Fighting the autumn wind

I think we chose a pretty good season to visit this part of Turkey. The colours are just incredible! Most of the mountains here are dry, but when there are trees, they are shining bright in yellow and red.
Our profile was tough though, we had to climb 3 passes of about 2300m elevation. But the worst were the headwinds! All day we had to fight against the wind which was really tiring. In the end, we decided to stay at a hotel to finish the day with a much needed hot shower. The first hotel we saw was right next to a highway, so we continued. The next hotel Google indicated didn't exist and the only other one in that town was full. So we had to cycle another 15km against strong headwinds to reach Erzurum. 5km before town, Herbert had a flat tyre. We were exhausted and it was getting close to sunset, so we only pumped it up and took the first hotel we could find. It was pretty crap, but we couldn't bother to search any longer and at least it was close to restaurants and shops. The shower was semi-cold unfortunately, but hey - we'll survive...Read more