Last day in Turkey, in a hotel on the sea
It was a long and boring bus trip down from Canakkale to the seaside town of Dikili. There was a brief exciting moment where we stopped at a roadside diner and I tried to order an omlette and some yoghurt. The...
Christmas at Anzac Cove
Right now I’m sitting on a bus heading for Ayvalik, our last stop in Turkey. Tonight or tomorrow we jump on a ship bound for Greece. It’s the day after Christmas, and I couldn’t have guessed when...
We are masters of missing the train
The bus from Avanos dropped us back at the Kayseri bus terminal at 5pm. According to the touts who pounced on us as soon as we arrived, there was a train heading from Kayseri to Ankara at 6pm. We had 6km to get to...
Kayseri and Cappadocia
The couchsurfing idea in Tatvan didn’t work out, but we found we could spend the night at the train station in the waiting room. Not a problem for tough, independent (and poor) travelers like us. The only...
Dogubeyazit, Van, and Tatvan
It’s COLD!! After our near-death experience at the border, I was thinking that things couldn’t get much worse. But being raised in a country where it’s the middle of summer at Christmas time, and...
The EPIC three day tour of Iran!
It started off so well…..After my small scare at the Indian check-in counter, the guy happily printed out my two boarding passes – from India to UAE, then UAE to Iran. I was seated in seat 1D for both...
How to sneak into Iran
I applied for my Iranian visa when I first arrived in Delhi, on November 21. The embassy in Delhi told me to get an authorisation code from iranianvisa.com, which would be sent to the embassy, and then I’d...
Delhi takes me down, and Iran probably deports me
I’ve been in India for almost four months now, and I’ve eaten meat the whole time, drank the local water in Goa, and not been sick once. I finally arrived in Delhi, and one accidental sip of the tap...