Bruno and I had been in Oman a couple weeks.  We’d already had a run-in with the police, visited lots of forts and mosques, and fallen in love with cheap Omani-Indian fast food.

Now we were driving away from Muscat, the capital, and were heading down Oman’s eastern coast to do what we were most excited to do in this intriguing Sultanate – catch sea turtles in the act of nesting and laying their eggs.  (Read more about why this is such a wondrous experience in the official version of the story.)

Here, the coastline varied between rock that looked like coral and long white sand beaches.  Photographically, it was like a fairy tale.  But in actuality, we quickly learned, it was a pain in the butt.  The wind was a constant nag, bringing whipping sand, goose bumps, and whitecaps on the water.  Worse, as overlanders visiting a country with no campsites, it was a great challenge to find an uninhabited place in which to camp along the entire 400km stretch of coastline we crossed.

Hole in a rocky outcrop along Oman’s stunning eastern coastline.

Exploring a rocky beach along Oman’s coast.

Waves crashing onto the rocky coast of windy Oman.

Still, we were on a turtle mission, and search for nesting turtles we would.  We would just try to accomplish the mission as fast as possible.

On one of our first nights, after getting stuck in the sand on nearby White Beach and subsequently sharing a very strange session of tea with an elderly local villager, we parked on a rocky outcrop and effortlessly spotted turtle heads bobbing between the waves.  Later that day, while climbing down to a little gorge near our campsite, we saw tracks in the sand that Bruno declared were those of a turtle.

The little gorge we climbed down after spotting turtle heads bobbing in the sea.

Bruno, taking a closer look at those turtle tracks.

If it had been this easy to spot turtle heads and turtle tracks, then surely it would be easy to spot nesting turtles, I concluded.  I slept well that night, and dreamed of turtle eggs.

The following day, Bruno and I drove through Sur, a town famous for its dhow – or, traditional boat – building.  We climbed a little hill and got a spectacular view of the coast.  Then we carried on to Ras al Hadd, the official starting-point of turtle-territory in Oman.

Ras al Hadd is set along a long stretch of sandy beach, a beach known for its nesting sea turtles.  We found a sign displaying a series of rules of conduct on this beach, set in place to protect the turtles and their nests.  But other than that sign, there was no sign of anything turtle-related.  Instead, the beach was strewn with fishing nets, boats, and 4WD vehicles, used in Oman to help pull in one’s catch of the day.  We didn’t fancy sleeping among the fishermen here, so we carried on.

A panorama of Sur and its famous wooden dhows.

Guidelines for behaviour on this (or any, really) turtle-nesting beach.

There was more evidence of fishermen on this beach than turtles.

To Ras al Jinz, the turtle-nesting site of Oman and the entire Middle East.  This was the place where Bruno had spent so much time a decade before, camped along the beach watching turtles quietly dig nests in the sand, nestle themselves in, and lay a hundred eggs before waddling back to the sea and leaving their future babies to the fate of cruel Nature.  (Read more about that cruel fate in the official version of this story.)

Now, though, Ras al Jinz was just one big concrete building with a tourist information center and a mediocre museum.  Bruno was appalled, so we moved on, deciding to continue searching for turtles further down the coast.

We spent a night near As Sulayb, a fishing village whose nets were doing more damage than good to the turtles.  We spotted six turtles here, but all of them were dead.  This time, I was the one that was appalled.

Parked at As Sulayb, where I only saw dead turtles.

It was while going for a run that I spotted two turtles in the water, and, thinking they were alive, raced into the water to push them out. They were both, however, dead.

A sunrise breakfast that should have been beautiful but was just really, really sad.

We drove through the Sharquiya Sands, a desert of dunes that reaches to the coastline.  It was fun to climb dunes and gaze at the turquoise sea, but the wind made the sand storms too unbearable to camp here.

Sharquiya Sands is a big desert in Oman with sand dunes that reach all the way to the Arabian Sea.

Photo op amid the dunes.

But it was too windy to spend the night.

Instead, we chose to take a ferry across to Masirah Island, renowned for its turtle-nesting beaches.  On the ferry ride, I was full of anticipation at the prospect of soon accomplishing our mission.

Getting on the ferry bound for Masirah Island.

Excited to accomplish our turtle mission on Masirah Island!

Fellow passengers bound for Masirah.

Arriving to Masirah Island.

We spotted more camels than turtles near Masirah Island’s Turtle Beach.

Once on the island, we headed straight for Turtle Beach and the Masirah Island Eco Resort.  They had an interesting display of turtle conservation efforts on the island, but the receptionist told us we were too early for the loggerhead turtle nesting season, the type of turtle that nests here.  We spent the night on Turtle Beach anyway, but instead of turtle tracks, all we saw were tire tracks from 4WD vehicles playing in the sand.

Disappointed, we decided to drown our sorrows the next day at the resort pool.  A couple of hotel beers in a country where alcohol is hard to come by helped us swallow our turtle frustrations, and the following day we were ready to search every corner of this rugged, rocky, arid island for nesting sea turtles.

Chilling at the Masirah Island Resort’s pool.

Bruno’s chillin’ too.

And search we did.  We drove up and down the 95km-long eastern coast (where the turtles come to lay), searching for sandy beaches.  When we’d find one, we’d get out of the car and walk up and down the beach, looking for signs of turtles.  And eventually we found them.  At first, the tracks were faint – a few days old or more – but eventually, we found fresh tracks, certainly created the night before.

Parked along a beach searching for turtle tracks or nests.

Scouring beach after beach for signs of nesting turtles is hard work – hard work that requires an ample supply of water.

Finally, fresh turtle tracks leading to fresh turtle nests!

The nests are pretty big, aren’t they? They have to be, since they’re filled with countless eggs.

So, we parked our vehicle near the beach and set in for the day, filled with anticipation.  Since turtles almost always lay their eggs in the middle of the night, we busied ourselves that afternoon snorkelling in the water and walking up and down the beach while waiting for the sun to finally set.

Parked along our private turtle-nesting beach, waiting for more turtles to arrive.

Going for a beach walk (or a few) to kill time before nightfall.

The nearest village from our private turtle-nesting beach, and this was shot after a 40-minute beach walk.

I’m not going to go into the details of what exactly happened that night on that uninhabited, isolated stretch of white sand coast on faraway Masirah Island.  For that, you’ll have to read the official version of the story.  Suffice to say that it was an incredible night.

And no, I didn’t see nesting sea turtles in Oman.

Epilogue:  A couple of months after searching for nesting sea turtles in Oman, Bruno and I found ourselves along the Mediterranean Coast of Turkey, another key turtle-nesting coast.  I had hopes of finally accomplishing my turtle mission, but once again, we were too early.

With Phil and Angie, we visited Turkey’s premier Iztuku Beach near Dalyan and learned a lot about the local efforts to protect the sea turtles, both by Captain June (a famous sailor-turned turtle ecologist) and a Sea Turtle Research and Rehabilitation Center.  The beach was well-protected, which is great to see, but also means that independent overlanders can’t simply camp out here and wait for incoming turtles.  I guess my nesting-turtle mission will have to wait for the coast of Mexico!

Chances are it’s some sort of kebab, right? That’s surely what came to my mind when I had imagined my choices at Turkish restaurants and cafes prior to my arrival. Some sort of grilled meat, served in a wrap or on a stick. It was a disappointing thought to me, a traveler who loves to experience a country through its food but who happens to be vegetarian.

Kebab. Everywhere in Turkey.

On my first morning in Istanbul, my friend Dani pointed me to the neighborhood borekçi and counselled me to breakfast on a greasy savoury pastry filled with white cheese and spinach. As I wandered with a full stomach down the alleys off Istaklal Caddesi, I spotted other vegetarian snacks for sale at food stalls – grilled corn, chestnuts, and several varieties of simit (bagels – one with sesame, another with tahini and sugar) – that made for an excellent picnic lunch in the park. Later, when I sat for an afternoon drink at a café, a man walked by selling raw almonds topped with ice.

It seemed that I had made it through my first day as a vegetarian in Turkey without starving.

Simit with sweetened tahini – better than a cinnamon roll!

A good bar-snack: raw almonds on ice.

One of MANY chestnut and corn stand in Istanbul

Over the following weeks, I learned about other vegetarian Turkish foods. I sampled kumpir (baked potato loaded with a variety of pickled veggies) and gӧzleme (a crêpe filled with white cheese, spinach and potato). I tried çig kӧfte, a wrap that used to be stuffed with raw meat balls, but was now more often made with bulgar, chilis and tomato paste. And I feasted on mixed mezze platters with Dani, dipping bread into roasted red pepper dip, garlicky yogurt, and walnut and tomato spread (my favorite). Mezzes were my Turkish saving grace – something I could eat as an actual meal that was always vegetarian.

A spicy veggie wrap: çig kӧfte.

Gӧzleme

But this was Istanbul, a cosmopolitan city. People understood when I muttered vegetarian as I pointed to a tasty-looking treat. The same rules didn’t apply in Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey’s equivalent of the wild, wild west. I’d told Bruno about lokantas, cafeteria-style restaurants I’d discovered in Istanbul where the cooks whip up a few dishes of the day, you point, fill your plate, and pay by weight or portion. That’s where I’d learned the art of pointing and asking “vegetarian?”

When I spotted a lokanta around lunchtime, a dozen lovely-looking dishes displayed at the window in bain-maries, I waltzed in confidently. I was looking forward to guiding Bruno through his first Turkish meal. There was a stew with purple eggplant peeking out, another one with thick fasulye green beans. I played the pointing game. With every dish. But each of them had tiny chunks of meat floating around in the thick broth. I had to settle on mercimek çorba (lentil soup), bread, and salad.

Don’t get me wrong. Turkish çorba is really good. It uses sumac, an indescribably lovely spice I’d never tasted before and will now forevermore associate with this soup. I was just frustrated that Turks would ruin perfectly lovely vegetable stews with their meat chunks!

Food on offer at a lokanta.

I do like çorba, I just don’t want to eat it every day.

I was to eat çorba a lot that week. It – along with the ubiquitous bread and salad that’s served at every table – was practically the only vegetarian thing every restaurant seemed to have in Turkey’s wild, wild west. But I wanted my Turkish experience of food to be slightly wider that soup.

I forced myself to adventure away from the lokantas. I learned some Turkish words – mostly related to food – and dragged Bruno into salonus and pideçis to try new foods. With my new key phrases, etsiz yekem var muh? (do you have something without meat?), I began to try new foods. I tasted menemen, Turkey’s take on scrambled eggs. They came served on a mini hot plate, scrambled with tomatoes, onions, and green pepper, and served – of course – with ample cups of çay and a loaf of sliced bread. I tasted pide, thin, canoe-shaped pizzas, made to order with cheese and vegetables. You could taste the wood-fire oven in the crisp, buttery crust. I tried mantı (ravioli) stuffed with soya in a tomato and yogurt sauce and sprinkled with colourful spices. I tried patlıcan (aubergine) in every form available – chopped and fire-roasted, melt-in-your-mouth grilled, and bathed in olive oil.  I tried vegetable stew cooked in a clay pot and ceremoniously hammered open in front of us.

Menemen

Hammering the clay lid off the veggie stew.

Stewed vegetables in a clay pot.

And, of course, I continued to sample mezzes whenever I could. Technically, mezzes are the Turkish equivalent of apéro snacks – vegetable spreads to be served with bread and a drink while your main dish is being prepared. I solved that problem by always ordering mezze platters rather than single mezze plates. It allowed me to try a greater variety of spreads and acted as a main meal. I’ll never forget the mixed mezze platter at Topdeck Cave Restaurant in Capadocchia’s Gӧreme – the platter contained fourteen different spreads, including hummus, dolma (vine leaves stuffed with rice), and bean salad. It was my best experience of mezze in Turkey.

After meals (and between, if I’m being honest), I’d sample Turkish desserts, of which there are many. Rice pudding, fried flour dough balls doused in honey, dondurma (“sticky” ice cream) – the Turks know how to do dessert. Their bahklava is the best in the world, flaky layers of pastry dusted with pistachio shavings and dripping with syrup. And their lokum, which I’d never tried before, is a gelatinous (though vegetarian!) bar in a variety of flavours and colors, sometimes with hazelnuts or pistachios inside and sometimes coated in powdered sugar. My favourite flavour was rose, though I was never to find rose lokum as good as in Istanbul, where there were actually dried rose petals around the square that burst with rose flavour.

Mezze. Fourteen different ones.

Fried dough balls with walnuts and honey.

Bahklava!!

There was one vegetarian food I hadn’t yet tried – kahvaltı, Turkey’s infamous breakfast. I’d first experienced the ritual when I’d watched Zelal, my Turkish roommate, prepare her elaborate breakfast. A boiled egg, a block of white cheese, honey, jam, tomatoes, olives, cucumber, bread, and tea (of course) – all spread out picnic-style on the table. It looked weird. I mean, cucumbers for breakfast? Savoury and sweet mixed together? I wasn’t at all interested in eating those combinations for breakfast.

But for lunch? Kahvaltı could make a good lunch, I thought. I was willing to try – it was vegetarian, after all.

One late morning, at a little café on the edge of the Mediterranean, Bruno and I finally hunkered down and tasted kahvaltı. Each ingredient came out on a little individual plate. I started with the innocuous parts – the egg, the vegetables, the bread. Next to me, Bruno was spreading honey on his bread and popping it in his mouth along with big chunks of cheese. I tried it, and my eyeballs rolled back in their sockets. I tried the homemade fig jam with the white cheese. My eyeballs rolled back again. I tried the kaymak – clotted cream – and, no joke, my eyes rolled back yet again. It was ah-may-zing!

Zelal’s kahvaltı.

OUR kahvaltı.

This is when my understanding of Turkish food really started to come together, I think. This is when I began to understand the Turkish people’s true relationship to produce. I began to notice things like dried apricots for sale on the side of the highway, statues of oranges or cherries standing proudly as the mascots of villages, locals picking lemons and mulberries off fruit trees in town.

Dried fruits of every variety. Yum!

Dried apricots for sale on the side of the road.

If the locals do it, why can’t I?

Kumluca is proud of its cherries!

I began to visit the local farmers’ markets, and to really look. What I saw astounded me. There was fresh milk sold in Coca Cola bottles, homemade yogurt in wooden vats, more varieties of young white cheese than I ever thought possible (and all of them really, really good – I know, I got to sample loads of them!). And of course, more fresh fruit and vegetables than I’d ever seen in a market.

I’d read that Turkey is one of the world’s few countries that can entirely feed itself and still have leftovers to export. What I was beginning to understand, however, is that the Turkish people not only grow loads of produce – they love it. It wasn’t just Zelal, whom I’d watched taste her way around every stall at the vegetable market in Istanbul, and who crunched on raw veggies all day every day. It was all Turkish people, generally.

Cherries, oh my god!

Fresh white cheese, thirty varieties at least!

How else could I explain the fresh vegetables, decorated with parsley leaves, or the jars of pickled vegetables placed on every restaurant table? How else could I explain the cold mezzes made entirely of vegetables and so much a part of Turkish food culture? I thought back to the many locals’ picnics I’d sneaked peaks at and remembered that they all included whole cucumbers, olives, and tomatoes. As I walked through Selcuk’s farmer’s market and filled my bags with locally-produced and locally-loved fresh produce, I finally understood that vegetarian food was actually the soul of Turkish cuisine.

Turkish food hasn’t become my favorite in the world. It’s a bit too heavy on the bread and olive oil, and it doesn’t have the spice kick I love in Indian and Thai food. But it was an integral part of my experience of Turkey, helping me to understand and appreciate Turkish people, history, and culture in a deeper way. I’ve discovered new favorite foods – mezze, kahvaltı, pide, çorba. I’ve gained a whole new respect for aubergine. And I’ve included a few new food ideas into my own repertoire– yogurt dip with garlic and cucumbers, and picnics of white cheese, jam, and bread.

I guess we can say that my search for vegetarian food in Turkey was a success.

Our stash one market day.

I’d done my research the day before. I’d read up on the history of Ephesus, and picked out the sites I expected to be the most popular – the amphitheater, the Library of Celsus, the Temple of Hadrian. I’d studied the map and plotted my course: I’d go through the back entrance, wander briefly through Lower Ephesus, then head for the top three sites. I was going to make the most of the early-morning calm before the storm.

Ephesus’ grand amphitheater, with seating for 25,000.

Ephesus’ Temple of Hadrian.

By the time I found myself in Selcuk village studying my Ephesus map and guide, I’d visited over a dozen ancient ruins throughout Turkey. This number, though astounding, was significantly less than it could have been if I’d popped in on all the ruins we’d passed nearby on roads or in villages. I’d learned early on that I needed to pick and choose my sites – not only did we lack the time needed to visit them all, but both Bruno and I would be seriously ruined out.

How, though, to choose among the plethora of ancient ruins listed in guide books and identified on brown roadside signs? How to decipher between the ones worth visiting and the ones worth skipping? How best to enhance one’s understanding of the Ancient Greeks and Romans without taking away from other worthy experiences in Turkey? Where is the fine line between seeing enough ruins and seeing too many?

The Roman bridge of Hasankeyf.

Adamkayalor, the statues on the cliffside.

Lycian sarcophagi at Kalekӧy.

These were questions I asked myself each time we drove past another village or brown sign boasting yet more ruins. There were always many reasons to visit – because the guide book called it a regional highlight, to be able to say I’d been there, the fear of missing out on a great site (it’s called FOMO, and it’s actually a thing!), curiosity, or just because it’s there and, well, why not?

And so, often, we went. For all of these reasons, I dragged Bruno to a lot of ancient ruins. I dragged him through a snowstorm because I wanted to see the Greek ruins of Nemrut Dağı and to the bustling town (two words Bruno hates) of Diyarbakır so I could walk on the ancient city walls. I’d made him bush-camp next to a cemetery to visit the Lycian ruins of Kalekӧy, and sleep in a field filled with roosters beside a disco and a mosque so I could see the ancient Lycian capital of Patara. I even dragged Bruno up a 5km hill to the hilltop ruins of Pergamon after a full day’s drive.

Pergamon’s hilltop amphitheater.

The Patara Ruins, being overcome by the marshes.

Poor Bruno. It’s no wonder he sent me to see Ephesus on my own.

I didn’t expect Ephesus to live up to its name. Especially after having had the seaside ruins of Anemurium to ourselves and having shared the picturesque Lycian ruins of Phaselis with Phil and Angie. I expected that sharing my experience of an ancient site with so many people would feel lackluster.

Anemurium.

At the Phaselis amphitheater with Phil and Angie.

But when I walked through the back gate and strolled down the shaded main street toward the biggest amphitheater I’ve ever seen, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Doubly so because I had Ephesus to myself. For a full forty minutes I wandered past a crumbled city of sparkling white marble and found myself continuously amazed at its scale and obvious grandeur. The decorated tops of columns were scattered all over the ground. Images recreating the massive fountains and temples helped me picture their former scale. Decrees written in Ancient Greek were still deeply carved into rock.

Ancient Greek is pretty, no?

Notice the cat sleeping on top of the decorated column top?

The Library of Celsus, with its intricate detail and elegant columns hiding a modest room behind, was the most beautiful ancient building I’ve seen in all of Turkey. But I knew I only had a few more magical moments to myself – I could see the hordes of people marching down Curetes Way, Ephesus’ main street, straight toward me. And so, I sat down in front of the library that had housed 12,000 scrolls in a climate-controlled environment almost 2,000 years ago and marvelled at the civilization that had created this beautiful building.

The Library of Celsus, without anybody in my photo!

One of four statues on the façade of the Library of Celsus – “Episteme”, or knowledge (I remembered this from my Philosophy B.A.!)

Tour groups arriving down Curetes Way means the calm is over!

Admittedly, after Ephesus, no other site in Turkey could compare. Pergamon’s Acropolis, a comparable ancient city that some prefer due to lack of crowds, failed to impress me. Its marble was dull grey, its amphitheater felt small, and its ruins were a little too ruined. Only the temple of Trajan wowed me – and probably because its gigantic white marble columns reminded me of Ephesus.

When we drove on to Troy – yes, the Troy – to visit the ruined layers of its eight ancient cities, we felt so unimpressed that we decided not even to enter the site. I simply took a photo of the reconstructed Trojan Horse – my “I was there” photo – and left.

Pergamon’s lovely Temple of Trajan.

My only photo of Troy.

It appeared that Ephesus had ruined me (pardon the pun!). I didn’t want to visit any more ancient sites in Turkey. I’d seen many ruins: I’d seen them without crowds; I’d seen unknown ones on the side of the road and ones that would soon disappear under water; I’d hiked down cliffs and over hills to see them; I’d uncovered them among jungly-tall grasses, spiders and snakes; I’d seen them in the hills and by the sea, in the beating sun and the freezing rain.

And now I’d seen ruins that sparkled white – after thousands of years – from head to toe.

***

I’ve learned a thing or two about visiting the ancient ruins of Turkey (which can, I think, be applied to any other country with a multitude of sites to see):

1. Don’t try and visit every site. Don’t travel too far off your route for a site unless it’s something you really want to see. Don’t let FOMO get the best of you!
2. Do visit whatever is literally right next to you – sometimes you can be surprised by sites you’d never even heard about.
3. See a mixture of types of sites – a few big “must-see” sites, a Lycian ruin or two, and a few lesser-known sites to have the experience of a ruin to yourself.   (My personal top-five recommendations are Ephesus and Hasankeyf for must-see sites, Phaselis Lycian ruins, and Adamkayalor and Anemurium, lesser-known sites worth the trip.)
4. Leave Ephesus for last, if you can. Working your way up from tiny, less-impressive sites, to larger and more important sites is a great way to be continually impressed.

Even the smallest of detail at the smallest of ruin is special.

Taking in the Mamure Castle by the sea, since we were camped right next door!

Lastly, here are a few Ephesus-specific tips for beating the crowds and making the most of your visit:

1. Be there for 8:00am on the dot if you value having a peaceful, solitary visit (which I highly recommend).
2. Visit the most important sites first (if you’ve arrived early). The Library of Celsus and the Temple of Hadrian are the two most-visited sites. Save the side-streets, harbour, and little ruins scattered along the main streets for when you need to duck away from the crowds marching down the Curetes Way.
3. Consider entering via the Lower Gate because all the groups start their tours from the Upper Gate. The only problem with this tactic is that eventually you’ll run directly into the onslaught.
4. Finish your visit with the Terraced Houses (they are well-worth the extra $7!). Not only do they show a fascinating glimpse of home life in the city (complete with excellent mosaics and frescoes), but because they are covered, you’ll be able to get out of the hot sun!
5. Visit the Ephesus Museum in Selcuk after your visit to Ephesus. All its objects come directly from Ephesus, so it’s a great way to fill in the gaps of some of the artistic elements missing at the actual site.

A mosaic floor inside Ephesus’ Terraced Houses. Well-worth the visit.

Admiring the Beautiful Artemis marble statue, the highlight of the Ephesus Museum.

I’d never traveled by camping car with another couple before. I would do so now, with Phil and Angie, from tip to tip of Turkey’s Lycian Way.

Traveling the path of the Lycian people.

Two camper vans on the Lycian Way.

What would traveling with another camping car be like? Bruno and I had developed a routine over the past three years, one which included early breakfasts, timely departures, slow driving, relaxation in between sightseeing, and early nights. Would Phil and Angie’s travel style mesh with ours or would we have to compromise? Would we do everything together or allow our paths to ebb and flow more naturally?

It didn’t take me long to get the answers to my questions. After our visit to Antalya Museum, Phil and Angie headed into the mountains for a few nights while Bruno and I continued further along the Lycian Way. And when we met up again in a wild camp near Kalekӧy, Bruno and I hiked up the Lycian Way to visit the village ruins ourselves, while Phil and Angie stayed at camp to prepare a delicious Indian meal.

Along the hiking trail were sarcophagi in the shape of overturned boats. According to one local we met, the Lycian people believed in life after death. The dead buried inside the sarcophagi, he said, would be able to turn over their tomb and use the boat to help them travel to the afterlife. The views from the top of the hill were absolutely mesmerizing – the best I’d seen on the coast of Turkey so far. The colors were as vivid as if the view had been painted, and uninhabited islands tumbled down from the hills. There wasn’t a road in sight. Kalekӧy was completely isolated, only reachable by boat or this walking path.

Now that the Lycian Way was a proper tourist attraction, Kalekӧy had unfortunately lost a great deal of its indubitable former charm. It still had fruit trees and wild herbs growing through the old Roman walking paths. It still contained the ruins of a crusader fortress crumbling on the top of its hill. It still had a Lycian tomb in the shallow waters of its azure bay. But it also had women selling trinkets on the side of the path, restaurants all advertising kӧy dondurma (village ice cream), and pensiyons (guesthouses) at every turn. I guess that’s what happens when the Lonely Planet declares that a town is “one of the western Mediterranean’s truly delightful spots”. Bruno and I felt out-of-place with such tourism, so we decided not to take the must-do canoe trip out to Kekova’s underwater ruins.

Admiring the Lycian tombs, and the view, near Kalekӧy.

Kalekӧy has become rather touristy, but it’s still really charming, isn’t it?

A picture-perfect Mediterranean view.

And so, the four of us continued further along the Lycian Way, to Patara and its 15km long beach (the longest in Turkey). Though we didn’t exactly follow along one behind the other, we met up a couple of times along the road, tooting and waving while we passed one another. In Patara, we hiked together up a dirt track to a forest, and then down massive sand dunes onto the endless beach. Bruno and Phil searched for fossils in the rocks and I learned the names of some of the wild flowers and plants from Angie. Curiosity got the best of us, and we wandered up onto the cliffs at the eastern edge of the beach, just to see what might be around the corner. On the way back, Bruno and visited the Patara ruins (the capital of the Lycian League for a time!) while Phil and Angie (who’d already seen the ruins) returned to the campsite to book a ferry to Greece, where they’d decided on a whim to spend the month of June. Isn’t the life of an overlander great?!?

On Patara Beach, the longest beach in Turkey.

The boys searching for fossils in the rocks.

Oleanders grow wild all over Turkey. Thanks for telling me what they were called, Angie!

Wow, what a view!

It seemed the four of us had settled nicely into one another. None of us felt the need to take part in each activity. We allowed for couple time. We felt able to do online research, read a book, or take a nap in one another’s presence. Yet we also prepared meals together. Talked late into the night. Heck, we even washed each other’s hair! We’d become more like a family than just good friends.

And like a little family, we decided to drive the next section of our Lycian Way together, on a dirt track through a pine forest and over a hill to the seaside city of Fethiye. Phil and Angie knew this corner of Turkey well, having spent two months Help-Xing in the nearby countryside. Almost every Tuesday, they had gone to the Fethiye farmer’s market, and Angie had told me of the delicious homemade dairy products you could buy here. Indeed, on the day they took us, we bought thick yogurt scooped out of giant vats and sampled half-a-dozen young white cheeses before settling on a few strong crumbly ones.

Angie washing my hair with her cool water pump gadget!

Following the Iveco on the mountain road to Fethiye.

It’s only a proper Turkish market if there are homemade cheeses, fresh milk, and at least ten different types of olives!

Phil and Angie also showed us their secret hiding spot – a wild camp with an incredible view over the rugged, forested bays of Fethiye region. I still can’t believe we got to swim in the crisp crystal water faraway from all the tourist beaches, hike along an overgrown patch of the Coastal Trail toward an isolated monastery (I don’t care that we didn’t make it!), and share a sunset and sunrise looking out over the water. It was an incredible spot that Bruno and I would never have found on our own and that was made doubly special by sharing it with friends.

Not a bad spot for my first swim of the season in the Mediterranean!

Check out our dinner view! And it was free!

This hike was prickly, but it was worth it for the views.

Bruno and I taking our typically early breakfast with that amazing [free] view… Ahh…

Bruno and I drove along a spectacular coastal road south of Fethiye, to a tiny hillside village called Faralya, overlooking the beautiful Butterfly Valley. We were welcomed by Bayram and his family to camp for free in the tiny parking lot of his Montenegro Motel. Over tea on his terrace-with-a-view, he gave us a full page of written directions on a 17km loop we could complete the following morning, to Kabak village and back.

So that’s what we did. We followed yellow and red trail marks along the Coastal Trail to Kabak, which gave us fantastic, close-up views of the Mediterranean, and we followed the official white and red marks of the Lycian Way up the hills to what felt like the top of the world to get back to Faralya. It was an exhilarating walk through seemingly virgin trails. We encountered almost no-one, passed through a charming local village with crumbling rock houses and an old-fashioned wheat grinder, and communed with more of that fabulous natural beauty I’d spent the last six weeks in Turkey falling in love with.  Oh, how I do love walking in Turkey!

Walking the Lycian Way near Faralya and Kabak.

The infamous Butterfly Valley, from the Coastal Trail.

It’s easy to follow the yellow and red striped markings!

Thanks Bayram for the hospitality and Faralya Loop directions!

When we reconnected with Phil and Angie in Dalyan, it marked the end of the Lycian Way and just about the end of our time together. On our final night, we shared a picnic of Turkish snacks we’d picked up at a local woman’s market we’d happened past earlier that day, and toasted to our next encounter. The thing about an overland life is that we can’t be sure where or when we’ll meet, but we do know it will happen. Phil and Angie are headed to Africa and we’re off to the Americas. But we all know that somewhere, someday, we’ll travel another Lycian Way together.

Miss you, Angie!

Miss you, Phil!

***

Tips and Info About Walking the Lycian Way:

1. The Lycian Way is generally well-marked in white and red stripes. When the path is straight and clear, the marks will become less frequent, but when the path is grown-over, windy, or on rocky terrain, frequent markings will help guide you. If you don’t see the white and red stripes for a few hundred meters in a confusing area, backtrack until you spot the stripes again.
2. There is a good network of accommodation and food as long as you plan your walk from village to village. Most of the time, this is doable, but there are a few sections of the walk where distances between villages are particularly long. It’s a good idea to bring a tent for those days, and also because I noticed some amazing-looking spots for wild camping. As long as you stock up on food and water at each opportunity, you should never have to carry too heavy a load.
3. The Lycian Way is an incredibly popular tourist destination. There seem to be as many people doing it backwards now as the right way (the “correct” way is from West to East). If you’re worried about walking alone, it’s likely you’ll be able to pick up a walking partner or two along the way.
4. The Coastal Trail, marked by yellow and red stripes, often links up with the Lycian Trail. It can be a more scenic route, and I highly recommend it – but only if you’re sure your detour will once again re-join the main route! We found it fairly difficult to get maps of the trails, but the locals do seem knowledgeable on the paths in and around their villages.
5. I found the first section of the Lycian Way (after Olüdeniz) the most scenic and interesting. It has the greatest amount of coastal views, though less Lycian ruins. Personally, I’d actually choose a different long-distance walk were I to hike for a month in Turkey.  The Culture Routes Society has created several wonderful long-distance walks in Turkey, all of them less touristy than the Lycian Way.  A fellow blogger friend walked the Evliya Çelebi Way, and her experience sounds amazing.  If you do opt for the Lycian Way, a pretty good description of the distances, directions, and water sources can be found here.

Presenting Phil, Angie, and their new Iveco camping car! Cooking us up a Moroccan tagine, yum!

They spotted his Toyota first, shoved into the corner of a tiny guest house parking lot in Uzbekistan. On the balcony above, he was pouring over a stack of maps, plotting his route east.

“We’re going to Mongolia, too,” they said as they glanced over his shoulder at the maps.

And thus began the overland adventure of Bruno, Phil, and Angie. Over the coming months, they bounced along the muddy roads of Mongolia, explored the far reaches of South Korea, ferried their vehicles across the Pacific, and emerged as one in America.

Since I’ve known Bruno, I’ve known about Phil and Angie. I’ve seen the photos of their adventures, heard about their Iveco camping car, and listened to the travel tales involving them. I’ve almost felt I knew them myself. It seemed strange, then, to be actually meeting them for the first time on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. That’s probably why there were immediate big hugs, tears, and laughs. Or maybe it was just because Bruno hadn’t seen his friends in five years, since Guatemala.

A beautiful wild camp in Mongolia.

Driving in Mongolia wasn’t easy… I’m sure Bruno was happy to have an extra few set of hands in Phil and Angie!

Putting the two camping cars into the container ferry from South Korea to Los Angeles.

The setting for this reunion couldn’t have been better. The four of us set up camp in a pine forest tucked in a bay along the Turquoise Coast of the Mediterranean. Behind the forest were rocky hills and snow-capped mountains. Horses trotted in the nearby creek. Spring wildflowers bloomed all around us.

This was the territory of the Lycians, an Anatolian people as old as the Ancient Greeks. Mystery shrouds their society, since they left little material legacy and their unique Indi-European language hasn’t yet been fully decoded. We do know that they were fiercely independent, never succumbing to Greek rule – indeed, they were admired by the Greeks and considered to be one of the rare “non-barbaric” groups. When the Lycians accepted later Roman protection, they retained a great degree of autonomy in language, art, and politics. They even had their own Lycian League, whose republican principles have since been studied and admired by many modern nations.

In a region of Turkey dominated by Greek and Roman history, the Teke peninsula, between Dalyan and Antalya, is unique.

A reunion of four overlanders.

The four of us, and our campsite in the back left.

Toasting their reunion after five years apart.

Like Bruno’s other overlander friends, Josu and Ana, Phil and Angie have been adventuring around the world in their camping car for a long, long time. Ten years ago, they drove overland from the UK through Asia before boarding the ferry with Bruno to America. They spent the next several years spanning America almost from tip to tip before eventually selling their camper van and heading back to Europe to loop their own around-the-world trip (more details and photos on their website).

Through the course of their travels, they would occasionally house-sit. In America, Spain, Guatemala, and Ecuador, Phil and Angie took advantage of the online house-sitting network to take care of people’s homes in interesting off-beat places. For them, it was a way to deepen their connection to a place and feed their domestic side while also saving money so they could continue living their dream.

You see, even though their around-the-world trip was complete, their travels were far from over. The freedom and adventure of a nomadic, overland life had captured them, and they had no desire to return to their stable yet mundane life in rural Wales. So, they bought another Iveco, transformed it themselves into a camper van, tested it in Morocco last winter, and then drove through Europe to Turkey. In a few months, they will ship their new home from the UK to Namibia and begin what will surely be a several-year-long African adventure.

Phil and Angie had been in Turkey for a few months doing something similar to house-sitting. Help-X is a network where people offer their skills – electrical, building, gardening, animal care, English, etc. – to others around the world in exchange for room and board. Phil and Angie had spent a few months in the hills near Fethiye helping a couple in the care of their animals and garden. When we met up with them in the forested bay near Tekirova, they were just finishing their Help-X stint and were again enjoying wild camps and ruins along the Mediterranean coast.

Those first few days with Phil and Angie felt like I was meeting old friends. As we toasted to our reunion and chowed down on vegetarian world food, we yacked about memories, upcoming travel plans, things we love about the world, and our incredible luck to be living the lives we live. It was so easy to connect with a couple that was living the same reality as Bruno and I and that shared a similar passion for life and upbeat outlook on the world.

A group effort – our first picnic lunch, with a bit of this and that.

It’s yoga time!

Drinking çay, as always.

The four of us very quickly got into a routine of sharing picnic-style lunches, taking turns at cooking dinner, and doing group yoga in the campsite’s dome tents. We drank innumerable cups of tea together. We studied maps and travel guides. We compared our camping cars. And of course, we didn’t stop yacking (that’s what happens when you get two couples together who spend the vast majority of their time alone in the bush). Bruno and Phil talked cars and tires and awnings, and Angie and I bonded over food and yoga.

We even managed to do a bit of tourism together. It would have been quite easy, really, to forget we were in Turkey and to remain in our social bubble forever, but Phil’s endless enthusiasm had us visiting a museum in Antalya and hiking to some Lycian Ruins in nearby Phaselis. Angie’s artistic eye helped me notice details in Hittite pottery and Greek statues that I would have otherwise overlooked at the Antalya Museum, and Phil reminded me to imagine life 2,500 years ago as we wandered around the ancient theater, baths, and agora of Phaselis. I might not have been as focused on the sites before me as I normally would have been – I was too busy talking up a storm, really – but it was nice to share these places with friends.

Nice view from the theater of Phaselis!

Enjoying the ruins of Phaselis, with friends.

Admiring the ancient Greek statues in the Antalya Museum, with friends.

Our campsite was on the path of the Lycian Way, a famous 500km walk along the coast, through the hills, and past the ancient ruins of the Lycian people. Every day, I’d watch a handful of hikers in heavy boots and heavier backpacks march past our campsite in one direction or another. They were walking some – or all – of the Lycian Way. We’d sampled a few kilometers ourselves of the Lycian Way on our visit to the ruins of Phaselis. It had been a scenic scramble up the rocky hills with some very rewarding ruins on the other side. I wanted to walk more. I said as much to our group.

“What’s your plan?” Between friends who have the freedom and time to travel as we wish, this is a common question at the dinner table. When we posed this to Phil and Angie, we learned that they, too, were headed west. This was a surprise for us, since we’d expected the four of us to merely pass one another for a suspended moment in time before continuing in opposite directions.

“We could travel a bit of the way together,” suggested Phil that evening. “We could follow the Lycian Way.”

And so, just like that first night that Bruno met Phil and Angie a decade ago in Uzbekistan, we glued our fates and travel paths together for a chunk of the road. We would follow the ancient path of the Lycian people. Together.

Ready to walk the Lycian Way, with friends!

The Mediterranean Sea, in its sparkling turquoise glory.

I remember the first time I caught sight of the sparkling turquoise water of the Mediterranean Sea. It was nine years ago, almost to the day, and I was gazing dreamily at it from a cliff near the Italian Riviera town of Riomaggiore. It was the perfect first view of this sea that had conjured such imagination in my North American heart and mind. I still remember the activity of boats and fishermen and Italian words down at the harbour. I remember the setting sun spotlighting the pale reds and yellows of the old waterfront buildings. I remember my impending excitement at the hike through the five historic towns of Cinque Terre I would walk the next day.

A few weeks ago, I felt the same impending excitement as we drove down from the mountains of the Anatolian heartland onto Turkey’s balmy Mediterranean coast. And when I glimpsed again those same turquoise waters, I felt, well, disappointed.

We were seeing the Mediterranean Sea from Mersin’s traffic-clogged roads. Shopping centers and giant supermarkets lined the streets. Sunburnt tourists sat half-naked at roadside tourist cafes. It was a far cry from the wide open spaces and peaceful emptiness we’d left in Anatolia.

As we drove along the coast in search of a campsite that wasn’t right along the side of the coastal highway, I wondered if we had made the wrong choice in coming here. I’d felt more drawn to Turkey’s the Black Sea coast, but Bruno had told me the Mediterranean coast was the best part of Turkey. Maybe it had been twenty years ago, I thought, but now, modernization had arrived in full force, and appeared to leave the place devoid of what I’d come to love about Turkey this past month.

Bruno seemed content, at least. Not by the traffic and the development and the roadside campsite, but by the familiarity of the landscape. Bruno grew up on France’s Mediterranean, and he was revelling in the similar sights and smells in an almost nostalgic way. We drove past mangled olive trees and he talked about those growing in his father’s garden. We saw tortoises on the side of the road and he reminisced about following tortoises on all fours from his childhood home to the sea. Once, we absentmindedly walked past a fig tree and he stopped, sniffed, and declared “FIG!” before looking up and triumphantly pointing out the green fruits hanging from the tree. The figs weren’t even ripe!

I’m an olive tree-hugger.

Bruno contentedly taking a nap along the beach. Note the string of hotels in the background.

It’s amazing how places can conjure such nostalgic memory-sifting.

It’s also amazing how once you get over the disappointment of expectation, you can actually have a lot of fun! Bruno and I set to work forgetting about the downsides of the Turkish Mediterranean in favour of picnic lunches along the water and afternoons on the beach. We biked, hiked, and strolled our way along beaches, into orchards, and through villages of red mud tinted on old whitewashed rock walls. We picked lemons and oranges and mulberries (I had purple fingers for days!) from overflowing fruit trees. We admired unique seashells and weird prickly plants.

Gorging myself on mulberries!

We found this large but delicate shell on our first night on the Mediterranean.

Plants on the Mediterranean are prickly and painful to walk through!

Hiking along a rocky beach is hard (but rewarding) work!

Best of all, we visited the ruins of ancient cities. The Mediterranean coast takes a step further back into history than what I’d experienced in Cappadocia, Southeastern Anatolia, or Istanbul – Ancient Greece and Rome. This coastline was very much a part of both empires, and there are theaters, necropolises (cemeteries), public baths, palaestras (gymnasiums), and fortresses to prove it. I’ve rarely had the opportunity to wander around ruins that are over two thousand years old, especially the ones that are the foundation of my own civilization. Here, in Turkey’s eastern Mediterranean coast – despite the mass tourism on the beach – we got those ancient sites all to ourselves.

Ok, so most of the ruins we visited were little-known sites. Elaiussa-Sebaste’s Roman theater, castle, church, and temple don’t draw in the tour busses. Adamkayalar, the reliefs carved onto a cliff face in the hills north of Kızkalesi, are amazing, but they require too steep a hike for most to reach. Anemurium, a sprawling coastal city 2,500 years old, is a regional highlight in our guide book, but when we wandered through its odeon and hamam, we were – amazingly – alone.

Elaiussa-Sebaste’s little-visited Roman theater.

So surprised to be alone at the ruins of Anemurium.

Enjoying the uninhibited view of Kızkalesi Castle from the Corycus Castle ruins.

I didn’t forget to be thankful each time I got to wander through ruins without having to fight with the day-trippers for a view or wait for the big white tour busses to properly experience the aura of the place. Each westward kilometer we would drive, I knew we’d have to share the sites with more and more people, culminating at the hugely famous ruins of Ephesus – a must-see site that I was totally dreading to see.

Despite the sense of doom in our westward travel, driving along the coastal highway was pleasant. The hills were filled with boulders of limestone and marble, helping me to understand why ancient Greek and Roman architecture looked the way it did. Random ruins – decorated cave tombs, columns, building foundations – that weren’t in the guidebook popped up with astounding frequency. Agricultural villages (well, masses of plastic greenhouses, really) appeared in valleys and coves as we rounded each bend. And the landscape was beautifully green. I knew it was actually arid from walking through all the prickly and pointy bushes that week, but still, the lush green against the turquoise of the water and they grey of the boulders was such easy beauty to gaze at.

Coastal villages with terraced gardens.

Stopping for lunch on the road with a view.

Parked along the coastal highway to capture the spectacular Mediterranean view.

Eventually, our single-lane highway gave way to construction and then four lanes of traffic. Alanya, the tip of the Turkish Riviera, was approaching, and our brief reprieve from the downsides of the Mediterranean was over. We drove past endless kilometers of resorts, shops, and bars advertising things in Russian and German with prices in Euros and Dollars. We actually sat at a dead-stop in traffic for an hour as tourists did things in clothes that made me feel ashamed to be a westerner.

That day, we drove as absolutely far as we could, hoping to get out of this mass tourism nightmare. And just when I thought this was the way the rest of Turkey’s coast would be, we found a simple family-run campsite set on the only open kilometer of beach between luxury-hotel cities. As the plump old woman prepared us a healthy serving of Turkish food and her husband sat down at our picnic table for coffee and friendly chit-chat, I gazed at the sun setting over the Mediterranean and marvelled yet again at Turkey. It seemed that no matter what – illness, bad weather, mass tourism, horrible traffic, ugly development – this country would keep coming out smelling like a rose.

A home-cooked Turkish meal with a Mediterranean sunset. Not too shabby!

Turkey, I still love you.

Çukurbağ

The sheep dog followed us into the foothills.

Entering the boundary of the national park.

When I walk, I think. I daydream. I ponder silly things. I reflect. I connect experiences. I’m reminded of other things that make me think, ponder, and reflect.

On this day, as we meandered up and down the silently beautiful foothills, I was reminded of the walks we’d done only a few days earlier, in Cappadocia. That region is a day-hiker’s dream, with no less than a dozen valleys to explore (that you can connect together to length and loop your walk, if you want). Many of them hold ancient cave churches visible only by the tiny doorways and windows carved into the face of mushroom-capped and elf-hat-shaped fairy chimneys. All of them offer overflowing natural beauty.

I had loved walking in Cappadocia. It was probably my favorite aspect of my time in a place where choosing a favorite is a huge challenge. It wasn’t just the fairy chimneys or the churches. It was that every step forward offered a new angle on the landscape. It was the vineyards poking out of pale, chalky earth. It was the tortoises we encountered on the road. It was the trees in full spring bloom. And it was, above all, the fact that we were free to enjoy our walk in peace.

Walking amid the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia.

Inside a cave house discovering during a walk in Cappadocia.

Lunch break while hiking in Cappadocia’s Rose Valley.

Vineyards and cave churches.

I thought back to our hikes on in Africa. In three years of travel through the continent, I can probably count them on one hand (ok, maybe two). You need a guide, or you have to pay a fee, or it’s not safe, the locals would say. There was always some reason that we couldn’t walk freely. Often, to be honest, we didn’t want to hike in a place. If the hike involved passing through villages, we knew without a doubt that we would be harassed, begged to, or scammed. Walking is supposed to be relaxing and meditative, but it rarely was in Africa.

I thought, then, about my past month in Turkey. I’d really enjoyed myself, so far. This country was growing on me, getting into my skin in a big way. I thought about how it seemed to be the perfect country for a traveler. I wondered if it might become one of my favorite countries of the forty-one I’d now traveled to.

It wasn’t just that I could walk here, without a guide, without paying a fee, without worrying about my security, or without being harassed by the locals. It was that Turkey really has the whole package. It’s got the incredible natural beauty. I’ve seen snowy mountains, rivers, giant blue lakes, geological oddities, rolling hills, steppe grass, and pine forests, and in a day or two, we’d add sea and beach to that list. The map of Turkey even shows a desert and a salt pan. The variety – and vastness, for Turkey is huge – of landscapes means that your bottom jaw barely reconnects with the upper jaw before dropping yet again.

Around the bend, a moment of beauty.

Another bend, another beauty.

A beautifully weird plant in the foothills of the mountains. See, even Turkey’s details are pretty!

Turkey also has a fascinating and complex history that I’m still struggling to make sense of. It wasn’t just the Byzantines and the Ottomans here – there’s a whole slew of characters involved, from the Hatti and the Hittites to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the Persians, the Arabs, and the Seljuks. And there’s a historical site seemingly at every intersection to match.

Its culture is no less complex. The women wearing long sleeves, ankle-length skirts and headscarves holding hands with their mates as they strolled in the park; the young hip generation in Istanbul born from farmers in Anatolia; the [long and meandering] call to prayer coming from mosques that, here, sit empty most of the year; the fact that tourism has reached Turkey with a bang yet the locals still speak no English.

Now that I had been in Turkey for a few weeks, I was starting to understand some of the seeming cultural inconsistencies and to place customs and sites in historical context. I’d had to work hard for it, but things were finally starting to reveal themselves to me, just like the Turkish language that I was slowly picking up on out of pure survival. And with each layer I peeled back, I continued to find Turkey just as intriguing, but more and more appealing.

A Turkish family in the streets of Avanos. Check out the hand-holding.

Farmers in the fields.

Not one of these people spoke a word of English when Bruno approached, asking the price of the veggies for sale. Good thing I’ve been practicing my Turkish!

The sheep dog led us back down the hill toward Çukurbağ. A few people waved at us as we passed. Merhaba, we replied with genuine smiles. We’d just been on another successful hike in Turkey, one where we were neither pestered nor threatened, one where we’d been left to our own devices, one where we’d been free to explore the countryside at our own rhythm and to ponder those that had walked these paths before us.

As I walked past the friendly locals of Çukurbağ, and thought of all the other laidback, relaxed, and open people we’d encountered in Turkey, my meandering thoughts connected: It seemed there was a direct correlation between how much I liked a country and how walkable it was.

A country I can walk in is a country I like, I decided. And I’ve already walked a lot in Turkey.

I love walking! I love Turkey!

Actually, we’d arrived in Turkey’s Cappadocia, but this place was about as otherworldly as it gets.

What the heck is a Fairy Chimney, anyway?

Fairy chimneys are much more scientific than they sound. They are geological rock formations that grow out of valley floors. Erosion wears away at the soft rock, leaving only thin spires that are protected by a harder layer of rock overhead. Fairy chimneys exist in arid regions of North America, France and Spain, Serbia, New Zealand, and even Taiwan.

These… are fairy chimneys.

This is what they look like from a distance.

Totally weird, right?

Scientific or not, these rock spires inspire such imagination that they are sometimes called things like “mushroom caps,” “tent rocks,” “ladies with hairdos,” and “earth pyramids.” As I wandered around Devrent Valley, I came up with names like “witch houses” and “elf hats.” The locals of Cappadocia simply call them “castles.”

There might be a reason for their local name: the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia doubled long ago as homes, churches, and hideaways. Unlike the fairy chimneys scattered around the world, Cappadocia isn’t simply interesting topographically – it has a fascinating history to match.

The region of Cappadocia, like much of Turkey, has been inhabited for thousands of years and has a complex story of flip-flopping allegiances, rulers, and empires. (Come to think of it, Turkey is sort of the like original Game of Thrones, really.) The most interesting part, for me, is that Cappadocia has long been the center of Christianity in a largely Muslim region. The local Christians carved not just homes, but churches inside the fairy chimneys. More interesting still, they built entire cities underground to use as hiding places against invading Muslim armies.

Yep, they look like mushrooms.

And elf hats, right?

Oh, and hey, they have doors and windows!

And, well, sometimes you can climb into the cave chambers via little hidden cave doors.

It wasn’t that difficult to do. The rock in this region is soft tuff – consolidated volcanic ash – and the locals could dig tunnels and chambers several floors deep with relative ease. Their underground cities (several hundred in the region, apparently, though most of them unexcavated for now) could house several thousand individuals and all the food and water needed to keep them alive for several months. There were churches, stables for the animals, and defense methods like large round stones designed to block strategic tunnels and holes carved into walls, ceilings and floors of chambers for throwing spears or hot liquids onto their trapped enemies.

Experiencing Cappadocia’s History

Bruno and I visited one such example: Kaymaklı Underground City. We wandered down the ever-narrowing hallway through a complex maze of tunnels and rooms. It was cold and dark, and I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be stuck down here for a few months over mere spiritual technicalities. But this was the height of the spread of Islam, and the Persians and Arabs were fierce and merciless. It’s a good thing the message of an arriving army could travel from Jerusalem to Cappadocia by lit mountaintop beacons in only a few hours.

Inside the ever-narrowing passage of Kaymaklı Underground City.

The big stone passage blockers, or whatever their technical term is…

It’s also a good thing the Seljuks and Turks of later times tolerated the Cappadocian Christians, for this allowed for a flourishing of cave churches cut into the fairy chimneys of the region. We visited an agglomeration of such churches in the Gӧreme Open-Air Museum. Here, a dozen or so churches and monasteries were carved into the tuff between the 10^th and 13^th century. As we wandered inside them and experienced their damp darkness, their faded frescoes, their Maltese crosses engraved into the rock, I couldn’t help but be reminded of our visit to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, some five months earlier.

The rock-hewn churches of Cappadocia aren’t as impressive as those in Lalibela. They are smaller and less varied in style. More importantly, they are carved horizontally into the rock, like caves, rather than down into the rock, which is architecturally a more impressive feat. Most importantly of all, the churches of Cappadocia fell long ago into disuse, whereas those in Lalibela are still very much alive, tangibly surrounded by ritual and legend.

But, from the outside, Cappadocia’s churches cannot fail to impress. Even after eight days of wandering around the region, I couldn’t help but sigh each time I saw a pointed fairy chimney, an interestingly shaped mushroom cap, or a perfectly scraggly witch house. It was all so wonderfully whimsical, and I couldn’t help but fall for the fairy tale.

Some of the most impressive frescoes inside Gӧreme’s cave churches.

St. George slaying the dragon – a story also heavily featured at Lalibela’s rock-hewn churches.

A view of Rahibeler Monastery at the Gӧreme Open-Air Museum.

Can you spot me among the fairy chimneys and rock-hewn cave churches?

Experiencing Cappadocia’s Culture

Bruno and I spend a lot of time wandering around Cappadocia’s villages. There are a lot of them, and they all have that storybook charm that is particular to the regions. Their homes seem to grow out of the hills, and it’s difficult to determine where the natural shelter ends and the artificial extensions begin. Each village had its particular appeal. In Avanos and Ürgüp, it was the ruins of Greek homes overlooking fertile countryside. In Uçhisar, it was the cave castle sitting grandly on top of the city; in Çavuşin it was the cave church hanging off its side. And in Gӧreme, it was the luxurious hotels built into and around the hills and fairy chimneys with sprawling courtyards that we could stare down into.

As we wandered up and down the alleys of Cappadocia’s cave villages, I marvelled at the fact that these people had so long used their natural environment to create shelter. I could think of a fair few cultures that used their surrounding natural materials to create their homes, notably the ingenious huts scattered across the African continent (I especially love those constructed out of plastic UN tarps and other rummaged garbage); I could certainly think of cultures (cough) that razed the land and placed upon it totally incongruous materials to create homes that stood out from the landscape like sore thumbs. But I had rarely, if ever, seen a place whose homes and villages so harmoniously blended in with the natural environment. At the risk of overusing the term, it was charming.

Ürgüp

Uçhisar Castle, the rectangular cave at the top of the hill.

Gӧreme

In fact, I was so charmed by the cave homes that I convinced Bruno to take me to a fancy cave restaurant for dinner. (It was either that or pretend to be looking for a cave hotel room in order to catch an inside glimpse of the cave hotels – Bruno, smart guy, went for the food). We chose Topdeck Cave Restaurant, a small family-owned restaurant run out of one of the cave-rooms of their Gӧreme home. The food was delicious and varied (I’ll soon devote a blog to Turkish cuisine), but it was the atmosphere that won the night. Eating inside a cave was just plain cool.

The restaurant was packed. In fact, the first night we tried to eat there, there was no table for us. We were advised to book a reservation, which Bruno declined (“How can we know what we’ll feel like doing and eating tomorrow?”) until I looked at him with sad puppy eyes. I didn’t care that we had to battle against the swarms of tourists wanting to sample Topdeck’s mezze platters – I’d been battling them all week.

Don’t you totally want to stay in a cave hotel? Or at least pretend to be looking for a room so you can catch a glimpse inside?

… or at least dine in a cave restaurant?

This is a REAL “cave à vin”!!!

Experiencing Cappadocia’s Mass Tourism

Yes, up until now I’ve painted Cappadocia as a geological oddity, a land straight out of a fairy tale, and a place of significant historical and cultural interest. It’s little wonder, then, that Cappadocia is one of Turkey’s biggest tourist destinations. Even in April’s off-season, we’d had to contend with the massive white tour busses since that first morning in Devrent Valley.  It was probably the most touristy place Bruno and I had ever been to together.

While we made it through Gӧreme’s Open-Air Museum just as the tour busses were pulling in, Kaymaklı Underground City became a claustrophobic prison as we stood at a standstill in narrow passages, blocked by bodies, or struggled to make it back into the cue anytime we veered off the main path. Random tourists were often captured in our photos of a nice fairy chimney, an interesting fresco, or a panoramic image. And every morning, we were awoken by the deafening inflating sound of hot air balloons.

The reality of Kaymaklı Underground City.

The arranged photo benches at Gӧreme Open-Air Museum for all the tour busses passing through. I found this hilarious.

If you can’t beat them, join them – Bruno embracing being a tourist, wandering around with his Lonely Planet guidebook in hand!

Experiencing the landscape of Cappadocia with a dawn hot-air balloon ride is the most popular activity in Cappadocia. Every morning, over one hundred hot-air balloons take off into the Cappadocian sky, and each morning, we took an early breakfast as they floated into the air all around us. At over $200 a pop, with twenty people (or more?) inside each basket, I gazed in awe at the fortune literally floating into thin air. It was akin to experiencing America’s Fourth of July fireworks every morning.

Falling in Love with Cappadocia

And that’s the thing about Cappadocia. It’s a mass tourism destination if ever there was one – and yet, it was still charming (yep, there’s that word again!). I found it exciting to wake to the sound of hot-air balloons every morning (ok, if I’m being honest, it was only Bruno – who was wearing ear plugs – who heard the sound and proceeded to shake me awake). I loved drinking my tea while staring into the pink sky, the fairy chimneys mere meters away and the kaleidoscope of balloons drifting overhead.

Breakfast with balloons.

This is a mere fraction of them. And yes mom, I thought of you every morning.

No comment.

Enough with the balloons, Bruno. We get it, they’re pretty.

Cappadocia is special because it can reveal itself to everyone. My budget didn’t allow me to board a hot-air balloon (and anyway, once I saw how many there were, it no longer appealed to me), but I was able to catch my own birds’ eye view of the otherworldly landscape from the top of Uçhisar castle. I wasn’t interested in approaching villages from the back of a big white bus, so Bruno and I hiked through Rose Valley and reached Çavuşin’s old church from the hills. I wasn’t bowled over by the churches in Gӧreme’s Open Air Museum, but I was certainly impressed by those Bruno and I discovered in the middle of nowhere on our two day-hikes through the surrounding hills. I couldn’t enjoy the sunset from the private veranda of my cave hotel, so we watched it instead from Gӧreme’s Sunset Hill (where we had the pleasant surprise of catching yet more hot-air balloons take off, the only time they did so in the evening the entire time we were there!).

Yep. I’m not ashamed to say it. Cappadocia is one of Turkey’s most popular tourist destinations, and I absolutely loved it!

Birds’ eye view of Cappadocia from the top of Uçhisar Castle.

Approaching Çavuşin from Rose Valley.

One of the many fantastic cave churches we came across in the middle of nowhere during our hikes.

Sunset and hot-air balloons in Cappadocia. Pretty well near perfect, no?

I love fairy chimneys! I love Cappadocia!!

In my last blog, I mentioned that one of the benefits of solo travel is the reunion with one’s loved one(s) that comes at the end of the trip. In French, they call it a “retrouvaille,” which kind of means “to find one another again.” I find this term apt, for that is exactly what Bruno and I did. There was so much news to share, stories to tell, questions to ask. It isn’t often that our experiences aren’t mutual, and even though it was strange not to have been with Bruno in Iran, it was fun to have so much to fill each other in on. We barely had time to leave the camper van!

Our campsite along the southern side of Turkey’s Lake Van.

Lake Van from the road.

We managed to eat lunch outside with this view, but I can tell you we didn’t linger any longer than necessary!

Get your heads out of the gutter, people! It was cold outside. Cold like I haven’t felt in years. Bruno, unfortunately, had been this cold for over a week. Northern Iran is at altitude, too, and has its fair share of snowy peaks. By the time we met up on Lake Van, Bruno was utterly sick of having to spend all his days and evenings inside the camper van. So even though Lake Van was beautiful and there were things to do and see in the area, we stayed only one night and opted instead to drive onward to better weather the following day.

Being on the road again was fun. Watching the scenery change, passing through isolated villages, discovering nooks of Turkey together – it was good to be back. Over the course of the week, we drove through Southeast Anatolia from end to end, a 1,000km-long chunk of this massive country. “Anatolia,” or “Asia Minor” refers to the part of Turkey that lies in Asia, i.e. all that is east of Istanbul’s Strait of Bosphorus.

Southeastern Anatolia was beautiful. That first day, we drove through snow-capped peaks and dark fuzzy steppe grass rolling into vast and endless hills home to herds of grazing sheep and shepherds. One day, we drove beside the Tigris River and its red-rock cliff; another day we passed through rolling fields of yellow wild flowers and rocky, rugged plateaus. Jaw-dropping scenes appeared around unexpected corners, in unannounced places. In any other country, there’d be a sign, a restaurant, a hotel here, I thought each time we passed another place of unacknowledged beauty. But in Turkey, there’s simply so much beauty that Turks don’t understand the need to make a fuss about it.

Snow-capped mountains

Shepherds and their sheep on rolling steppes.

The Tigris River! I still can’t believe I got to sleep on its edge…

Can you BELIEVE there is no sign or mention of this place in the guide book? Absolutely STUNNING.

We stopped in a place called Hasankeyf. Now a hamlet of a couple thousand inhabitants, it has been a historically important site since the early Byzantine period – one need only look at the size of the Old Bridge to know that (hint: it’s massive). The city is full of pre-Ottoman era mosques, churches, mausoleums, and hamams (Turkish baths). Even more interesting, the sheer rock wall on the edge of the Tigris River houses a castle, palaces, a watchtower, and tons of little cave houses.

Hasankeyf was out of the way for us, but we wanted to make the effort to visit now, before it’s underwater. The Turkish government’s massive giant hydroelectric project (called GAP) will dam the Tigris River near here, flooding thirty-seven surrounding villages, including Hasankeyf. GAP is a highly controversial project, and there is a fair amount of opposition both inside and outside of Turkey, but I don’t think they will manage to halt the project, whose previous dam flooded another historic site in Turkey. We wanted to visit Hasankeyf before it became an underwater treasure chest, like Savaçan.

The Old Bridge of Hasankeyf. Well, it’s ruins, anyway…

A mausoleum on the edge of the Tigris River.

The ancient hamam of Hasankeyf.

The ancient mosque of Hasankeyf, with a bird’s nest on top!

We woke up in Hasankeyf to spring weather. Bruno and I took our breakfast outside, watching the rabbits and geese wander around the shaded lawn at our campsite. A day of tourism was before us. Things were finally back to normal, I thought. After several months of bush camping in the Middle East and jet-setting halfway across the world, Bruno and I were finally together again, waking up in an actual campsite, and preparing for a day of tourism. Our reunion was feeling blissfully good.

After breakfast, Bruno and I wandered around the village, visiting sites we either stumbled upon or could see from a distance, popping out of the fields. When we reached the citadel – the sites at the top of the cliff – we sadly learned that the site has been closed to visitors since 2012 due to security concerns. We were able to walk through a canyon and up an adjacent hill, however, to get a stunning and interesting panoramic of the cliffside cave houses.

Hasankeyf’s off-limits citadel.

Climbing the canyon…

Totally worth it for this view. Check out the holes in the hill behind me – all are old homes, shops, places of worship, etc.

I wouldn’t have to worry too much about not getting to visit Hasankeyf’s citadel, not only because we would visit the even more impressive cave houses of Cappadocia the following week, but because I was quickly learning that Turkey has an abundance of historical sites. In fact, if we stopped at every roadside sign or spot mentioned in the guidebook, we’d need to renew our Turkish visas for an extra three months! I wanted to see a bit of Turkey’s history, but I’d drive Bruno nuts unless I chose my sites wisely.

And so, next I chose Diyarbakir and its 6km-long early-Byzantium city wall – a wall that is second in extent only to the Great Wall of China! Bruno and I spent an afternoon circumnavigating the wall, climbing it (which is allowed) to catch the view of red rooftops below, and wandering around the alleys of the old town, filled with Armenian homes, mosques, and churches. It was drizzling, however, and there was no place for us to sleep in this narrow maze of streets, so we did the fast version of our visit and drove on, finding an excellent bush camp in the middle of verdant farmland.

The old wall of Diyarbakir.

A view from the old city wall – a woman processing sheep’s wool.

A few of Diyarbakir’s local men.

I’m not sure, but I think these might be Armenian women, or at least of Armenian descent.

I strolled around the hills and farms that evening. Pale buds were sprouting on trees, the wildflowers were sending out an absolutely intoxicating smell of spring in blossom, and the sun peeking through white clouds balanced the crisp air. I hadn’t experienced spring in so long. In Africa, there aren’t the same four seasons as I grew up knowing. Their seasons are called things like “short rains,” “dry season,” and “long rains”. There are rough equivalents to spring, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Spring is the reward for making it through a long, harsh winter, and even though I personally hadn’t had to go through winter, I could feel the collective sigh of relief of winter’s passing all around me.

And in any case, one thing I could comprehend was that sun and warmth are things to be appreciated in Turkey. Here, in this four-season country, the sun wasn’t always out, the breeze wasn’t always light and warm. Sometimes it rained. Sometimes it was cold. This was a change. Here, I actually needed to look at the weather forecast. This was not Dubai. When the sun poked out of the clouds for a half-hour, or you awoke to a bright blue sky, you appreciated it.

Our bush camp.

As if to confirm my musings, the next morning we woke up to drizzle and plummeting temperatures. We were bound for the mountainous Nemrut Dağı National Park, whose peak exhibits statue heads placed there by a narcissistic pre-Roman king. The guide book recommends visiting the summit only from late-May to August because at other times it can be covered with snow. The guide book fails, however, to mention the humid frigidity of the weather in the surrounding area of the park. We were so cold that not only did we decide not to visit the summit (whose road was open, but barely), but we decided not even to spend the night in the surrounding hills. We took a quick tour of some nearby ancient Greek stelae, caves, and statues (another historical site, check!), but tourism isn’t nearly as fun when you’re wet and shivering.

An Ancient Greek stone relief portraying Mithridates I shaking hands with naked Heracles. Inside Nemrut Dağı National Park.

A Greek stelae (tablet with writing) in the foothills of Nemrut Mountain.  Can you tell I’m cold and wet?

And then, it started to snow. When Bruno first pointed out the freezing rain on our windshields, I giggled. I hadn’t been in snow in four years, and I am still Canadian, after all! This was certainly a change from the regions we’d come from. But, as the snowstorm started in earnest and Bruno worried out loud about not having the right tires and the tracks on the curvy, hillside road disappearing under the mounting snow, the storm stopped being fun and took on an ominous tone. We focused on getting out of these hills and down to lower altitude. There it would be warmer, surely.

But it isn’t. The snow storm may be behind us (for now), but the thermometer is still hovering around freezing. I’m sat on the bed of our camper van hunkering down for the evening. I have four layers on, and I’m under the blankets. I’ve never – I mean, never in my whole life, not even in Canada – been so acutely grateful for having a heater. We’re going to keep it on all night long, bundle ourselves under our five thin blankets, cuddle the crap out of each other, and hope we can start the car tomorrow morning. What a reunion in Southeastern Anatolia it’s turned out to be!

Oh my, we’re stuck in snow!

“We need chains on these tires, like in Canada,” says Bruno.

Southeastern Anatolian hills dusted by snow.

Poor spring buds being frozen by snow!

Bruno did take photos, however.  He managed to sneak a few in markets and towns, and also took a couple shots from the road.  The best way I can capture Bruno’s time in Iran, then, is by showing you a few images that caught my attention.

And so, without further ado, here is Iran, in pictures:

Bruno spent only two weeks traveling through Iran.  As you can see, he chose essentially the fastest route through the country to the border of Turkey.  He stayed only one or two nights in most places and spent a good part of each day driving.  I guess he was looking forward to reuniting with me!

Bruno’s approximate route through Iran is in green.

One of Bruno’s campsites in Iran.

Bruno’s “campsite” in Persepolis, one of Iran’s greatest historical sites. You can see he’s not the only one here…

Bruno’s “campsite” in Tabriz, in a big park.

Bruno visited quite a few markets in Iran.  I guess he needed to feed himself, since his chef wasn’t around!  It seems to me that the markets were rather photogenic, and a great way to experience some aspects of Iran’s culture.

Iranian spices are known to be unique and flavorsome.  I remember trying a simple Iranian pilaf at the home of an Iranian family I used to babysit for, and I can confirm that it tastes like nothing else I’ve eaten.  I would have loved to sample more of Iran’s spices!

I would have found my true happiness at this shop!

Bruno spent a lot of time wandering around this covered market in Esfehan.

Typical Persian decoration and colors on this old man’s goods for sale.

Bruno opted not to visit Persepolis this trip.  He has been to Iran twice before and spent much time wandering around its ruins.  He did, however, manage to catch a bit of Iran’s rather unique architecture in photo.  I’m sure there are important histories attached to most of these places, but unfortunately, I didn’t get to learn about them!

The entrance of Persepolis – as far as Bruno got this trip.

Khaju Bridge in Esfehan.

The underside of the bridge is also a local hangout. I love the symmetry and the material used.

Naqsh-e Jahan Square, Esfehan.  Seems like a nice city!

The mosques scattered all over Iran also have that unique Persian flavor:

Just a random mosque on the side of the truck highway.

Another random mosque.  Bruno says these mosques remind him of those he’s seen all over central Asia (the “stan” countries).  I guess that makes sense since Persian culture extended very far during the height of their empire.

The entrance of a mosque in Esfehan.

Wandering around the city streets and markets, Bruno managed to steal a few shots of the local people out and about.  He reports that it wasn’t at all easy to communicate with them, as Bruno knew only a few words of Farsi, but he appreciated their friendliness, hospitality, and numerous offers of tea.  Here are a few of my favorites people shots:

Women taking in the view near the bridge of Esfehan.

This old man must have quite the story to tell…

Cool outfits.

Bruno and I have been trying to capture a woman in a metal mask since our arrival in the Middle East (it’s a style of  facial covering designed to cover facial hair, as per some Muslim’s interpretation of the law) . These masked women are not easy to catch!

But Bruno’s time in Iran was not all about tourism.  He had some work to do as well!

Taking advantage of cheap parts and the absence of his partner to tackle a few Totoyaya tasks.

Filling up our empty cooking gas bottles.  Points to the Iranians for thinking up creative problem-solving methods for these types of tasks!

And of course, the biggest task was actually driving through Iran.  The road was long (2,400km!) and the drivers maniacal.  Somehow Bruno still managed a few shots from the road.  Iran seems to have a beautifully vast and varied landscape.  Wish I’d gotten to see it!

Bruno thinks these are covered wells, perhaps designed to protect from the desert dust and sand in the south.

Beautiful patterns in the rock.

Interesting topography.

Wildflowers everywhere.  Spring has arrived to the north of Iran!

Bruno had driven through Iran and was almost in Turkey.  He just had a few final obstacles to cross before reaching me:

A bad road and a narrow entry under a decaying bridge…

… and the first of many snow-capped mountains. Brrrr…. the nights were cold!

Soon after those mountains, Bruno reached the Turkish border, leaving Iran behind.  His time there may have been brief, but it was long enough for us lovebirds.  Our reunion was lovely, but that, friends, is a story for my next entry!