Travelling in Turkey by camper van: our results
Here are our practical information to travel by camper in Turkey, based on our 2 stays from 9 March to 12 April 2015 and from 7 June to 24 July 2016.
• Number of days: 81 (34 outward, 47 return)
• Nb of kilometres covered: 8 200 km (3 500 km on the outward journey, 4 700 km on the return journey)
Average expenses per day: 54€/day for daily expenses. It should be noted that the Turkish Lira lost its value between our 2 stays (2.8TL for 1€ in April 2015 against 3.2TL for 1€ in July 2016) which allowed us mathematically to spend less on the road back to France. These expenses are exclusive of mechanical costs and excluding extra-balloon expenses.
General impression
We really enjoyed our trip to Turkey. We have well alternated between the "cultural" visits (mosques, castles, ruins...), walks in town, hikes in the countryside and idleness at the beach. We had quite a lot of rain on our way to the Black Sea coast (in March), but we were able to enjoy the sunny south coast to the fullest. It is a country that has much to offer: beautiful landscapes, beautiful monuments and numerous archaeological remains of great beauty. In short, we really liked it!
What we liked
• Istanbul: a great city in which we spent 4 days walking around with pleasure
• The Cappadocia: an incredible region with its churches and troglodyte houses, beautiful walks in the middle of fairy chimneys, and extraordinary underground cities. We spent a total of 2 weeks there.
• The welcome and hospitality of the Turks: many hand signals when we go by camper van, liters of tea offered, small gifts for the children... we confirm that the Turks are really very welcoming and warm.
• Renaud has a special crush on his friends from Kars, with whom he spent 4 memorable evenings (sports parks, football match on TV, barbecue in the street, Turkish baths...).
• Turkish dishes are very tasty and quite varied: lots of meat, aubergines, small salads as an appetizer, ravioli with yoghurt... The children fell in love with Kuymac (a kind of Savoyard fondue) and on my side I fell in love with Iskender Kebab coated with butter and tomato sauce... yum yum!
• Playgrounds everywhere: the slides and swings that are really found all over Turkey have given us a few hours of peace and quiet; -)
• The region of Lake Van, beautiful and deserted by tourists: the lake and the island Akdamar, the Nemrut Dagi which offers the possibility to bivouac inside the crater of a volcano, the castle of Van...
• The Mediterranean coast between Antalya and the peninsula of Datça (south of Marmaris): still wild landscapes in a very touristic Turkey, and beautiful bivouacs in the middle of nature.
What we liked less
• Waste (plastic bags, bottles, cans...) at the edge of roads, in streams, on sidewalks... Everywhere in fact!
• The climate during our first stay: we had quite a lot of rain, snow, hail... We knew when we left in March that we were a little early in the season for Turkey. In addition, the locals confirmed that the winter was going on... No luck: - (
• Cities in general: practical for finding internet connections, but not great for sleeping in them. Our nights in Trabzon, Artvin, Dogubayazit... will not remain among our best memories.
• The site of Hattusha did not excite us, too damaged to allow us to really project ourselves.
• As much as we loved the Mediterranean side, the Aegean coast to the north and south of Izmir did not thrill us. We found it very dirty, with less chance of finding isolated corners.
The little things we've noticed
• The speed limits are a little weird here: 62km/h, or 82km/h... Couldn't they put in a round bill? At the same time it's okay, nobody respects them anyway...
• Video surveillance is omnipresent here: on village squares, in the parking lots of monuments, at traffic lights... Always a little camera watching!
• There are many cemeteries in the middle of the fields or on the edge of town, without fences or hedges. Sometimes they have many graves, sometimes only 5 or 6.
• The red cross here is a green crescent!
**Supplies **
• Gas: bottles have the same tips as ours, 12kg bottles. So we left our French bottles to put the Turks that we then kept all along our journey. Count about 70TL the bottle (20€). There are shops selling bottles everywhere, no need to indicate our GPS points!
• Diesel: no bb, pumps are available every 500m! The liter is on average 3.60 Lyras (about 1.10€). We were looking for stations offering special offers on major roads frequented by trucks.
• Water: no problem to find water, there are water points everywhere! We have a preference for service stations with a car wash: the water is rather clear and the flow rate is fast (roadside taps or fountains in town often have a small flow rate and it takes 20 minutes to fill the tanks! We used to fill our cans with drinking water at public fountains, sometimes in mosques.
• Baby products: baby products are easily available in small supermarkets: diapers (even pampers), milk, small pots. The hardest to find is cotton squares for exchange.
• Diet: there are many products similar to France, especially fruits and vegetables (zucchini, radishes, cucumbers, beans, apples, bananas, kiwis, plums, nectarines...). We often buy eggs to make omelettes and pancakes. Milk is found everywhere, pasta and rice as well as yogurt and Swiss pups. There are several types of pressed cheeses, more or less strong and rather good. You can find beef meat in the butcher shops, otherwise it's chicken or turkey. They sell vacuum-packed meat in supermarkets but which tends to "spin" quickly and small sausages that children love (knacki type).
Visa
No visa is required for French nationals. We can stay 90 days on the territory for free.
Temporary importation of the vehicle
No special steps need to be taken, they register the vehicle on the passport at the entrance and add an indication on the driver's passport.
Motorhome traffic conditions
Roads are generally very good in Turkey. We took a few narrow and winding roads on the Mediterranean coast which is quite steep, but without difficulty. We took 2 or 3 highways but... we never paid, not having the obligatory "electronic toll". It rings and flashes when you pass the toll at the exit, but nothing else happens. We took some tracks in Cappadocia, in the crater of Nemrut Dagi or on the peninsula of Datça, but tracks that can be used without great difficulty.
The bivouacs
We slept 2 times in a campsite, 4 or 5 times in car parks in the city centre (Istanbul, Antalya, Trabzon) and sometimes in village squares, mostly in the middle of nature. We have never felt insecure and there are many possibilities for beautiful bivouacs in Turkey. Besides, we have a lot of favorites in the excel file.
