Now the story will go a bit faster, because the Forest of Sounds festival is completely over, except maybe for a corporate party on Saturday. I won't go to the Riga cycling marathon. Almost 20 lats for tickets + I'll definitely spend money there, and two days down the drain. I'd rather ride my bike around Latgale, plus a virtual person is suggesting we meet up in Kraslava.
I left off last time at our by now familiar overnight stay in the bushes. By the way, we rode a whole 89 km on the second day, despite all the obstacles. True, we planned for 120, but oh well. By the way, at night muezzins were singing from as many as three mosques at once, and then dogs barked so loudly nearby that it felt like they wanted to eat us. True Dolby Surround Sound. [more text=See somewhat cheerier landscapes than yesterday]
The tent has seen better days, but is still good. As Igor Shchukin says, “you can't exactly live there with four people, but you can crash for the night”. He means the tight squeeze.
On the left is Maris's and my tent. Even just crashing for the night with three people won't really work out in it, because it's a two-person one.
By the way, I forgot to share my latest far-fetched theory about yesterday's renamed Turkmen woman. Despite all her friendliness, she was somehow afraid to approach us. I diagnose strict theological-patriarchal drill: she won't come close to men, and even allowed her employers (or some husband) to change the very core of a person — her name. I have, of course, no facts to back up these speculations.
I don't know if there's any point in reporting all sorts of minor details: like how last evening the locals told me that the only camping might be in Lapseki (we wouldn't have made it there anyway) or that Sergey found a Russian guy in a minibus who advised us to maybe try and lasso a bus. Like, it all depends on the driver, they don't have strict rules on whether to take bikes or not; or well, everyone just doesn't care.
About the bus — Sergey was asking around because he really, really wanted peace, quiet, and warm water from a shower. I had basically already made my peace with the tent and the Latgalian grass, so I didn't even dream of such things.
Luckily, some time after we started moving, we reached quite a picturesque gorge. When I was little, I read a lot of books, especially sci-fi, but didn't understand the meaning of the words. And now I'm grasping it in practice. This is called “a child discovers the world”, only in my case descriptions of various phenomena have already been downloaded into my brain. Soon, in principle, all kids will live somewhat like this, when they finally learn to download everything directly into the noggin.
Sergey, by the way, was pedaling like a maniac — he was half a kilometer ahead of all of us. He pedaled in strict accordance with the scientific organization of sports — that is, with a high cadence on the climbs. Cadence is the rate of pedaling, and theory says it's better to pedal within certain limits (from 70 to 120 rpm). You get less tired, and more importantly, there's no risk of damaging your knee joints, which don't appreciate excessive strain at all.
I, in general, always respect theory, and I agree with it. Even if it seems to you that it doesn't match practice, you have to apply it long and persistently, until you're convinced that it really doesn't work. Because a person doesn't immediately get used to the correct way of doing things. If you've been doing something for a long time, naturally you'll get pretty good at doing it the wrong way. But if you learn to do it as recommended, in the end it will most likely turn out even better.
So Sergey was nagging me, too, to pedal properly. I was too lazy to explain that I usually do pedal properly, with a high cadence, it's just that doing the “dancer”, that is, standing on the pedals, is also okay sometimes — for variety, plus if you put your weight on them, they kind of spin themselves. The only “but” is that riding standing up is very dangerous. If anything happens with the pedals, wheel, or handlebars — you'll get scraped up, or even end up under a car. Luckily, there weren't that many cars on the highway, and I only ride standing up when going uphill.
Here a local grandpa greeted us with the words “as-salamu alaykum”. I replied with “merhaba” because I was slow on the uptake. Probably any semi-cultured person knows that this greeting means “peace be upon you” and you're supposed to answer something like “wa alaykumu s-salam”. Wikipedia tells us that the correct answer sounds like “Wa 'alaykum as-salam” — “And unto you peace”. In principle, this greeting is more of a Muslim one, so my secular answer was actually pretty fitting, but no one strictly forbids kefirs (that is, infidels) from using it either.
Speaking of kefir, by the way — I finally found a once-spotted and long-lost article about linguistic shock. Entertaining stuff, everyone should read it.
In general, the places had already gotten prettier, and the rain didn't bother us, despite the threatening clouds during the day and a still ominous forecast. Nevertheless, it dropped all its drops at night, and in the morning we even dried off in the sun. Understandably, our mood immediately began to rise.
As I already wrote, we saw sheep along the way, but not all that many. The guidebook says that meat in Turkey is tasty because the sheep are organic, that is, natural. Hell knows — for there to be enough for everyone, we should have met a hundred times more. Surely there's globalization now and animals in Turkey are also farmed industrially, stuffed with antibiotics and growth hormones, and what we observed is a relic of the past and won't last long.
Here I'll skip a bunch of photos, because the settlement landscapes are somewhat monotonous after all.
By the way, I don't remember if I mentioned it, but Turks always honk their horns — whether there's a reason or not. When they saw us — they honked with heightened enthusiasm, because, well, they have to show they're welcoming us warmly. At first we thought they were asking us to be careful, but when oncoming cars started honking too, everything became perfectly clear.
I should also mention that because of the rain we lost practically half a day, so we decided to optimize the route and not go to Çanakkale. This wasn't good. Even though I didn't see any instructions on the internet saying we had to check it out, many Turks along the way mentioned it. I just looked at Wikipedia — the city itself is picturesque, and the fortress there is pretty legit. But the weather and the steep hills are factors beyond our control, so all that was left to do was to make our peace with it.
In the next part it'll be about the cute little town of Lapseki and the crossing to the other side of the Dardanelles Strait.