“Suckers,” I say to Pat.

Wincing, he agrees. The sun and the wind blow directly into our eyes as we watch the show about 150 meters down the pothole-laden road. Our guide, a young 15-year-old Turkish boy who apparently drank about 20 Red Bulls before the tour (or so it seems), pops wheelies on his bike in an effort to entertain himself.

Pat and I… well, we’ve had enough. We are now walking next to our bikes.

* * * * *

It was with explicit instructions that we wanted an easy day that we agreed to hop on those bikes in downtown Göreme.

On the plus side: We got access to good photo scenery on the bike tour.

The first two days of our Intrepid Travel tour in Cappadocia involved lots of light hiking – into canyons, up into pigeon houses, and then some. It felt good, regardless of wearing us out a bit (I mean we usually sit on our butts all day at work).

When Salim initially announced we would be riding bikes on our third day, I didn’t think twice about it. However, on the second day while hiking, when we passed a poor girl and her guide pushing bikes up the same trail (in Rose Valley) I was having to be careful on going down… I panicked.

We explained that we didn’t want that ride. So, Salim explained to our guide that we didn’t want the Rose or Red Valley, and to take it easy.

Apprehension was quickly cast aside after we took off, gliding almost effortlessly on a slight-slight-slight downhill road towards our destination. Even with a growing burn in my thighs, the sun was out, the breeze was cool, and we were in the middle of Cappadocia – everything was swell. When we got towards a small village, our young guide pointed to the top of the hill, letting us know that was where we were heading.

To the top of the hill, where this flag waved.

It all happened fairly quickly – turning the corner, weaving in and out of cars and people, until we were met with an uphill climb… that didn’t end… and that left Pat and I forced to get off the bike and push.

Only our guide never once got off the bike. In fact, he was up in front of us popping wheelies while going up crazy steep hills!

Sweat started pouring over my red face, and as we got back on the bike and trudged past people walking the same path, you could tell they did not in any way envy our situation.

This was just our first stop.

Throughout the day:

We faked smiles for photos.

Forced smile much?

We saw lots of these “mushroom” rocks (c’mon, you’re not fooling anyone with those names).

The famous mushroom rock structures.

We got to sit and chat with an interesting old man selling organic apple tea.

The signs led us to the organic cafe in the middle of the mushroom village.

It was overall a very productive few hours, but that bike ride? It KILLED us. It’s hard to understand how it was so hard. I mean, yeah, we do sit on the computer all day at work, but for the 3 months before setting off we both were hitting the gym regularly in preparation.

I guess it didn’t help that our bikes kept slipping into the only and lowest gear, and it also didn’t help that our guide was a young teenager with all the energy and stamina in the world. He just didn’t understand that we couldn’t keep up – or maybe he didn’t understand that much English!

And there you have it. When we literally couldn’t pedal anymore on the way back to Göreme, we walked… slowly… hating life and hating bicycles. Thank goodness our final night of the tour was the all-you-can-eat-and-drink feast and cultural show. We needed to drown our sorrows!

Tip: If going on the tour in Göreme, don’t be afraid to give your bike a good test run before committing. The seats were much too small for us (I hurt sitting down for a couple days after), and the gears on our bikes kept slipping. Otherwise, switch it up for ATVs! I’ve never been so jealous in my life.

**Our Intrepid Travel tour was provided free of charge, and this bike ride was the only part of it that we didn’t fully enjoy. But that’s just us! We generally hate walking up hills…

Cappadocia was NOT meant for Bicycles is a post from: Brooke vs. the World. Don't forget to check out more awesomely awesome travel goodness at Her Packing List.

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Kyrgyzstan's hero Manas in the smoke of Victory Day fireworks.

Central Asia, the lands of the ancient Silk Road, and the route of much trade, war, and magic (I guess you could just replace magic with mystery), has been my obsession for a long time — only I haven’t explored that much of it beyond my beloved Kyrgyzstan.

The lands of magic carpets.

That’s why I’m excited. Tomorrow, Pat and I journey down through the heart of Kyrgyzstan, with stops in Kochkor and Naryn, to the Torugart Pass. Once we cross, we will be driven to Kashgar in far western China.

It’s a part of China that not too many people get to see. I mean, why would they travel across the great expanse of land to touch foot to this somewhat tiny city (in Chinese terms)?

After a couple of days there, we will then head up to Urumqi for a few more days before flying to Beijing.

In Beijing, we’ll meet up with Tony and Paula and hopefully get our final details settled for the big Trans-Mongolian train trip.

Now, if I can just stay healthy, I think this journey is going to be unforgettable.

I’m chasing the magic… what keeps you traveling?

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Walking behind Salim and Pat.

His name is Salim. Salim now runs the Gultekin Motel, and although young, he has been working in the tourism industry since the age of 12 — quite the norm for Turkish people.

Over an impressive spread of traditional Turkish breakfast at the Gultekin Motel, Pat and I made small talk with Salim about our upcoming tour, asking him if he knew the details of the daily events since he was making the call to our day 1 tour guide when we were finished eating. At this time, we didn’t know he was working with Intrepid on such a close level.

To our question, Salim busted out a pamphlet from his top desk drawer that had the next 3 days lightly mapped out.

“Intrepid Travel… it is a very good company,” he said as he placed the pamphlet on the table in front of us in the rooftop communal room.

Good to hear, I thought, since I was to review this tour on my site when it was all said and done.

“Today, you will go on this tour to the Underground City and to the Ihlara Valley. Tonight, you will have dinner with a local family. Tomorrow you will go on a hike of the Rose Valley and the Red Valley. I will take you on that.”

After having built a small rapport with Salim, we were excited to find out that HE would be our tour guide for the hike on the following day. This is the moment we learned about his connection with Intrepid and how happy he was to be working with them as a local contact for the past two years.

Cappadocia sightseeing on day 1.

When we returned from exploring the low-hanging tunnels that composed the miles of the Yeralti Sehri Underground city, stopping off at onyx jewelry workshops, walking a few kilometers in the Ihlara Valley next to flowing streams, having a spectacular stew-filled lunch, and getting inside looks at pigeon and cave houses high up in Cappadocia’s volcanic rock landscape, we had a little bit of time to kill before our 7:30 pm dinner call.

Since Salim’s young family lived at the motel, his Japanese wife and his half Japanese-Turkish toddler, Maku, were always seen in the kitchen or wandering around the rooftop playing. Maku quickly became a center of attention for us during the stay, and especially for Pat who I feel is sort of like the Pied Piper when it comes to small kids. Leave him in the vicinity of them for a short while and sure enough he will come back with a small flock of children trying to get his attention.

Maku and Pat

Lo and behold, Salim was there and he was hard at work with the task of escorting us to our dinner with the local family.

“Today, we are going to a very special place. Normally, we do not do the dinners with this family,” he told us as we walked through the cold, dark streets that evening.

Meanwhile, we learned the story of Salim and how he got into the tourism industry. His uncle owns two other hotel properties in Cappadocia, which is where he started working at the age of 12. We learned that Turkish people work extremely hard, with 2 (or more) jobs. He told us that they work a first job in the morning and a second in the evening.

“When do you find time to sleep?” I couldn’t help but asking. I’m always at a lack of sleep.

His reply shocked me. “Turkish people sleep maybe 4 hours a night. We are very hard-working people.”

The topic seemed to come up repeatedly throughout our 3 days of tours. During our hikes with Salim in the Red and Rose valleys the next day, we had to duck and dive through small cave houses. I had to duck and dive, which is surprising.

“Are Turkish people like really, really short?!”

To this, Salim repeated again that they are a hard-working people that sleep little, so they are usually short.

Inside a cave church.

Our walk to the local family’s home in Göreme took us just a few minutes. Salim led us through the giant, metal back doors and up the stairs to the entrance of the home. We de-shoed as is customary before entering a stark living room with two couches and a dinner table next to one of them. A side table in the corner set some small cake-like desserts and a few photo frames, one with a familiar looking baby.

Pat and I got comfortable on the couch as a woman came in with a headscarf and typical Turkish dress.

Salim turned to us and said, “This is my mama.”

We wailed with excitement! Salim had brought us to his family home – the home he grew up in – to eat the food that his mother had cooked for him for years. We felt honored.

“I thought that baby in that photo looked familiar,” I exclaimed in the midst of the news. “It’s Maku!”

Dinner with the local family.

We dined for about an hour on soup made from fresh tomatoes grown in the back garden, Turkish rice, bean stew, and the cake-like desserts with a glass of Turkish tea. Salim explained more about what he said earlier – about this not being a normal family dinner location. There used to be another family that prepared the meals for the Intrepid groups, but they are currently in the middle of finding a new one.

“It is very good for the women of these families to work with us.”

“Is it good money for them?” I ask.

“Yes, it is very good money. These women can stay home and cook, be near their families, instead of working long hours in a hotel.”

He paused from time to time to enjoy the home cooking he repeatedly told us he had missed.

“I really like the way they work. Intrepid Travel is one of the best travel companies out there.”

I could tell that he meant it.

Cultural show and feast on our final night.

Over the next few days, between feasting at cultural shows, being mesmerized by whirling dervishes, hiking and biking in the Cappadocian hills, hanging out at the Gultekin, and indulging in budget-friendly meals at as many local restaurants as possible, we grew to love our tour with local cultural insights as well as all the traditional tourist activities one would expect to participate in while in Göreme.

Normally I’ve always been an independent travel type of girl, but this tour did a really good job at changing my mind.

* * * * *
*My Cappadocia tour was sponsored by Intrepid Travel, but all words and thoughts expressed above are my own.

The Tour That Changed My Mind is a post from: Brooke vs. the World. Don't forget to check out more awesomely awesome travel goodness at Her Packing List.

Welcome to Kyrgyzstan! (photo by Patrick)

So, we arrived in Bishkek about a week ago after a hectic, hectic week in Italy — and me getting sick. Only, my body finally learned that fast travel while being sick just makes you sicker. Trying to explain to all the taxi drivers pressuring us to get a ride from them at Bishkek’s Manas Airport that I couldn’t leave yet because I felt like I was going to vomit was not an easy task.

Rodem House - Our guesthouse for the first 4 nights in Bishkek.

When I finally got around to feeling better, we caught a taxi to Rodem House, a Bishkek guesthouse that was set up by Hostelworld for us, and also where I proceeded to pass out for most of the day. I developed a hefty cough that kept me from sleeping for a couple of nights at all (I’ve never coughed so hard in my LIFE), and I noticed it felt like I had lots of nasty junk in my lungs. There was no improvement with all the meds I was taking so we started on antibiotics with the persuasion of the pharmacist (luckily, they helped almost immediately).

The living room of our super sweet apartment in Bishkek.

We then moved into a super sweet apartment where we will be until around the 16th, but I was still a bit sick. My muscles ached and ached from the coughing, and the first night we were in our sweet apartment, I was coughing and felt a pop in my side, around and under the rib cage. I could barely walk.

Yes, I pulled a muscle FROM COUGHING!

Which, of course, meant that anytime I coughed I was in EXTREME pain. Bye bye sleep, again.

Yeah, it’s been a rough week!

Well, because of my sickness and agony, Pat had to man up and get stuff done for me. Under normal circumstances, I would like to go with Pat to the shops to pick up food and household items, but in this case, I would just slow the process down.

So, I sent Pat to get a loaf of bread for breakfast — only I didn’t send him to the big grocery store down the street where everything is easy to grab. I sent him to the little convenience stand in our complex where you basically have to talk to the worker, or point as I expected would be the case.

About 5 minutes later, Pat swings the door open, quite chipper, holding a bag of croissant-esque rolls.

“How’d it go?”

“Great,” he said while kicking off his shoes at the front door. We dare not enter an abode here in Kyrgyzstan without taking our shoes off. “We had a good conversation.”

“You had a good conversation?” Can you imagine my surprise?

“Yeah. They didn’t have bread though, so I got us these rolls. I think they’ve got like milk cheese in them.”

“Milk cheese? Like cream cheese?”

“I think so.”

Ok, that sounds nice, but I’m still confused as to how he knows this. And what about that conversation? I pop back on that topic.

“So, tell me about this conversation. Did the person speak English?”

“A little,” Pat says laughing. “There was no bread there, so I pointed at these two rolls, said ‘dva’, to which the woman said ‘milk’ in English.”

I’m so confused now…

“And, you immediately thought that meant there was cheese in them?”

Pat’s ability to infer with such certainty what someone is saying in another language blows me away, both because sometimes he’s very right and because sometimes he is very wrong but still runs with it. On one of our first taxi rides in Bishkek back to Rodem House, the driver was telling me that he forgot where Umetalieva Street was located. While I rummaged through my backpack for the free Bishkek map we picked up at CBT — telling the man “chas, chas” in the process — Pat started shouting out “109″ in English because he assumed the driver wanted the address again — and in English. He doesn’t understand you, hun. You don’t understand him. China should be interesting.

Pat has no trouble getting around in Bishkek. At Orto Sai Bazaar.

He turned on the oven to heat up the rolls for our brekky. When he opened the plastic bag and got whiff of them, he told me they might be sweet rolls, which sort of charged up my intrigue level even more.

“Pat, was she asking you if you wanted to buy milk? Was she saying that you need to eat them with milk?”

I couldn’t understand where the cheese, bread, and milk came from in this conversation.

“No, she just picked up the rolls, pointed to them, and said ‘milk’ in plain English.”

When the rolls were finally presented to us on our kitchen table set around corner benches and topped with a flowered plastic tablecloth, I let Pat do the honors. He took a bite and all I saw was some brownish-orange filling. Huh?

It took a few seconds of chewing before he came back with a slightly surprised and confirming response of, “Mmm!”

I couldn’t wait for the full report and instead dug in.

That filling? It was caramel! Made from sweetened condensed milk. Milk!

Finally, we both understood.

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