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Our journey into Turkey was fairly smooth, customs seemed fairly friendly relaxed and happy to see us trough. We had a but of a sketchy moment when they realised we didn't have Bulgarian road tax on the way out. This for us, was just a short walk to the kiosk on the inward crossing to purchase the relevant tax disk for a week stay for 5 euro. A local man in the car in front told me that had we had been stopped in a town by local police we would have been in big trouble. This is what may explain the huge numbers of police all across Bulgaria stopping cars in towns and on service station slip roads. We had successfully evaded every single blockade en route and lucky 100euro fines other rallyists had been caught with. Not so bad. Luck more than anything though. It turns out that the Bulgarian government is clamping down on road tax evasion in a big way as it used to be easy to buy black market road tax off the mafia. Ok Boris. Not that any gets spent on keeping the road up to scratch or cutting the verges or anything.
Right enough of Bulgaria. Istanbul is our first main event. The gateway to Europe/Asia and all that jazz. For us we had a fairly hard ride in. The city has 12 million citizens and every one of them thinks they are Formula One drivers. I mean Bulgarians and Romanians were pretty tasty overtakers but istnabul is just brilliant. It's fight your corner every inch of the way. Toot or be tooted at. Get out of my lane you b******. With nearly all 12 million driving at the same time on roads that are bowls of spaghetti chucked on the floor it's a great game and one I immensely enjoyed playing.
So finally we were here. The end of stage one 2500 miles and the 6th country for by trip. No problems so far and a much needed rest day for some sightseeing and R&R.
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