Two years after his first visit, travel writer Brendan Shanahan returned to Turkey. After catching up with old friends in Istanbul, he set off on a journey in the country's secretive east where, among other adventures, he found himself in the middle of a gunfight, was propositioned by a gang of teenage boys and swam to Armenia in his underpants. Returning to Istanbul, Brendan agreed to run a friend's carpet shop. With only the dubious help of a loveable but wildly unstable drug addict, the results were occasionally disastrous, frequently hilarious and often poignant.