Away From Istanbul!!!

So one Car, I and Jonny with a touch of snow in the air and a late start from the land rover centre Istanbul Where finally after a unexpected delay of three weeks and only one car (the load lugger) headed back to the open road and the continuing adventure… Being led by the slightly incompetent but very pleasant Levant (our repair coordinator for the car said with large dose of irony) in his private space-like land rover ….

As he led us past the chaos that is Istanbul driving Jonny went to lower the electric window and we heard a highly unpleasant grinding and crunching as the damaged door mechanism of our motorway pile up, reminded us of our annoying Istanbul mechanical disaster that was the centre who unbeknown to us where concentrated on aesthetics rather than the actual mechanics!!!

We had discovered this fact as we had walked past our newly fixed car and Jonny spotted that the front right wheel had a massive dent in the hub which had thrown the whole wheel and steering out…. To be honest we where furious (not a trait myself or Jonny often show) because just that morning we had delivered a perfectly good set of wheels attached to a written off land rover in to the arms of Turkish customs, which I might add we were legally obliged to do…. At the customs yard there where a flurry of rat racing scavengers at whom where probably biding and dismantling as we spoke with our slightly nervous Levant who was fully aware of our frustration and disappointment… And it was becoming very clear that they had never looked under the hood. A big lesson learnt there and then about things which we would take for granted at home… To think that a car involved in a big pile up would be thoroughly checked out before allowed back on the road to travel the world is not necessarily to say it or know its being done…. We had to let go of this stress and the wheel was repaired free of charge the car well…. We just had to trust that it was as we suspected fairly sound mechanically speaking and hit the road again, that was after a few hours repacking two cars into one….

We struggled to wind the window back up… laughed at Levant and headed off towards double figure minus temperatures and adventure.

On our way at last! Tolls galore before we even left Istanbul and we went over a bridge and started to see the snow line growing… as I mentioned earlier Istanbul is warmer than the rest of turkey because of its position surrounded by sea… inland the temperature drops to at least -10c so we where travelling towards way more serious weather than we had come across so far and it was late in the day night had fallen, however we wanted to get some distance between ourselves and Istanbul. I think that night we travelled around 400kms and eventually found a motel on the motorway checked in still with the buzz of freedom and passed out!
Love it!