Konya

August 17, 2023

A day that started out well but ended up being somewhat deflating. But more about that later.

We slept well enough under the pine trees last night and were on the road soon after six thirty. First of all we had to finish the climb that we had started on leaving tge restaurant yesterday afternoon. We only had a bit over a hundred meters of climbing to do and it maxed out at 1560 meters. Then we had a most enjoyable downhill taking us to the Altınapa Reservoir. From here we had a shorter but steeper climb before barreling down into Konya itself.p

It was thirty eight degrees again today. Hard to imagine the need for snow chains.

Not too far from the top of the second climb.

As we reached the outskirts of the city we joined a cycle path that woukd take us all the way to the center of town. It was an incredibly easy ride into a city if kver a million people.

We hadn't booked any accommodation because we have worked out that it is significantly cheaper to simply rock up and ask for a room than to use any of the online booking sites. In any case, Booking.com is blocked in Turkey for Turkish hotels. We found ourselves at the Lotus Otel, just around the corner of the Mevlana museum, which we plan to visit tomorrow.

The main objective this afternoon, was to get to the local immigration office to try and extend our evisas. But we first stopped at one of the multitude of restaurants in the vicinity of our hotel selling etliemek. Etliemek is like a pizza but elongated. It's a dish that originated in Konya but has spread to other parts of Turkey as well.

Ex use the strange colour shift. We were under a red umbrella that screwed up the white balance.

Then we headed down to the immigration office. To cut a long story short, they could not help us because all they really deal with is processing thousands of the more than five million Syrian refugees that have streamed into Turkey over the past few years. The immigration office was packed with people who had far more pressing needs than ours.

It took us an hour or two to regain our composure after that let down but at least we, unlike the refugees, do have options and the means to put those options into practice. Right now, with two weeks left on our visas, we think we will head for Kayseri, which also had a large influx of refugees, and try again there. If that is not successful we will catch a bus to the Georgian border. This will leave us with an extra few weeks to play with so we will be able to take a detour into Armenia. But first prize would be an extension to our visas!

Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 397 km (247 miles)

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