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trip2006 Jul 18th, 2007 07:35 PM

driving in turkey
 
Hello,
Wondering if anyone here has any experience driving in turkey?
Would like to take a motorhome there next year and am keen to hear of any experiences good and bad regarding tukish roads and drivers.
Thanks
Trip

julies Jul 18th, 2007 07:53 PM

We were in Turkey and drove last month. Driving there was a piece of cake--good roads with not much traffic. Don't know about a motor home though. Gas will be quite expensive for it. We were paying about $9 for the equivalent of a US gallon.

trip2006 Jul 21st, 2007 04:45 AM

Thanks for your reply julie :-)

Not too fussed about the gas price as motorhome is a diesel.

Was more concerned about quality of drivers and roads.

Just spent 3 mths touring western and eastern europe in a motorhome and found a marked difference between east and west in road quality and driver safety.

Lots of tailgating speeding and overtaking on bends in the east. Not so much in the west except for Italy where they drive with what can only be described as organised chaos!

Where abouts did you travel in Turkey Julie and what where your thoughts on the country?

Thanks again for you reply
Trip

julies Jul 21st, 2007 06:45 AM

We flew to Kayseri where we picked upa rantal car for 10 days. We drove all through Cappadocia and then over the mountains and down to the coast emerging east of Antalya. From there we drove along the coast, and up to Emali and back down to Dalaman where we dropped off the car before our flight to Istanbul.

I guess I should say that we are never too worried about road conditions because sometime reports seem to be exaggerated. When we visited Romania about 5 years ago we'd heard reports about how terrible the roads were. We get lots of poptholes where we live after the winter and roads didn't seem too terrible there other than watching out for animal traffic. Last summer, before our visit, we'd heard that Lithuanian drivers were crazy. We didn't think so.

trip2006 Jul 22nd, 2007 03:28 PM

Hello again Julie and thanks for your reply.

Yes I agree regarding exagerated ideas of road conditions etc.

You may find a thread I started here many months ago regarding driving a manual motorhome in europe.

The majority of the feedback was negative and proved to be rather exagerated from our point of view.

Having said that though i guess it applies to what you are used to. I live in australia and our road system is pretty appalling especially after driving around western europe. So if you were used to driving on those sort of good roads then your idea of a bad road would be rather different.

When we got to eastern europe the roads were pretty much the same as oz and in most cases they still had more motorway system than we have here which is basically none for a country our size. The drivers were a little scary with their tailgatting and overtaking on bends but we countered that by driving slower and pulling over as much as possible to let them pass. We found that once you get into the rythm of how they do things we didnt find it too stressful or dangerous.

Anyway we are planning our next motorhome trip for August 2008 roughly a 3 month journey from frankfurt through the bottom of scandanavia to the top of poland across to st petersburg down to moscow then south to turkey through the ukraine then across greece and back to frankfurt via southern italy.
I have noticed from your posts that you have travelled a fair bit of eastern europe and would be interested in your thoughts on driving in countries like romania, bulgaria, and and ex soviet countries you may have been to.
Thanks again for your reply.
Mark


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