Karayağmur Köyü, Aksaray

AKA: This happens only in Turkey. Part 3.

[Here part 1 and 2]

This time we have been brash for real.
Usually we have a plan (a beach, a friend-of-a-friend, a camping…), plans that sometimes get overturned by the amazing Turkish hospitality. But this time we have been really brash…
We leave Aksaray in the early afternoon. Days are starting to get shorter, so we know we ha to stop soon. We have no idea of where we were going to sleep, but this is not worrying us too much. This is the plan: we will drive until the sunset and then we will head to the smallest village we see.
The Central Anatolia plateau is flat and desolated. A minaret on the distance at the end of a dirt road fully occupied by sheep shows us the way. The center of the village is a small shop full of snacks, we turn off the engine and the owner comes out to greet us. “Ekmek?” (“Bread?”) we ask, “Yok” (“There is not”). “Tamam, çay!” (“Ok, then give us a tea!”). Habib (this is the name of the plump shopkeeper) happily welcomes us to the shop and gives us a seat. First comes the son with 2 homemade bread loafs still warm, after comes the wife with a smoking kettle of tea, then the Imam and obviously all the kids of the neighborhood.
The communication is difficult but honest, the son asks us to take pictures of his baby, a couple of months old, and to send them (they don’t have neither a camera nor an email address). We decide to study Turkish. From that point everything goes as expected: dinner, beds, breakfast and a lot of çay. The next morning we promise to print the pictures and to send them by mail. We give them a packet of tobacco that we received as a present in Cappadocia, we take a lot of pictures and then on the bike again. Liras spent = 0 Experience points gained = 1000.

Thomas