I think I easily beat my longest bus ride ever: Adana to Antalya along the Mediterranean coast, 600km in 13 hours!

Luck was with me from the beginning. I got a seat on the first row with the best view onboard that allowed me to really appreciate the landscape. Some of my good male friends (you know who you are) would say I could have been even luckier and be seated close to top model but sadly guys, this is not possible in Turkey. A man and a woman are never assigned adjacent seats except if they are traveling together!

We left at 1PM and as soon as we got out of the city, the bus entered a narrow road, tucked in between the sea and the mountains that we would almost never leave for the whole way. It was just great to look up from my guide book (gotta read the stuff right!) and see the blue sea on one side, the green mountains on the other, and the blue sky on top.

 

The best time was definitely around 8PM when the view became especially impressive as the sun set and the dusk was coming down. At that point, the darker colors were so vivid and you could clearly see the line of trees on the edge of the mountain.

The landscape was not that great after 9PM. As we got closer to Analya, the view changed completely as package hotels started covering the whole shore and the other side of the road. I had reached the more touristy part of the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

It became a bit frightening too, as I could see everything that was going on in front of the bus. The curvy road was forcing the bus to make wide turns covering both lanes, while cars and trucks were coming fast on the opposite direction. This worries you a bit during the day, but at night it becomes quite scary. And the guide book mentioning the high rate of bus accidents in Turkey did not help either :).

Given that there was not that much to see any more, I fell asleep around 1AM and we finally reached our destination at 2:30AM. It was a great journey. Meryem had told me it was crazy to take the bus and that I should have flown here instead but I had time and I wanted to enjoy the landscape. It is true the ride was longer than I expected but I did not get bored at all and did enjoy it a lot.