The Lycian Way

June 15th - June 23rd 2012

So with 2 weeks off that Becky had to work, I thought it would be a perfect time to take a trip that I knew she had absolutely zero interest in doing and was something I had wanted to do ever since I had heard about it in early 2009. I would walk a section of the Lycian Way. The Lycian Way is a through-hike stretching 510 kilometers between Fethiye and Antalya. I had it all planned out. I'd fly into Dalaman and then bus it to Kas. From Kas, I would spend the next 2 weeks hiking through ruins, passing beautiful coastlines and walking through Turkish villages. I had my sleeping bag, bought a tent and found my compass.

I had spent the previous 2 weeks studying a guide book of the hike and making notations of trail updates I found online. I learned the Turkish words I would need to know on the trail that I had absolutely no use for in the city like “way-makers”, “foot path” and “potable”. I bought a sun hat, found sunscreen and checked weather reports. Not only did I check weather reports for the next 2 weeks but I checked the previous 5 years of weather reports for the same 2 weeks in June I was planning to walk. June isn't the best time to walk the trail but it is in no way out of the question. I counted on it being about 32 degrees for most of the trip which was, with the amount of water I was going to be carrying and the times of day I was planning on walking, incredibly doable.

When I finished work, I flew down to Dalaman and jumped on a bus south to Kas. I bought 6 liters of water, grabbed some trail food and started walking outside of the city heading in the direction of the trail head and eventually, Olympos. My total trip had me walking about 175 kilometers and ending up on the beaches of Olympos where I would spend the last few days of the trip sitting on the beach, reading a book and allowing my feet to recover.

A view of the coastline from the trail

The onset of the hike was great. I had a bounce in my step and I marveled at everything I encountered. I was very happy to be hiking and out in the open. I spent the first day walking along beautiful coastlines with views of the sea that were bluer than any other water I had ever seen and speckled with dozens of jagged islands that looked both undiscovered and uninhabitable. These beautifully formidable islands added greatly to the beauty of the walk. With every break, I observed a beautiful, serene stillness that seemed to be all around me. At the end of the first day, I trudged into this village looking for a flat place to pitch a tent and refill my 6 liters of water that had been quickly disposed of and surprisingly insufficient. I found that along the way all the places I was told I could fill up with water were bone dry. But I, undeterred and exhibiting worrisome indifference to this dilemma, simply figured I was not rationing my water well enough and scaled back my intake.

I bought some food from the villagers and they allowed me to stay on their land and refill my bottles. I spent the first night talking with some villagers who told me that they hadn't seen anyone walking the trail in 10 days and that they figured the season to be over due to the onslaught of atypical heat. It hadn't registered to me until that moment that it might have been hotter than what I thought it was supposed to be. She told me that the last 3 weeks had been right around 42 degrees with little variation accounting for: 1. Little to no water in local wells or my water bottles 2. No people on the trail doing the same thing as me and 3. A pounding headache that I was now attributing to my serious dehydration.

Again, undeterred to such compromising trifles, I adapted my plan and forged ahead. I would wake up earlier, walk until midday, find a tree to sit under until the heat subsided at around 4pm-ish and then continue on to my next destination. Bam. Problem solved and headache sure to be vanquished.

Well, the heat reprieve I was banking on left something to be desired. I got up and hit the trail at 6am but it might as well have been 9am. It was balls hot as soon as the sun was up except today was different as I was conscious of it. I was walking about the same amount as I did yesterday. Yesterday was 18 kilometers and today would be 21. 12 miles. Piece of cake. Up and over 3 ridges and then a descent to the village. The way-markers were good, the trail was negotiable and although more tired than the day before, I still retained a bounce in my step and an unwavering determination to keep walking. I had every intention of making it to Olympos no matter how hot it was.

Well, it turned out I needed to stop and run for cover a lot earlier than expected. It was 10:30 am when I was crawling under a tree, escaping the scorching hot sun and trying to conserve energy expended during my cool morning walk. I read, wrote notes and observed donkey-carts being lead by villagers that seemed utterly perplexed by my presence on the side of the road in this heat. 4 pm-ish ended up being about 6 pm-ish when I rose from my marginal provider of coolness and soldiered on. I made my way the remainder of the 21 kilometers to this beautiful valley floor, unable to recall the last 4 hours of my walk and also unable to disregard the fact that I still had not see any other hikers.

I slept horribly; Constant cramping in my legs and oscillating between seeking refuge in my sauna-like tent and the mosquito-laden open air. Sleep did not come easily and 5:30 am came far too quickly but with the added addition of hundreds of mosquito bites (apparently the mosquito repellent I bought in Turkey was less repellent, more sugar water). The heat was not what I planned it would be and it was causing slight discomforts but I pushed on nonetheless.

I filled up my water at a local mosque and hit the trail early. To get to where I wanted to be this evening (a water source) I would not be afforded the opportunity to post up under a tree for an entire work day and wait for the heat to subside. Water, shade or not – I had 23 kilometers to walk to get to my next reliable water source and village. I could not be certain, but today definitely felt hotter than yesterday, and yesterday was surely hotter than the first day which was 42 degrees. The serene stillness I observed 2 days ago now left me acutely aware of the absence of any wind or cross-breeze.

I set off up and over the pass that would then saddle back to the coastline and carry on inundulatingly for hours winding in and out of views of the coastline and the islands that seemed to follow me everywhere I went. I actually remember very little of this part of the day. Whatever my body was forced to do to conserve energy, water and allow me to put one foot in front of the other left no allowance for day dreaming, note taking or, as I would later realize, photography. I guess even though I was consciously making bad decisions, walking into mind-boggling heat, subconsciously I was making necessary arrangements to get me to my village...up until about 4 pm.

Day 2 campsite

I stumbled to a stop to have a drink of water that seemed to be depleting with accelerated sieve-leeking speed when I felt a creeping suspicion of impending projectile vomit washing over me. I bent over, realized this was actually happening, assumed the position and watched as I regurgitated precious water and bits of lunch like a shotgun blast -  cascading all over the surrounding rocks and dirt. And just as I had finished voiding my body of the very substance that seemed to be preventing me from keeling over, my backpack, reaching an inertic tipping point as I stood bent over retching, propelled itself forward and forced me downwards on an unalterable trajectory into my newly formed puddle of excreta.

I lay there, ascertaining and quantifying my situation, wondering A) How much water I had left in my pack and B) If, just by chance, maybe I had turned the tide of my wayward leaning luck train and somehow didn't just plummet into my own vomit?

The answers were little and no, respectively.

Tapping into an unknown resource, I picked myself up off the vomit-muddied earth and assessed that I had about an hour more of walking to do, waning sunlight and a puny amount of water. None of which were being helped by my woozy stagnation in this spot. I got my bearings, found my path and plotted onward in a daze of dehydration and confusion. I finally reached the village that had a potable drinking source, filled up my water and proceeded to curl up in a ball on my mat, drinking thimble sized cups of water and waited for the nausea and blinding headache to dissipate.

Lycian sarcophagi along the trail

My brain was turned to mush, I wasn't thinking clearly, and I was quite confused as to where I was. Too much water would cause me to throw up but not enough would somehow cause me and my mat to spin around in circles in the most annoying way. I spent the rest of the evening curled up on my mat too deprived of energy to even swat the mosquitoes off of my face. Sunstroke is no joke.

I woke up late the next day after another sleepless night, nursing myself back to acceptable hydration standards and contemplating the future of this trip. I had read that the water sources were few and far between for about the next week and that its not advisable in hot temperatures. I walked into town to buy some food and inquire about the trail. My brain, not operating on all its cylinders, was definitely affected in the foreign language department which made communication slow at first, but I eventually conveyed what was going on and they were very surprised that I was walking and also very adamant that I stop immediately. They told me that there was no water on the trail and absolutely no shade to take refuge in. I would need at least 12 liters in this heat. It ended up being 45 degrees yesterday with expectations to rise in the next few days and the wind, which I never felt in the first place, was expected to die down completely.

So that was it, I left the trail. It was too stupid to continue no matter how much I wanted to and it was supposed to get worse in the next few days. Not happening. Super pissed off and disappointed, I took a boat taxi to the nearest bus station and boarded it heading south. I had no idea of what to do but decided to go to the place that I was supposed to end up at, Olympos. I talked to Becky who made me a reservation at a hostel (and who was also very pleased that I had tabled the hike) and I made a plan to go sit on a beach for a day or 2 and then sort things out from there. Since I still had 10 days before I flew back to Istanbul, I figured that would be as good of a place as any to waste some time at. Becky told me how to get there and I made my way in that direction.

Driving into Olympos was not what I expected. I expected sandy beaches, umbrellas and open air cabanas but we were driving through forested roads, winding our way through dry river beds and past tacky buildings dressed up as tree houses. Whatever the allure of this place was, it was still alluding me and I'm sure my sunny disposition wasn't helping. I still carried around with me an air of pissed-offness that I couldn't seem to shake and so far, Olympos wasn't helping.

Olympos Beach

I checked in, surveyed the place, marveled at the wonder of the air-conditioned room I was staying in and then did a double take when they told me that both breakfast and dinner would be included in the very cheap price that I had been quoted for the room. The hostel was laid out with several open-air, ottoman style sofas on stilts where people were hanging out, reading books and drinking beers. They told me that I could run a tab on the room and just pay when I left-eerily tantalizing words that sound so attractive and yet are never a good idea.

I made myself at home, hung out on the ottoman couches and read my book for awhile. I later made my way down to the beach that was unlike anything I had ever seen. As soon as you walk down, through the old ruins of the ancient Lycian town, the remnants of the city gave way to a beautiful beach, a cliff face and old defensive towers and fortifications perched up above the beach, overlooking the pristine water. The place instantly thrusted me back hundreds of years and gave me a strong appreciation of this place and its obvious significance in history.

I had planned to stay in Olympos for a day and I ended up staying for 9. I loved it there. I met interesting people, had great discussions, read books, drank beers, ate great food and got a sunburn. I walked the ruins, went cliff diving, took a night hike to the eternal flame and stayed up late talking about random things. It was hard for me to remember why I was so upset when I first got there. Although I didn't get to complete my 175 km hike this time, I will revisit the Lycian Way sometime in the future for sure. It will not be done anytime later than April or before September but I will somehow find a way to do it. I have to. In the end, this trip was anything but a disappointment. Well, everything except the check out I suppose...

I had begun thinking about this moment a few days earlier. The check out. The moment you realize that you must stand at the cashier on the day of your bar-tab reckoning and atone for your gluttonous sins and your hedonistic alcoholic purchases.  Almost as if there would not be an inevitable, monetary responsibility for services and libations rendered. I pushed the thought out of my head, willing it to never come. Hoping for some sort of clerical error that would wipe out everything, eliminating any evidence that I had ever sauntered over to the bar to obtain something, down to the very last unnecessary chocolate bar. This day, sadly, did not come.

On the day of my departure, I stood there at the desk, backpack donned and wallet out, searching the desk attendant's face for any clue as to the damage I was about to incur but found only indifference. Surely it could not be that bad could it? 9 days of lunches, waters, drinks and incidentals? How much could that have gotten to, honestly? He tallied it up, punched the calculator, scribbled some numbers and pushed the docket to my side of the window from where he sat. I picked it up, unfolded it and quietly quivered as I internally railed against this ridiculous number. “How could this be?!?” “There must be some mistake!” I formed the words to speak but first made hasty calculations in my head. Frantically carrying ones, doing long division and solving for X in a banal attempt to show an apparent mistake. I finished my calculations, sighed and handed over my credit card. When all was said and done I realized that if anything, they probably forgot to tally a beer here and a chicken sandwich there. I was deflated and downtrodden. That piece of paper stared at me with a big, disgusting number :(

So yes, I almost died of heat stroke. If a couple of things had gone differently on this trip, I could still be out there at the time of writing this, like a dried up piece of bacon, melting in the sun and being picked a part by vultures. Luckily, the only real bad thing that happened was I had to pay a rather large bar tab. Like I said, the Lycian Way will one day be revisited. At a time when I do not have to carry more weight in water than in everything else combined and when I won't be constantly plagued with headaches and bouts of neasuea. The trail will not take the best of me, that, I promise you.

So I made it to Antalya and hopped on a flight back to Istanbul to meet Becky. Although I was 2 weeks into my 5 week holiday I felt that it was about to start in some strange way. Becky was getting off work that night for her summer and the next day we were jumping on a plane to Africa.

To be continued.

Books Read:

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak 

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Turkey: The Map and the Territory Part 2 of 2

Mt. Ararat from Doğubeyazıt

After Ani, I hitched a ride to Doğubeyazit with a watermelon dealer. He was a nice guy who even sliced up a watermelon for us along the way. Doğubeyazit was just kilometers from the Iranian border, so as soon as you get there, you notice its military presence and no nonsense attitude from the soldiers. I got there in time to see the fading sun shimmering off of the snow-capped Mount Ararat in the closing hours of the day. The mountain was way bigger than I had imagined it would be. It just seemed to loom in the distance, so large that I was unable to quantify how big it was just by looking at it. Mount Ararat has also been a very divisive issue between Armenians and Turks. Before World War I, Mount Ararat lay within the boundaries of Armenia, but after WWI and during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the Soviets invaded the Armenian Republic and then sliced up Armenia at the Treaty of Kars; new borders were drawn up and the enormous mountain was declared a part of present day Turkey.

I spent my time there hanging out in the city, wandering the palace of Işak Paşa and befriending some chatty military personnel on the street. While I was having lunch, I met an officer who was stationed in the town and he sneaked me on to the base to have tea and baklava with him and his fellow officers late one night. It was not long after the third or fourth tea where they willing to tell me how much of a living hell their year-long conscription into the Turkish military truly was. We talked late into the night until their shift was about to change and then, fearing punishment from anyone who had seen me on base without proper permission, they showed me the door and bid me safe travels for the rest of my trip. This was just another occasion in an ever growing list of examples of mind-bogglingly kind hospitality and altruism that I had no way of reciprocating-- a specific kind of uniqueness never to be duplicated.

Işak Paşa Palace

So right about the time that a Kurdish family dropped me off in Van, Ramadan was starting in Turkey and in other Muslim countries around the world. Ramadan is a Muslim holiday in which all Muslims abstain from food, drink, and any other *ahem* physical need during the time between sunrise and sunset. All of this is done to practice restraint in an attempt to purify and cleanse their mind, body, and soul and refocus themselves on their commitment to god. During Ramadan, Turks  get up before sunrise to break their fast and then proceed to work the entire day until they are allowed to break fast after sunset.

This was a truly interesting time to be traveling the east of Turkey.  I found that the Turks here were a lot more pious than in the Black Sea, and definitely more pious than in Istanbul. Although I was, and am not, a pious person myself, I derived a great deal of pleasure out of walking around the city and listening to the melodic, high energy clamor of people in the streets at the end of a hot day as they broke their fast amongst family and friends. Everyone was in good moods and high spirits-- excited about their month of purification.

On Akdamar Island

Van, one of the bigger cities of the east, is butted right up against a massive lake. As I traveled out to the lake, I saw the massive silhouette of a fortress sidled up against the lake; I approached and saw that others were climbing up on it and I did the same. I met a couple of beautiful Kurdish girls who were in town visiting some family and when I told them I was from California, they could not fathom a guess as to why I would come all the way out to Van if I lived in California; a question to which an answer was never understood, no matter how many times I tried to express it in my broken Turkish.

I spent my time in Van traipsing through old, ruinous buildings, sampling the delicious and special herb cheeses from Van's famous breakfast spreads, and even spent an afternoon on a Kurdish boat party that took us to and from the island of Akdamar.  A very fun experience indeed.

View of Van Lake from the fortress

Van marked about week 3 in my 5 week trip and it also marked the turn I would make back towards the West coast and to Cesme. Needing to budget my money as well as time a little better, I jumped on an overnight bus to Diyarbakkir and then on to the city of Mardin. I arrived in Mardin just a couple of days into Ramadan expecting to witness the same charming demeanor of the people in Van. Well, I guess it doesn't take too many days of this holy time for people to traverse from the pleasantries and mild-temperaments of rational people to everyone pretty much being a massive dickhead to any and everyone around them.

Atop the fortress

As you could imagine, due to the scorching heat, dehydration and Turks' debilitating nicotine addictions, tempers were running high during the day. Tensions were short, nicotine-deprived bodies were shaky, hunger was rife, and I had learned the hard way that if I could somehow go about my day with as few interactions with others as possible, I would have a better chance of not being dismembered by hungry and foul-mooded Turks.

Van city center

I had been told in Van that there would be at least a restaurant open during the day to accommodate children, elderly people, and (and apparently) menstruating women who could not endure the hardships of the fast. Me, not needing to adhere to this, or any other of the 4 pillars of Islam, would not be fasting during the day.  But finding this elusive restaurant seemed to be more difficult than I thought. Dehydrated, tired, and incredibly hungry, I was reduced to (very creepily) waiting outside of a school, hoping that when school ended, I could follow the students and one of them would lead me to the one restaurant open in the entire city. Desperate times called for desperate and creepy measures. School was let out and the children were off into town. I thought that I was walking after them with a competent and masterful surreptitiousness but it turned out I was some creepy foreigner that they all noticed right away. Apparently I didn't look very menacing because they proceeded on unperturbed and for once, a  brilliant plan of mine worked! I walked into the culinary heaven of some greasy, dirty ev yemekleri (handmade food  served cafeteria style) surrounded by children, elderly people, and women. Whether they were menstruating or not remained to  unclear and unverifiable.   

View of Syria from Mardin

 

Once I got something to eat, I walked the gorgeous city with a new perspective. Admiring the old and narrow streets with donkey carts traveling up and down them, sitting at a restaurant drinking a tea (after  sunset of course), looking over into the massively large and flat area that was Syria, and observing other people around me breaking their fast which whisked the charm and positive attitudes back to them; eating bread, smoking cigarettes and enjoying other people's company with satiated stomachs.

Mardin

Well, now my trip was really coming to an end. I was running out of time and I still had Nemrut Mountain and Cappadocia to see before I made my way to Cesme. I took another night bus to a village on the slopes of the mountain and spent the day wandering around the hillsides and stopping off at little eateries selling their homegrown food. Nemrut Mountain is the site of a massive sanctuary and tomb for a king called Antiochus I Theos of Commagene. The Commagene kingdom was a small kingdom in present day Armenia and central Turkey and Antiochus, who reigned until 38 BC, was the most famous of this kingdom. The thing to do in Nemrut is get up before dawn, drive to the top of the mountain, hike out to the peak,  watch the sun rise over the  beautifully vast area of Central Turkey, and watch the sun glisten off the giant 30 foot sunrise facing statues of Antiochus, eagles, lions, and various Greek, Armenian, and Iranian gods of the time. Despite the over-abundance of people there, it was a morning of quiet, stillness, and peace that I remember fondly.

Crossing the Euphrates

Sunrise facing statues

Nemrut Dağı at sunrise

I had made my way several hundred kilometers and was now closing in on one of the tourism highlights in Turkey: Cappadocia. The ancient area of Cappadocia is famous as a modern day tourist destination for it's gorgeous aerial views from hot air balloons, it's wonderful trekking trails through valleys and their dry river bed valley floors as well as its geological features; namely the fairy chimneys. 

Fairy chimneys are tall, thin spires of sedimentary or volcanic rocks that have been shaped by the elements over thousands of years. The chimneys are made when softer rocks are topped with harder rocks prohibiting erosion to the lower areas. These tall and skinny rock formations often resemble totem poles or pinnacles and they are everywhere in Cappadocia. Also famous about Cappadocia is that because the rocks are so soft, early Christians in the area were able to carve several underground cities into the rocks and fairy chimneys and to this day, there still exists a vast, underground system of churches, houses, and various defense systems that protected them against invaders and religious persecution. 

Hiking through Cappidocia

Cappidocia was also a welcome respite from the rigors and conservativeness of the east. As there were more tourists here, I was able to find food and drink at all hours of the day despite it still being Ramadan. I arrived from Nemrut late in the night and completely exhausted from my day of hitch-hiking. I went to bed early, wanting to make the most of the short, 2 day stint I would be confined to before I made my way to Cesme. I was up early, bought provisions and food for a day of walking, a map, inquiries into the general direction I should be walking in, and I was off. My haste proved to be something I would be kicking myself over later in the day in the sweltering sun of an incredibly hot afternoon. 

The morning was cool, the sun was barely up, and I was charged with the enthusiasm of 5 weeks culminating in being in this place. Every traveler I had met coming from this direction told me how much I was going to love it here, especially if I like hiking, so I was excited and I turned out to be anything but disappointed. I explored every valley I could get to. Every fairy chimney was a new discovery, begging to be climbed in and explored. I would sit inside this massive rock and wonder at the history of its former inhabitants; their lives, trials, tribulations, and the things that brought happiness to their lives. I explored underground cities and churches with intricate well water systems that still worked to this day. I went from valley peak to valley floor, everything being slightly different from the previous but invariably slightly different. A different fascination in everything I looked at. This place was absolutely magical. But, as it happened, the euphoria of the place (and possibly the heat) voided me of my better judgment later in the day. 

Cave Church

I was walking on this ridge line, making my way down the soft, sandy, white dunes of the area. I didn't know where I was exactly, but I knew I was making my way back in the general direction of town. As I walked along this ridge, I noticed a set of fairy chimneys on the valley floor to my right. This would be a bit of a detour but I thought it would be worth checking out because it seemed so remote down at the bottom. I assessed the area from the ridge line and saw a trail that seemed to snake down the side of this peak to the valley below. I started walking down this trail and then  realized that this trail was less a trail, and more an eroded, rain run off chute. It was doing a lot less snaking, and a lot more going straight downhill. No matter, it wasn't very steep and it was easily negotiable. The trail continued down and down, offering me absolutely no shade from the directly overhead sun beating down on me. The rain run off trail was getting incrementally more annoying too; I was having to climb over and under rocks, down sandy embankments and worst of all were these more than occasional 2 foot drop offs made higher from dried up pond beds where water, cascading over the side, would puddle up. 

Rock Castle

The further and further I made my way down the valley wall, the deeper and deeper this rain trench became and the higher and higher the drop offs were becoming. Nearing the valley floor, I approached this one drop off that had something about it that made me exude caution. It seemed to be a bit taller than normal. I inched toward the slanted drop off, deciding if it was worth going down when all of a sudden, I slipped on my ass, smashed my hip and slid off the side. Before I had a chance to register anything else, I was standing safely below the drop off on my own two feet. My heart was pumping and I was a little startled but I landed softly on the sand. I was almost there, I had to be. I had been walking for about 30 minutes now. I was hot, sweaty, and tired. I came around another corner to another drop off that, like the previous one, made me be a little bit more cautious. This time being very careful not to slip on the slant right before the drop off, I peered over the edge to see how best to get down. 

I swore aloud.

I guess it was interesting for me to think back on my feelings at this point. I remember being incredibly angry that I was going to have to turn around and go back up because this drop off was well over ten feet onto jagged rocks but I guess I should have been thinking about what would have happened to me if I slipped and fell over this ledge instead of the ledge before. I suppose anger and fatigue were clouding out everything else at that moment. 

In fact, yes, yes it was, because it was when I got back to the ledge that I had slipped off that I realized I had a bit of a problem. This ledge was taller than I thought it was when I fell off of it. I had thought it was just a couple of feet but now that my adrenaline and pulse were not racing, I could clearly see that this ledge was about an arm’s length over my head. 

I approached the problem calmly at first, seeing if I could grab onto anything on the sides to hoist myself up. Nope. The rock was so soft that whenever I tried to grab something, it fell off in my hand. I tried to run up to it and leap to a stronger looking rock above the drop off but the sand was so loose, I couldn't jump high enough to reach anything. I had a problem. 25 minutes passed and I was nothing except a lot more tired. I took out my phone to see if I had a signal but, of course, I didn't, - the trench had become too deep to get a signal here. 

"Ok, think!" I told myself. 

To stave off a major freak out and to ration any remaining energy, I stopped, tried to find a place with a marginal level of shade and take stock of the food and water I had. 

"Lots of water, that's good," I was talking aloud now, trying to keep myself calm. "If I need to, I could spend probably 3 days here. No problem." 

3 days and then what? What would having a problem mean? I saw no one all day walking around. Not one person. Did I see any foot prints on the rain run off trail? I couldn't remember. 

This was bad. 

"Ok, conserve energy. Find shade."

I was sitting with my back to the rock wall, a sheer cliff that was facing the wrong direction in relation to the sun - offering no shade. I needed to get out of the sun, it had to have been well over a hundred degrees out here and the cooler I was, the less water I would drink. 

I snuck inside the rock castle

I walked back down the trench towards the death drop, trying to find a place to sit, escape the sun, and regroup for a second. The best thing I could find was the low lying rock I could lay next to that provided me a little bit of respite from the sun.I was hoping that it would lead to a respite from the paralyzing fear of baking to a crisp and dying of dehydration in the Turkish desert before anyone found me. 

I was lying down in the dirt, trying to extract any coolness the shady patch I was occupying could emit, when I felt something dig into my back. 

"Ouch," I said out loud, annoyed that the only place that was tolerably cool was intolerably uncomfortable in this place that I could very well die in. I rolled over to see what was poking me in the back. I dug down a little and exposed the root of an old tree. This gave me an idea, but I would need to wait until after the sun had gone down a bit when I had more energy. 

I lied there until the sun had gone over my section of trench and then got up on my hands and knees and started digging in the dirt. At first, I was digging for roots but then really, I realized I was digging for anything and everything that might help. I collected tiny little branches, stones, tough clumps of dirt, and the occasional tree root that I could break off. I went back to the base of ledge and started breaking off pieces from the drop off to use as well. Once I thought I had enough, I started to pile it up at the base of the ledge with intermittent layers of sand and dirt until, when i stood on it, I was about eye level with the edge of the drop off. I threw my backpack up, then slowly pulled it back down, threw it up, then slowly pulled in back down until, when I tugged on it, it wouldn't move. I tested it with incrementally more and more weight until I was satisfied it would be load bearing. I held my breath, distributed my weight between my makeshift pedestal and my backpack,  hoisted myself up, clambered on my bloody knees and lay face down on the slope, clutching a sturdy rock with the lower part of my legs and feet hanging over the edge. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, looked back at the place I had been trapped for 4 hours and then unceremoniously turned and headed back up the hill.     

I almost died here!

"Not today," I said as I made my way back to my hostel, the shower, and a cold beer. 

I spent the next day a lot less adventurously discovering the area before whisking myself away to the beaches of Cesme. I met up with Lisya and her friends and enjoyed the last of my time and money sitting on beaches, eating and drinking hedonistically and telling them of the trip I had just took. It almost seemed surreal to be back, speaking my language and not living out of a backpack from day to day. 

At that point in my life, this had been the best trip I had ever taken. I loved every bit of it- the indescribably sublime as well as the incredibly frustrating. To anyone who later asked about the trip, it proved impossible to explain exactly how I felt at any step along the way. The feeling I felt when witnessing Turkish hospitality, the overwhelming awe-struckness of standing in front of ruined cities that had once been responsible for the formation of the modern world, or the grandeur and beauty I saw in something right before I took a picture of it. The map falls short in every banal attempt it makes to embody the territory. This uniqueness was for me and me alone no matter how many pictures I took or how well I described it.  

Anything more would just be a muddled and distorted song in the wind.

Books Read:

Gai-Jin - James Clavell

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Mehmet, My Hawk - Yaşar Kemal

The Power of the Dog - Don Winslow

Carvings in the rock churches

Doesn't really show how hot it was

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