Insane-bul.

'I think you shouldn't drive through Istanbul. No one in their right mind does that' said Ahmet while his lovely wife Ayse nodded in agreement. They had already given me their map insisting I have it, as it was better than the one I had.

The view at Kartel

Not driving through Istanbul was sage advice, and parroted by everyone and every source, which is why I could have punched myself in the facefor not following it as I found myself stopping again at another set of lights in the crammed orgy of traffic.


I had called in at the airport to see if the tourist info could narrow the search for Mum and Dad's campsite in Kartel. Turkey is a wonderful hospitable country, but their tourist information is the worst in the world by far; rude, lazy and unhelpful. Not a great advert for the country. The lazy clerk behind the counter couldn't be bothered to stand, he gave me tourist map and said there 'might be' campsites in Kartel. There were none printed on the map.


At the end of a hot, six hour drive Austin was had to endure first several hours lost in Istanbul's insane traffic followed by several more in the even greater insanity of the commuter traffic heading to Kartel and the surrounding suburbs. I won't go into the detail but by the time we reached Kartel both of us were ready to knock the whole trip on the head. It was absolute purgatory.

Jimmy and Dad in Istanbul

When the Originals paused this way looking for a few days in the souks of brilliant Istanbul, there were still beaches at Kartel. They were even able to park right outside the Blue Mosque when they went sightseeing. There hasn’t been a campsite in Kartel for twenty years, apparently, and no beaches for decades. Now the city spills unsuppressed all the way along the coast and the beaches are either parks or industrial areas.


Istanbul is one of my favourite places in the world, but Kartel is not. I collapsed into the first, and only, hotel I found.


The situation was almost completely mirrored on the run to Bursa. The info guy was rude and unhelpful, the traffic a nightmare and the end result was an expensive hotel. The only difference was that Austin threw a bit of a wobbly and we had to sit beside the road while he calmed down.

The Ulu Camii in Bursa

'And that is that' I thought later as I sat in the old market eating dinner. 'I have reached the last point of my parent’s journey'. Here they were stopped by the shockwaves of the Six Day War, the shockwaves of the Mudurnu earthquake and the shockwaves of a dodgy kebab. They called it a day and headed home.

You wouldn’t recognise the Bursa of their time to the sprawling city of today (the fourth largest in Turkey). The closest place to camp is twenty miles away from the outskirts in the ski resort of Uludag milli Parki. So as I ate my Iskendia Kebab, in the busheling market and the Call to Pray rang about the eves, I took a moment to congratulate Austin and I on getting this far, of course we still have to get back…

There a new Turkey gallery over at the Facebook page.

Have a good week folks
And again soz if there are any typos.
Cheers Matt