Turkey or Turkiye is fascinating to me as it is to millions of others. The mere thought of a place at the confluence of east and west is thought provoking. It was in top 3 destination for me while I started planning my trip (Japan and Greece were the other two). More or less it was an impulsive decision - a pull at the strings of my heart.. Turkey it was.
The first issue that we faced was planning for a week long trip. We chose august due to two main reasons - holidays and season for Turkey. Though I would have preferred non-peak season, 4 days holiday ensured that we had a limited window to choose our travel dates. Finally we chose 6th Aug to 17Aug. We knew we had to goto Istanbul first, hence we did our flight tickets upfront.
The things we planned in chronological order are:
1. Flight - The most expensive part of our travel was supposed to be flight tickets. We had been tracking flight tickets 3 months prior to travel for best deals. Due to peak season in August, the fares did not change much over a month. Hence, we finally booked our tickets 2 months prior to our flight. The dates were finalized based on cheap availability of ticket. That's when we decided to start our trip mid week i.e. on Thursday and end it on a Monday. Air tickets from Mumbai were almost 7-8K costlier than those from Delhi. So upfront savings is possible if you happen to be in Delhi around the time of your trip.
There are two main carriers from Mumbai - Turkish Airlines and Egypt air. Of course, the choice had to be Egypt air due to low cost. Fair warning though - Egypt air is late almost everyday. So you will in all probability miss your connecting flight from Cairo. In that case, you can ask them to adjust you on Turkish Airline flights from Cairo to Istanbul (code share flight and the last one leaves around 8:30 PM). In case you have time with you and no further time bound plans in Istanbul, you can take a layover and visit Cairo the next day before proceeding to Istanbul while on Transit.
Overall cost of Ticket from Mumbai to Istanbul (Ataturk Airport)- 42.5K
Duration of Flight - 5 and a half hrs from Mumbai to Cairo and 2 and a half hours from Cairo to Istanbul. I am excluding layover here as it depends on your luck totally. Minimum layover that you can expect is 2 hours.
We had also booked three domestic flights.
One was from Istanbul (Sabiha Goecken) to Bodrum costing 3.5K per head, another one from Izmir to Cappadocia (kayseri Airport) costing 3K and from Cappadocia (Kayseri) to Istanbul (Ataturk) costing 2.5K. The choice of airports and flight timing were very crucial while choosing flights. Ataturk is in the european side of Istanbul and is around 30-45 minutes drive from Sultanahmet / Taksim area. Sabiha Goecken is on the asian side and is almost 1.5 hrs away. Shuttle costs around 10Euro per head while a taxi would easily cost 120-130 TL. Late night flights tend to be cheaper but limited connectivity from airport to the place of stay is a factor we had to consider as well.
2. Places to visit - Based on our very limited knowledge of Turkey, we knew only about Istanbul. We had definitely seen some amazing pictures of the country but were not aware of the places. Days of extensive search later, we had zeroed down to a list of places which we would like to see - Istanbul, Selcuk/ Epheseus, Bodrum/ Anatalya, Pamukkale, Cappadocia and Nemrut. Since it was only 12 days trip, we decided to skip Nemrut (also due to ongoing conflict in border areas, we did not want to venture in south eastern part of Turkey). When we started planning our route, we came to the conclusion that we could not do more than 4 places in 12 days (even that was a stretch). We decided to give Pamukkale a skip. You can include Pamukkale instead of Bodrum/ Anatalya if you are OK for a night travel by bus.
Finally the itinerary was - Istanbul (2 nights) - Bodrum (by flight costing around 3K, 1 night stay) - Kusadasi (2 nights) - Cappadocia (3 nights) - Istanbul (3 nights).
3. Stay - We used AirBnB extensively on this trip. The idea was to experience local food, mingle with locals and get to know them better along with saving some bucks. The budget we had kept was 1500 per head per night. Only one booking exceeded this budget marginally. We had a mixed experience regarding this.
Istanbul (2 nights) - Deniz Houses (recommended if you are not finicky about room size) in Sultanahemet area (very near to Blue Mosque)
Bodrum (1 night) - Neil Mars Otel (not recommended)
Kusadasi (booked for 2 nights but stayed 1 night) - A stayover at a pension house (not recommended)
Selcuk (1 night) - Attila House (recommended) (3 Km outside Selcuk; recommended if you have a hired car)
Goreme (3 nights) - Goreme Valley cave house (recommended solely for the host; walking distance to centre of Goreme)
Istanbul (3 nights) - Homestay near Taksim Square. Recommended for 2 people.
Average cost per night was 1500 rs per head.
4. Moving around - We decided that we will do a short roadtrip from Bodrum to Izmir i.e. roadtrip for 3 days. We had checked out local as well as global rental agencies and decided to go for Avis even though it was a bit more expensive than local ones. The cost was around 4.5K per day for a very well maintained i20 excluding diesel. We had opted for a diesel car and the cost was additional 3K for gas (at the end of 3 days). We pre-booked our car but the payment was done once we dropped the car at Izmir airport. If I look back, we were able to see Izmir region in a much better way due to the flexibility a car provided. You do get buses between cities/ villages but if you wish to cover more and try off beat roads, you have to do a self drive in the region. It's a right hand drive and hence adjusting to style takes sometime. Road conditions across Izmir region is very good. We could drive at insane speed on free highways and enjoy the beautiful coastline. If you are not on a very tight budget and in a small group, I highly recommend a self drive plan.
For Istanbul we relied completely on public transport. It is very convenient to travel across the city at reasonable price.
For Cappadocia, we had not planned anything. During our 3 day stay in Goreme, we hired a scooter for 2 days at 80 TL per day (10 TL extra for petrol) and a private car for 1 day at a very high rate of 200TL per head (we did travel around 250 Kms that day). We hired both scooter and car with the help of our host. He got us a fair deal and helped us finalize the right means of transport. I highly recommend using a scooter while exploring Cappadocia region. One - it gives you flexibility, second - It's cheap for two people (45 TL per head only). If you travel around using local buses, you might save probably 10 TL per head per day but you will not be able to cover as much area and with ease.
5. Visa - Once we had planned everything, we focussed on visa. For Indians with no Schenghan or US Visa, you need to apply with a host of documents like account statement (with closing balance not less than 1 Lakh), leave certificate, employment proof, salary slip etc. I used a visa consultant as did not have time for running around embassy. The visa services cost me an additional 1.1K and the total cost for visa was 5100 Rs. including taxes. For people with US visa, you can apply online and can get visa within 1 day. For me, it took 4 working days.
6. Currency - Turkish Lira is used everywhere within Turkey.
1 TL (turkish lira) = 24 rs.
1 TL = 3 Euro or 2.8 $
Either you can carry USD and get it exchanged in Istanbul or you can withdraw cash from your international debit card. We withdrew cash through ATM and it was least expensive to us. (Tip: Withdraw 1000 TL per person for atleast 3-4 days.)
P.S: Do not try to buy TL in India. It's way too expensive. (26 Rs for 1 TL - best rates)
Now comes a million dollar question - Should you take the headache of planning the entire trip yourself or just hire an agent. My experience says that if you have someone to guide you about nuances on ground, it is a great help. I wish I had that guidance before did extensive research for almost a month, it would have been great. Having said that, customized packages do not offer you the experiences that we got. You will end up doing tested and tried things and end up not knowing the country so well even after your trip. If you are personally less enthusiastic about gaining these experiences, go for a package tour. If you are up for some excitement, plan your trip.. with some help of course to make it way more enjoyable.
The first issue that we faced was planning for a week long trip. We chose august due to two main reasons - holidays and season for Turkey. Though I would have preferred non-peak season, 4 days holiday ensured that we had a limited window to choose our travel dates. Finally we chose 6th Aug to 17Aug. We knew we had to goto Istanbul first, hence we did our flight tickets upfront.
The things we planned in chronological order are:
1. Flight - The most expensive part of our travel was supposed to be flight tickets. We had been tracking flight tickets 3 months prior to travel for best deals. Due to peak season in August, the fares did not change much over a month. Hence, we finally booked our tickets 2 months prior to our flight. The dates were finalized based on cheap availability of ticket. That's when we decided to start our trip mid week i.e. on Thursday and end it on a Monday. Air tickets from Mumbai were almost 7-8K costlier than those from Delhi. So upfront savings is possible if you happen to be in Delhi around the time of your trip.
There are two main carriers from Mumbai - Turkish Airlines and Egypt air. Of course, the choice had to be Egypt air due to low cost. Fair warning though - Egypt air is late almost everyday. So you will in all probability miss your connecting flight from Cairo. In that case, you can ask them to adjust you on Turkish Airline flights from Cairo to Istanbul (code share flight and the last one leaves around 8:30 PM). In case you have time with you and no further time bound plans in Istanbul, you can take a layover and visit Cairo the next day before proceeding to Istanbul while on Transit.
Overall cost of Ticket from Mumbai to Istanbul (Ataturk Airport)- 42.5K
Duration of Flight - 5 and a half hrs from Mumbai to Cairo and 2 and a half hours from Cairo to Istanbul. I am excluding layover here as it depends on your luck totally. Minimum layover that you can expect is 2 hours.
We had also booked three domestic flights.
One was from Istanbul (Sabiha Goecken) to Bodrum costing 3.5K per head, another one from Izmir to Cappadocia (kayseri Airport) costing 3K and from Cappadocia (Kayseri) to Istanbul (Ataturk) costing 2.5K. The choice of airports and flight timing were very crucial while choosing flights. Ataturk is in the european side of Istanbul and is around 30-45 minutes drive from Sultanahmet / Taksim area. Sabiha Goecken is on the asian side and is almost 1.5 hrs away. Shuttle costs around 10Euro per head while a taxi would easily cost 120-130 TL. Late night flights tend to be cheaper but limited connectivity from airport to the place of stay is a factor we had to consider as well.
2. Places to visit - Based on our very limited knowledge of Turkey, we knew only about Istanbul. We had definitely seen some amazing pictures of the country but were not aware of the places. Days of extensive search later, we had zeroed down to a list of places which we would like to see - Istanbul, Selcuk/ Epheseus, Bodrum/ Anatalya, Pamukkale, Cappadocia and Nemrut. Since it was only 12 days trip, we decided to skip Nemrut (also due to ongoing conflict in border areas, we did not want to venture in south eastern part of Turkey). When we started planning our route, we came to the conclusion that we could not do more than 4 places in 12 days (even that was a stretch). We decided to give Pamukkale a skip. You can include Pamukkale instead of Bodrum/ Anatalya if you are OK for a night travel by bus.
Finally the itinerary was - Istanbul (2 nights) - Bodrum (by flight costing around 3K, 1 night stay) - Kusadasi (2 nights) - Cappadocia (3 nights) - Istanbul (3 nights).
3. Stay - We used AirBnB extensively on this trip. The idea was to experience local food, mingle with locals and get to know them better along with saving some bucks. The budget we had kept was 1500 per head per night. Only one booking exceeded this budget marginally. We had a mixed experience regarding this.
Istanbul (2 nights) - Deniz Houses (recommended if you are not finicky about room size) in Sultanahemet area (very near to Blue Mosque)
Bodrum (1 night) - Neil Mars Otel (not recommended)
Kusadasi (booked for 2 nights but stayed 1 night) - A stayover at a pension house (not recommended)
Selcuk (1 night) - Attila House (recommended) (3 Km outside Selcuk; recommended if you have a hired car)
Goreme (3 nights) - Goreme Valley cave house (recommended solely for the host; walking distance to centre of Goreme)
Istanbul (3 nights) - Homestay near Taksim Square. Recommended for 2 people.
Average cost per night was 1500 rs per head.
4. Moving around - We decided that we will do a short roadtrip from Bodrum to Izmir i.e. roadtrip for 3 days. We had checked out local as well as global rental agencies and decided to go for Avis even though it was a bit more expensive than local ones. The cost was around 4.5K per day for a very well maintained i20 excluding diesel. We had opted for a diesel car and the cost was additional 3K for gas (at the end of 3 days). We pre-booked our car but the payment was done once we dropped the car at Izmir airport. If I look back, we were able to see Izmir region in a much better way due to the flexibility a car provided. You do get buses between cities/ villages but if you wish to cover more and try off beat roads, you have to do a self drive in the region. It's a right hand drive and hence adjusting to style takes sometime. Road conditions across Izmir region is very good. We could drive at insane speed on free highways and enjoy the beautiful coastline. If you are not on a very tight budget and in a small group, I highly recommend a self drive plan.
For Istanbul we relied completely on public transport. It is very convenient to travel across the city at reasonable price.
For Cappadocia, we had not planned anything. During our 3 day stay in Goreme, we hired a scooter for 2 days at 80 TL per day (10 TL extra for petrol) and a private car for 1 day at a very high rate of 200TL per head (we did travel around 250 Kms that day). We hired both scooter and car with the help of our host. He got us a fair deal and helped us finalize the right means of transport. I highly recommend using a scooter while exploring Cappadocia region. One - it gives you flexibility, second - It's cheap for two people (45 TL per head only). If you travel around using local buses, you might save probably 10 TL per head per day but you will not be able to cover as much area and with ease.
5. Visa - Once we had planned everything, we focussed on visa. For Indians with no Schenghan or US Visa, you need to apply with a host of documents like account statement (with closing balance not less than 1 Lakh), leave certificate, employment proof, salary slip etc. I used a visa consultant as did not have time for running around embassy. The visa services cost me an additional 1.1K and the total cost for visa was 5100 Rs. including taxes. For people with US visa, you can apply online and can get visa within 1 day. For me, it took 4 working days.
6. Currency - Turkish Lira is used everywhere within Turkey.
1 TL (turkish lira) = 24 rs.
1 TL = 3 Euro or 2.8 $
Either you can carry USD and get it exchanged in Istanbul or you can withdraw cash from your international debit card. We withdrew cash through ATM and it was least expensive to us. (Tip: Withdraw 1000 TL per person for atleast 3-4 days.)
P.S: Do not try to buy TL in India. It's way too expensive. (26 Rs for 1 TL - best rates)
Now comes a million dollar question - Should you take the headache of planning the entire trip yourself or just hire an agent. My experience says that if you have someone to guide you about nuances on ground, it is a great help. I wish I had that guidance before did extensive research for almost a month, it would have been great. Having said that, customized packages do not offer you the experiences that we got. You will end up doing tested and tried things and end up not knowing the country so well even after your trip. If you are personally less enthusiastic about gaining these experiences, go for a package tour. If you are up for some excitement, plan your trip.. with some help of course to make it way more enjoyable.
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