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Summary:
Massive ride through wet and mud from Goreme to Adana via Mt Hasan and north Adana province mountain range.
Today's ride was actually adventure touring. Everything up until now could have been accomplished on any road weapon of your choice. I had essentially a plan of hitting the twisties through the mountains on the way down south to Adana. In final plans the morning of the ride I realised I'd be able to go over the saddle between Mt Kucuk Hasan, a large mountain I'd seen off in the distance on Day 2 when refueling in Aksaray, and the next mountain to the southeast. This was the highest elevation I'd get to on the trip, around 2200m.
The day started off with a gentle burble through placid farmlands south of Capadocia. This is another area which would be fun just to pootle around in for a couple of days with no particular destination in mind. You get the feeling that everything goes at half the pace of life back home and the people are harmless if not some of the nicest you've ever met. There were very few cars so I felt no danger in taking in the views left and right whilst riding along slowly, feeling like I had a whole country to myself and the roads were all mine alone.
Within an hour though this would change. Whenever you go up high there are always obvious changes in the landscape. The lushness of the lowlands disappears. The trees look smaller and older somehow. There is more exposed rock, the clouds are closer. The air felt damp and chilly. The towns were spaced further apart and as the peak of Mt Hasan Kucuk loomed closer, clouds began to move in and obscure it. In my perusal of both Google Maps and OpenStreetMap I found that there was a track up over the aforementioned saddle, I just had to go to Kitrelli and head southwest on it. I only knew it was gravel from OpenStreetMap - Google Maps has it marked as a thinner white line but this does not indicate at least to me that it's going to be a gravel road. Anyway, so it was with a bit of trepidation that I set off from Kitrelli after telling my friends where I was heading via Whatsapp just as a precaution. I didn't know quite how high, or cold I'd get but the fact that the mountains either side where covered in snow did give me pause.
Turns out it was a fairly well maintained dirt road the whole 20km to Ulukisla on the south side. I had a great feeling up there of being out of the way of things, exploring. I found a turn off from the track which strangely had a sign for Ulukisla - I wonder if someone had deliberately changed it to misdirect people. This is because it soon ran out in an area which looked like where you'd set up a basecamp if you were going to attempt a climb of Mt Hasan Kucuk. I also discovered a whole lot of stone huts! It was quite a scene seeing these, the same size as the one's you'd see on the Balcony Walk in the shadow of Jebel Shams in Oman. There were quite a lot more here though, all seemed to be about half the size of caravans and made of grey, lichen covered granite. It was a great compliment to an already awesome view and added an eery edge to the scene with me wondering what people had done up here in this windswept remote place. Was this an army barracks at the top of the world for an old civilisation? A monastic mountain retreat? There were no signs, nothing to aid a tourist's understanding. This made it feel all the more special for finding.
The next memorable part of this leg was after the turn onto the Kamisly Koyu Yolu road in north Adana province. Here I would start the journey east through the mountains on my way down to Adana. One issue. One the new O-21 toll road down through the valley from Eminlik to Gokbez it had begun to rain. This is fine on a nice new tarmac road with gentle curves and gradients. Now I was confronted with some challenging dirt roads, much less well maintained than that near Mt Hasan and often covered in large puddles, some spanning the road. I had slowed to 30km/h and begun to think how much time the remaining 120km to Adana was going to take if it was all dirt. With thoughts of various Top Gear Challenges and the voice of a particularly spirited captain of the Kuwait Offshore Sailing Club amidst telling one of his many and possibly tall tales of adventure in my mind, I pressed on.
Today was turning into a broad test of my motorcycle riding craft. I had covered some dirt already and on the way down the O-21 had dealt with some fairly strong crosswinds. These hit me as I came out of the big cuttings they'd made in the mountains for the highway and basically had me riding at an angle good enough to take a reasonably sharp corner. It must have looked funny to cars behind me seeing how leaned over I was. I'll also mention here how it was handling the wind gusts of trucks. If you pass them at a decent clip you'll first come across a general messy wash about 20m off the back of the big ones. As you draw along side there's a vacuum effect as you find yourself drawn in close, followed by a final shove outwards as you come into the wind again that the truck is pushing. It's quite an effect to maneuvre yourself through and can be fun once you know what to anticipate. Basically I just hunch through the backwash, take a lean left next to the truck - and you can be quite strong shoving yourself across, then poke your head right as you finally pass the truck. It's fun feeling the bike fight you but having control over it.
Anyway, back to creeping along the country back roads of Turkey at a fifth of the speed. It started out kind of fun, but soon I was soaked through and a bit disappointed at times that I was missing all the nice scenery for having to focus so hard on the road. I had a couple of nice encounters with locals who helped me shelter from the rain. Essentially the road followed a river gorge and this widened out at one point to a logging yard with a shed. A couple of new roads were being built down either side of the valley and I thought I was supposed to go down that direction. A surprised local pulled me up no doubt issuing stern instructions in Turkish not to go that way but I was still trusting my reading of the map at that point and told him in sign language and with a self assured thumbs up that I knew where I was going. With a wink he headed off. Finding that my marker on the GPS kept showing me as nowhere near where I was supposed to go, I bailed for the sawmill shed to wait out the rain for a bit and maybe get some directions. There were two very friendly, concerned men there who quickly brought me into a little room with a very hot wood stove and had me sit down to get some warmth into me and maybe dry something out. That would have taken all night but it was so nice of them to at least make the gesture and give me a place to rest for a bit. My pants started steaming from the heat of the fire which gave us something to laugh about. After 10 minutes or so the rain died down, they pointed me in the right direction and off I went up the hill.
It was a relief to be able to keep going as I was beginning to think I might have to throw in the towel and either stay the night somewhere like that shed or ride back out and just head into Adana on the O-21 like a sensible person. Probably because of the confidence of having a GPS and a decent map (so long as I read it right!) I plodded on, secretly happy with myself that I was sticking to my crazy, most-indirect-as-possible route despite all that the day was throwing at me. It is a pretty risky 35km stretch of road to go on here because it's so thin and trafficked by many logging trucks, including the odd semi-trailer! I have no idea how they'd get past each other if one met another coming the other way. There were many instances where the road was starting to subside with some treacherous drops into the river gorge below. I'm actually glad I was on a bike as it made it easier to squeeze past them.
The next meeting with a helpful stranger was at a Shell fuel station after I had attempted to take a shortcut east on Gerdibi Koyu Yolu road to Yagbasan and then Kabasakal. After coming to Sivisli after the 35km stretch of dirt before it had finally turned into tarmac again - but this shortcut sent me through more dirt with more puddles the width of the road. I had begun to develop some confidence now but at the same time I was aware I needed to make headway if I was to get to Adana before dark. Seeing a sign in Yagbasan for a petrol station in Kicak was just the excuse I needed to abandon my heroism for a bit and refuel. I certainly didn't want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere having to push the damn thing. Anyway inevitably I got talking with the kid manning the pump and showed him my what was now looking like a pretty stupid route in all this rain. With a laugh he brought me into his little office - again with a much coveted warm fire! - and showed me a more direct southerly route straight down to Adana. At that point I realised there would be no shame in using that and after a bit more resting took off. It was a welcome sight coming down out of the clouds and seeing some flatter straighter roads, but this all makes me want to go back again in good weather for some fun tearing along without fear of slipping off at every corner.
I'm happy I pushed through despite the conditions and experienced a bit of what this bike is capable of. It was built for going off road (although can more than keep up with traffic on the hightway too!) and I was happy to do that without stacking it. I was left feeling though that a lighter bike would be better for this type of thing. There was a moment where I nearly dropped it and felt all its weight holding it up with my right leg. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold it and it would be a pain to lift on my own. Another close call was getting the front wheel in a rut caused by erosion - luckily at slow speed so I was able to control things, but this would very quickly get you unstuck if faster. In the end I was exposed to some fairly tame offroading today but with the rain it was made much more challenging as I couldn't trust the surface for long stretches and had to be extra careful given I was on my own. It was similar to the rainy day riding through the Cardomoms in western Cambodia, a ride which ended up being more challenging in fact due to completing about 60km in the dark with no headlight and having to ride in front of a friend to use their light. I also had a crash that day too... the rest of the story is here (scroll down toward middle). So I guess I can say I'm starting to get a bit of offroading experience especially given the trips I did with Adventure Tourers Sunny Coast group in 2012 as well.
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