Hidden Delights

At the wheel of a BMW 530i, Kevin Doyle steers a course deep into Anatolia the road less traveled

"Trust me. I am going to show you the real Turkey." My friend Serhan and I are on the balcony of his Istanbul apartment, with a giant road map of Anatolia spread out between us. Twenty stories below, the lights of the city shimmer on the Bosphorus, stirred by the churning wake of ferries.

Serhan traces an inland loop on the map that slopes gently southeast from Istanbul and then veers north into what looks like the middle of nowhere, before eventually circling back to the city. Most of the places he's recommending merit little more than a passing mention in my guidebooks—if they're mentioned at all. "I think I should drive south, along the Aegean coast," I tell him. "Everyone says that's the best driving in Turkey."

"Yes," Serhan replies patiently, in a tone usually reserved for addressing small children or the very, very old. "That's what everyone says. But if you want to see the most beautiful, unspoiled part of the country, you will take this route." Having made his point, he continues. "Do not drive after dark. Keep an eye out for slow-moving tractors, and don't speed. The traffic police are everywhere. I have several tickets to prove it. Now that we have your itinerary settled, may I get you some more tea?"

Day One, 195 miles: Istanbul to Mudurnu
I know that Istanbul lies on two continents, but even so, I am not prepared for how relentlessly it sprawls. After crossing the Bosphorus on one of the two massive suspension bridges that link Turkey's toehold in Europe with the rest of its hulking Asian mass, I've covered 40 miles of the Trans-European Motorway in my frisky black BMW 530i and still haven't broken free of the city.

So this is the real Turkey? The traffic is bumper-to-bumper and crawling. Municipal buses packed with dull-eyed straphangers belch black clouds of diesel exhaust into the air, and a toxic-looking yellow plume rises skyward from a smokestack near the road. Just as I make a mental note to send a check to the Green party, I come upon a frightened mother cow, calf at her side, trotting clumsily along the motorway's narrow median. I take these wayward bovines as a sign akin to Noah's olive branch: There must be something else out here somewhere.

Soon the industrial haze lifts and the factories and apartment blocks give way to the green, rolling coastline of the sapphire Sea of Marmara. But the ocean views are fleeting: In less than half an hour, I'm climbing into an alpine landscape of gently sloping foothills and distant fir-covered peaks shrouded in mist. Turning south onto Highway 650, I open up my eager little Bimmer to a satisfying 90 miles an hour. Trucks are poking along at less than half that speed, and more daring drivers are tearing past at well over 100, but I've seen a police car or two coming from the other direction and don't want to press my luck.

About 30 miles later, turning onto Route 150, I leave the highway—and the twenty-first century—for a winding two-laner running through a pine-blanketed valley surrounded by serrated peaks and scudding clouds. Beside the road, a couple is loading wood onto a donkey cart, the man wearing a felt cap and sport coat, the woman a white wimple and billowing blue pants. As the route climbs higher, the vista is pastoral in the extreme. The land below is a patchwork of cultivated fields veined with muddy rivers. Drenched by frequent rains that blow in from the nearby Black Sea, the fertile earth bursts with bright reds, purples, and yellows from poppies, lilac, and gorse.