Esenler Bus Terminal

I would be going on a long bus ride this evening and I was waiting at the bus terminal for the bus to depart. The Esenler Bus Terminal is one of a few bus terminals in the city of Istanbul. It is a massive complex where buses depart for regional and even international destinations. There are numerous companies which sell tickets and it was nice to just walk around the terminal to see where the buses go. A lot of the local destinations are unknown to me except perhaps Ankara which is the capital of Türkiye. However, some destinations surprised me.

There were some international destinations like Sofia in Bulgaria and Bucharest in Hungary which made sense since they are neighbors. The ones which surprised me where Odessa and Kiev which, as you might know, are in Ukraine. I had no idea you can take a bus to go there. Then again, I think that because it is too dangerous to fly into Ukraine, it would be safe to just take the bus, which is still not a sure thing. I would be curious to know how much it costs and how much time does it take to get there. Is it more expensive to go there because it is an active war zone? I will be going somewhere else tonight but it is sobering to think that people would have to take such long journeys just to escape a war. One consoling thought was that it is still possible to go back there so people can still visit their relatives who remained there.

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