26 April – Gallipoli (Turkey)

An early start this morning, 5.30am, and finally leaving the hostel at 7am for the five hour trip to Gallipoli with a stop for breakfast and lunch. The late start was because some Australians had been dinking the night before and they had problems waking them up!  Breakfast was boiled egg, bread, butter, jam, honey, beautiful goats cheese and tea. Lunch was at Ecearat where people were put in different coaches depending if they were to see Gallipoli or Troy.

Gallipoli consists of over 100 cemeteries and monuments so we were only taken round a few. As it was the day after the Dawn Service there was a lot of cleaning up going on and surprising to me, many Turkish families going round the sites as well. Having been to the Dawn Service two years ago I did not realise how small the bays were where the fighting took place, Anzac Bay itself being hardly one kilometre long. The Dawn Service had been moved to another bay in 2000 due to the numbers increasing from 500 to 5000 at the time.  With the 100 year anniversary next year the numbers have been restricted to 10,000. Apparently some Australians and new Zealanders booked years ago to be at the service but because of the excessive numbers a lottery is to be held in each country to decide who will be able to go.
The guide pointed out many times that all the area was now wooded with plenty of scrub yet at the time of the fighting the area was bare with no cover for the men coming from the sea. Of the 500,000 men on all sides fighting at Gallipoli 50% of them died. Some of the memorial sites, such as Lone Pine, had memorial plaques for named soldiers but where the bodies could not be identified or were actually missing there were plaques with 2000 names. I did like the way there were many cemeteries where men had fallen instead of making one big cemetery, it kind of calmed the thoughts of what had happened there. The guide did mention that the Allies had one victory here after the old generals had been ‘retired’ and replaced with one general. He advised the politicians that the best thing to do was to retreat and evacuate the remaining soldiers. This, he said, was well planned and executed with no loss of life mainly because the Turks knew what was happening so decided to stop shooting so that they would not loose any more men. There was one cease fire during the fighting on 24 May when both sides buried 4000 Turkish soldiers killed during a counter attack as the smell was overpowering due to the heat.

I cannot figure out how to put captions on the photographs so for now will name them above and sort them out later. Figured it out, am I not a clever little boy! 
                                                           

Ari Burnu Cemetery

Brighton Beach

Lone Pine Cemetery

Chunuk Bair

 A Turkish soldier carrying one of the injured Allies

A cemetery near 'Johnson's Folly'

                
                             

The Turkish Monument

One of the tablets which mentioned the Maori soldiers

                                         The Dawn Service two years ago                                                                                                                            

The day after the Dawn Service this year looking up to what was called the Sphinx 

Anzac Bay with Second World War bunker

24 April 2014 - To Istanbul (Turkey)

Mary drove me to Stansted Airport dropping me off at the ‘drop-off point.’ She gave me her last two pound coins as spending money. There was no information on the the way in that she would have to pay to get out again, £2 for only dropping me off. It stinks! We used to be able to drive up to the terminal, then into the parking area with a ticket for free parking under a set time and now it is pay for everything. Mary was not amused.

The flight left on time at 11.30 pm and landed early 31/2 hours later. It was all right but the problem was the 2 year old in the seat in-front of me who had a temper tantrum which lasted 20 minutes when he had to wear the seat belt. Every so often during the flight he started off again. I actually felt sorry for his mother. The safety announcements were all done on the overhead screens with the hostess showing what is to be done, the passengers and captain all being children. They were absolutely fantastic and it was one safety video that I actually watched. During the flight the only thing on the screens was advertising, continually replayed. Horrible! At least there was no sound with them. Immigration was easy, I was only asked if I had an e-visa, was not even asked to show it. It was foggy, damp and cold on arrival in Istanbul.

I did eventually get to the hostel sometime in the morning after being dumped by the taxi driver by some road works saying that he could not drive up to the hostel and that I would have to walk the rest of the way. What he meant was that he did not know where he was and I had to lump it. I was too early to book into the hostel but they took pity on me and found me a room to sleep in by 9.30am.


My room in the Orient Hostel

12 April

The blog will start at the end of April 2014. The route I will be travelling is :

A flight from Stansted to Istanbul where I will spend a few days. Then an overland truck from Istanbul through Turkey to Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan,Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan ending in Beijing, China. From there by train to Lhasa, ten days travelling in Tibet before a seven day overland trip to Kathmandu, Nepal. A couple of days in Kathmandu before flying to Paro, Bhutan and travelling round the country for ten days. Returning to Kathmandu for a couple of days I then fly to Singapore for ten days. From there it is back to Kathmandu, stoppping for a little while before returning to the UK.