Eastern Turkey

Hello from Eastern Turkey, we’re in Dogubayazit near the Iranian border at the moment, a large dusty town not worth stopping in except for internet access – but with a Turkish keyboard – arrrrgg.

It’s been a bit of a slog through Turkey the last few days. The roads are mad at times – main roads suddenly come to an end where they have dug them up and not bothered replacing them – last night we did a bone juddering 20km in a cloud of dust and dirt.

Yesterday morning we visited Mt Nemrut where there are several ancient statues at the top of a perilous road. It took us about an hour to drive up the 2,000m mountain in 1st gear and another hour to get down again – with smoke coming from the breaks as they started to overheat. Was it wise in the rally car? Probably not.

We had our first flat tyre this morning, on the way down yet another mountain road. The car was too low to get the jack under at the side, so we had to jack it from the front, this didn’t give us enough height though – we ended up flagging down a lorry and with 2 jacks managed to get it sorted.