We set off at around 8am this morning in pleasant weather. A few bumps at the start. The real problem is that I’m taking small roads and the layouts aren’t always reliable ^^ First joke : at the end of a path, it’s closed by a large gate with a padlock. I get out of it quite easily because - I’m not sure I’m the first - I noticed that the barbed wire along the road had been raised a bit earlier. I can easily push the bike without even having to remove the panniers. Second joke : in one village, the road suggested on the route... doesn’t exist... I turn off a bit further on but just as I’m having doubts about the feasibility of the route a guy on a motorbike stops next to me and tells me that the road is closed, you have to go round. It’s all right, I hadn’t gone too far down this dead end...
I have lunch halfway to Bismil, not a pretty town with no shade. I’m about to have lunch in the shade of a building in a creepy street, when I see a green spot on my map. I go there but in fact it’s the cemetery. Finally I have lunch in the shade of a mulberry tree, but it’s impossible to sit down because the ground and the low wall are covered in crushed mulberries...

A little further on I stop in a shop and ask for some Çai (tea). In fact I don’t think the guy was selling it, but he made me some anyway and we had a chat. As I’m French, he tells me about his son who’s a refugee in Paris. I don’t ask him why, but he’s Kurdish... I leave, the boss doesn’t want me to pay the Çai.
I thought I’d take some photos when the Batman river joins the Tigris... but it’s a huge gravel pit... ugly.
I walk around Batman, take some photos, and a vegetable seller also offers me a Çai. We chat as best we can. I understand Turkish... no. Kurdish ? even less... The vendor tells me that ‘Kurdish is perfect’.
Back at the hotel, under my window a demonstration of which I don’t know the meaning, surrounded by police outnumbering the demonstrators. People settle down, take up chairs, songs begin to the rhythm of the drums.
Tomorrow Baykan.