I turned my nose up when some one suggested it might take me 3 days just to negotiate the sprawling suburbs of Istanbul.
I think I have finally found a good reason to have cycled to Istanbul with a set of mountain bike tyres. I knew like everything else on my bike that they would have a purpose and trying to negotiate the traffic and crazy roads from 30 miles out of Istanbul has meant some serious off-roading.
Sometimes my stubbornness can get in the way and there is no way I am coming all this way to get a bus or a boat into the city centre. I will climb fences, I will ride through ditches, I will ride through dog infested dumps of rubbish and I will run face to face with the ugliest dirty polluting vehicles that man has to offer.
I do not recommend this.
