On the Silkroad towards West

Time to go West again. After breakfast, we left for what would be a relatively boring day. We are heading towards Şanlıurfa and follow a Southern arm of the ancient silkroad. It's a highway, it's flat and it's dry, so we just try to get some kilometres in.
The people here live of agriculture, mainly corn and cotton, and animal farming. They are still friendly and invite us for tea. But in general, they seem to be more serious and smile less.
One truck driver stopped and offered us a lift - all the way to Antalya if we wanted. He absolutely could not understand we wanted to continue cycling. We actually were a little bit tempted to accelerate the boring part and take a lift to Şanlıurfa, but declined in the end.
After about 100km, we stopped in Viranşehir, which is half way to Şanlıurfa from Mardin. The city is ugly and some people are very conservative and pushy and only talk to Herbert. The first hotel we checked required a marriage certificate to give us a room, the second one was dodgy and rundown, so we continued our search. We ended up at a more expensive, but Western standard hotel which feels a lot better than the ones before. For dinner, we went to the centre and found a restaurant run by a super nice family who prepared some delicious food for us.Read more