You don’t understand it from the outside.
You have to enter it.

The traffic is not chaos.
It is a dance that forms around you.

Here was the first very large city I rode in after getting my license.

Once inside, I forgot the warnings from home.
I trusted what I saw.

What makes you feel safer?

Cars that follow signs
or drivers who look at you?

Before that, I had taken nine full days of safety training.
Situations you are told may happen once in a lifetime.

In Istanbul, they happened every day.

And yet, it worked.

I felt fortunate when I rode along the Bosphorus.
Crossed between Europe and Asia, again and again.

Ate a bowl of sütlaç each day.
Lived in sight of the Hagia Sophia.
A place where history feels present, and immediate.

Even now, when I approach the city on my motorcycle,
it feels like returning.

Not anywhere else.

There.

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