Day 25 - Turkish Water Fountains

We awoke to the sound of thumping bass which was in stark contrast to the beauty of the surroundings. The bar on top of the valley edge had started up in preparation for the balloons. It's weird hearing cars drive up and voices nearby but knowing they're nowhere near you since they're on top of a cliff. We opened the tent zip with great expectations of seeing balloons low above the valley but there were none in sight and the music stopped shortly afterwards. It seems we were expectionally lucky to have had such a good show yesterday!

We were careful to check our shoes for scorpions before getting out of the tent, having spoken to an Iranian cycle tourer the day before who told us what was making all of those holes, and that he'd seen one that morning! 😳

I felt absolutely wrecked in the morning. No energy in body or legs which felt particularly unfair given the rest day! I suppose I slept badly on the sloped bumpy ground while still wrestling with indecision about the next move from yesterday (whether to fly earlier and skip Georgia, or cycle as planned).

We were on a big road, and realised we would be unless we wanted thousands of metres of extra ascent and hundreds of kilometres extra distance. Normally, we'd be up for that, but it's a lot slower and every day we spend here is one less we have for seeing other countries, one day colder and one day of less daylight! Soon enough we came off into a small town to find water and snacks, and stopped at a water fountain in the village. Similarly to a couple of days ago when we ended up at a flat bread party, we saw some guys waving us over before we'd even had a chance to fill a bottle. We shrugged at each other - these water taps huh?! The cycling was kinda rubbish right then anyway and we went to say "hi". Very quickly we were chatting away in a village hall like place drinking first coffee, then tea, with the "village headman" (Mayor of the town) and his friends. There were perhaps 10 tables, all set up with Rummikub-looking games on it. Well, one thing led to another and they invited us for a game of "Okey". They played a quick round to show us the rules which was a furious and insanely well practiced click-clicking of tiles in very clearly defined but completely incomprehensible way, combined with helpful Turkish interludes to explain subtles of strategy.

And then it was our turn, with someone over our shoulder to help. By game 2 or 3 I felt like I was getting the hang of it, until someone leant over and completely rearranged my tiles and I played something that was throughly not allowed and incurred penalty points. It's like a combination of Rummy and bridge - you play in pairs with your partner. I'd like to mention me and the headman won, but at one point I did have 6 people standing behind me moving tiles so I can't entirely claim credit. Nonetheless, something I did thoroughly frustrated Emma's partner and got a beam from mine so I'll call myself a natural and not just confused.

Eventually it was time to actually do some cycling since it was 1pm and we'd done 50km. By the time we left half the village was there and had come to say hi. It dawned on us that the phone calls they all have when we first see them are "something something tourist something something". I.e. they call their mates and tell them to come by!

The only disadvantage of the meeting was all of them were chain smoking inside, so despite the open door we could both feel the effects of a few hours of smoke inhalation deep in our chests. It was quite disconcerting and we could both still feel it much later! It was such a nice community spirit and clearly well used, but they were all men - no women in sight.

Back on the road, after a few wrong turns, we were feeling a lot better! The stop had done wonders for the legs. We joined back onto the main road and turned North towards Silva. North. And the wind was coming from...the South! We had a tailwind!!! 🎉🎉🎉 and boy did we make the most of it! Smashing out the miles to make our final distance with only a couple of miles in the dark. Win!

Food spend today: 31.72 euros