Another adventure begins with boxing up our two bicycles and heading to the airport. Bicycles and airplanes, however, are a headache. I found a decent price to Narita from İstanbul and figured I could add the Antalya-İstanbul leg later. Nope. It was going to cost hundreds of dollars (US$700? or was it US$900?) to fly with our bikes to İstanbul. I had never seen such pricey flights for that route before.
Buses, however, were reasonable — less than US$100 for two people with bicycles, including a taxi in Antalya, an overpriced porter in Esenler (where we transferred), and even some meals. I had never taken a bus from Antalya to the İstanbul airport before. Turned out to be easy.
That overnight bus ride was followed by an overnight flight to Narita via an early morning layover in Ulaanbataar where I was able to stretch out and sleep a bit. I’ve never been to Mongolia. Here’s what it looks like taking off in the morning at the beginning of November.
On the Japan end our only business in Tokyo was to drop off the bikes at the hotel where we’d be staying three weeks later. Our goal was to get to Kyoto to meet my Dad. That meant another overnight journey (!) — a bus from Tokyo to Osaka.
Dropping our luggage in Tokyo was easy (as was the Narita to Tokyo bus):
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