Whatever you do, don't drive at night. When Pallavi's parents asked if I could drive them in Turkey, as I know how to drive on the right side of the road (India drives on the left), I said "sure thing, no problem." I mean, I've driven in Morocco in the old city of Marrakesh. Driving in Turkey cannot possible give me that much difficulty. I even looked up the basics of info about driving in Turkey. I ignored all of the bits about aggressive Turkish drivers. I figured, Chicagoans are aggressive drivers. I am a Chicagoan. Therefore, I am aggressive. See? Just like a simple SAT question. However, the one bit that I took seriously was 'whatever you do, don't drive at night.' Let me continue.
Pallavi's family wrapped up with Istanbul in the morning, despite the loss of power in our hotel, and we all made our way to the airport to pick up the vehicle. We had all intentions of renting a GPS or getting a local SIM with data on it (as we had in Morocco) before picking up the car; however, they gave us only high tourist prices. Armed only with the PDF of the Google Maps instructions I had cleverly emailed myself, we got the car and started to battle our way through Istanbul aggressive driving traffic.
I felt in my element. I can totally drive in crazy fast traffic. In, out, weaving... okay, I drove cautiously. I don't want to kill the family on my first hurrah out! We happily drove 20 kms of the 300 kms we had to drive until WHAM... TRAFFIC JAM! This was like the Eisenhower/Eden highway split kind of a jam. You might as well just park the car. It certainly would have saved the blood which gradually drained from my left foot as I just held the clutch, in anticipation of any movement. We thought it might be an accident kind of jam, as a police car did manage to miraculously part the traffic like the Red Sea. It was 3 p.m. on a Sunday. Finally, we passed the cause. It was like the Eisenhower/Eden split. There was some sort of fair going on that everybody was going to and it had caused us to be stuck in traffic, moving only 7 kms in 1.5 hours!
What did that mean? The sun sets at 5:30 and we finally got free of traffic at 4:30. 5 hours of driving in the dark! Why did they warn not to drive in the dark? Because of the pot holes! Did I see pot holes? Not until we ended up taking the shortcut towards Gallipoli, driving in the dark past small town after small town, with Pallavi reading the poor PDF instructions, and bypassing pot hole after pot hole!
I don't think I did that badly. I only almost killed us once! I swear that guy zipped out of nowhere! As Grandy says, it's not who is right, but who is left. I think the family is only slightly scarred from the experience. Seriously, the Turkish people really are aggressive drivers that zip at double the speed limit and these roads really are badly marked. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the warnings.
We made it in one piece to Gallipoli. I swear we didn't even say goodnight. We all just went to the rooms in the apartment and closed the doors and passed out.
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