Look everybody!  Camels!

All along the road this morning we saw roadside stands selling boiled corn.

And fruits and vegetables and melons and preserves and all sorts of nice things to eat.  Turkey possesses vast agricultural riches -- it's truly a land flowing with milk and honey.

A milk and honey vendor.

Look quick!  Beasts of burden!

We're approaching mountains again.

Pretty scenery.

Many major highways consisted of three lanes, with the center passing lane being a true suicide lane.  I can't tell you how many times we saw cars approaching head-on in the center lane when rounding curves.  But we saw no accidents out on the road.  In the cities we saw accidents -- cars crushed and upside down in the road, but out in the country we just saw near miss after near miss.

See?  The guy up ahead is in the middle lane going around the curve.

 Our driver, Saddam Hussein, took a few chances himself.  That really added to the excitement of the trip. 
(Just joking.  His name was Celal Imre and he was an excellent driver.)

Now this takes a bit of explanation.  It's a pile of amulets at a souvenir stand.  The amulets are called mavi boncuk, and they protect the wearer from the evil eye.  Mete gave every one of us a mavi boncuk on the first morning of the trip.  He was taking no chances with this group.

You can find mavi boncuks dangling wherever good luck is needed -- like in the cab of our Trafalgar bus.  It was the first thing we saw when we stepped inside every day.

There's even a mavi boncuk decal on the front of the bus.

Another pit stop.  This was a nice one.

Lots and lots and lots of souvenirs.

And a beautiful view -- except for that Russian-built power plant you can see in the background.  It spews pollution all over the area and has caused many deaths.  According to Mete, some of the locals are being compensated for their poor health.

More of the fancy bus stop.

More fancy, colorful, half-finished apartment buildings. 

Mete says this part of Turkey gets really cold in the winter.

Some of the neighborhoods aren't so fancy and colorful.

We're entering the outskirts of Konya, a modern city noted for having a large fundamentalist Muslim population.

Cars and buses share the roads with horse-drawn carts.