Çukur

i spent the first half of the day in bed trying to figure out my next steps. also spoke to elias, the other german lad i met in izmir, about meeting up in pakistan. it's certainly quicker than going through russia, and that way i would be in india before the high summer hits.

i then went out to see a bit of the city. antep has over 2 million inhabitants, and yet i haven't really heard much about it before. walking through the city definitely feels a lot different from other places like antalya, that's probably because i am now in kurdish territory. in the two days i was there, i saw a total of 3 other white people and 0 with blonde hair. you can imagine the stares.

i still decided to go to a free museum i had seen on google maps and it turned out to be really good. it was an exhibition about antep's history, mostly about wars. to my surprise, there was a huge cave system in the basement where people hid out during conflicts, very cool to see.

on my way back to the hotel, i saw a place selling pizzas. it looked pretty dodgy and it was pretty expensive for turkish standards, but i ordered one because i hadn't had any in months. good decision. also, for the first time, i saw street vendors selling pigeons out of cages and i was naive enough to think they weren't meant for eating. boy was i wrong.

the next day, i started looking for an exchange office with iranian rial in stock, but none of them had any. i also tried to visit the famous antep castle, but it was closed due to earthquake repairs. i went back to the hotel, packed my stuff and set off towards the highway running through the city. not 20 minutes later, i was on my way again.Read more