Category: overlanding

Coincidentally helping to build up a plantage and getting into a Kurdish family (May 2023)

My rush through Turkey continued and I reached a lake near the city of Batman. Not kidding, I went through it just because of the name which always reminds me of a Batman action figure my mother had glued some feather angel wings to the back and hung into a tree in our garden.

I just wanted to have a rest at this lake when a friendly guy came by and invited me to a barbeque. I accepted and had a funny meal with him and his friends supported by Google Translate.

After the meal I helped them building up their plantage and we had a lot of fun.

In the evening they insisted that I have to join them for dinner at the home of one of them. It was super nice and very interesting and traditional.

Back in Turkey in the amazing Aladaglar National Park (May 2023)

I made it back to the mainland! But had only about three weeks to pass Turkey and reach Georgia because of the way the Turkish border control did calculate my visa days (see the last post).

I had kept in touch with Cindy and she had recommended that I visit the Aladaglar National Park and said the mountains there were amazing. And she was absolutely right!

Cyprus was super nice but to see again some real mountains was just mind-blowing. I loved it and the paid campsite in the national park had a super nice location.

I met July and Philip from Germany. They just traveled the Arabian peninsula in the camper van and were about to go east to Georgia. The same direction I was about to take. They told me that they would like to climb a mountain about 5000 meters high. Maybe in Turkey or maybe in Georgia. I never went up that far and loved the idea.