Turkish roads: Istanbul & cycling the rural north🇹🇷

In this video you’ll find us at the start of our 5 month journey through Europe on our bikes with the tent.
Before we head out cycling we stayed 5 days in Istanbul, strolling around in it’s steep narrow streets, being amazed by such variety of everything and eating our bellies full of delicious food.
After exploring this huge cosmopolitian city, the north of Turkey is as rural as it gets. Endless fields connected by small meandering roads leading to dusty old villages with older men drinking tea.

We encounter lots of stray dogs on our path, which to us is heartbreaking. Some look quite alright living in packs in the woods, others look so scruffy, missing patches of hair - we did buy sausages for them every day, but it feels like drops on a hot plate.

The people in Turkey are mostly very kind and warm and they’re probably also quite suprised to see us huffing and puffing through this remote area.
Farmers herding their small groups of cattle through the fields, people growing their own vegetables, horse drawn carts.
From day one we felt so welcome, even in the smallest village everyone greeted us with a smile, offering us tea. Life in this part of Turkey is very minimal and tranquil.

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00:00 Intro
00:20 Exploring Istanbul
06:10 Leaving Instanbul on the bike
09:42 Cycling the rural north of Turkey
12:48 Stray dogs everywhere
14:52 Saving a green friend
17:00 The border with Greece is getting close
17:55 Outro