Turkey Part 5: Istanbul (Hagia Sofia, Sultan Ahmed Mosque / 'The Blue Mosque', The Grand Bazaar)...and then home.

(...Continued from Turkey Part 4.)

With cold extremities and heavy hearts we finally turned up in Istanbul. Norm parked Roxy up in a car park on the sea-front and, after a bit of faffing around and scrambling about for rucksacks and belongings, everybody filed out of the back of the truck for hugs and kisses in the car park. (Stan Collymore was nowhere in sight!)

It was all pretty bizarre – as goodbyes always are: I’d got to know all of these people pretty well over the course of the year. We’d gone through trials and tribulations together and, to use a cliché, it had been an emotional rollercoaster: malaria, dengue, thieves, worms borrowing into your feet, Al Qaeda scares, riots, corrupt police, sky-diving, bungy-jumping, cage-diving with great white sharks, extreme heat, extreme cold…not to mention all sorts of dangerous wildlife - from petite and poisonous to big and bitey.

With all of this in mind, the goodbye was somewhat unceremonious…for some, the end had been a long time coming. People were eager to get home and as everybody walked off either on their own, in pairs or in threes to their individually booked accommodation, it became clear pretty quickly that our days as a travelling family were numbered.

That was the last I saw of Yoichi. As much as he pissed a lot of people (everybody) off at some point or other on the trip, at various points (when his stubbornness wouldn’t get in the way) I’d taken him under my wing. It was sad that you could be around somebody for that long but never really know them. It didn’t seem to faze him though: A few days later, I would leave a note with the receptionist at his hostel (Big Apple Hostel) explaining how to get hold of us and where to meet us to say goodbye to Berbs and the others, but his mind was elsewhere. He’d arranged to reconvene with a Japanese girl he’d met in Damascus and they were both due to stay at the Big Apple. I wasn’t about to get in the way of the moment when Yoichi’s self-confessed “challenge” of ten months of abstinence from “solitary romantic time”, finally found a release.  Banzaaaaaai!

Most of the others had a couple of days left of exploring Istanbul before their flights home, so before Son, Ish and I strolled off to our hostel, we made sure we got the names of everybody’s hostels.

It took a lot longer than we thought to find our hostel. Ok, it was a bit further out of the way than the hostels the other guys were staying at (on the street where we’d left them) but the whole process of finding it was exacerbated by the fact that, despite us being back in Europe, the local’s comprehension of English was limited. After a few red herrings, misunderstandings and wrong turns, we ended up at our hostel absolutely knackered after what seemed like an hour or more of walking uphill with all our gear…probably the most exercise we’d had in months.

No sooner had we settled in then it was time to get showered and go out and meet the rest of the gang for some grub and some booze as a kind of final blowout.

After a good feed, the booze continued to flow along with the stories of highlights and lowlights of the previous ten months. All this to the soothing sounds of a bubbling shisha pipe…(well, when not drowned out by the bass of the house and hip-hop that was thumping out of the large speakers).

Spirits were high and we were just getting into the swing of things when somebody suggested we hop across the road where there was better music, more girls, cheaper booze and a better atmosphere in general. Disappointingly, the chosen venue failed to deliver on all of these promises but we carried on puffing the peace pipe and drinking undeterred.

After one drink too many, our numbers began to dwindle and those still left behind moved on to the karaoke bar next door. Before I went to join them, I said my goodbye to Marjane – who was taking the truck off to a workshop out of town. I thanked him for everything he did for us over the course of the trip. The guy’s a year younger than me and was already on his 7^th year in Africa and his second Trans Africa trip. He’s a qualified carpenter, skilled driver, resourceful mechanic and on top of all of that, was ultimately responsible for all of us reprobates and had to put up with our crap for ten months. Legend.

As Marjane’s silhouette disappeared in the distance I reluctantly joined Dan, Berbs, Ish and Elisa in the karaoke bar. No sooner had I entered then it was time I made a hasty retreat: the largely overweight and sweaty local patrons started thrusting the microphone in the faces of unsuspecting newcomers. I think Dan was in the middle of “Summer of ‘69” as I left…

Another day went by and it was time to say more goodbyes…Spencer and Allison left on the 7^th Jan, as did Berbs…and Marjane’s trusty Homeless side-kick (Kyle) left us to join him too. Kyle’s adventure wasn’t quite over though: him and Marjane were aiming to work on the truck before starting their drive through Europe and finishing up in Spain where the next Ultimate Trans Africa trip would start.

Now it was just Gab. Dan, Ish, Son, Elisa, Kim and I. With Kyle gone, Kimbo was without her partner in crime so she came and joined Ish, Son and I in our hostel for a couple of nights.

Son and Gab were next to leave (from memory, I think they both left on the 8^th Jan). Before Son left, she treated Ish and I to a meal at a Mexican restaurant, we’d kept passing with a curious glance over the previous few days.

Now that Gab had returned home, there was another damsel in distress (Elisa) without her other half. With Son gone too, there was a spare bed in our room again…so it was now Elisa, Kimbo, Ish and I in a room with Dan in another hostel relatively nearby.

During the dying days of our trip, we busied ourselves strolling the grounds of the awe-inspiring mosques and museums (particularly the Hagia Sofia and the ‘Sultan Ahmed’ or ‘Blue’ Mosque); drinking coffee in whatever Bohemian wee coffee shop we could find (or failing that, a Starbucks); gorging ourselves on kebabs and Pide and exploring the Grand Bazaar where we would barter for last-minute souvenirs. (The latter comes highly recommended.)

By Jan 10^th, it was Just Ish, Dan and I left…the last three in Istanbul. We spent the afternoon together before one last Efes (Turkish beer) on a roofed terraced bar with spectacular views of the minarets of the Hagia Sophia - the multi-coloured spot-lights showing them off in all their beauty. A good time to reflect.

I said goodbye to Ish and Dan that night – despite Ish staying in the same place as me, he was up and out early in the morning and we both knew an early wake-up didn’t need to be endured by both of us.

On Tuesday 11^th Jan, I was on my own with just my thoughts for most of the morning until my taxi arrived to take me to the airport. It’s fair to say that I did Istanbul a bit of a dis-service as all I could think about was home. I wasn’t particularly homesick…I was just road-weary…. Tired of living out of the same backpack; wearing the same old, stinking, sun-scorched, starched, faded and stained clothes; tired of moving on every couple of days;  As a result, I really didn’t see as much of Istanbul as I should have done.

11^th January happened to be both my mum’s and Lara’s birthday and I had planned all along to come back and surprise them both on that day. Whilst I’d been away, my little bro, Elliott ‘Wormboy’ Kennedy had passed his driving test so I’d arranged for him to pick me up from the airport. I didn’t know that my dad had organized a birthday meal for my mum and, with no real excuse for leaving the table mid-way through, the only justifiable alibi Wormboy could conjure up was “I have to go home. I need a dump and can’t go in public toilets!”

Wormboy was waiting for me in the arrivals hall and we gave each other the big brotherly embrace that a year apart deserved.  15 minutes later, a surreal feeling past over me as we rolled up to the front door of my parents’ place. I’d figured as much would happen: the whole African experience was so different to everyday life in Guernsey that it didn’t even feel like the last year had been real.

As I walked through the front door, I was overwhelmed with feelings. I was sad as I was all too aware of the symbolism involved in crossing the threshold of my parents’ home: My African odyssey was well and truly over. I was also anxious, nervous and excited about seeing my family after so long. On the drive home, Wormboy had confided that he’d had the same feelings of nervousness when waiting for me in the arrivals hall at Guernsey airport.

Feigned or otherwise (evidently brothers tell their girlfriends who tell their sisters who tell their mums…!), everybody seemed suitably surprised to see me. The only member of the Kennedy Clan missing for my homecoming was Morgan (aka Big Mo). It soon transpired that just a week prior to my return, he’d left on his own travelling adventure. So whilst I finally put down my laptop and put this blog to rest, I’ll leave you in the safe hands of my bro. He recounts his travelling tales over land from Berlin to Russia, China and then South East Asia in his blog here: 


http://wisteriaboys.blogspot.com

Home in one piece.

AK

Turkey Part 4: Cannakale, Eceabat, The Dardanelles, ANZAC Cove & Gallipoli

(...Continued from Turkey Part 3.)

On Monday 3^rd January, we had a long drive day from Selcuk to Eceabat in the Cannakale Province of Turkey.  The drive included a short ferry crossing which took us across the Dardanelles from the town of Cannakale to Eceabat on the other side. After seeing so much of Africa and dipping our toes temporarily in Asia, we were now back in Europe (with the Dardanelles serving as a divide between the Asian and European parts of Turkey).

It was dark and cold when we arrived in Eceabat and it seemed that as we’d journeyed north towards the European winter, everywhere we went we were taking the weather with us. Ironic then, that the hostel we were staying at in Eceabat was called ‘Crowded House’. As the name suggests (and like ANZ Guesthouse in Selcuk), this guesthouse too seemed to cater to the Antipodean fraternity…. but with good reason.

Eceabat is the closest town to ‘ANZAC Cove’ and the battlefields of Gallipoli. If you’re not too hot on world history or just an ignoramous (like me) you may not know much about this place other that it spawned a classic movie featuring a young Mel Gibson and an awesome retro electro soundtrack provided by Jean-Michel Jarre.

Old school movies aside, Gallipoli and ANZAC Cove were the site of one the most tragic stories to come out of World War I. Unfortunate navigation and bad timing compounded catastrophic strategy and left the majority of the Australian and New Zealand troops involved in this campaign as little more than cannon fodder.

The Battle of Gallipoli was the first major battle fought by the ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’ (ANZAC) and to quote Wikipedia “is often considered to mark the birth of national consciousness in both of these countries.” Furthermore. “Anzac Day (25th April) remains the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in Australia and New Zealand, surpassing Armistice Day /Remembrance Day.”

So, after a quiet first evening in Eceabat, we set off early the following day and an English-speaking guide accompanied us in the back of the truck ‘til we got to the site now known as Anzac Cove – where the Anzac troops landed on 25^th April 1915.

Here everybody stood in silence listening to our expert guide explain the story behind the chaos: how the Dardanelles formed a supply route to Russia; how the British wanted to support the Russian efforts on the Eastern Front to relieve pressure on the Western one; how an Allied naval attack had failed; how the Aussie and Kiwi troops had been on training exercises in Egypt and were therefore perfectly placed to provide the infantry needed for a second attempt at the campaign; that this was the first real battle in the war for both countries; that chaos ensued after the commanding officers were either killed or removed from the field with injuries…What was planned as a swift attack took over 8 months and had over 20,000 troops occupying an area of land totaling no more than ¾ of a square mile.

Everybody found a time and space for themselves as they strolled around the cemeteries, reading the epitaphs and looking for an age or even a name that they could identify with. The whole morning was made even more eerily somber by a solar eclipse.

From the Cove, Marjane drove Roxy (with us and the guide in the back) up to the top of the headland, beyond a prominent landmark known as ‘The Sphynx’ and to the cemetery and memorial at ‘Lone Pine’. We then drove further up the hill along a road – which our guide soon pointed out marked the boundary between the Anzac trenches and the Ottoman ones. We stopped the truck on the roadside and got out to explore the still intact trenches – unbelievably, the road was probably less than 10 metres across – which meant the opposing forces frontlines were close enough to hear each other talking. When our guide overheard us noting this, he detailed stories in which the two enemy forces that had fought so fiercely on this very spot, also used to exchange cigarettes and food rations by throwing them from trench to trench. Supposedly unwanted SPAM used to get launched the Ottoman’s way by the Anzac troops…and the Ottomans would launch it straight back…it seems they were all hungry, but not that hungry. Yoichi would have disapproved (private joke you’d only get if you’ve been reading the whole blog!).

Our guide was undoubtedly a knowledgeable chap and the stories he told were nothing short of fascinating: the two bodies of enemy fighters discovered in either a brotherly embrace or a hand-to-hand fight to the death where both and neither were victorious; the fact that in the summer, you could dive off the shore and invariably surface again with a rusty bayonet or other war artifact; how for the entire 8 months of fighting, there was only ever one day of ceasefire allowed…and that was to remove the fetid, putrid and bloated carcasses of the fallen as the smell had become too overpowering in the heart of the summer.

Finally, he told us of the famous command uttered by Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal (the commander of the Ottoman 57^th Infantry Regiment) “I do not order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can come forward and take our places.” (Subsequently, the entire 57^th Regiment died defending their part of the Gallipoli peninsula. As a mark of respect, there is now no 57^th regiment in the modern Turkish army.)

The Allied Forces had under-estimated this Turkish resilience that was typical of the whole campaign. In all, approximately 23,000 troops (from both sides) were killed or wounded in the landings at Anzac Cove. The Gallipoli Campaign in its entirety claimed the lives of over 250,000 troops from both sides of the enemy lines.

After a fascinating - if not sobering - morning, reality hit home that I was in a very privileged position and had spent the last ten months on a trip of a lifetime…and it was now coming to an end. It was January 4^th and we were three days away from our final stop-off in Istanbul.

As such, people were using that afternoon to clear all of their stuff out of their lockers in the truck…it was time to get rid of all the crap we’d accumulated over 10 months of travelling across three continents. We had to be realistic and brutal about what we thought we could truly manage to get on the plane home (without having to pay the extortionate excess baggage fees).

I’d packed my bag pretty well, but was left with a giant cardboard box full of souvenirs, books and other weird and wonderful things. I took it to the nearby post office where my lack of Turkish and their lack of sympathy made it impossible to convey what I needed to do. After half an hour of struggling, I was called behind the counter where an obese, grey-haired Turkish guy grunted orders to a slightly more sympathetic woman who proceeded to help me.

Even though I’d packed everything perfectly and used up what seemed like an entire roll of parcel tape keeping the package from falling apart, I was asked to take everything out for security purposes. BUGGER! The long and the short of it was that I finally got the parcel sent, but at a cost of over £100…and that’s without The Dead Sea Mud that Kay and Allison had picked up and packed into a Tupperware container for me in Jordan….apparently it resembled explosive material.

The next day was a long, cold drive-day towards Istanbul. So cold in fact that at one of the service stations we were able to have a snowball fight. During the drive, people were wrapped up in their sleeping bags or whatever they could bring themselves to unpack from their rucksacks that had been so carefully jam-packed like jigsaw puzzles the previous afternoon.

Kyle Mijlof Photography - kylemijlof.blogspot.com

Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a while since my last blog entry...but I'm by no means finished. I just thought I should touch base to let you all know about a very good friend of mine, who seems to have an annoyingly amazing natural talent for photography and all things creative. His name is Kyle "You can smell him a..." Mijlof. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know him as the "Homeless F*ck", or "Homeless" for short.

On my Trans Africa overland trip which began in March 2010, Kyle was one of the few other passengers actually doing the whole 43 week trip all the way around the continent and beyond into the Middle East. He was one of the first people on the truck I truly made friends with and the two of us, along with Leon "The Love Mountain" Liebenberg aka "Happy Hippo" made up the 'Team Amazing' cook group (complete with Fez hats...the only cook group to have had their own uniform).

With his various cameras, accessories, photography books and even magazines that he brought along in his wee backpack, it was clear that he had a passion for being behind the lens. His love didn't stop there though...as a native Capetonian (i.e. from Cape Town), Homeless was/is truly a part of Africa...and from his homegrown dreads, homegrown herbs, laidback attitude and tattoo of the continent on his calf, Africa was truly a part of Homeless too...and I think it shows in his photos.

Here's just a select showcase of what our lad can do...all taken from the trip him and I were on together as well as his second journey down Africa's west coast during the first half of this year (2011). Plenty more examples of his talent can be found on his own blog, here: http://kylemijlof.blogspot.com

 

  

Syria Part 2 - Palmyra & Aleppo

(Continued from Syria Part 1 - Damascus) 

The following day (Monday 20th December 2010), we left Damascus and made for Palmyra, the home of some pretty impressive ruins. Some ran off to explore and get their snaps whilst others chose to chill and get some grub at a local restaurant...it was after eating lunch here that we stumbled across the chefs hard at work preparing dinner (dismembering a sheep) in the car park.

Pretty surreal build up to Christmas...in the middle of the desert, in a majority Islamic country, Paddy dons his Santa hat in the sun.

Dinner being prepared for the evening punters in the restaurant car park. Thankfully we were eating off the truck that night.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, by this point in the trip, a lot of us were fatigued by all these ancient monuments and ruins, so I’ll let the photos do the talking as I don’t think I appreciated it as much as I would have done had I visited the place in a single, isolated trip.

As Ish, Son, Ronald and I walked around the ruins, Kimbo and Berbs came out of nowhere on this bike.

Herbie Berbie Rides Again

Vicram

Kimbo Slice

Homeless

Gabaroni

The highlight of our time in Palmyra was actually the place we stayed at: we slept in a Bedouin tent; everybody scattered out on the floor; on mats and in their sleeping bags and with an awesome furnace in the middle. After a nice bowl of warming chicken soup (cooked up by Dan and Yoich) we got cosy huddled in the tent, those that were quick enough managed to secure a place close to the in-tent stove. The chimney poking out through the middle of the tent only did half a job and every so often we had to let the thick smoke out of the door…more for the fear of one of those hands coming out at us like in that movie “The Fog” than anything else.

Our stay there was a very cool experience, albeit slightly marred by one of the slimy members of staff there who tried taking liberties with a few of the girls.

We left Palmyra relatively late in the morning and arrived in Aleppo in the evening for our stay at The Spring Flower Hostel. It was a kind of gothic little place nestled in between hardware stores down a side street. It had dimly lit, stone corridors set at jaunty angles and the communal area at the top of the building had a section cordoned off (by little more than a curtain) which doubled up as a cheap dorm, with even cheaper mattresses for our lot. It was extremely basic, and there was nothing to block out the noise from other guests watching tv or playing cards in the communal area…but we didn’t mind.

The "dorm" we stayed in at The Spring Flower Hostel. Very cheap, very basic.

The communal area - right next to the dorm.

The (locked) hostel library.

What we did mind was the most anal hostel manager in the world (…and yes, I do realise the sort of traffic I might get arriving at my blog having searched for “anal hostel”). He was an apparently educated and well-travelled man who could speak French, English and Arabic (and probably more); he was occasionally pleasant but he ruled his staff with an iron fist. They couldn’t fart without his permission…let alone make us an early morning cup of coffee (careful not to get those two confused)…but how could they, the manager was the only one with the key to the fridge/till/bar/bookshelves/coffee-maker…and he didn’t arrive til 10am every morning anyway.

To be fair, I don’t think his staff minded being repressed as, when they weren’t asleep in the communal area, they were busying themselves yawning. Seriously, back home being thick means you might only have a couple of G.C.S.Es but I don’t think these guys could even spell G.C.S.E.

Our first night in Aleppo happened to fall on Allison’s (31st) birthday so we ventured out for a bite to eat. After the obligatory decision-making calamity that comes with a large group we ended up at a cosy little restaurant with our own room cordoned off from the riff-raff (or, were we the riff-raff being cordoned off from everybody else?).

Our wee room in the Syrian restaurant...separated from the riff-raff. (Photo courtesy of Allison Harvey.)

The food was good there and I’d opted for some kind of cherry-sauced kebab, which despite being very rich, was inhaled in a matter of seconds. Back at the hostel, we all worked stealthily to retrieve Allison's birthday cake (bought in a town we'd stopped in that day and stored in the truck all day) and keep Allison distracted as we put the candles (READ: fireworks) in place.

This was my (blurry) distraction shot. I got Alli to pose for a photo as behind me, the rest of the gang hurried to get the candles lit on her birthday cake.

I spent the next two days (our entire time in Aleppo) pretty much tucked up in a mattress feeling rough. Not sure if it was the food, or the general feverishness that had come and gone every now and then over the past few months, but I was pretty incapacitated. Lying in bed ill for the next couple of days, I came to realise one thing...I was probably born upside down...

My feet smell...

...and my nose runs.

Before we left the hostel, I had one last run-in with the owner: as you've probably seen from the photo above, the hostel library was very well stocked - albeit with multiple (photocopied) versions of the same book. We were evidently at a regular stop for overlanders going both north and south as there were guides (Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Bradt etc) to both the Middle East and African countries. As we had a few copies of the LP East Africa guide on the truck and didn't need it anymore, I thought I'd enquire about the hostel's openly advertised 'book-trading/buying' scheme.

Once the owner had located his keys to the bookshelves, he donned his - no word of a lie - special, rubber, book-handling gloves and got me down some books he though would be a fair swap for my almost pristine condition East Africa guide. When I suggested a straight swap for his used, one edition out-of-date Turkey guide, he snorted at me and said I'd need to buy that off him for 15 EUROS...oh, and give him the book too! When I explained that that was more expensive than it would cost in the shops he simply said, "well, I suggest you go buy it from a shop...if you can find this book in one here." Man, this guy was so anal he'd have made Elton John blush with inadequacy. Thankfully, we were moving on.

I don’t want to make a sweeping statement about a city I hardly saw, but the impression I got from the others was that apart from an old castle/citadel here and there, there was not much to get excited about and it certainly didn’t compare to Damascus. Damascus seemed full of character, a heedy blend of the old and the new, of east and of west whereas Aleppo seemed more like an urban jungle. I should have found time to at least visit the Citadel of Aleppo, but feeling under the weather was just the excuse I needed to disguise my lack of motivation to see yet more old stuff...it's sad but it's true.

The view of the "urban jungle" from the roof of the Spring Flower Hostel.

Syria – our short stay with you flew by but don’t lose sleep over it: you’ll definitely have the pleasure of my company again, even if only in Damascus.

Next stop, Turkey.