Well it is now Friday of the first week of overlanding and we are pretty much into the full swing of it. Our first night was spent in Eceabat, a dismal town on the end of the Galipoli peninsula in a similarly dismal hostel, made only slightly better for the classical music that accompanied breakfast. The two subsequent nights have been spent wild camping the first on a coastal sight just down from the old Roman settlement of Assos, and the second just outside Pergamon were far preferable. Nice to be out in the wilds eating camp food and spending the evening talking crap huddled round a camp-fire. Our days so far have been spent driving between sites of historical significance, the Anzak tour of on Galipoli peninsula being of surprising interest to me, followed by a tour of Troy and Pergamon, both very impressive in their own ways. We are in Selcuk at the moment. Staying in a pleasant campsite just outside town. Tomorrow we continue the historical tour with a visit to Ephesus and then it is on to Pamukale and Kas.

Impressions of Turkey have been mixed. It is nothing if not a land of variation. In our short time so far we have encountered snow, moody storm clouds and hot sun all within a day's drive of each other. The beauty of the landscape is a continuous and stark contrast to the ramshackle and often ugly settlements that in themselves seem to wrap around mosques that are surprisingly beautiful as they catch the sun at the end of the day. Certainly the Blue Mosque in Istanbul is a sight that will remain with me beyond the end of this journey. It is hard to imagine a building that can captivate, but if such a thing can exist this is it to be sure.