Our route, the only existing road, led us all the way up into the mountains. Since we hadn't seen snow in a long time, it was kind of exciting. But the most amazing part of being there was smelling the cool, fresh air without air pollution from cars and trucks. Although it looked on the map like it should have been a big road, there was barely any traffic. When we arrived at the mountain pass (2250m), a very nice downhill awaited us. Wow, this was great 🤩
Around midday we reached Yüksekova, where we had lunch and bought a Turkish sim card. In the afternoon we cycled on with the idea of finding a nice campspot and finishing the cycling day early. It turned out to be super difficult to find a spot to pitch our tent. We cycled along the Nehil river. The land around the river was extremely wet and muddy, not a good idea to pitch the tent. Then the landscape changed from wide swampland and farm fields to a narrow valley with steep rocky mountains on both sides, also no possibility to pitch the tent. So we kept pedaling and pedaling. Finally, we saw a flat and grassy place 20m away from the road. We pushed the bikes up there when we suddenly realized we were being watched from the mountain peak. Armed military men shouted down to us 'yallah, yallah,' sounding like 'get your butt off here...' and that's what we did. We almost lost hope. Finally, we found a place where we saw no military posts or guards around and where we could set up a bivouac (no tent).
We cooked a very delicious meal with lots of veggies and fell asleep immediately 😴