Moztly Harmless

Phew! Only half a year has passed since I returned from Mosambique, my photos from the trip are ready to be scrutinized by your eyes. It wasn't supposed to take that long, but it did. And in the meantime I've visited Jordan and India fairly extensively, so now I have two more mountains of photos to conquer. It's a good think I rather enjoy editing photos.


This trip was more rushed than I usually prefer it to be, because I chose to join a typical (not too) organized overland truck tour. With a purpose-built vehicle and fairly seasoned guides, this part of Africa was all too easy to visit. I escaped from the rather dull program as often as I could, and most of these photos were taken on the "side trips" I made on my own.

We started out by driving from Johannesburg into Swaziland, the tiny country stuck between South Africa and Mozambique. Our camp was in Hlane National Park, known for its many predators. Supposedly we were safe there, as our camp was surrounded by an electric fence. This worried me slightly, since there was no electricity whatsoever available inside the camp. But we were fine nevertheless. And compared to the 120 or so members of the Johannesburg police force who were killed in 2009, we were absolutely fine.

I won't blog about the animals I found there. Look at the photos instead.

We continued into Mozambique, which made a noticeable difference. Strange sights kept popping up. In Maputo they were building a football stadium, paid for by money borrowed from the Chinese, as always eager to befriend countries with more natural resources than they can handle. Originally the stadium was meant to be used in connection with the 2010 World Cup tournament taking place in Southern Africa. I'm eager to find out in what decade it will be finished.

Mozambique has lots of unemployed people. The strategy seems to be that instead of having workers get things done, let's have time take care of business on its own. When it comes to camouflaging planes and helicopters, this works very well. By leaving the flying machines out in the open at an airbase just outside the capital, they've succeeded in hiding them all inside a wide selection of bushes and weeds. Well done, Mozambique Air Force!

Little work was done at the petrol stations as well. People were employed there, but they had precious little to sell. On a good day there would be petrol on offer, at other times the selection was limited to yoghurt, old bread, engine oil and soap. Which makes sense, since most of the petrol stations were owned by PetrolMoc, and I assume Moc is short for "Mock-up".


Mozambique is huge and the roads are horrible, so even with more than a week in the country, it wasn't possible to make our way more than about a quarter up along the coast. We camped on beaches and ate mostly food we had brought from South Africa. There's not much that can be easily and reliably bought in Mozambique. If you choose to eat what you can find there, chances are you'll have bananas and mangos for breakfast and grilled barracuda for lunch and dinner each and every day. Unless you become a meal, yourself, that is, which is quite possible, thanks to a healthy population of crocodiles.

My final verdict is that I found Mozambique to be a pleasant country to visit. However, if you're the kind of person who prefers a certain minimum of comfort and reliability, you might want to wait 5-10 years before you go there. There are many beautiful spots, but sort of difficult to get around unless you have your own transportation. Also, the country is haunted by cyclones, which may mean that anything of any size, up to and including small towns, can suddenly be gone. When you choose when to go, choose wisely!

The return to Johannesburg went via some days of safaris in the Kruger Park in South Africa. There's almost no way that can fail, unless you go there for the shopping and hiking in the mountains. What you'll find is a tranquile, savannah-like land, where easily driven roads takes you between a huge number of different species of animals. I had a great time, and I'd also like to recommend a visit to the Moholoholo Rehab Centre just outside the gates of the Kruger Park, where you can have close encounters with birds and animals desperately in need of some care, medical assistance and/or psychiatrists. Just make sure you don't play too wildly with the young rhino they have!


This is how thick your skin should be before you head for Mozambique.

Good luck, and happy trails!

Bjørn

Going easter than usual this Easter

I'm about to thoroughly break a promise.

Once upon a time, towards the end of the last millennium, I promised myself never to return to New Delhi. Guess what? I'm soon on my way to that very city and Rajasthan again! And I don't even know what I'm going there fore. Turkish Airlines just waved a cheap ticket in front of me, and I willingly grabbed it. Oh well. It could be worse. I think.


The last time I was there, it was mainly the conditions at the airport that made me move on to Kathmandu rather quickly. True, I was less than a seasoned traveler back then. Today I would probably cope better (we'll see!), but looking back at my notes from my visit, I can see why I hated the place.

Take the toilets, for instance. It was the first time in my life that I had to use a lavatory with no door to hide behind while doing my business there. But if you have to, you have to, and I really, really had to.

It went fairly well, until I got to the part where one wipes one's ass. Inexperienced as I was, I had brought no toilet paper, and there certainly was none of the kind available inside my stall either. This was when the missing doors became a great feature. I waved my hand, and immediately some guy with a roll of toilet paper appeared. He sold me what I craved, at one rupee per wipe. Expensive, but well worth it, I thought.

I also remember that the toilets had muzak. You know those birthday cards that play something quite, but not entirely unlike a melody when you open them? Well, they had one of those hanging on the wall by the sinks there. It played the theme from Lambada. Six seconds long, over and over again. Which was quite fitting, as few people spent more than six seconds in the airport restrooms. Even though three men were hard at working changing batteries in the Lambada card and keeping the mirrors and sinks nice and shining, no one ever went anywhere near the toilets to clean them, apparently.

I saw few other passengers at the airport, but hundreds of people worked there, doing nothing. They just walked around, looking rather gloomy. Every now and then someone would come up to me and say "Don't worry, sahib Torrissen". This kind of freaked me out a little bit. First, why did they know my name, and second, what was there not to worry about? Did they pity me for being about to enter the accident-prone Indian air space? I still don't know.

Oh, and the food was awful. Golden Fried chicken turned out to taste decidedly fishy. And not smoked salmon-fishy. Not at all.

Fortunately, everything should be in perfect order there now. The last thing I did before leaving, was to put eight full pages of my best ideas for improving the airport into a suggestion box hanging on the wall there.

On my way to New Delhi I'll get to spend an evening and a morning rediscovering Istanbul. That's the price I have to pay to get a ticket to India at roughly the same price as a ticket to my hometown in Northern Norway would come to.


I'm looking forward to an alternative and extended Easter in Hindu-land, although this might turn into an a lot more hot experience than I normally would want.


I'll try to keep you posted here about my Indian early summer during the next few weeks.

See you later!

Good Heavens, Sort Of

Time has behaved in strange ways lately. Since I returned from Africa in December I've been busy working, enduring Christmas, chatted about the cold weather and declining camel rides in Jordan, but now I've pulled myself together and finished the first photo journal from my time in the Drakensberg and Lesotho.

If you click your way through the photos, you'll join an African maths exam, you'll get to see how I get almost so lost that I need to be rescued and die of shame, you'll meet good olf Falkor and you get to see that blizzards can be encountered even in the middle of an African summer. Oh, and there are of course, like always, some fascinating bugs to see.

Maybe I'll post some stories from this trip here later, but the short of it is that the mountains of Southern Africa are well worth visiting.

Oh well. Now I just have to work my way through the piles of photos from Mozambique and the Middle East.

I'll be back.

Bjørn

Indiana Bjørn and the Last Crusade so far

In the series "Bjørn goes to hot places only to freeze his butt off", it's now time for a trip to Jordan. Or Horrordan, as it apparently is known as to most people I have told about my fresh travel plans the last couple of days. At work I was instructed to write down in more detail than usual exactly what I've been working on lately, in case, eh..., someone else will have to finish it.

Let them worry. I'm confident I'll be fine. The only worry I have is that it seems as if I shall have to spend a few days at a five star hotel. This is not something I was designed for. What will I do if the mattresses are comfortable?! What if the cleaning people thinks my backpack is just a piece of garbage? What if I go for a hike in my room and I get lost? How embarrassing!

(Photo borrowed from the Creative Commons, by C. Chou)
Apart from that, Jordan will please me, I'm sure. I'm already thoroughly impressed by how the people there, being surrounded by Israelis, Irakis, Syrians and Saudi-Arabians, haven't been at war for several decades now. And the stuff I'm going there for, mainly mountains, looks just great!

Well, apart from the fact that they offer freezing temperatures at night during this part of the year, that is. That's okay. If it gets really cold, I can just stay inside and pretend I'm out exploring the country, by watching movies like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (sounds like a feel-good movie!), Red Planet and Mission to Mars (I suppose this means the landscape may be slightly alien?) and a large number of action movies that needed spectacular scenery to lead the attention away from a missing story.

Ground Zero of my journey will most likely be Petra, the mountain town that isn't a mountain town because it's located in the mountains, but because it's built INTO the mountains! You've probably seen photos of it already. If not, I can pretty much guarantee that when I return, I will force you to look at some.


Well, as soon as I've finished the pile of photos from Africa, that is. It's right her next to me as I write, only half done... I'm sorry. In the meantime, you can look at my Turkey photos one more time. Lots of Turkish people do! No less than nine of my photos from my time in Turkey last summer have been voted to be "Featured Photos" on the Turkish Wikipedia. Like the one above. How nice of them! #8D)

There you go. Now you know where you won't find me the next week or so.

Enjoy your February!

Bjørn

Sad stuff?

We've spent another decade!

I'm not quite convinced that we spent it in an optimal and sensible way. I don't mean that we should always be sensible, but I really think that we, the people of the planet that I have now traveled at length, should have achieved more.

Granted, I could also have contributed a lot more than I did. I made some Web pages that I am quite happy with, and I'm sure they put a decent amount of money in the pockets of the shareholders of the company I work for. Also, I made a book that surprisingly many have thanked me for taking the time to write. Many of my photos have also made the world a tiny bit better, through making some people smile and by enlightening others, mainly on Wikipedia.

So that's something. It's enough, at least, to make me look forward to the 2010s! Maybe then we can get more done? Good things, I mean.

A good start in doing so may be to sit down and think some things through thoroughly. I won't be much inspiration for you, I'm afraid, but I've found some people that will! Here are some videos I really think you and your mind will benefit from watching. Enjoy!

(Some videos take some time to get to the point. Bear with them.)

1. It's okay to be weird, and it's okay to be fascinated by weirdness.
Here's a great example of that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8z7f7a2Pk

2. Smile to the world, and the world will smile back at you.
This goes in particular for certain people, like the guy in the middle here, wearing yellow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Y4keqTV6w

If you need proof, take a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iys86OcXPY8

3. Consider everything you've learnt in life, and use it before it's too late.
Try to make your wisdom available to others as well. Randy Pausch did. He got pancreatic cancer fairly early in life, but he managed to give a last lecture about life and dreams before he passed away. Watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

4. Help those who need it, as much as you can.
This will make both you and others happy. I dare you to not be moved by watching what happened to this guy who struggled with singing the national anthem before the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhcZRFcjbhw

5. Love something or someone.
If you're not already doing this, consider finding someone or something to care more for than anything else. It may end sooner or later, and then it's not much fun, but it will probably be worth the effort anyway. Just make sure you dedicate enough time to do it thoroughly. Here's a cute story with unbearably sad music, about a girl and her dog. Many questions and many answers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGQVX8iGbgk

6. Always end with style!
Here's a group of old people singing of joy even though they're going to die fairly soon. And the most beautiful voice comes from the guy that looks the least healthy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_n0zvoHlVk
(Backup link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asnQFYyZd8c)

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Bjørn

Back to Life - Back to Reality

Yes, I know. It's been awfully quiet here. Although there has been plenty to report from my recent trip to Southern Africa, I simply couldn't find a practical way to keep in touch with you. Partially because I've been moving around a lot, but mainly because the Internet, as you know it, just hasn't found its way yet to those places I visited.

I'm back in Norway now, where I'm currently converting a great many pages of handwritten notes into captions and stories that you may want to read. As usual, the mountain of photos I have to conquer is a mighty one, so this may take a while. I'll enjoy every second of it.


For now, here's a brief summary of how I spent the last four weeks:

I flew to Johannesburg and immediately escaped to Pretoria, only to find that nowadays it's called Tshwane instead. Or maybe not. They haven't quite decided yet. I repeated a long walk from my last visit there, and I think things have improved, security-wise. I didn't shit myself even once this time around. The closest I got to being physically attacked was when the woman at the tourist information office requested "Will you tell me where you're from, please?", and I apparently, quite rude, responded with "No way!".

Moving on, I had some good days in the Drakensberg and Lesotho. I managed to nearly kill myself only once. I went hiking near Sani Pass in dense fog when suddenly and for a few hours I only knew that I was in Africa, but not quite where in Africa. It could have been worse. I could have been surrounded by a blizzard instead of just fog. Incidentally, that's exactly what I got a few days later, when I ventured into a remote part of Lesotho. Heavy snow wasn't exactly what I had expected from Lesotho. Then again, in hindsight I can safely say the same about pretty much everything I did and saw in Lesotho. It's a funny place.

After leaving behind all my warm clothes with the people of Lesotho, who need them a lot more than I did for the rest of my trip, I went back to Johannesburg. There I joined an overland tour to head into Mozambique, another funny place. I slept in a tent in the wilderness. The camp had no electricity, yet the only thing separating me from lions, elephants and whatnots there was a supposedly electrical fence. Hmmm...


We traveled up the coast, the beaches steadily increasing in beauty the further north we went. In Vilanculo I went on an epic journey to mail some postcards. I celebrated having completed that mission by sailing around the Basaruto Islands in a dhow. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), large crocodiles live on those islands. Some natives kept me safely away from those ravenous beasts, and I rewarded them richly for their services. (They now have enough party balloons to last them a decade, I swear.)

On my way back to reality I made a stop in the famous Kruger park in South Africa for a few days of safaris and game drives. Unfortunately I did not find any new species this time around. I did discover a couple of new rivers, though. They both ran with gusto through my tent during a most intense nocturnal thunderstorm.

That's it, although I now see that I left out a couple of highlights. Anyway, I'm still alive, and that's all I really wanted to say.

Oh, and since I've been gone, my photos have found their way into the annual report of the Gumala aboriginals (here), and there's a good chance my iguana photo ends up on an Iceland CD cover in the near future. I'm thrilled, obviously!

Bird of Passportage

Norway isn't exactly at its best right now, so I decided to head south for a while. The best option that popped up was a ticket to Johannesburg (about €650 roundtrip). While I'm not too fond of that city, it's a great base for seeking out some interesting places.

So tomorrow I fly away, ready to experience South African scares, Lesotho's mountains and the whale sharks that are cruising up and down the coast of Mozambique. I'll give the Matekane airport a miss, though...

Photo from Wikipedia.
I haven't booked anything yet, but chances are that I will join a group of travelers in order to get more done in the four weeks I have. That's partially because it's simply safer that way. African predators of all kinds prefer to single out individuals as their victims. I'll make sure I'm neither the easiest prey nor the slowest runner among those I join.

Also, while I often choose hard rather than easy when I travel, that rule doesn't apply to my journeys in Africa. Traveling there is a different game from traveling anywhere else. There's hard, and then there's African hard. Crossing a border is not necessarily just a straight-forward procedure there. Public transportation is available, but there may be no schedule for it. You may sit around and wait for it to appear for long periods of time. And then you have to wait some more for it to continue.

Finally, Africa is huge, and the highlights usually have wide stretches of emptiness between them. You can go in a vehicle that goes straight there while almost certainly not breaking down on the way, or you can get there by getting on and off a number of minibuses that may or may not go in your intended direction, while possibly carrying a selection of new and exciting strains of viruses.

This time, I will confess to probably choosing easy. Mind you, that is African easy we're talking about.

Hopefully, I'll get to elaborate on that in future blog entries.

Sala kahle!

Quirky Turkey

It's been a long and winding road to get here, but finally my Turkey photos are ready for you! Now, I have to apologize for there being as many as 152 of them, but let's just consider that an indication of how many different great experiences I had on this trip!


Being done with such a huge pile of photos and also having completed my paid work for this year, I'm left feeling kind of empty. Now what? Well, I'll probably dedicate a couple of days to improving some Turkey-related Wikipedia articles. Then I'll go for a walk in my neighbourhood and discover that winter has indeed forcefully arrived in Norway. If that doesn't put me on a plane to somewhere warmer, I shall be much surprised.

I'll keep you posted.


Oh, and that's a hummingbird hawk-moth. They're cool.

Bjørn

En Route to Nemrut

Charmed by the fairy chimneys and cozy cliffs of Kappadokya, I was ready to take on more hostile mountains. I got on a night bus in Göreme, continuing to the east. The bus attendant served me tea and cookies, and everything was just great. Then the engine exploded.

The explosion threw me straight onto another bus, sort of. Apparently, as a foreigner I was too important to be left standing next to the road in the middle of the night. Another bus was waved down and convinced to let me get on it. I felt a bit bad, as the rest of the passengers on the Blown-up Express were left behind, but all in all I was quite happy to go.


Until we arrived in Malatya, that is. I don't know which worm-holes the new bus drove through, but we arrived at my destination a full three hours earlier than I had predicted, having taken all physical laws known to me into account. And let me tell you, Malatya at four in the morning is a quiet place! The only sound I heard at the bus station was my own silly chuckle when I saw the (sadly closed) ticket counter of the Findiklitoris tour company.

I could have slept there until dawn, I suppose, but I decided to just walk to the city centre instead. Surely it couldn't be far away.

An hour and a half later my walk had awoken many a Turk by activating the ever-present howling dogs on guard duty. But that was okay, as I had indeed found the centre of Malatya. It was still dark and quiet, though, so now I found a bench in a pavillion to get some sleep on.

After fifteen minutes of sweet dreams, someone woke me up by quite insistently shaking my shoulder around. No, it wasn't the police. In rural Turkey no crime goes on before morning prayer anyway, so there's no police around at night. Instead it was a man who somehow had spotted me arriving, who then had proceeded to make me a glass of tea, which he now offered to me. "It's much to cold to sleep on a bench in the park! Drink this and be warm!", he said.

Now, how is that for hospitality? True, I would rather sleep, but you can't really turn down a cup of tea offered in the middle of a cold night, can you? So I drank the tea, and it was good. Letting me pay a lira or two for his trouble was out of the question. After some non-sensical chatting I returned the empty glass and thanked him. The good Samaritan, or rather the good Malatian, disappeared into the night again.

And that was just the beginning! As the day came into being, I discovered that Malatya was full of friendly people. Apparently they don't get many visitors. As I walked around and watched the city come to life, I was pulled into ironmonger shops, shoe stores, hairdressers and fruit stalls. Wherever I came, I invariably was offered tea and apricots in a number of shapes and forms, including fresh, dried, jelly and cake. Maybe you wonder what will happen to a stomach when it's exposed to a diet like that? Well, I can inform you that apricots are probably capable of resolving any clogged up digestive system on this planet. I spent the latter part of the morning in the company of a toilet that I had to hose down properly before I could leave it.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah, yes. The people of Malatya were extremely kind to me. Even the woman in the supermarket where I stocked up for my journey into the mountains. I didn't expect her to say much, me being a man and all, but she did inquire at length about where I had come from and why. A growing line of customers just waited smiling and patiently for us to finish our conversation, and they all said "Welcome to Malatya" to me.

I can definitely recommend Malatya if you're into small-talk. Unfortunately there's not much to see or do in the city itself, so you're likely to soon leave for Mount Nemrut. Your easiest option is to start out by going to the VIP Cafe. Kemal, a man with a most striking and amusing appearance, will be there from early morning till late in the day. The part he plays in this world is to sell a package of Nemrut transportation, meals and accommodation to independent travelers. He's not very good at it, but since there are basically no other options, he's still succeeding fairly well.


So thanks to him, by midday I was in a mini-bus on my way south into deep valleys with winding roads leading up to what may be Central Turkey's greatest cultural and natural sight.

If you've never heard about Nemruth, don't feel bad. Neither had I before I went there. My expectations weren't high, but I suspected that I might be in for a treat. And boy, was I!

Just over 2000 years ago, crazy King Antiochus decided to impress the gods of the day by building an enormous tomb up there, probably for himself. A dozen or so huge statues of bearded gods, eagles, lions and more. Eager Muslim believers in iconoclasm have of course long ago done their duty and defaced the statues so as not to offend their god, so the heads and the bodies have been separated quite dramatically. The size of both bodies and heads are still impressive, and it's not hard to imagine what the place might have looked like originally.


More impressive still is that on the top of the mountain, between the two rows of giant statues, there's a man-made mountain! Roughly 50 metres tall and 150 metres in diameter, it's huge, especially for being a mountain. Sure, the pyramids of Egypt are taller, but there at least they didn't have to carry the rocks up a 2000 metres tall mountain before they could start building.


Despite the scale of everything, the place disappeared from common knowledge for a long time. Sure, local shepherds must have known it and just not thought it necessary to mention it to anyone, but to the rest of mankind, it just didn't exist until 1881. Then a German engineer on a mission to build a railway went up the mountain to have a look around. I can only imagine him running around up there shouting "Donnerwetter! Du scheisst mich an!" for a long time.

Not much has happened up there ever since. There's only one tiny motel up there, some 45 minutes of walk away. The roads are not bad, but they are so full of crazy turns that it'll take you a while to drive up there. During the winter the place can be completely inaccessible for weeks as the roads are covered in deep snow.


I really think you should go there if you ever have the chance. It comes with the same feeling I've had at places like Luxor in Egypt and Machu Picchu in Peru. It's ancient, it's enormous, it's hard to understand the efforts the people building it must have put into it. What were they thinking?!

If you're into hiking, don't just spend an afternoon and a morning here! That's what most visitors do; see the sunset and the sunrise and then move on. The mountains around Nemrut offer great views and an insight into what life is like for the people who live there throughout the year. The guys at Günes Motel will let you add another night or two at a good rate (40 liras for a single room in 2009), and that may include three decent meals per day, whether you want them or not.

The hiking here may be a bit rough, so bring really, really good hiking shoes! There are some trails you can follow, but thanks to the tall peaks around you, you won't get lost, so feel free to explore! The views you may stumble upon are breathtaking!


I'll soon be done with sorting my photos from Turkey this summer, so in a few days you can see some more of what's on offer in this area. I think you'll like what you're going to see!

Güle, güle!

Cappadocia Calling

Today I'll blog about a place that some of you may actually have heard of! Five hours of pleasant landscape outside the bus windows took me from Ankara and into the most picturesque mountains of Central Turkey. I stayed in the village of Göreme in Cappadocia, and this was the view I came for:


"Matchless times!" seemed to be the slogan of a five star hotel nearby, and I agree with what they so eagerly are trying to say. (And I think they mean that the place can offer visitors a good time that will be hard to match, and certainly not that Göreme is a smoke-free zone. Far from it.)

Hiking in the many valleys and canyons and across the mountain plateaus of the area is a delight. Rocks here come in colours rarely seen by hikers. While the landscape is rugged, it still has a most feminine feel to it. There's a lot of pink, and there's a Rose Valley, a Red Valley, a Pigeon Valley and a Love Valley. Hello Kitty fans would adore the place!

And as it happens, that's exactly what they do. Following extensive coverage of Turkey in connection with a football match between Turkey and South Korea in the World Cup a few years ago, more than a hundred thousand Korean tourists visit Turkey every year. A great many of them are young women, donning cute t-shirts, giant Paris Hilton sun-glasses and facial expressions that leave little doubt that Göreme is something else than Seoul.

It's fascinating, really, how the South Koreans tourists outnumbered those of other nations (except for Turkey, obviously) almost anywhere I went on this trip. Both nations were occupied by the Mongols once upon a time, so I suppose they have some common history, but still, these are two countries FAR apart in almost every way other than that.

Anyway, hiking is the thing to do out of Göreme, and if you put a few hours of leg-work into it, you'll soon be on your own and out of the way of the masses of tourists. Your day *will* start with tourists all around you, though. You'll be awoken by burst of loud thunder, and if you look outside your window, you might see this:


One morning I counted about 30 hot-air balloons taking short-term visitors to Cappadocia to their heaven and back. This makes Göreme the most intense ballooning destionation in the world. I'd say you should save your balloon money for more solitary sunrise safaris in Kenya or South Africa instead. The best views of Cappadocia can be had on foot anyway!

Wherever you walk, you'll find interesting things to see. This area has been used by people for thousands of years now to hide away from the rest of the world and live peacefully and relatively well. They used to build their houses into the mountains, as the walls are hard, but inside it's very soft, almost sand-like rock.

There are churches, homes and pigeon holes everywhere you go. Sometimes you will find caves with great works of art on the walls, just there for you to admire. There's of course a museum for it as well, but it's much more interesting to explore and discover stuff on your own.

In addition to the ancient views, you can see a living community at work. Like here:

Sun-dried apricots is a local specialty, and in the right season you'll find them all over the place. There are also grapes, apples, citrons and a others of Natures delicacies found in small patches of farmland between the mountains and the "fairy chimneys" Cappadocia is so famous for.

I can't recommend doing any of the day tours running out of Göreme. They all seemed to be designed by some official government tourist bureau, offering exactly the same schedule. While the stops might be fairly interesting, since all the tours do the same stops at the same times, they're all full of tourists and desperate sellers of souvenirs. The rest of the day I suppose it's all quiet... Rent a car and do it on your own, starting a couple of hours before or after the tours!

In Göreme I met Kylie the Kiwi. She's a most energetic and positive woman on her way home to New Zealand from London. Going by bicycle! Next time someone calls me crazy for walking a few hundred kilometres from Oslo to Jotunheimen or whatever, I'll just point them towards Kylie and reclaim my own relative sanity!

Oh well. I've got just over a thousand photos from the trip left to edit (I started at about four thousand!), so I'd better get back to that.

You'll be hearing from me!