The hammock days are behind me for now. Yesterday I arrived in Malatya after an overnight bus odyssey from the Mediterranean coast. Today I depart for Erzurum.
Malatya has to be the rudest town in Turkey. From the moment I arrived I have been jostled, cut off, hissed at and treated as a walking wallet. And it's an ugly place. My guidebook says it grows on you – but after 24 hours here the only things growing on me were a film of stale tobacco smoke and a case of deafness from the ridiculously loud loudspeakers on the mosque across the street. So I'm leavıng and, with a choice of spending 10 more hours in Malatya or spending those same hours out at the Otogar (bus station) I opted unhesitatingly for the bus station! I doubt there can be a more devastating condemnation of a place than that its best feature is the departure plaza of its bus station.
From Erzurum I make my way down to Trabzon on the Black Sea coast, which will be my last stop in Turkey for this trip as beyond Trabzon is the first land border of the trip – from Turkey to Georgia. I'm looking forward to it.
My original budget for Turkey was about AUD 69 per day. My budget is not a fixed thing – I tweak it endlessly as I go along. Currently it has been tweaked down to just AUD 63 per day, but in fact I'm spending less than that – only about AUD 56 per day. That's about AUD 230 saved for use later in the trip, representing up to an extra week I can spend on the road. I budgeted for 11 months, hoping for 12, and so far that's looking like working out. But there's still a lot of road left in front of me, mostly places new to me, so it's too early to be sure.
* Yes, I know that's supposedly a Malacca tapestry. So sue me. Malacca's a long way from here but Malatya is here and now.
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