seat close to the road waiting apparently for nothing ?
Why Mehmet, a guy met yesterday, stayed all day on his pillow kissing the Coran book and feeding a wondering dog ?
What is doing this old man with his umbrella and his three calfs (veals?) on the motorway ?
So we keep pedaling in the middle of this mountains of question marks.
We are wide eyed in front of this great landscape but we keep a lively eye on the sheperd dogs, that strange animals, mix betwheen a dog, a wolf and a hyena, hide behind the sheeps and are waiting for cyclotourist.
Hopefully, they are scared of our stones, but they are frightened.
We are now in Doyubayesi in front of the Mont Ararat (5165m the highest point of Turquie), tomoroww we take the road for İran, the border is about 40 km.
Ararat in the back