Nearby Destinations to Istanbul: Possible hitchhiking spots

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Istanbul is geographically huge, spanning two continents, so it is hard to hit the road with your thumb up immediately, although not entirely impossible. Here are a few ideas for spots (accessible by public transport) where to raise your thumb up when leaving the city.

• If you intend to head west (towards Europe) by hitchhiking, take public bus HT48 (Yenibosna Metro-Mimarsinan) which departs from the bus stops located next to the ‘Yenibosna’ station of southern metro line. HT48 takes you to the highway leading to west, to a highway on-ramp out of city, near Mimarsinan town. Don’t get off the bus until it leaves the highway by turning right in the on ramp junction. (fare: TL 1.30/person, though you’ll have to buy multi-use cards (at least 5 uses for TL 6.50), which makes a bad investment assuming that you are leaving the city. You can pay directly to the driver inside the bus the single-use fare, though)

• If you intend to head east or south by hitchhiking, however, it may be best to get to the neighbouring city of Izmit first. The cheapest train ticket costs 3.75 TL (3.00 TL if you have a valid student ID, this is the rate for Doğu Express, which departs 08:35 every morning) from Istanbul’s Haydarpasa station to Izmit currently. Near the train station in Izmit is a major highway junction, take east for Adapazari/Ankara/Central Anatolia/Black Sea Turkey, south for Yalova/Bursa. If you are eager for more southern locations such as Antalya, take eastward road to Adapazari first, then hit the southward road there (which eventually reaches Antalya after hundreds of kilometers). Another option to leave the city is to take the not-so-cheap fast ferries to Yalova, if you don’t object to pay much for public transport.

• There are also public buses from Kadiköy, Istanbul’s main centre on Asia, to Tuzla (#130 and #130A; fare: TL 1.30/person), which is the easternmost district of the city. If you take one of these buses, get off as soon as the bus leaves the highway (colloquially known as E-5, pronounced “ay besh” in Turkish, 4-lane one-way, you can easily recognize what is this highway and what is not). Where you will get off is as far as you can get on that highway with a public bus, though most of the cars passing there will be too fast to be able to stop right beside you.

Edirne ← Corlu ← Junction ←

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→ Izmit → Ankara