Pilgrimage from Golbasi to Esenay 24/06/08

Life feels great when you wake to a beautiful view and this morning we are in luck. The view over the lake is wonderful :)

Having already reached the edge of town last night there are no restaurants nearby so we get straight into it. The walk into Ankara was pretty dry and desolate and I'm expecting the same this side. Knowing that I should have stocked up on food but some pilgrims never learn ;)

Still with around 10kms of highway before our turnoff I'm keeping my fingers crossed. After a couple of false alarms, service stations without restaurants, we find a hotel. It is a posh affair, claiming to be 4 star but there is no way we are passing it by...and we are not to be disappointed, the buffet is awesome. And all for 15 Lira. Bargain! :)

Sitting there gorging ourselves silly with a view over the lake we are in no hurry to get going. Sabine is fantasizing about spending the day lounging by the pool and considering I still have my blogs to catch up on it's sounding like a great idea. But for some reason we don't, and before we know it our feet are once again pounding away on the road.

Highway walking is always boring, especially when there is nothing to look at, After the lake disappears we are left with just that...nothing. It is already hot so keeping our heads down we slog it out. The good news is that even though we are still so close to Ankara the service station staff are still super friendly and keen to stop us for a tea and chat. It makes for slow going but keeps us entertained.

Passing another service station we hear a guy yelling behind us. Considering we are 50m away and have already consumed five or six cups of tea we do not feel the need to stop. The guy is persistent though and chases us down and with such enthusiasm we can't refuse :)

And lucky we made the effort! It turns out the worker had been sent out by one of the customers, Burhan, to bring us back. Burhan owns a trucking company and is getting a lift back to his hometown in one of his trucks. Having passed us a short while back he decided to wait for us here so he could buy us lunch. Champion!!! Cheers mate :)

Not long down the road we meet another wonderful character, Embulu. He invites us into his office for tea and also wants to buy us lunch. Explaining we just ate he settles on buying us an icecream instead :)

Finding our turnoff we are into hot, dry farmlands, but with little traffic the walking is nice. As the hours tick away it's looking like we will go hungry for the night, but then out of the blue a little village appears. As we pass the first houses a group of young girls spot us and almost die laughing. We could still hear their cackles as we locate the local market :) There are no restaurants in town so we stock up, the best thing is they have internet and let me plug in.

When I emerge the girls have decided to find out what these strange looking creatures that have just waked into their town are. Their English is great and from talking with Sabine while I was inside they seem to know more about who we are and what we are doing than I do :)

We continue walking for a few more kilometers and finding a great little camp site next to a stream call it a day. Too exhausted even for backgammon we crash out...