Ok so we're about to leave Turkey but thought I'd write this up as a lesson learned and a warning to others...Entering Turkey was a bloomin' trauma. I find entering any new country a bit of a trauma anyway. I always feel a bit nervous about the unkown for example: will there be anything I can eat? (top priority) or potentially being rejected at the border for some spurious reason I have no control over. So my general approach is to roll up looking as innocent as possible (which is pretty easy when all you have on you is 3 pairs of padded pants and a bag of haribo bears) and hope they think we are too foolish with our pimped rides to turn away (just wait til I get to India, Trusty'll have tassels and bells on).
Anyway entering Turkey proved to be a special nightmare because we didn't have the euros necessary to buy visas (just the correct amount in apparently worhtless Bulgarian lira). This left us stuck in no mans land between Bulgarian and Turkish borders, no going forwards (no visas) no going back (well, you wouldn't). We tried to reason with the visa sales man, no movement there. I tried to speak to the Turkish police, not much doing there either. Just as I had psyched myself up to tout my worthless cash up and down the huge line of cars queueing to go to Bulgaria, planning to throw myself upon the mercy of anyone unlucky enough to have uk plates and beg for their emergency sterling, the guard who had turned us away to get our vısa's came to find out why we hadn't produced them at the gate.
Finally he found someone who would take all I had of any value, every lira and a random 5 pound note I had somehow missed spending on cups of tea at dover to give me just enough Euros to buy 2 visas. All of this lasted about half an hour leaving me highly strung. When they finally did give us the visas I burst out crying with relief at which point all the Turkish border police mercilessly took the piss out of me as only police can. Smooth.
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