The Big 300

 

After leaving Australia at 265k we finally ticked over the 300k mark in Turkey. The car has been running great although does require your standard maintenance that is performed before most trips as you would expect, as the roads we normally try to drive add a ton of wear and tear.

 

We start our blog by leaving the camp site and spending a night in Sivas, I had a work meeting to attend so I had to spend most of my time in cell reception, hence mainly highway and staying in town. Now I normally have issue with underground parking due to clearance, we sit at 2.37M high while. Long story short they tell me the roof is 5 meter clearance, I’ll let the photo explain…

I doubt thats 5 meters..

 

The next day I enjoy a great breakfast and start making miles, mainly hanging around on secondary highways that are practically empty allow for a calm day, I even stop at a chesma to refill my water jugs and have a quick wash as the water is cool and refreshing and I will be spending the night so arriving feeling clean after a hot day in the car is always nice.

The main stop tonight is a campsite at Emli Valley, A lovely place tucked away in some steep mountains, but before arriving I tick over that magical 300k. A stop for photos is mandatory.

Pullin into the campsite it is busy, there is a solitary tree for shade left and no even ground so I park and grab a rock to start leveling the car, the camp site manager walks up and between hand signals I finally understand he is asking if I want access beyond the locked gate, due to having a 4wd. You bet I do. This gets me an extra 5kms into the mountains where there is no one except some shepherds.  The wind is blowing a bit and I worry it will like this all night so I tuck right into the trees for protection, and set up for my last night on the road.

 

Not an hour later 2-300 sheep come through the campsite, I had already talked with 1 local who was back there with a tractor collecting sheep for market and we got along quite well, so I was quite surprised, but our friendly view of each other was about to end abruptly as their dogs that protect the flock found garbage, 3 bags! Full of diapers and stuff that a family clearly left behind, well, who do you blame if there is only 1 person in sight. Its worth adding, turkey has a severe rubbish issue and most will chuck it out their car window without a second thought. He comes from around the back of the paj and slams his walking stick onto the table almost breaking it. I jump straight out of my chair and there is some extremely colourful language exchanged and a few aggressive steps towards him.  I have no idea what he was saying but I arced up enough he backed off.  The rubbish was not mine, yet he felt it fair to blame me and get physically aggressive, so I will stand up for myself.

He finally left with the tractor and all was good with the world again and calm. I enjoy the sunset form camp and get ready to cook some chicken kebab with saffron flavouring.  I luck out and the wind calms down and I enjoy a few drinks around my small cooking fire before calling it a night, tomorrow will be a 600ish km day to get home.

 

Overall we covered almost 3900kms and experienced over 70kms worth of altitude change. I was also able to eek out almost 1100kms from the dual tanks, averaging about 10.7L per 100.

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