Today I was walking through the village of Nizip. I saw what I thought was a very lively-looking market. The colors were very bright. There were lots of people. “I will definitely check that one out,” I thought to myself.

As I walked in something seemed weird to me. I noticed there were a lot of children running around, a lot more children than is normal for a market. Then I noticed a lot of men were sitting around on the ground. “That’s not normal for a market, either,” I thought. Then I noticed the tents. They were almost completely empty, also not normal for a market.

Then I looked closer at the people. They were not Turks. They were Syrians. I was not walking through a market. I was walking through a Syrian refugee camp.

This morning as I walked out of Gaziantep, breathing exhaust fumes and trying not to get hit by cars, I thought, “Sometimes walking across a country is scut work.”

I briefly likened it to sitting in a cubicle answering emails. Then I thought, “Yeah, but the difference is I don’t mind this particular variety of scut work.”

Sunday and Monday I took a quick trip to Side (pronounced “see-day”) to visit my friend Anton Bogomolov.

Anton is a professional photographer from Russia. He was in Side for work. I wanted to remind him to keep thinking about walking Iran with me next year.

Side is a small town on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast near the city of Antalya. The drive from Mersin to Side is about 350 kilometers (220 miles). I had no idea what the road would be like. I assumed it would be smooth and wide, and that the bus would cover the distance in about 4 or 5 hours.

I was wrong. The trip took about 9 hours each way. In many places the road is a narrow ribbon carved into the side of the mountains a thousand feet above the sea. If a road like this were built in the United States I don’t think it would be opened to the public for two-way traffic.

It did, however, afford some amazing views of the sea, especially late in the day as the sun fell low…

Some parts of the journey were rainy, others were sunny. My favorite parts were the ones where the rain had broken just a few minutes before, like here…

I arrived in Side after dark. Arriving in a new town after dark is a little disorienting, but it was a beautiful night out. Below is a photo of the full moon rising over Side’s ancient theater…

Anton and I had dinner near the marina. We were sitting outside, and towards the end of dinner it started to rain, plus Anton needed to catch the last minibus to his hotel, so we cut dinner short.

During the night it rained cats and dogs. I thought for sure the roof over my head was going to cave in and I’d drown in a cascade of water. Everything was fine though, and the next morning the clouds were still there but the rain was gone. Before heading to the bus station I walked around the peninsula and took some photos…

I get a little confused in places like Side. Prices are in euros and dollars, so I don’t know how much anything costs. Menus are in German and English, so I don’t know what foods restaurants serve. People speak to me in German, so I don’t know what anyone’s saying. It’s like I’m in a foreign country or something.

Reminding Anton to think about Iran was the trip’s mission. The trip’s highlight, however, was the bus ride back to Mersin. I don’t think I’ve been on a bus ride that exciting since 1993, when I took a Chinese bus over some pretty bad-ass mountains from Chengdu to Ruili.

The driver from Mersin to Side was pretty cautious, but the driver back from Side to Mersin drove like he was in a rush. At least three people got sick, and the guy sitting next to me moaned occasionally and prayed to god for protection.

We were not using all of a one-lane road. It was a two-lane road…

After dark, on a straightaway where at a combined speed of 120 miles per hour (200 km/h) we passed an oncoming truck so closely the vehicles’ mirrors almost touched, I found myself thinking, “Don’t be scared, the Blue Angels do this all the time.”

Within moments I realized it was a little absurd to be comparing our experience to that of highly-trained elite show pilots.

At one point we were held up at the scene of an accident. A truck had gone off the road. The driver had, however, chosen an excellent place to do it, a location with a wide shoulder and plenty of trees to crash into. I found the fact that his left-side wheels were still on the pavement heartening. We almost had to go off the road ourselves to get around him.

There was one guy sitting across the aisle who slept through the whole ride. I don’t know how he did it. He dozed off minutes after getting on the bus, and woke up 7 hours later, when it was all over…

Today my only plan was to wake up in Mersin, go to Cennet ve Cehennem (Heaven and Hell, some naturally-occurring sinkholes), take a single photograph, and return to Mersin.

In Turkey my plans are usually simple like this. Sometimes people ask me why I make such simple plans. I make simple plans because unexpected opportunities present themselves on a regular basis, and I don’t want to turn them down. Here is an example…

This morning I boarded a minibus and rode it about 70 kilometers (42 miles) southwest along the coast. The bus dropped me off a couple kilometers from Heaven and Hell. It would be a steep climb up to the final destination, but I didn’t mind. I’ve walked almost 1,300 kilometers in Turkey already. What’s a few more?

About 30 seconds after the bus dropped me off, however, a car pulled up. Hop in, the driver said, without even asking where I was going. He was going the same direction I was, so I hopped in. About 100 meters later we stopped to pick up another man walking uphill on the same road.

The driver’s name was Süleyman, and he was going up the hill to his restaurant, a short distance past Heaven and Hell. When we drove past Heaven and Hell he just pointed to it and continued driving. I was a little confused. I had told him this was where I was going, why was he not stopping?

I told him I wanted to get out and look around. He pulled off to the side of the road. I got out of the car, ran to the railing, and took a photo. Süleyman told me to get back in the car, his restaurant was higher up the hill. It was clear that his restaurant was more important to him than Heaven and Hell, one of the most famous sites in the area, and he was assuming it was more important to me, too.

We pulled up to Süleyman’s restaurant, not even 1 kilometer (half a mile) past Heaven and Hell. Süleyman gave me a full tour of the place. There was a garden with olive trees, a dozen nomad-style tents where customers could stretch out and leisurely munch on their breakfasts, a few treehouses where others could do the same, and in the back a house where Süleyman and his family lived. The floor above their quarters was a pension with a half-dozen guest apartments.

From there we went inside the restaurant, sat down, and had some tea. The view from the restaurant, inside and out, was amazing. You could see 100 kilometers to the right, and 100 kilometers to the left. In front was the Mediterranean. On a clearer day, Süleyman told me, at just the right hour of the morning, you can even see the island of Cyprus, 100 kilometers (62 miles) out in the sea.

We sat and talked over tea about his family, his military career, his restaurant. There was a couple having breakfast in the restaurant, and they joined the conversation. The couple was visiting from Gaziantep, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) away. The man showed me photos of Gaziantep’s mosaic museum on his iPhone.

The couple asked where I was going after this. I told them I would be heading back to Mersin. We are going to Mersin too, he told me, come with us, we will give you a ride.

I had only seen Heaven and Hell from the road, but I was having fun with these people, and I had already completed my mission for the day (get a photo). I accepted their offer. They finished their breakfast and I finished my tea. We left the restaurant and piled into their car.

We chatted on the drive back to Mersin. The man ran a restaurant in Gaziantep. He was from the Mersin area, and came back almost every weekend. He and his girlfriend and I bonded over my knowledge of a few Turkish idioms. They got a big kick, for example, out of the fact that I knew about the saying “at, avrat, silah” (horse, woman, gun; i.e. the three things a man needs to be a man).

The man’s girlfriend was incredibly hot, the kind of hot where when you talk to her, you have to do the best you can with only half your brain, because the other half is screaming into your face like a drill sergeant. “Keep your eyes up! Be polite! Be respectful!”

On the way into town we stopped to pick up a few things. One of the places we stopped raised a million questions in my mind, but I told myself to bite my lip and be quiet. There’s a saying in Turkish, “maydanoz olma” (don’t be a parsley), which means don’t be nosy.

The errands run, the couple dropped me off at the Çetinkaya (a department store in Mersin) and continued on their way.

In Turkey I can expect one thing: a few times each day, I’ll be presented with an unexpected opportunity. Someone will offer me a ride, or someone will invite me to dinner, or someone will invite me to a wedding.

I create simple plans so I can accept these unexpected invitations. Today my plan was to take a single photograph, and I got that photograph, but I had a lot of unexpected fun getting it, fun I couldn’t have created myself, no matter how hard I tried.

Today I joined Melih, a friend of mine in Mersin, and two of his colleagues, Barış and Musa, for a trip to a mining camp in the mountains outside Erdemli, a town on the Mediterranean coast southwest of Mersin.

The three of them are working on a project to boost the power available to the camp. The camp is a long ways from the nearest village or store, so it has everything the workers need for weeks at a time — beds to sleep in, laundry facilities, showers, a kitchen, television, etc.

The camp already uses a few solar panels, but they aren’t enough. To close the gap the camp is currently using a diesel-powered generator. There are a couple diesel tankers parked nearby. I am amazed they can get the tankers up that bouncy mountain road. Anyway, the camp wants to stop relying on the diesel generator, and is planning to boost solar usage instead. Melih and his colleagues were there to inspect the site and take some measurements.

Below are some photos I took during the outing…

If you are viewing this on a iPhone, you may not be able to see the photo slideshow. Here is a link to the original photos.

Here is a video of the ride back down from the camp…

“The secret of the region’s new strength lies in its ancient links with Syria and Iraq. Antep is on the old silk road that leads to Aleppo.” –from The Economist

Here’s the rest of the article…

http://www.economist.com/node/17276352

After I boarded the minibus for my commute to work this morning, a Syrian truck driver from Aleppo, Syria, tried to board, too. He was heading back to the border. He only had Syrian currency with him. The driver would not accept it, and he told the Syrian guy to get off and find a currency exchange. I called out to the Syrian guy to get back on the bus, I would cover his fare. People do me favors on the road all the time. Taking the opportunity to help out a fellow traveler was the least I could do.

About a half hour after I got off the bus and started the day’s walk, a journalist from one of the papers (Sabah) called me for an interview. There I was, standing by the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere, doing a phone interview with a national newspaper over the din of truck traffic.

My main job for the day was not to pay Syrians’ bus fares or talk to journalists, though. It was to get a particular climb out of the way, the climb from 1850 feet (560 meters) to 3750 feet (1140 meters) feet. For the next two months I’ll only be making two very brief forays to that altitude. They aren’t that big a deal, since I was at that elevation, or higher, on the Central Anatolia plateau, and I will be significantly higher on the last leg of the trip near Van. They are relatively significant climbs for this section of the walk however, so I was happy at the end of the day today to have banged one of them out.

The walk over for the day, I hopped a minibus and commuted back to Gaziantep for the night. Mustafa made a delicious dinner of köfte (meatballs), and we had some tea while I uploaded photos and he studied for a professional certification exam (tax law). Then I hit the sack.

One thing I love about this walk is how unpredictable things are. Yes, I may have planned out the route months before starting the walk, and yes, I may have spent hundreds of hours poring over Google Earth before I even left California.

But as planned as many aspects of this trip are, it is very unpredictable from one minute to the next.

A couple hours into the walk this morning I came upon the day’s main village, Nurdağı. I walked by the town’s Jandarma base (the Jandarma are like the military police).

As I walked by the front gate I waved hello to the guard. I wasn’t planning on stopping, I was just being friendly. We exchanged pleasantries above the din of the passing trucks.

He asked a few followup questions and made a few followup comments (where are you headed, it’s awfully cold out, stuff like that). I felt a little ridiculous opening a conversation with my back to him (remember, I was walking past), so I stopped, turned, and started walking towards him. He got really nervous and told me quite clearly to keep moving (yok yok, devam, devam).

At that point other soldiers started to appear at the gate, eagerly throwing questions out to me over the increasing distance. I wasn’t sure whether to turn around and answer their questions, or heed the advice of the first guard to keep moving. In the end I thought of newsreels showing Iraqi civilian drivers with their brains splattered over the back seat after getting shot in the head by nervous US soldiers at security checkpoints, and I kept moving.

A few minutes later I came upon the local police station. I decided to stop by and see what kind of reception I’d get there.

I walked up to the guard booth at the front gate and said hello to the two policemen inside. The first policeman greeted me with a huge grin and launched right into a conversation. The second policeman, however, was cold as ice. He said hello. When I asked him his name, he said, “My name is hello.” The first policeman said to me, “His name is actually Ali.”

When the first policeman invited me in for tea, the second policeman quickly put a stop to it. “No,” he said, waving his hand dismissively, “keep moving.” I think it was the first time ever in Turkey that someone had said to me no, you can’t drink our tea.

Not wanting to get involved in whatever interpersonal conflict they had going on, I said goodbye and kept walking down the road.

About halfway through the village I figured I would just keep walking and blow right through this one. But then the naughty part of my personality came out, the part that loves being a bull in a china shop. I stopped suddenly, looked over at another collection of government-looking buildings, and said to myself, “No, I’m not done here yet.”

I walked up to the buildings and picked the nearest one, which turned out to be the local Agriculture Administration office. I went through the front door. There was no reception area, so I just stuck my head into the doorway of one of the offices.

Within nanoseconds someone grabbed my hand and pulled me into the office. He told me to put my bag down, rest, sit. Someone brought tea. Within minutes the office was full of curious workers wanting to find out who had just walked in.

It was barely 9:30 in the morning, but they offered me a place to stay for the night. They started debating amongst themselves, one person saying the office was unsatisfactory, how about the belediye (town hall)? No, said another person, they are closed. How about this, how about that? I told them it was too early for me to stop for the day.

Have you eaten, they asked? Take him to the cafeteria, someone suggested. It’s closed, said another. Order him some take-out, said another. Within minutes I was eating tavuk dürüm (chicken wrap) and drinking ayran (a yogurt drink).

We stepped outside for some photos. We came back in and friended each other on Facebook. At that point I felt it was time to go, so I said my goodbyes and took my leave. The town was small, so within a few minutes I was clear of it and back out on the open road.

When I walk up to a Jandarma base, I might be told to move on, or I might be ushered in so the commander can feed me more food than I’ve ever seen. When I walk up to a police station, I might be told to move on, or I might spend the next two hours watching TV and eating and drinking with the cops. When I walk into an Agriculture Administration office, I might be greeted with puzzled silence, or I might be greeted with an overwhelming explosion of hospitality.

And what happens to me in one situation provides almost no indication of what will happen to me in the next one.

I love that about this walk.

At the end of the walk today, out in the middle of what I thought was nowhere, up pulled a car. The driver was none other than the son of the man who fed me breakfast at the gasoline station yesterday. He gave me a huge bag of peanuts, waited with me by the side of the road until my bus came, and then insisted on paying my fare.

By the way, the mountains I was walking through yesterday and today are known by two names, Mountains of Heavenly Radiance (Nurdağları) and Mountains of the Infidel (Gavurdağları). I never know from one moment to the next whether I’ll be treated like a gift from god or a bizarre space alien. I love that about this walk.

This slideshow uses Flash, which you won’t see on an iPhone. Here are the photos without Flash.

This slideshow uses Flash, which you won’t see on an iPhone. Here are the photos without Flash.

Today’s walk took me from the town of Ceyhan to the village of Mustafabeyli. In the background is the Ceyhan river, a completely different river than the Seyhan, which flows through Adana and which appeared in some photos the other day.

Lara was one of my guardian angels last month at Tarsus American College. In the photo below she is at the left, wearing the vest…

Occasionally someone asks why I don’t mention his or her name on this website.

There’s a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan where Matt Damon and Tom Hanks are swapping stories about loved ones.

Tom Hanks tells Matt Damon about his wife back home. Matt Damon asks Tom Hanks to tell him his most special memory.

Tom Hanks refuses, saying, “No, that one’s just for me.”

If I don’t mention your name, or the times we shared, on this website, it might be because some memories are just for me.

Tonight I am in Osmaniye, a city of about 200,000 people at the eastern edge of the Cukurova plain.

Early in December I said I was going to try to Couchsurf all the way across the Cukurova, and, knock on wood, it looks like I’m going to do that. Couchsurfing has been a great experience. I’ll be doing a write up on it in the days to come.

Today on the way into Osmaniye I saw a highway sign for Halep, the Turkish spelling for the city of Aleppo, Syria. It was the first time on this trip I’ve seen a highway sign for a city in another country, and I’m kind of excited about that. It reminds me the trip is shifting into another gear.

Osmaniye is about 28 miles from the Syrian border. It is closer to the border than it is to any major Turkish city.

Well, I’ve been on the road for four months. I’ve walked across 53% of the country so far.

Here’s an update on some journey-related stats, and then I need your opinion on something for the second half…

Distance walked:

Total: 1109 kilometers (689 miles)
That’s an average of 277 kilometers (172 miles) per month. Months before the trip I planned on 300 kilometers per month, so I’m hitting that target pretty close.

Monthly numbers:
Sep: 399 kilometers (247 miles)
Oct: 238 kilometers (148 miles)
Nov: 165 kilometers (102 miles)
Dec: 302 kilometers (187 miles)

As you can see, I hit it pretty hard in September. November, the month with two trips to Istanbul, was very light. December was actually right on plan, even with large changes in my traveling style and more social activity than in the three preceding months combined.

Money spent:
Total: US$3979 (an average of US$995 per month)

Monthly numbers:
Sep: US$737
Oct: US$1303
Nov: US$1143
Dec: US$684

Those numbers are all-inclusive, everything I’ve spent since taking the first step on 1 September, 2012. Food, lodging, health insurance, internet data plan, warmer clothes, two trips to Istanbul, even one-off expenses like the residence permit and the communications “Plan B” (new cell phone, etc). Everything.

All the months have been over budget. The Dec number is pretty close to budget, but even it is too high.

Weight:

For 10 years my weight has never gone far from 84 kilos (185 pounds). I regularly go 5 kilos (10 pounds) over or under that, depending on what I’ve been eating and how much exercise I’m getting. When I am walking a lot I actually put on weight, because the muscle I put on weighs more than the fat I lose. But my weight isn’t changing much on this trip. It’s still been staying at 84 kilos, +/- 5 kilos.

Miscellaneous notes:

I am liking the Couchsurfing method I started in early December.

Physically, it’s more comfortable, since I sleep in a bed or on a couch. I take showers and do laundry on a regular basis. I love that way of life to no end.

I commute to work in the mornings, and return to the same home in the evenings. Since I’m based out of a given place instead of moving to a new location each day, I make much closer friendships. Emotionally it’s much richer.

The conversations are more substantive, too. Traveling old-style (pre-December), I have the same conversation over and over (What is your name? Where are you from? What are you doing? Where are you going? Why?). With Couchsurfing, since we have more time to get to know each other, we talk about other things too. Politics, history, professions, money, life, philosophy, girls.

However, language-wise, the Couchsurfing community is heavily oriented towards English. In December I spoke way more English than I did Turkish. But I’m not out here to learn Turkish. I’m out here to walk across the country and show it to people.

My question for you: I haven’t decided yet whether the language thing is good, bad, or irrelevant. What’s your opinion? Let me know in your comments or by emailing me directly.

Today’s walk took me from Cukobirlik (a few kilometers east of Yenice) to Adana’s Seyhan river.

Now I’ve walked all the way to Ceyhan, two days (43 kilometers or 27 miles) from Osmaniye. I’m almost done with the Cukurova plain now.

Dilek was one of my guardian angels at TAC last month. In the photo below, she is fourth from the right, in the white shirt…

Today’s walk was from Tarsus to Arikli, a village between Tarsus and Adana, just a few kilometers east of Yenice.

Elif was one of my guardian angels at Tarsus American College earlier this month. In the photo below she is third from the right, in the light pink scarf…

Yesterday’s walk put me at 51% of the total distance walked. I’ve walked more than halfway across Turkey.

Hitting that milestone came one day after Christmas, and a couple days before my birthday on Friday. A great way to mark the holiday week!

Melih accompanied me on yesterday’s walk. Nice job Melih, it was an honor to clear the halfway mark with you.

Today’s walk was from Mersin to Tarsus.

In the background is a replica of the Nusret minelayer, a ship which mined the Dardanelle Straits in World War I, helping the Turks stop an Allied invasion.

Oya was one of my guardian angels the other week at Tarsus American College. In the photo below, she is second from the right, in the pink boots.

I wish we could play light sabers in the garage, but I’ll have to settle for something else.

Maybe they’ll make me a Christmas Whopper at this Burger King.

Above is a photo of a Burger King in Mersin. Below is a photo of Pryor.

Yes Pryor, I know having your photo pasted on the web for the whole world to see makes you shy, but you smile at the same time, and you know I can’t resist embarrassing you, so here we go…

Woke up this morning at 6:30am, my normal wake-up time for a work day.

I lay in my sleeping bag for 15 minutes and flirted with the siren who sings to me each morning. She whispered softly into my ear, “Oh, this sleeping bag is so warm and fluffy and comfortable, you could just stay here all day, yes, couldn’t you?”

But then I told myself the same thing I tell myself every morning that she sings to me, that this kind of comfort will not last, and when it is gone, I will need to be, too. Must get out of bed. Must get to work.

Today’s walk was 20 kilometers, from Yakapinar (aka Misis) to Ceyhan, a city of about 100,000 people between Adana and Osmaniye.

I could see the mountains east of Osmaniye today. It’ll be another week or so before I climb into those mountains and leave behind the Cukurova Plain. I have a string of holidays (Christmas, New Year’s), my birthday, and a couple social calls to make in Mersin.

So it’s not a straight shot to those mountains. But they are there, looming behind the clouds, and I have seen them. I love mountains. I miss mountains, and I am looking forward to climbing into these.

Back in the year 2000 I got a dog, a black labrador. I named him Milk Dud. He has since passed away, god bless his heart. He was a good dog.

When he was about four months old, I took him to the lake for the first time.

He didn’t like the water, however. In fact, he was deathly afraid of it. I tried to coax him into the water, but he wouldn’t go near it. Wouldn’t even put his paws in it, not even just a little.

“Come on,” I thought, “you’re a lab, you’re supposed to love the water.”

I rolled up my pants and waded in. I even took off my shirt and swam around, thinking that maybe he needed me to demonstrate what he was supposed to do. But no dice. He refused to go in.

At one point I got so frustrated that I got out of the water, dried off, picked him up, and threw him into the lake. He plopped into the water with a big clumsy splash.

He went under for a brief moment, and I’ll never forget the look on his face when he came back up for air. He had this crazed, panicked look like he was thinking, “Oh my god, I’m going to die!” I don’t think he was even aware that I was there anymore, standing nearby in case things went south.

After a few moments of flailing in the water, he started to dog paddle, and then another unforgettable look crossed his face. It was a look of realization, a look that said, “Oh, THIS is what I was put here on this earth to do.”

From that moment on I couldn’t get him out of the water. Whenever there was water nearby, whenever he so much as smelled water, Milk Dud had to go swimming. He was obsessed with it.

That’s how I feel now about us humans and walking. We were meant to walk. We were meant to walk long distances. We were meant to make eye contact with strangers. We were meant say hello to people we don’t know.

A couple days into this trip I had a moment of realization like Milk Dud did, where I woke up and realized that hey, this is exactly what we were put here to do.

At one point in my walk into Mersin this morning I was standing on the side of the road, struggling to open a particularly reluctant roll of sandwich cream cookies. Up rode five Turkish cyclists, all decked out in lycra and helmets. They pulled up next to me and stopped. I had not met them before, but they greeted me by name in English.

They were on their way to Kizkalesi, where I began yesterday’s walk, to meet some Germans who are cycling to China.

That’s another thing I love about this area. All kinds of people have been passing through here for thousands of years, headed in one direction or another. This morning I was honored to have joined that group.

Today’s walk to Kiz Kalesi started in her hometown of Silifke. Above is the Goksu river on its way to the Mediterranean, with Silifke’s castle on top of the hill in the background.

These were my guardian angels this week at Tarsus American College. They kept me organized and on task, showing me from class to class, rushing with me from building to building, climbing up and down countless sets of stairs. They kept me fed, making sure I made it to the cafeteria on time, even organizing a “Taste of Home” luncheon for me.

Thank you so much, Pinar, Bade, Elif, Oya, Dilek, and Lara, for all your help this week. I am forever in your debt.

Pinar, whose family we found lives just a few blocks from where I used to live in Istanbul.

Bade, who made some of the most delicious brownies I’ve ever tasted. They practically melted in your mouth.

Elif, who goes camping with her dad and recognized my backpack and much of the equipment I carry in it. Go camping with your dad whenever you can Elif, it means a lot to him.

Oya, who made amazing cupcakes which, according to rumor, included as one of their magic ingredients Bailey’s Irish Cream.

Dilek, whose birthday is 2 January; she made very sure I understood that that particular birthday, hers, is the most important.

Lara, who made a stack of only-god-knows-how-many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut them into quarters, and individually-wrapped every single one. How long that must have taken!

Sunday night I went to dinner with Mr. Chris Hanna, the headmaster of Tarsus American College, Filiz hanim, one of the administrators, and Pinar Seydim, one of the students.

I mentioned that recently in the evenings I had been trying to read, but with the booklight on I couldn’t see out of the tent, and I didn’t like that. I preferred to be able to see my surroundings, even when it was dark and I couldn’t see them well. In the dark shapes take on a different personality, and I need to know that personality.

Mr Hanna recited this poem…

To Know the Dark

–Wendell Berry

A number of people have asked me lately what my social life is like on the road.

The answer is that my social life is simple and monk-like.

There is an important safety reason for that. On the road I am not in one place for more than a few days, so I rarely understand the wider social context of any given interaction. I don’t know if there are brothers or fathers I would be making angry.

I am alone, I am very easy to find, and I don’t move very far or very fast. I depend on the people around me to watch over me. So it is important to me that I don’t make anyone angry.

And so yes, I live like a monk on the road. It is one of my most important safety techniques.

The 200 kilometers (120 miles) before Konya, and the 200 kilometers after Konya, were pretty sparsely populated, so camping by the side of the road became my “go to” way to spend the night.

As much as I enjoy sleeping under the stars (rain clouds not so much), what I really like is a warm bed, a roof over my head, and some conversation. A hot shower is nice, too, and a washing machine, well, these days a washing machine is a gift from god.

So now that I’m on the more densely-populated Cukurova plain (the flatlands running from Silifke, through Mersin and Adana, to Osmaniye), I am going to try something new, new to me at least: Couchsurfing.

Couchsurfing.org is a website that connects travelers looking for new friends and a place to stay with hosts in the area they are traveling through. People have been recommending Couchsurfing to me for a couple years, especially now that I’m doing this walk.

And I don’t want to just dip my toe into the Couchsurfing waters and then quickly pull it out. No, I am going to try to cross the entire Cukurova plain, all of its 250 kilometers (155 miles, about three weeks of walking), doing nothing but Couchsurfing.

We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck. Knock on wood, 41 kere masallah!

Below is a press release from Turkayfe, one of the walk’s backers. The press release has a nice description of my daily routine on the walk…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Headline

Ankara, Turkey December , 2012

“I am walking solo 1305 miles (2100 kilometers) across Turkey, from the Aegean coast to Iran, and describing what I run into along the way.” This bold announcement caught the attention of quite a few people and organizations, some of whom financially backed the $10,000 project.

Now three months into his trek and almost 50% of the distance, Matt Krause is more determined and confident than ever that he will reach Iran on foot. “Before I was knocking on wood and going on hope. After I reached the 40% mark I realized I have gained significant momentum. I know I can get this done.”

Each walking day follows a general routine: Wake up early, eat a large Turkish breakfast or grab something from the roadside stand, dedicate the day to someone special in his life, walk for 6-7 hours, find a place to sleep (usually in a mosque garden, gas station, bus station, open field, or as a guest in a house), and make sure he eats enough good food to give him the strength to continue walking. He usually starts walking around 8am and finishes about 3pm.

In between walking, Matt (or Mert as he introduces himself to Turks) finds time to keep his website (heathenpilgrim.com) updated with pictures and his experiences along the way. He also gladly accepts speaking opportunities such as his talk at the Istanbul Toastmasters a few weeks ago. He has also been invited to be a guest speaker at Tarsus American College the second week of December. He will explain about his walk across Turkey to 4 classes, interacting with different age groups.

In the months to come he will trek through Adana, Antep, Diyarbakir, and Van, expecting to reach the Iranian border sometime in March. As the weather turns colder and he gets nearer to Van, Matt will find himself hiking and camping in the snow, something he is well prepared to do with his warm clothes and thick sleeping bag.

As American who spent a few years in Istanbul and who was previously married to a Turkish woman, Matt has a special place in his heart for Turkey. It bothers him that some people in the West not only have a negative view of Turkey and the Middle East in general but also regard these areas as unsafe. Matt aims to prove that people in the Middle East are basically the same as those in the West, with the same human feelings and problems and compassion. He is giving the people of the villages and cities he passes through the opportunity to demonstrate their hospitality and goodwill to the world through their kindness to him. So far he has not been disappointed.

Actually, this walk is just a warm-up. After he rests up and writes a couple of books about his trip across Turkey, he plans to continue walking where he left off…across Iran, showing that the people of Iran are also basically good people, just like everyone else.

To contact Matt for a speaking engagement or to join him in walking a kilometer or two, email him at mattkrause@mattkrause.com.

Turkayfe.org is a proud sponsor of this project. To find out more about Turkayfe, visit http://turkayfe.org/index.php/brandturkey

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Tuesday was one of the most scenic days of the entire walk. After I left the Jandarma Komutanligi (jandarma command post) I spent the day walking a two-lane road hewn into the side of the mountains rising above the Goksu river. The road rolled up and down between 500 feet and 1000 feet above the river, and passed through areas of deciduous forest colored the fall colors of yellow and red, and areas of evergreen forest that made me feel like I was walking through the mountains of the Pacific Northwest near Seattle.

Nihat bey, the commander at the jandarma post, had told me to find and say hello to “Hoca” at the end of the day, so all day long I walked thinking, I can’t just camp anywhere tonight, I’ve got to find Hoca. Whatever I do, I’ve got to find Hoca.

In the early afternoon I stopped off at a tea garden with an irresistable view of the river valley below. I ate patatesli gozleme (a pancake stuffed with boiled and lightly-seasoned potatoes), drank some tea, and had some conversation with Hilmi, the grown son of one of the tea garden’s owners. But I had to find Hoca, and so as comfortable as the tea garden was, I had to get going.

Shortly after I left the tea garden the storm rolled back in, except this time from the opposite direction. Instead of a warm rain coming from the Mediterranean, the storm was blown back in by a wind from the north. The rain was colder than it had been the night before. Someone from the tea garden came driving by a few minutes after the rain started. He told me to get in the car, he would take me wherever I needed to go. I told him, as I’ve told countless people on the walk, that thank you very much for the offer, but no, I’ve got to walk. He finally gave up and disappeared back the way he had come.

Fortunately, the rain only lasted a short while. The clouds and the wind were still there, but the rain had stopped, and I was left a little wet but happy to be walking through such beautiful territory.

About 3pm I reached the village where I was supposed to find “Hoca.” I came up on a section of the road crowded with parked trucks and thought that looked like a good sign. I started asking around, and the second or third person I asked pointed to a nearby restaurant with a sign that said “Hoca’nin Yeri” (Hoca’s Place). I’d find Hoca there, the man said.

I walked into Hoca’s Place and started asking for Hoca (by the way, “hoca” means teacher in Turkish). At the back of the restaurant I met Hoca and told him I had had breakfast with Nihat the jandarma commander, and Nihat had told me to find Hoca and say hello from him.

Hoca smiled and shook my hand and invited me to sit down next to the fire they kept going for the barbecue. I began telling Hoca, and the people sitting nearby, who I was and what I was doing.

Within moments, and without me even asking, someone brought me a plate of barbecued sucuk (sausage), a huge pile of bread, and a salad. I bit into the sucuk. It was the most delicious sucuk I had ever tasted. I asked Hoca about it. He told me they made it there, themselves, with their own mixture of spices. I asked Hoca what they called the sucuk. He told me it was named after him.

After eating I sat around the restaurant with Hoca and a handful of the villagers making small talk. I could barely understand a single word they said. Their accent was very different from the Konya accent, but to me it was equally unintelligible. Sometimes I could barely even identify their words as Turkish.

Hoca got up every few minutes to greet customers as they came into the restaurant. He was like the mayor of the town, greeting people like they were long-lost friends, even though he had probably last seen them less than 24 hours before.

As darkness fell I asked Hoca if I could camp somewhere in the area. I told him I had everything I needed in my backpack — tent, sleeping bag, everything. He said of course, you can camp anywhere you like. I asked if I could camp out on the restaurant’s balcony, which was closed off for the winter. I thought the balcony would be a great place to camp, especially since it was right above the Degirmen creek (Degirmendere, for which the village was named), and I could fall asleep to the sounds of running water. Hoca said sure, of course, no problem.

A few minutes later though, one of the earlier patrons in the restaurant, Ali, a man in his early 30s, came back, sat down next to me, and said come with me, you can sleep at my place tonight. I jumped at the offer, especially since I had camped outside in rainy weather the two nights before, and was in fact still a little wet from the afternoon’s rain.

Ali and I left the restaurant and walked the short distance, maybe just 100 meters, to his apartment. Inside the apartment I changed into dry clothes while Ali built a fire in the TV room. The TV room was small, and by the time I finished changing clothes the fire had turned it a nice toasty warm.

I took a seat amongst some pillows on the floor next to the fire. Ali spread out on the couch. He offered me some baklava, and we settled in to watch “Evlen Benimle” (Marry Me), a popular matchmaking show on television.

At one point some curious neighbor kids came over to meet (read: play with) the foreign visitor. They were Enes, a boy aged about 5, and his sister Elif, a girl aged about 2. Ali left to take care of some business elsewhere, and I played “horsey” with Enes and Elif. I was surprised that after a full day of walking I still had the energy to let a couple kids climb around on me simultaneously, but I dug deep and found it somewhere. I had no problem with Elif, who was about as light as a feather, but when Enes would decide that the back of my head made a great saddle, I had a hard time supporting his weight with my neck muscles. I didn’t complain when Ali returned and told the kids to settle down.

After the kids’ mom came to collect them, Ali and I watched the second half of Evlen Benimle. We drank some cinnamon and ginger tea that Ali had been warming next to the fire. When Evlen Benimle was over Ali and I went back to Hoca’s restaurant, and to the next door kahvehanesi (coffee house), for some tea and village conversation before bed.

While at Hoca’s restaurant I asked Hoca if he had any children. He has two, a daughter, aged 19, and a son, aged 16. Both live in Silifke. I asked Hoca what his son’s favorite subject was in school. Hoca laughed and said girls, and sports. I told him those are the favorite subjects of just about every 16-year old boy. He laughed and said he just wanted to see his son go to college. Everything changes if you go to college, Hoca said. Life is different. Work is different. Everything is different.

That night I slept incredibly well, spread out on a nice comfortable couch, the fire still going, and some drama show on TV. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, being that a mere 24 hours earlier I had been camping out on the side of the road, hiding from one of the most aggressive thunderstorms I had seen in a long time. I find it so easy to take a warm bed and a roof over my head at night for granted, and at some point I probably will again, but for now at least I recognize how there is almost no price that can be put on small creature comforts like that.

In the morning Ali and I both woke up around 6:30am. We got up, walked down the street to Hoca’s restaurant for breakfast, found it not open yet, and hung out at the kahvehanesi a while instead. When Hoca finally arrived we stepped into his restaurant for breakfast. It turns out breakfast was not a regular meal served publicly to restaurant patrons — it was just Hoca, Ali, me, and a young man 21 years old named Sahin, the village’s butcher.

While Hoca was away from the table I asked Sahin how Hoca had come to be called Hoca, since I have never met someone whose real name is Hoca (Hoca is just a nickname given to some people). Sahin told me that at one point Hoca had been an imam. With that piece of information, something about Hoca fell into place for me. He had a way of looking at me that made me squirm a bit — a calm, self-assured gaze that said, “I’m looking into you, but I don’t need anything from you, and you don’t need to do anything that you’re not doing right now.”

As soon as Sahin said that, I remembered an imam I met back in Horsunlu a couple months ago. He had looked at me with a very similar gaze, and that too had made me squirm. Maybe they teach you how to look at people that way in imam school or something.

Breakfast over, I said my goodbyes and thank yous, took a self-portrait photo of the four of us, and began my day’s walk.

At no point did anyone ask for, nor would they have accepted, any money in return for the delicious dinner, or the dozens of cups of tea, or the breakfast, or the warm bed. I was simply the village’s guest for the night. For eighteen hours it was their mission in life to see that I was taken care of, and after almost a week camping by the side of the road, getting rained on, and eating food wherever and whenever it appeared, I drank that in like a man just in from crawling through the desert would drink in a tall glass of water.

Tuesday morning I woke up shortly before dawn to the sounds of coyotes howling and yipping a few hundred meters away. They either didn’t know I was nearby listening, or they didn’t care.

Early the night before a ferocious thunderstorm had passed through. Some of the thunder was so sharp it seemed like it was going to crack the trees around me. By 11pm though, the storm had passed, and all night long a steady breeze had blown warm Mediterranean air up the valley, so by the time I woke up in the morning my camp, and the ground around it, were almost completely dry.

I broke camp and began walking about 7:30am. A few minutes after I began walking it began raining again, but this time it was only a light drizzle. The light drizzle, and the road I was walking along (a rolling, hilly road lined with evergreens) reminded me of mountain roads I’ve walked in the Pacific Northwest.

About five kilometers down the road I came upon a Jandarma Komutanligi (a jandarma command post). In Turkey, the jandarma are a branch of the military. Their job is to keep the peace in rural areas and along rural highways, kind of a combination of a sheriff and a highway patrol in the USA, except with a military flavor.

The day before, a few people had told me about this jandarma post, so I was expecting it. And, I had heard that as I walk across the country I should keep in touch with the jandarma. So I figured now was as good a time as any to see what it was like to crash a jandarma post.

I walked up to the front gate. The guard was about 20 years old. He was wearing fatigues and a helmet and carrying a machine gun. I didn’t realize machine guns were that large.

I told him what I was doing (walking across Turkey), and I asked him if I could come in and rest a bit. He radioed his commanding officer. His commanding officer said he would check with the post commander.

The guard and I made small talk while we waited to hear back from the post commander. I tried not to be intimidated by the gun. The guard tried to keep his cool too. I suspect it’s not every day the monotony of guarding a rural military post is broken by the approach of a foreigner walking across the country.

Word came back over the radio that my entrance was approved. I was waved through the gate and escorted to the headquarters’ front door. Once inside I was shown to the commander’s office.

The commander’s first name was Nihat. Nihat bey was about 35 years old. He was a busy man, taking, and making, a number of phone calls and reading reports that were brought to him, but he and I made small talk when he was between tasks.

Nihat asked me if I had eaten breakfast. I had not, and the day before I had eaten only one meal, so I was hungry. I tried to act with restraint when I asked if there was food. Before I was done asking though, Nihat called to one of his soldiers to make me some menemen (a dish of eggs scrambled with tomatoes and peppers) and bring me some tea, and make it snappy.

A few minutes later a soldier came in with the dish of menemen, a basket full of bread, and a cup of tea. I plowed into that menemen with almost no concern for decorum or restraint whatsoever. It was one of the biggest servings of menemen I had ever seen, and I had the entire thing eaten, and all the juice and grease sopped up with bread, in just a few minutes.

After the plates were cleared away, Nihat told me a bit about his personal history. He is single with no kids. He said the itinerant life of a military commander is not conducive to raising a family. He had been working at that particular post for about two months. Before that he was in the special forces in Mardin, Diyarbakir, Tunceli, and Urfa, all cities in east and southeast Turkey.

He asked me what countries I had been to, and when I asked him what countries he had been to, he replied that he had been to Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, all on military assignments.

Nihat is from Osmaniye. He has one sibling, a younger sister, who lives in Osmaniye and runs a grocery store there. I told Nihat I would be walking through Osmaniye in about a month. He responded that he would tell his sister about me and ask her to show me around.

Nihat asked me about my route. He made some suggestions about tweaks to make to it. I asked him if gasoline stations and mosque gardens would continue to be good places to stay in the eastern half of the country. He recommended that instead I stay at facilities run by the city and town governments, and at the police stations. He said that in the east, almost all of the towns would have one or two spare rooms they kept available for travelers. Not hotels, free places they opened up for people traveling through. Ask about these, Nihat told me. Also, he said, don’t camp by the side of the road once you get east of Osmaniye.

Nihat asked me how far I was walking that day. I told him the name of the village I planned to stop in, and he recommended a particular restaurant in that village. Stop there, Nihat said, and ask for a man who goes by “Hoca.” Tell him I sent you, and he will take good care of you.

It was time for me to go. I thanked Nihat bey for his hospitality and for welcoming me into his facility. He ordered me up a couple cheese and tomato sandwiches for the road. The sandwiches were ready a few minutes later. I took my leave and walked back out the front gate, saying goodbye to the guard with the machine gun, feeling less intimidated by it. I made a mental note to crash as many jandarma stations as possible, because this had been even more fun than crashing a police station.

I did not take any photos of Nihat or the jandarma facilities, since the jandarma is a branch of the military.