1) Wine: The Georgians make plenty of their own vino… A lot of it tends to be sweet (even the red wine) but perhaps more surprising than that, is the ingenious lengths they go to when bottling the stuff. It is commonly found in huge vats resembling vegetable oil and in strange little goblin bodies. The Mongoose was determined to drink all the goblins under the table.

2) Cheese: Any country where the ‘weird and wonderful’ list begins with cheese and wine is a wonderful one in my book. But nevertheless, the Georgians deserve a special mention here for the sheer amount of cheese they eat. This dish was served, bubbling and sizzling in its deep pan and as it was placed on the table our waitress declared it loudly and proudly: ‘Cheeeeeeeese!’

Huge quantities of cheese are seved with almost everything… Their national staple is Khachapuri, which is basically a cheese pie in a deep crust, served with half a block of butter and two fried eggs on top. I kid you not.

3) COWS!!! Yes, this list gets better, I hear you cry. Georgia literally has hundreds of cows – and sheep – roaming its streets, causing traffic to stop. They are beautiful and should be worshipped.

4) Hygiene: Georgia gets a special mention for its cleaning products sounding downright dirty. Especially its barf cleaner.

5) Loo roll: Confession – on my first day in Georgia I went without using any toilet paper at all as I just couldn’t find any in our hostel bathroom. It later transpired that this bandage-like object is actually the bog roll. Yes, it’s a tad scratchy.

6) Statues: Georgia has weird and wonderful statues all over the place. They are not shy of a bit of gold and elaborate statues of the golden fleece and whatnot often look fairly incongruous to their surroundings, just like the one at the top of this post which was taken in the coastal town of Batumi. Here’s a few more:

7) Ferris wheels: From the highest point in the crumbling, old town of Tbilisi to the sea level of Batumi, it costs less than a £1 to ride the Georgian ferris wheels which, we concluded, is a delightful way of seeing the surroundings.

8) Toasting: Georgian toasts are incredibly long and will leave you holding your glass in the air for long enough to wonder if you should put it down again. But at the same time they are often wonderfully thoughtful and poignant. The traditional feast is called a Supra, and each Supra will have a Tamada, a toastmaker, who will lead the toasts throughout the meal. It starts with a toast to God and peace and then moves onto everything from plans and dreams to absent friends. Oh, and did I mention that you have to down your drink at every toast? One person is always given the role of ‘merrykeeper’ whose job it is to keep everybody’s glasses full at all times. I think it was appropriate to scream: ‘Keep me merry!’ at him throughout the evening.

We learnt of the country’s booze loving ways before we even set foot on Georgian soil. A lovely French jewellery artist, who we met in Turkey, gave us ample warning. Cooing about monasteries and the rolling countryside, she raved about Georgia – but in a more cautious tone, added: “They are big drinkers, they often put pressure on you to drink when you don’t want to.”

Matty’s eyes lit up. The Mongoose rubbed his hands in anticipation, and I was delighted to learn that the Georgians are also big wine makers. On a trip where I thought we may have said goodbye to decent vino after leaving Paris, I was keen to sample as many large glasses of rich, red stuff as possible before begrudgingly moving onto the gurn-inducing vodka that no doubt awaits us in the ‘stans.

So it was perhaps fitting that the first thing purchased after crossing the border from Turkey by foot, was a bottle of wine. We had to break into a 100 Lari note to get a few pennies for the marshrutka into Batumi and this seemed like the most appropriate way to do it:

But, I won’t lie, it did not taste half as good as it looks. In fact, it tasted little better than an elaborately bottled glass of Ribena. Sweet and sickly, I couldn’t help but wonder if someone had picked it up in the fruit juice section before swapping it for a bottle of the stronger stuff in the wine aisle, leaving it for a hapless tourist to pick up minutes later.

The Mongoose made dark mutterings about finding the wine maker and dragging him out of bed in the middle of the night, to ensure others never again experience what we went through. And Matty wrote a rather twisted blog about its sinister ways.

Georgian wine, it transpires, is often sweet. Or dry. And a bit like girl with the curl, when it’s sweet, it’s very, very sweet and when it’s dry, it’s very, very dry.

It marked the beginning of what was to become a long journey to find the perfect Georgian wine. Our vino odyssey took us into supermarkets where we were watched like hawks as we cluelessly stared at bottles of funny-lettered wine, into basement bars where it was served out of large plastic bottles resembling sunflower oil, and into cosy little restaurants where the unidentifiable juices flowed from battered terracotta jugs.

But somehow, somewhere along the way, we concluded that we quite liked Saperavi. This robust, red grape has bags of potential and was by far, the tastiest red wine we sampled in Georgia.

Produced by dozens of wine makers all over the country (but mainly in the Kakheti region), it was occasionally a tad too dry, tasting as if it had been stripped of all flavour, and other times still a little too sweet, but by and large we found it was, in the words of Goldilocks, just right.

Many Saperavis remind me of the Merlot grape, a ruby red with subtle fruit flavours but plenty of tannin. And I guess like any grape, you get the good, the bad and the downright ugly depending on how much cash you’re willing to flash. As wine-loving budget-backpackers we found one of the best buys was the Marani brand of Saparevi, which ranged in price from 9 Lari (£4.50) to 14 Lari (£6.50) depending on the retailer.

But it is the purchasing of the wine that really makes Georgia stand out from its continental cousins. A far cry from the safe, reliable Thresher wine stores that once stood proud on every British high street (before the recession even managed to have a stab at wine), the Georgian off-licenses are as much as a place to drink as they are to purchase drink.

The centrepiece of every store is a table laden with half-empty bottles of wine and often a couple of skimpily clad ladies offering tasters to the boys. As we walked into our ‘local’ for 48 hours in Tbilisi, the Mongoose gave the man behind the counter a familiar smile and sauntered over to the tasting table.

“We’re back again,” said the Mongoose. “Last night’s recommendation went down a treat.”

The man looked at him blankly.

“You know,” the Mongoose continued, “I was in last night, you gave me some cha cha.”

Still no recognition came from the man, who was by now pouring us small glasses from a red-labelled bottle of Saparevi to try.

Eventually, he looked up and said: “I’m sorry, last night I was very drunk, I remember nothing.”

We nodded understandingly, glancing over to the two round-bellied men currently propping up the counter, which on reflection was more like a bar, drinking cha-cha with the other shop assistant.

So it was in that fashion that we sampled a few more Saperavi’s, before moving over to the bar to ‘taste’ no less than three varieties of cha-cha, a homemade fermented grape number which comes in a varieties of potencies. Most of which are potent.

And with a belly full of moonshine we eventually walked out with what we declared to be the finest bottle of Superavi yet.

But if truth be told, by that point we probably had just as much of a clue as we’d had the day before when we accidentally ordered non-alcoholic beers and got half way through them before realising. Or just as much as the tramp who gladly took them off us, swigging the booze-free beer from the bottle as she swayed down the street. But that’s Georgia for you.

1) Boys like climbing things.

Matty on a rocky crag in Ani, Turkey

2) Boys like shooting things.

The Mongoose even found something to shoot at the top of the Citadel in Budapest

3) Boys are not as good as girls at asking for things.

I was brave enough to ask this girl selling carrots in a club in Budapest for a picture. And now we have a picture of a girl carrying carrots... see, never hurts to ask.

In sum, this means I have asked more favours from strangers, and climbed more walls, steps and mountains in the last three weeks than I did in the one year I travelled with my dear friend Carly after university.* I’m not sure how the shooting thing comes into it yet, I’ll keep you posted on that one.

Crumbling city walls, that I would have once regarded as no more than a ‘lovely backdrop’ for a picture, have become giant playgrounds for climbing and walking, while steep, ghastly looking stairs that would normally pass me by have become one of the first things I notice when visiting beautiful old ruins. For those that remember my previous scaredy cat confessions of, well, most things, including  stairs, I hope you are impressed.

And this was precisely how I found myself climbing up to the Gergeti Glacier, in Kazbegi, Georgia.

A beautiful, mountainous region of Georgia, we had always intended to do some long walks in Kazbegi, including a climb to a 14th century church, perched above the town on an isolated crag at 2, 200 metres above sea level.

However, it did not take the boys long to realise that this was really just the first stop on a much more arduous (‘but rewarding’, they promised) climb to a glacier at 3, 000 metres above sea level. I enthusiastically (but slightly anxiously) agreed, and we pledged if one of us felt unable to continue we would all return back to the village together.

And so we set off. The Three ‘Must-have-a-beers’ (as christened by my dad when he said our farewells to us at St Pancras) and Dog. We accidentally picked up Dog, a big giant beast of a dog, in the village when buying bread for the trek. We clambered through some forest land, with Dog faithfully trotting by our side, and paused at an information board about local fauna and wildlife.

There it was in black and white, among a long list of indingeous creatures… the Brown Bear.

‘Bears?!’ I shrieked, loud enough for even Dog to cast a cagey look to his right, into the woodland. I had been worrying a bit about the altitude, about whether Dog would suddenly turn on us to get our bread half way up a mountain, and even twisting an ankle or two. But bears?

So the remainder of the trek up to the Tsminda Sameba Church was largely spent coming up with a bear plan. We decided the boys would throw rocks at the beast, while I would throw the bread in the hope that Dog would fight him for it… or I would play dead and let the boys deal with it all. Travelling with boys has its uses after all, I concluded.

But such fears were soon forgotten as we made our approach to the stunning church, sitting amid low-lying clouds, because Dog started terrorising the cows. There are cows everywhere in Georgia and as a huge bovine fan, I am in my element on a daily basis. They are not even skanky cows like in India. The Georgian cows are beautiful beasts with deep, rich coloured coats and happy faces. But Dog started chasing a couple of the idly grazing cows beside the church, causing them to charge in fear at startled tourists, who tried to run out of their way. So we pretended not to know Dog and focused on the beauty of the church instead.

Looking down at the village of Kazbegi, where we started the climb.

From the church we began the ascent to the glacier, minus Dog. Although by this point we had picked up New Dog, a smaller little creature that treated cows with more respect.

We started the long and cumbersome climb up hills scattered in wild flowers, over mountain ridges and more hills… and hills, and hills. As the altitude increased we found just a few energetic steps could leave us out of breath, causing us to pause… and reach for the chocolate.

Even New Dog (who got crazier the higher he climbed) got tired and stopped for a snooze.

But as soon as I got my breath back and looked around me, I felt overwhelmed by the views around us. The church soon went from being a tiny speck below us to disappearing completely, and was replaced by towering mountains and deep cut valleys that suddenly emerged over the ridges as we climbed higher.

As we approached our final destination, we discovered we were unable to reach the glacier due to wet, melting snow which came up to our waists. Instead we sat looking out to Mount Kazbek and the glacier and ripped open our bread, cheese and chocolate for a picnic that might just win the best location award yet.

And as we silently chomped away, at a spot that I would never dreamed of perservering to find, I concluded that travelling with boys – well these boys at least – is not so bad after all.

*This might be a slight exaggeration. Carly and I after all tackled many things including the great muddy hills of Laos’s jungles in nothing more than a pair of flip flops, which no other boys were daft enough dared to do.

Travel Tips

It is easy to travel to Kazbegi from Tbilisi – regualr marshrutkys (mini buses) run, taking about three hours and costing 10 lari (£4). You can also get taxis, costing about 90 lari – although we got a cab for the same price as the marshrutky as it needed to return to Tbilisi anyway, so worth asking around.

The journey is worth the visit in itself. Known as the Georgian Military Highway, it’s incredibly scenic if not a little terrifying as you take corners on the mountain edge – seeing an overturned lorry on one stretch was a tad unnerving – but the drive really is beautiul.

Where to stay in Kazbegi?

We stayed at a guesthouse called Nunu’s where she lovingly cooked for us every evening after we came down from the mountains. The beds were a little hard and there was no heating but we couldnt ask for better hospitality – plus the showers were hot! She’s very central – you can email her at gvanci9191@gmail.com or call +995558358535.

But sometimes he gets a little stage fright and the phrase book is at the bottom of a bag, underneath more useful things like tissues, kirby grips and Blistex.

So in the meantime we have a new strategy for ordering food, which basically involves the Mongoose making animal noises at bemused waiting staff.

When struggling with the word for lamb recently, the Mongoose just suddenly started bleating. Not missing a beat, the waiter ‘Mooed’ back in his face. But nevertheless, we were soon eating a bleating-no-longer lamb.

Often, the most authentic local food is found in the places that have no English menus. As was the case with the best Georgian restaurant we have found so far, in the seaside town of Batumi, which was recommended to us by the lovely owners of the small family-run hostel we are staying in.

The first challenge was finding it. We knew it was on an alleyway, off a main boulevard, but the alleyway did not have a name and the restaurant name was nothing more than a sprawl of Georgian letters (which to my untrained eye looks like a combination of Arabic and Russian). Nevertheless, after the Mongoose furiously acted out eating a big plate of food fit for the gods, and we enthusiastically showed off our piece of paper with the indistinguishable Georgian letters, somebody finally took pity on us and led us there.

This is the frontage of the inconspicuous little eatery.

Stepping in, we walked down some stairs and entered what almost felt like a hideaway den. A couple of women greeted us, chatting away in Georgian. We know one word – thank you – which we over use enthusiastically. Tomorrow I’m going to learn hello.

But for now we kind of greet people by thanking them and we try to tell people important messages by thanking them and when we actually need to thank someone for something, we feel rather pleased with ourselves for using the word in the right context.

So after ‘thanking’ our hellos, we took in our new surroundings. The walls and ceiling were decked out in a dark wooden panelling, giving the room a cosy feeling. And if you want it even more intimate than that there are two little private rooms that are curtained off from the main restaurant (this seems to be a common theme in Georgia.)

They wisely led us into one of the little hideaway dens to keep the likes of Matty out of harms way.

Then came the food-ordering challenge. No menu was presented but a cheery woman started reading out what we decided must have been food options. Our trusty hostel owner had said if we said his name they would call him so he could translate on the phone.

So we started saying his name. This caused quite the flurry of excitement and they dashed in and out of our little room, but then returned and continued reading us the menu in Georgian… With no phone.

So I just started nodding at things. There was no real rhyme or reason to what I’d nod at but I did notice sometimes she looked more excited when she read out various dishes, which in turn led to more excitable nods from me.

It was around this time that Donagh started behaving like a fish. He put the palms of his hands together and made swimming motions towards the poor woman. Just as he was about to start puckering in his cheeks and swimming in circles around the imaginary fish bowl he now believed he was in, the woman shouted what I can only presume was ‘fish’ in Georgian. I nodded enthusiastically.

And the hard work was done. We sat back on our little stools around the low table in our den and eagerly waited for the food to arrive.

Charming and well loved terracotta clay plates and bowls were placed down in front of us. A litre of red wine, served in a reassuringly robust clay jug was presented and the woman pointed at the small terracotta bowls and said ‘vino’, to avoid that awkward situation of tourists pouring food into their wine vessels.

Georgian red wine is either dry or sweet and tends to be of the two extremes, at least at the cheaper end of the market anyway. But this wine was light and fruity without being too sweet or too dry. It turned out to go very well with the food that was about to cover the table.

First up was the bread. Bread is both big and beautiful in Georgia, it is always deliciously soft and fresh and we end up eating far too much of it before the meal arrives. This time it was accompanied by a lip-smacking tangy tomato salsa that was laden with fresh coriander and chilli. The bread basket and dip were replaced so quickly we were almost embarrassed. Almost.

Allow me to introduce you to the 10 giant dumplings, (later learned to be called khinkali). Looking just like giant ravioli parcels, they were filled with a herb infused lamb mince and as we pierced the thick pasta-like skin, light but flavoursome meat juices spilled out onto the plate. A heavy sprinkling of pepper is encouraged. Delicious.

As we gobbled them down, a sizzling pan of pork was brought out to us, each little piece of juicy meat finished with its own crunchy layer of crackling.

Apologies for the terrible pictures (and lack of pictorial food porn in this post) – I had only my iPhone with me and our cosy little den was lit by a single lantern.

Rest assured though, the food was so good that Matty attempted to quieten our dramatic gasps and cooing as we chomped away.

‘The people next door are going to think there’s some kind of orgy going on in here with the amount of sex noises going on,’ he warned.

But no sooner had he said it, the waitress brought the fish out and the Mongoose made a sound that even he looked a little uncomfortable with.

Deep fried like a giant whitebait, the fish was deliciously tender and meaty.

It was, we concluded, a wonderful find and the ‘thank yous’ flowed out of us with no sign of relenting until we had finally left the building. Matty was delighted and the Mongoose ecstatic.

‘Mmmm, I wonder if we could get some squid next time,’ he suggested.

Let me assure you now, the phrase book will definitely be left behind for that occasion.

Travel Tips

We have been told that the translation for this wonderful Georgian restaurant in Batumi is ‘White Bear’.

It is on an alleyway just off Z.Gorgiladze Street, between the Art Museum and Maisi Street.

Our meal, with two litres of wine cost just 30 GEL for three people (about £10 between us).

If it’s any help at all, the alleyway entrance looks like this:

Where to stay in Batumi?

We stayed at the lovely Batumi Hostel, which is on Mazniashvilis Qucha, and run by a friendly, young couple.

A converted house, the light and airy place really feels like a second home. Being there out of season we basically had it to ourself… Perfect. They also had a living room and kitchen, which was free to use as we pleased.

The conversation went something like this:

Matty and The Mongoose are walking ahead on a dusty narrow path, surrounded by trees. Delia is dawdling and looking at flowers and thinking about how to get into Uncle Monty’s Cottage. The boys have a conspiratorial air about them.

The Mongoose: So mate, it’s been four years since we pledged to travel the Silk Road together – when can we make it happen?
Matty: Well Delia has suggested that her and I travel South America in 2013.

The boys lean their heads together and talk in low tones. Matty then hangs back and waits for Delia while the Mongoose continues ahead

Matty: What say the three of us travel the Silk Road together in 2013 and then we do South America on the way home?
Delia: Ok.

Some squawking, high giving and general elation. Followed by a long pause.

Delia: Where exactly is the Silk Road again?

The following months involved me learning about this ‘stan, that ‘stan, another ‘stan and ‘stan, ‘stan. I soon had a huge list of places I wanted to see… The shrinking sea in Uzbekistan, the gold statue of the Turkmenistan president that rotates at the exact same speed as the earth so the sun is always on his face in daylight hours, the beautiful pony treks of Kyrgyzstan and the countless yurt stays in Tajikistan.

But still, when we set off almost three weeks ago, I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect.

Europe was a wonderful whirlwind and then suddenly we were in Turkey. And I fell in love with Turkey. A far cry from the tacky beach resorts of the south coast, we visited the fairy tale land of Cappadocia before taking a stunning train ride through the mountainous north-east of the country to Kars.

But it was a little place called Ani, an old ruined Silk Road city, that made me stop in my tracks, stand still and realise what this journey is about.

Once the stately Armenian capital that was home to more than 100,000 people, today Ani’s crumbling city walls and ancient churches are surrounded by nothing more than velvet green hills and a gurgling river.

With only seven other tourists also exploring the ruins, which are spread over acres of land, it felt like we had discovered it quite by accident. It was both eerie and beautiful.

We had more birds than people for company.

The dramatic landscape rolls right into Armenia, a border which remains closed to this day.

The Mongoose gazes out to Armenia.

As we climbed up an old mosque tower (a dark, enclosed steep concrete staircase with a local who liked to brush up against me), and looked out on the view below it was suddenly so easy to see it as the hustling and bustling Silk Road city it had once been.

This excavation shows a whole street of what would have been shops, trading their goods and perhaps selling the silk that had just completed its long journey from China.

The view out to Armenia from the tower.

It was the sort of place that took you back in time, and made you imagine another world, another place. It brought history to life.

It made me think about back to that windy day in Penrith as we trudged to Uncle Monty’s ruinous cottage, and how glad I was for giving that one word answer. Because Ani is just the beginning of learning about a rather special time in history… and for me, that is what this journey is about.

Travel tips

We travelled from Goreme, Cappadocia to Kars to visit Ani.

We caught the airport shuttle bus to the nearest train station called Kayseri (our lovely Hostel – Shoestring- organised this for us and spoke to the driver to make sure he also stopped at the station on the way to the airport) and then caught a 16 hour sleeper train to Kars, which was – without a doubt the best and most beautiful train journey of the trip yet.

You cannot make train reservations in Turkey for sleeper cars etc online or by phone – you have to just turn up an hour early and do it there. We were assured the trains are never full as the Turkish find them too slow compared to buses. Sure enough we turned up (about three hours early as shuttle bus did not go any later) and got tickets at the station no prob at all.

In Kars we stayed at Otel Mirac, which was a basic but nice enough guesthouse (although the rooms STANK of smoke) and the guy at the hotel told us it would cost 40 Lira (£15) to go out on the minibus to Ani the next day, which seemed to be the only minibus making the trip as we had the place to ourselves. It was worth every penny.

Just as we were about to climb Bali’s highest mountain last year, our guide took us to a clearing besides a temple and as we gazed up into the glittery sky, we watched a star dart into the distance and silently made a wish. There were many points on that climb when I counted my lucky stars.

And as we now begin our journey across the silk road from Turkey to China, it would seem that I have been again blessed with such fortune. Only this star fell from the sky about 5,000 years ago… and landed in Argentina. And instead of being just a flash before my eyes, this shooting star, or at least a tiny piece of it, is coming on the journey with us… around my neck.

I’m not normally one to spend time and money in jewellery shops when travelling, but there was something about Shooting Star in Cappadocia, Turkey that caught my eye. That, and the fact that for my birthday last year Matty promised to buy me a piece of jewellery on our trip.

Inevitably, I was like a magpie… there was a lot of ‘ooohing’ and ‘aaahhing’ going on. The beautifully presented shop, with exposed walls and rustic handmade wooden benches, was full of unique and original pieces of jewellery, using gorgeous stones from around the world.

Every piece was different yet it was all so reasonably priced. And as I wandered around with more than a handful of necklaces and rings that I was seriously considering blowing a month’s budget on, I couldnt help but wonder why everyone doesn’t make jewellery like this – she makes it look so simple.

She being Leonie Zikos, a Parisian fine arts graduate, who spends 10 months a year living in the fairytale land of Cappadocia, Turkey selling her beautiful wares.

It was at the point when I was clutching about five different necklaces and pointing at more in two different directions, that Leonie asked us if we’d seen her shooting star collection. By this point I was in a gem stone trance and just started at her slightly bewildered.

She led us across the shop, past some more fabulous designs…

And then we reached The Meteorite Collection. It turns out that Leonie works with star hunters that travel the world looking for meteorites. They head to known landing spots and look for the chunks that may have been missed when they first hit the earth – sometimes hundreds of years ago. While the larger pieces are sent to museums, Leonie will buy some of the smaller pieces and turn them into jewellery.

Leonie knows exactly where each meteorite was found and spends hours drilling holes through the dense metal to turn them into beautiful pieces of jewellery. Each comes with its own little certificate, membership number and details about when and who discovered it.

As I gazed at the the collection from space I reached out for a necklace that boasted a small, pointy piece of meteorite and the decision was instantly made. As Matty fastened the chosen ‘star’ around my neck, I closed my eyes and made a wish. Here’s to hoping it comes true…

Travel tips
Leonie runs Shooting Star Jewellrey in Goreme, which can be easily found if walking towards the Open Air Museum, from the Otogar. Her address is listed as: gafferli mahallesi müze caddesi No : 48 , 50180 Göreme.

You can like her Facebook page here. She also takes mail orders so you won’t miss out if you can’t make it to Cappadocia.

PS The meteorite on ny necklace fell in the Gran Chaco Gualamba region of Argentina. It is thought to have fallen 4, 000 to 5, 000 years ago and was first discovered in 1576. It is known as the Campo del Cielo meteorite, which means Field of the Sky.

Having fostered a strong dislike for pigeons over the years, I found this tale especially hard to come to terms with. Pigeons (aka rats with wings) litter town centres across the UK with their filthy excrement while flying dangerously low, as if scoring points with their mates in the sky every time an elderly lady shrieks in fear or a gaggle of teens duck unnecessarily. They are ugly, menacing and downright dirty. And, unlike dirty burgers, dirty birds are not good.

But in the beautiful, fairytale region of Cappadocia in Turkey, which boasts huge swathes of deep-cut valleys with phallic boulders and hills that resemble Mr Whippy ice cream, the pigeon is of upmost significance. Or at least it was.

In a land where people created homes and communities in the caves they dug through the hills and inside fairy chimneys, pigeons were kept, loved and cherished. Little holes can be found across the hills where the pigeons were kept.

The story goes that once upon a time humans and fairies lived together in Cappadocia, but alas, they did not see eye to eye. However, against the odds one man fell in love with a fairy and they were determined to be wed.

The humans were angry, livid… Outraged. They cried things like: “How did that big, hairy oaf manage to pull a dainty little fairy?” and: “This must be stopped, their children will look like a cross between Tinker Bell and Chewbacca.”

So the horrid humans hatched an awful wicked plan to kill all the fairies. They organised a fake wedding for the pair and sat all the fairies together so they could be easily killed. But just before the genocide was about to take place the fairies, realising something was amiss, all turned into pigeons and flew out of the windows.

The horrid humans, on reflection of their ghastly behaviour, felt ashamed and embarrassed by their actions. So they built homes for the pigeons and looked after them very well… Until the tourism industry took off in the 1950s, that is, and then the pigeons sort of fell by the wayside.

But nevertheless for years, pigeons were the pride and joy of the people here – they were used to carry messages between communities, their excrement was mixed with other ingredients to make a paint to decorate frescoes in the cavernous churches, and they were even used as a bargaining chip in marriage. (I know, can you imagine?! Daughters up and down the land crying: “Dad, am I only worth two pigeons to you?”)

So as we wondered, cycled and climbed up the dusty paths surrounding the hilly caves, I tried to come to terms with the suggestion that pigeons might just be fairies. I tried to imagine their diseased feathers turning into pink, glittery wings and their crooked little feet with missing toes transform into dainty, tiny fairy feet.

And the more I walked, and climbed, and looked, and saw, the easier it became to believe. Because after all, nowhere can be quite this magical and not have been filled with fairies at some point.

So perhaps next time I am in Stevenage town centre surrounded by pigeons, getting dangerously close to me in the hope I may drop a smidgen of food, I will remember this story and see them in a new light. I don’t think I will kiss them though. After all, a fairy in Stevenage would not last long at all.

Travel Tips

Where to stay in Cappadocia?

We stayed at the cavernous Shoestring Hotel, which has an amazing cave-dorm where a bed will set you back a mere 25 Lira (£10). Bargain. But more importantly, the staff are wonderful. They helped us organise our onward travel and made quite a few phonecalls for us to save us from the terrible if-I-speak-louder-maybe-they’ll-understand-me scenarios.

How to get to Cappadocia?

We took the night bus from Istanbul to Cappadocia – run by a company called Metro. You can book it online but make sure it stops at Goreme (some will stop before that but provide a shuttle service – just be sure onward travel is included!) It was not clear online so we ended up booking one through an agent in Istanbul. It cost the same price as online – 65 Lira (about £25). It departs at 8pm and 10pm and also has a day service. The 10pm bus is quicker, and took about 11 hours. The buses are comfortable, and the seats recline quite far back… I slept well at least! There is also a hilarious ‘bus steward’ dressed in a dickie-bow who feeds you cake and pours tea for a midnight snack.

The Islak hamburger may only cost £1 and look like a heart-stopping combination of soggy bap and dirty meat, sold on unreliable street corners across Istanbul – but allow me to dispel such myths.

After purchasing said burger from a kind looking man at a stand on Taksim Square (where it had been sitting in a hot glass tank for longer than is probably worth thinking about), I was delighted to discover how soft the bread was. Biting into the warm, soft bap, a rich meat infused tomato sauce oozed out.

A few bites later, I was into the heart of the burger… a herby, spiced lamb mince pattie that made me make inappropriate noises and earn unfavourable looks from passer-by’s.

The Islak Burger is, my friends, the burger of kings, the king of burgers – the burger that looks down at Burger King from his hot, glass tank and mocks their dry baps and spiceless meat.

The pictures of me actually eating it are not suitable for public viewing but here’s me being all excitable by the stand.

However, if you are after something a little more fresh tasting then I can also heartily recommend making your way to the Gelata Bridge (that crosses over the Golden Horn) to one of the stalls where the fish is grilled fresh from the fishermen’s net. Meaty mackerel (or whatever the catch of the day is) is thrown into a crunchy baguette, drizzled in fresh lemon juice and topped with giant rocket leaves and crunchy onion slices, with a slight sprinkle of salt and paprika.

This will set you back just £2 – which means you can definitely go back for seconds.

Istanbul is a street food lover’s haven… We drank the juice of three freshly squeezed oranges (costing 50p) every day and munched on giant sesame seed sprinkled pretzels, costing about the same.

But it is the rows of dirty looking burgers that is the real secret gem in the city’s street food scene. Trust me*.

PS If you want to know more about the highlights of the city then take a look at my picture-led post from when Matty and I first visited Istanbul a couple of years ago.

*The hamburger was tried and tested after about four pints of Turkey’s finest Efes lager.

‘Bucharest,’ I replied, trying to shove two backpacks worth of toiletries into the top of my rucksack.

He slowly sucked in his breath through his yellowing teeth and gave us a knowing look. He had some advice for us: ‘Be careful of the Romanians, watch your bags closely,’ he said, before adding in a brighter and more positive tone: ‘But they do have hookers. They are very cheap.’

Hard to know how to respond to such advice, but fortunately time was not on our side as we had a train to catch. So, it was with that newly formed preconception of Romania’s capital, that we boarded the sleeper train to Bucharest. The Lonely Planet’s description that travellers often ‘depart shell shocked’ was also less than encouraging, and the Romanian in our carriage did his best to convince us to go anywhere and everywhere in his home country… except Bucharest.

But nevertheless, 17 hours later, looking almost as dishevelled as the city itself, we stepped off the train – to be greeted by stray dogs and a ferocious looking ticket woman who begrudgingly booked us onto the next train to Istanbul. In the meantime, we had 24 hours to explore the city.

It felt a bit like seeing your elderly grandparents surrounded by pictures of their younger selves… you can see how good they once looked and you know they didn’t always need a walking stick – but somehow you can’t really imagine it. Bucharest is exactly that. Beautiful, grand old buildings are now chipped and crumbling while once-glinting domed roofs are brown and rusty. Scattered among such shabby chic architecture stand the bland, concrete towers of the Soviet era.

The city is a picture of faded grandeur but just when you think you’re beginning to suss it out, Bucharest throws a curveball at you. Like the moment we turned a corner to discover a huge, tree lined boulevard that is six metres longer than Paris’s very fine Champs Elysees, with a huge, imposing palace-like building at the far end.

The Mongoose and I look onto the huge Palace of Parliament, the brain child of Comunist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, which was never finished.

And then just 20 minutes later we found ourselves on the cobbled, continental streets of the old town, where tables line the pavements and hundreds of people spend afternoons and evenings wining and dining into the early hours.

Irish pubs, Italian restaurants and bars that would not be out of place in Ibiza are hustling and buslting, as if waiting for European stag dos to discover them. One Glazweigan pub even displayed a banner claiming, ‘We proudly welcome heavy drinkers’.

Oddities at every corner

But just when we started warming to this strange city, which often seems completely at odds with itself, I saw that man in the hostel again… grinning and rubbing his thighs. Because sex tourism is clearly a well-cornered market here after all.

The 'information' stand in our hotel's reception largely contained exotic massage material.

So when my good friend rang me just after we had bid farewell to the city and asked, ‘So what is Bucharest like?’ I found myself stumbling over my words, unsure of exactly how to define the city… or what I thought of it. Is the architecture stunning or tragic? Is the vibe upbeat or desperate? Are the people happy or sad? Is it stuck in the past or looking to the future? I certainly didn’t leave shell shocked but I did depart feeling somewhat mystified by a city that still seems to be working out its own identity.

*We might have been packing our bags hastily because I may have developed an unfortunate habit of making up train times, which are actually completely wrong and only realised about half an hour before the actual time. This might have happened on more than one occasion.

We’ve sampled everything from posh trains with fancy buffet cars to rickety, smoke-choked carriages where even conductors are puffing away beneath the ‘No Smoking’ signs. We’ve sat, cooped up with strangers in couchettes, swigging wine from the bottle watching the world go by in Hungary, while rationing our last bottle of water meanly travelling through Bulgaria in the baking sun – and we’ve encountered many an unsmiling passport officer at borders, where the trains seemingly sit for hours on end.

Matty, the Mongoose and I will often glance up from our reading, journal writing or travel planning activities to exclaim excitement over the change in landscape, prompting all three of us to rush to the open windows and hang our heads out like panting dogs in a hot car. The phrase ‘travel is about the journey not the destination’ must have been coined by a train enthusiast.

And perhaps the best bit, for me at least, is snuggling down in my little train bed in one country, falling alseep to the reassuring chug of the train, and waking up in another country altogether.

Matty showing you how it's done on our Budapest to Bucharest sleeper train

But, there are you things you need to know before embarking on such trips. So, without further ado here are my handy tips for inter-railing across Europe on sleeper trains.

1) Shop, shop, shop! Buy all your provisions for the journey before you get to the station – you can never be guaranteed of a buffet car… as was the case on our 17 hour journey to Istanbul from Bucharest. Upon boarding a two-carriage train with just a small picnic for lunch, we realised the only facilities on the train consisted of a man in a white vest selling flat, warm fizzy water. In desperation this saw me buy Bulgarian Levs from a stranger and Matty and Donagh leg it across a random Bulgarian station mid-journey, with just five minutes to spare to get provisions.

They returned with this. And let me tell you Flirt Vodka will liven up any journey.

Matty and the Mongoose train feasting at a previous, better planned picnic

2) If you spy any rich-looking westerners, struggling with their over-sized suitcases, offer to help them. They will probably tip you, which will help buy those much needed drinks in the buffet car.

In fact, the tip was big enough for three large Weiss biers on our Munich to Salzburg train. True story.

3) Take lots of photos…

Train photos are cool. Here’s some of me and the Mongoose taken by Matty…

And a few more snaps…

4) When you go into the sleeper car, space is tight and you’re often sharing it with six people. Get everything you need for the night out of your rucksack before putting it into the luggage shelves above the top bunks – once it’s up, it ain’t coming down. Wash bag, towel, PJs etc…

5) Once the bags are up, sit down on the lower couchette with your roomies for the night- ask if you can push the middle couchette up to avoid having to hunch. You never know, they may just give you the best tips for your next destination… and at least it will avoid the whole carraige bunking down for bed at 8pm.

6) TAKE EAR PLUGS. TAKE EAR PLUGS. TAKE EAR PLUGS. Did I mention, pack some ear plugs? The snoring can be phenomenal… personally I think snoring tests should be carried out before tickets are issued and the snorers should be made to sleep together in a tiny little couchette where they can snore in harmony like a six-piece nasal band, making the kind of music nobody else wants to hear.

8) Open your eyes and enjoy… the train will take you through communites and parts of countries you would never otherwise come across. It’s magical.