Göreme

After eleven days on the road a wetwipe wash doesn't much scratch the surface. Zebra stripes of sweat-trickled dirt. Yesterday I added pannier-broken eggs and tar splatter from an ill-advised, wet asphalt detour to my grime layers, so that I could roll past the coaches into Kapadokya's touristville - Göreme- with the swagger of the truly filthy. I slept in a haycave (think rock-hewn barn) nextdoor(?) to Sam from America who has made his own little cave almost home. Before today's epic ablutions I found my own cave, scooped out several carrier bags of dust and replaced them with hay to make a world heritage, rupestral sancturary. I understand my cave was a monastic cell about sixteen hundred years ago. You get woken up at 0530 by the hot air ballons firing up or, if you don't, the exclamations in Korean from the baskets scudding past the cave mouth will do it. Unesco say The eroded plateau of the Göreme valley is a spectacular example of the effects of differential erosion of the volcanic tuff sediments by wind and water. Typical features are pillars, columns, towers, obelisks and needles that reach heights of 40 m...  Within these rock formations people have excavated a network of caves which served as refuges, residences, storage and places of worship. Usual touristic degradation excepting, it seems a magical place. Having not really stopped since Istanbul I expect we'll stay a few days, resting up and keeping as clean as you can in a cave.

To get here we rode two days alongside an enormous salt lake which seemed to suck all the moisture from the air and the body. I mistook my resultant sorethroat for the threat of manflu, a happy excuse to shell out for an extortionate bottle of scotch. Then 48 hours of hot-toddies and those rare, euphoric hangovers full of vigour and resolution. Glad of the flat, we made fast progress around the lake towards the imposing Mount Hasan, and fairly raced over the hills from Aksary to Nevşehir before a final, tarry push to Göreme. I stopped just out of town to pressure wash my bike and wondered why I hadn't done it before - almost as satisfying as my own walnut-tree hung, showerbag wash today. Tonight we'll have Sam and his girlfriend over for a cave-warming meal so I'm in the village buying vegetables, stove benzine and candles.

Scotch bottle

Scotch face

Aksary

Hasan Dagi

camping above Aksary, below Hasan

Göreme

dawn today

new place