The most south-eastern I have ever been!!

Istanbul - Kozan - Istanbul

According to google maps, the trip is 994 km long and should last 11:23 h. A very long trip for just one week end. But what google didn't know (yep that happens sometimes) is that our car, the Jolly, could not drive faster than 110 km/h and would have some some serious cooling system issues something like 60km before Ankara.


first things first. What is the origin of this trip. in the "Erasmus flat" next to ours live a Turkish guy, Gökhan, has a cousin who got married and the party was on October 3rd. When he told us about it, me and Jochen asked him if we could come, as a joke. He immediately called his cousin and told us it was ok. We didn't know if he was serious about it until last wednesday when he called me to know if we were still in. The wedding turned out to be in Kozan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozan,_Adana).
We were 10 people riding Gökhan's jolly through half turkey (3 of my flatmates: Jochen, Svenja and Vassia; 2 other german friends: Lars and Frederike; 2 spanish friends: Patricia and David; Gökhan's sister and me). Leaving Istanbul at 9am on Friday we were due to arrive in the morning in Kozan.

The jolly

Crossing the Bosphorus

But then, in the middle of the night it happended!
While David was driving something like 60km before hitting Ankara, the engine's temperature was starting to be quite high so we had to stop... It was something like 2pm, we didn't know what was wrong with the Jolly and if a kind truck-driver hadn't stopped to help us we would maybe not have come further east this week end! Well... it took more than 4 hours between the first time we had to halt on the side of the highway and moment we could continue our trip and it was like very cold this night but everything was fine again!

the sun rising somewhere before or after Ankara

The trip went on without further problems. We made a stop at the Tuz Gölü, a huge salt lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuz_G%C3%B6l%C3%BC). Quite an amazing landscape and some fresh air after 2 weeks in Istanbul's smog. sweet!






We arrived in Kozan in the late afternoon. The wedding starting around 8pm, we had enough time to enjoy the only thing that could help us to recover from such a trip: the Hamam!! a great experience, but no pictures! haha
After the hamam We enjoyed some of the food Gökhan's mother had made for us. great food!!





Then came the time for the wedding. No big dinner for this occasion but a lot of dancing, a very good mood and a 10-storie cake. We felt a bit like the stranger but everybody was so nice that it didn't take long for us to feel quite comfortable! we really enjoy this moment, even if there was no alcool ;-). sadly, the party stopped at 11.30pm...






After The wedding we headed to a lake nearby to enjoy a couple of open air beers then slept outside cowboy-style beside our proud jolly! On the next day we enjoyed the nice view and drove to Adana to enjoy the famous Adana Kebap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adana_kebap) then to the sea side, 200km further south, somewhere close to Mersin.


After swimming in the still quite warm mediterranean we drove through Tarsus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsus_(city)) and could see the ancient road and drank some weird red carrot juice! Well, that brings us to Sunday afternoon! time to go home! No problems with the jolly this time. But a very bright moon showed us the way. We arrived on Monday morning at 5. Everybody tired, but no one regretting having spent two nights in a van and one night in the wild!...