29 May, Ödemiş to Tire, 36km @ 12.9kph
Otel Koç 75TL (breakfast included)

My most enduring memory from my 1984 trip to Turkey is the generosity of the Turks, and yesterday this was demonstrated again in spades. In Allahdiyen we stopped for çay at the first tea shop we came to, where the young çay guy, a former sailor, said the hotel we hoped for was 7km away. Turks quite often say km when they mean metres, so we decided to double check by walking a little further into the village and asking again at the last tea shop we came to. We were invited in to type our query into Google Translate and so managed to ascertain that the hotel was in fact in Sahlili, and that the road we were travelling to Ödemiş was “perpendicular”, at which point we opted for the bus due at 13:00. We asked if they could arrange breakfast, and waited a very long time while cheese was bought at the shop next door, a woman consulted, a man dashed off on his scooter... to be presented with a delicious meal served on a large round tray, for which our hosts refused to take payment. Later, waiting for the bus at the first çay shop, we found that the three men sitting next to us, who had departed in a new white Mercedes Kompressor, had paid for our coffee unbeknownst to us, and the young çay guy bought us a bowl of cherries and flagged down the bus and helped load our bikes onto the back seat... Today, we stopped at a rural bus station for our self-catered breakfast, were greeted there by a man on a scooter, who returned again just as we were leaving with a plastic bag containing home-made bread ... kind.

Breakfast in Allahdiyen

Between Ödemiş and Tire