As you remember, in the previous part we spent the night in the bushes. And in this one I'll show you what our camp looked like. [more text=Read more]
But first, I'll mention a few facts I forgot to tell you about in the previous episodes. First, at the airport, some Germans came up to me and asked in good English how we were going to transport the bikes back if we threw away the boxes. I explained to them in not-so-good but perfectly understandable English that we'd pack them in trash bags, like some had done for the flight here. The Germans were somewhat disappointed — they also wanted to rip around on bikes the way we do, but dragging along bags (which aren't small and aren't exactly light) was clearly not something they wanted to do.
The second funny fact is that while we were waiting for dinner at the fish restaurant, a vendor walked by with a cart of all sorts of nuts and treated us for free. Who was it that talked about evil janissaries on ferocious camels?
Now we can continue the story. I, by the way, didn't mention that on our first day in Istanbul we rode 40 km, and were in motion for 3 hours and 12 minutes. These are the stats from Sergey the doctor's bike computer; mine reset in the middle of the trip because rain got into the sensor.
I hope this photo convinced you that the tent was pitched in the bushes
In the morning we left early, around nine o'clock — all because Sergey for some reason didn't sleep at night and woke everybody up early in the morning. This gave us reason to suspect that he had gone to pray. This thought occurred to us because we didn't just sleep in our tents, we slept to music.
Where did music in the garden come from? From loudspeakers, naturally.
Namaz or salah (Arabic صلاة; Persian نماز; Turkish Namaz) — in Islam, the obligatory daily prayer performed five times a day, one of the Five Pillars of Islam.
Salah primarily consists of reciting ayahs of the Quran and glorifying God while simultaneously adopting various postures. The five time intervals in which worship is to be performed correspond to the five parts of the day and the distribution of various types of human activity: dawn, noon, afternoon, evening, and night.
We listened to the call for this very prayer, which in Turkey is still called "namaz", and it rings out from all the mosques exactly as it should — 5 times a day. The call is quite musical, although it's performed a cappella, meaning without actual music — just singing. This uplifting procedure is called adhan. The verb for adhan in Arabic means "to shout in public", and it's performed by a special person — a muezzin. Probably, he sometimes serves as the imam as well, but usually it's a dedicated cleric at the temple, with a pleasant and powerful voice.
From this moment on, the adhan accompanied us every day — we'd be cooking in the dark, and suddenly we'd get surround sound from three spots at once — all minarets have loudspeakers, four of them no less. And there is no shortage of mosques in Turkey — there's at least one in every settlement, so we never had to get bored in silence. At night (around 10 PM) it was always clearly audible, while during the day I didn't always notice it.
Here I should mention that in order to sleep well, campers consume hard liquor. I'm not a fan of that, so instead I popped my favorite melatonin. I've actually run out of it already, by the way, but I hope a colleague will bring some, good thing it's over-the-counter in the US, and isn't even considered a drug. I rarely use it, so a huge American bottle will last me a couple of years.
Shchukin, by the way, is against any kinds of pills. He justifies this by saying that the doses of drugs in the pills are unnatural for the body. Sounds unconvincing — is vodka natural then? And the comrades were knocking it (or rather, other booze) back like there was no tomorrow.
No sooner had we left our campsite than we noticed something like an official campground. It turns out it was on the other side of the road from us, and we'd missed it in the dark. Although who knows if it was an actual campground, and whether it was even open. In any case, we had already successfully spent the night, so we rolled on with light hearts. Not for long, though — but the stop happened for a good reason: a body of water appeared around the bend. Shchukin quickly identified it as some sort of Sea of Marmara.
A successful and metaphorical photo. I'll leave understanding the association to you as homework, for lack of other riddles.
Photo by Sergey (the doctor)
Here at last is the promised group photo, where I'll tell you who's who. Left to right, like an unorthodox non-Muslim.
First is Victor — seemingly not
spotted in bike trips before. Then Maris — a tough Chelyabinsk Daugavpils man. He works as a
builder and has something to do with that very bridge his brother Edik (not pictured) told us about in the beginning.
Both of them are quite the outdoor enthusiasts, having been to all sorts of places, though Edik has been to a bit more.
Then Igor Shchukin in the center — the organizer of our trip, a lecturer at the Daugavpils branch of RTU, doctor of sciences. Next is me — here in the role of a culturologist, but generally a C# developer. Next is Igor — the navigator and mechanic, a doctoral student at RTU, lecturer. His field of activity is telecommunications. Igor, by the way, used to work for a while at the famous Latvian computer newspaper Digital Times, and he also wrote a report on Turkey; once I finish writing mine I'll give you a link, so that you don't spoil the impression for yourselves (and me neither).
Sergey took the photo, during the trip he acted as the doctor and at the same time, as we know, prayed to Allah for all of us so that the trip would turn out successfully. Apparently, he prayed well, because we didn't have any major problems. The only pity is that he started late, otherwise the trip had a mediocre start. Sergey is a doctoral student and a higher mathematics lecturer at the Daugavpils branch of RTU.
The weather, by the way, contrary to the ominous forecast, made us happy on the first and second days of the trip — there was no rain. Unfortunately, the joy diminished later, but more on that in the following parts.