Istanbul

The train to Turkey

The train to Istanbul was new and comfortable, although the only way to get any food was to ask the Turkish conductor for a sandwich, whereby he'd go into an unused cabin, warm a piece of bread up on a stove, cut it open and put one slice of cheese in, and ask for 2 euro. My cabin-mate for the journey was a Turk; an editor of a political magazine; and between the cheese sandwich and the wine and nuts my kind cabin-mate shared, dinner was reasonable.

Crossing the border involved being woken at 4am: "passports! Passports!" the train attendant was shouting. All the foreigners descended the train and out across the tracks to the customs office, where we stood around in the mild morning air, in the silence and darkness of this station in the countryside. We were called in one-by-one to pay the entrance fee. They prefer to have the payment in foreign currency, but having spent 2 euro on my cheese sandwich, I didn't have enough for the 10 Euro fee. "Ummm, 35 lira" says the guard. I dont know what exchange rate he was using, but in any case, after about an hour at the border, we continued onwards to Istanbul.


Stopped at the border


Even here you can get Duty free...


The final stop is still on the European side of Istanbul, so it was after a short ferry journey that I finally set foot in Asia, 9 days after having left London.

Istanbul

One of the first things I noticed in Istanbul was the people; although there is some variation, compared to Greeks they are generally darker, in terms of skin, hair and eye colour. And being a Muslim country, mosques can be found everywhere; indeed, just near to my host's house there are 3, all calling at the same time at the time to pray; it's quite loud, although by the end of my time here I'd stopped noticing it so much. The most famous mosque in Istanbul is the Blue Mosque, and it was the first I entered (in my life). Compared to the cold hard inside of churches, Mosques are carpeted, and have wide open spaces for people to sit, kneel, and/or pray. After the chaos, noise, heat and bustle of the city outside, they provide a calm, quiet and welcome respite.


The large famous Blue Mosque


Praying inside the calm of a mosque

I quickly tired of following the tourist trail like a sheep, and I was very lucky that my host took me round some of the lesser-known pats of the city, pointing out little details, churches and areas, including on more than one occasion the locations of past bomb-blasts and subsequent renovations. Of all my time in Istanbul, this little tour, and all the mosques, were my favourite parts. That and the food. Turkish tea and Baklava are reasons enough to come to Turkey...


Turkish tea

Leaving Istanbul

Unfortunately I am leaving Istanbul without collecting a key document: my Iranian visa. Recent developments have led to the UK foreign office advising against "all but essential" travel to Iran. This has two results: it worries family members, and it invalidates my insurance. So it is now highly unlikely that I am going.

This is very disappointing. Of all the countries I will travel through, it is Iran that I was most interested in. What you see on TV is only the worst of what Iran has to offer as a country. Through the Iranians I've met; the books I've read; the travellers I've spoken to; the research I've done - there is a lot more to the country than most people are aware. The kindness and hospitality of ordinary Iranians is something I came across again and again in my research. The amount of history there; much of it pre-dating western events; is immense, and much is preserved. The rogue element within the country; the government; is not bothered by the average tourist, unless you're a reporter or there deliberately to cause trouble.

So not being able to go to Iran raises the question of where to go. Do I push through to Georgia and Armenia as planned, and then fly over to India? Or continue my overland theme down through Syria and Jordan to Egypt? Or take a ferry across the black sea to the Ukraine, and up to Russia? Or, after making my brief visit to the UK in a few weeks, do I make a new journey in a different direction? There is much to consider.

But while I think about that, I will push on South, continuing the semi-circle route around the Aegean sea...