2 July, Darende to Malatya, 110km
Öğretmenevi 80TL (breakfast included)

Fifteen hours on the road is too long, too exhausting, too much. We enjoyed the first 10km of this day, but not much thereafter except perhaps our barbecued chicken lunch. We were on the road by 05:30, the chill belying the temperatures forecast for Malatya: 21 min; 37 max. The sun rose to our left casting our companionable cycling shadows onto the hills to our right. Our first climb of the day was a relentless 20km monster. The incline was in fact manageable in low gear, but not the distance, which called for a lot of slow, hot walking. We dropped then for awhile to the base of the real climb of the day: a 5km incline at 6% to 1800m. When we reached the top 90 minutes later, we were grateful we had not approached the pass from the other side as this warned of an 8km drop at 7%. It was on this section we encountered an open restaurant serving chicken and rice for lunch. There were two more stiff climbs before Malatya on one of which we had the first of two punctures. Malatya is a city of 600,000, so we ended our day with around 10km of city cycling – always a slow, stressful process, our shadows drooping beside us in the waning light. Aside from being physically enervating, hot weather quickly heats one’s drinking water so that no matter how often you top it up with fresh water it is soon too warm to slake your thirst. Inevitably too, we ran out of water on the last leg into town, arriving at the first garage on the outskirts with an unquenchable thirst. Tough day.

Between Darende and Malatya

Between Darende and Malatya