Snow, hamam, visa success

I’m sitting next to a man with nail polish on his toes. This is particularly well offset by the orange plastic sandals he has on. We are only wearing small strips of material around our waists, sitting in the cool room at the local hamam. I am just dying to ask about the nail polish, if it is a local thing, or just him, but unfortunately we don’t have enough language in common.

Although I’ve been to Turkey before, and this time have been here for what seems like forever, I have never been to a hamam before, I thought it was about time to go. Especially good now, since I am not showering especially regularly these days. I have just moved to a hotel with a shower, which is a novelty, but it looks like I may have a week of camping coming up before Dogubayazit, where perhaps I will indulge in another hamam.

Although hamams are very much a tourist thing in Istanbul, with prices to match (aside – you know things are just a tourist ripoff when they quote the price in euros, rather than YTL), here it is more of a local thing to do. Great architecture, I don’t think it has changed significantly in centuries. I was the only tourist-type there. No problem though.

After being given a small cloth to wrap around myself, and fetching rubber sandals, I head into the main room. The heat and humidity hits you straight away, and within minutes I was sweating as though I’d just been for a quick 30-minute run. I had decided to go for the “Full Monty” treatment, and after sweating it out for a while, a man vigorously tried to remove the top few layers of skin – and succeeded too. I had been worried a bit about the massage, having read some other’s accounts of encounters with “The Bear”. As it was though, the massage was pretty mild, with only a minimal amount of clicking, cracking and groaning on my part.

When I finally emerged, skin glowing and the smoothest it’s been in probably 28 years, I was then swathed in at least 7 towels. I lost count of them all somewhere along the line. I could hardly move. The last one on my head is tied on pirate style, but this one is a smaller towel, and as others have pointed out, I have, literally, a big head. Certainly bigger than the average Turk. As a result, I am deaf and half-blinded by this towel, and have to be led over to the couch where I can sit and sip my Ayran (yoghurt drink) in peace. When I think the manager’s not looking, I carefully loosen the head towel. Blood rushes back into the rest of my head, and I can think properly again.

All up a nice way to spend a couple of hours for 23YTL. Especially nice since it’s bloody freezing outside. Although it cleared a little this morning, the snow is falling heavily again, and I can’t quite muster up the courage to head out on the bike. Think I’ll give it a go though – worst case I can always come back to this place. Going to loop down to Lake Van, adds a few hundred kilometres, and it is also at altitude, so will be cold, but should be pretty nice. Just hope the ice fog – I’m not even sure exactly what that is, but it doesn’t sound good – forecast for tomorrow doesn’t hang around. At least sunrise is now at 5:30am, so if I faff about and leave late at 9:00, things should have had time to warm up a bit.

As you may have guessed from my recent posts, yes I do have quite a bit of time on my hands at the moment. Got my Iranian visa issued yesterday, on the same day. Only had to sit in the consulate office for 1 hour before someone appeared, and then on returning later in the day only had to wait another half hour. Met a couple travelling overland with their two kids. They’ve been waiting 10 days for their visas. Luckily I avoided that by using an agency, but it cost a bit. 110GBP for the agency, and 60 euros for the visa. Still, now I have the stamp, and only one more problematic visa to deal with (Turkmenistan).

I got speaking to a Turkish guy yesterday who spoke English and German – he told me winter lasts six months here, and people stay in their small villages for 3-4 months over that period. Looking at all the snow outside, I see what he means. Look at this photo I took yesterday morning at the bus station, as I sat there under some shelter, pondering my life, and trying to answer the question “How the hell am I going to ride in that?”