I am NEVER going to look at a kebab in the same way again.
Two h’s, one m and one k sum up Turkey - history, heat, melons and kebabs. This place has each in abundance.
On the first (history) - I hadn’t realised how much one event 100 years ago had so much relevance to our world today.
I’ve worked my way down the touristy west coast, via Gallipoli, and then headed inland to the centre of the country. Then I rode straight north to the Black Sea coast on Sunday, to make a fast ride to just short of the Georgian border today.
I picked this route because I wanted to mix things up a little bit - to see the history of Gallipoli, visit the ancient ruins of the west coast, cross the central steppe of the country and the famous Cappadocian landscape and then the mountainous landscape of the north. Needless to say I decided to stay away from the south, where all the trouble has been.
So - what have I learnt?
When it comes to history, I hadn’t realised how little I knew about the importance of Gallipoli to the Turks.
Think this is boring or not really relevant to you? Well think again. Look at the headlines this week to see the pivotal role the country is having in world affairs that impact on security back in the UK.
At school, we barely touched on the World War 1 campaign. For the Turks, it’s every bit as important today to their national identity as it is to the Aussies, or as winning World War 2 was to us Brits - perhaps even more so.
Why? It was a military victory that spawned the birth of modern Turkey, and led to the development of it’s own distinct style of politics that tries to balance the country’s often conservative, Islamic roots with a more modern, internationalist outlook.
You don’t have to drive far out of the cities or modern tourist resorts, to find villages where all the women wear headscarves and the village tavernas are a distinctly male-only zone.
Rarely has a country’s culture and geographical position at the crossroads between two continents been so clearly reflected in the division in its politics, even today.
What’s more, Turkey is a candidate country for the EU, something which the UK supports. And if it joins, you’re talking about a massive shift in the way Brussels will work to accommodate that.
As for the heat, melons and kebabs, the heat is a taste of things to come - in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the temperature will be 40 degrees plus. Though I do need to make sure I buy sun cream rather than tanning oil next time.
When it comes to hospitality, the last week has been a stream of offers of free melons and tea accompanied by broken English, a little bit of my awful German and a couple of words of Turkish, as I’ve passed through Turkey’s countryside, where the number of tractors more often than not outnumber the cars.
As for kebabs? Yeah. Had A LOT them. Time to move on to Georgia to try something new, methinks.