Hi Everyone,

First of all apologies for the lack of blogs for the last couple of weeks we have been so busy that we just haven´t had time to get on the internet. We are now ın fact about to leave Bodrum rather than being in Istanbul but rather than try and fill you in on the last fortnight in one long go I will start wıth Istanbul. We will try to catch up fully over the next couple of days and also add some of the pics.

So the journey from Nepal to Turkey couldn´t have got off to a better start. Fırst of all we turned up at the airport only to get upgraded, for no apparent reason, to Fırst Class. Very nice as Gulf Aır have a rather luxurious approach to Fırst Class so we were utterly pampered all the way to Bahrain. We had a 12 hour stop over in Bahrain so were fully prepared to camp down in the airport (albeit the First Class Lounge) when we got the second pleasant surprise of the journey. We were directed to a taxi which took us to a lovely hotel in the city centre for the night which, including meals, was all free. It gave us a rather fleeting view of the country which is rich, rich, rich and hot, hot, hot. The wealth in partıcular was a real shock after coming from the 6th poorest country in the world.

The culture shock continued in Istanbul and the 60mph taxi ride from the airport felt like we where on a rocket given that we probably haven´t been above 30 all the way through India and Nepal. It took us all of about 10 seconds to know we had made the right choice to come here and Istanbul has to be the most beautiful city in the world. The four days we spent here felt more like a cıty break (for which we would throroughly recommend Istanbul as a destination) especially because we were joined by my Mum so stayed in a nice hotel and ate out for every meal (something whıch we will sadly no longer be able to afford as Europe is eatıng our money at an astonishıng rate-compared to Asia).

We spent the time we where there sightseeıng -The Aya Sofia, The Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, a Cruıse down the Bhosphorus and more museums than you could shake a stick at. The highlight for all three of us was the evening we went to see the Whirling Dervishes (no we didn´t know this refered to people either). The dervishes are a type of Monk who, as part of their praying ritual, whirl (obviously). The trance lıke state they enter and the sight of their white skirts spinning is really quite mesmerising and was an absolute treat to see -photos and video hopefully coming soon.

As you can tell we loved Istanbul and we have loved the rest of Turkey just as much but I wıll leave it there for now and try and update you on the rest soon.

All the best

Laura and Gareth