This leg is about 150 miles long, so it’ll take me two or three weeks to cover it.
Leaving Lake Egirdir
The first week or so will be a time of lakeshores and memories of St. Paul. I’ll spend a couple days walking along Lake Egirdir — it’s not a huge lake, but remember I’m walking, so my pace is slow. Two days after leaving the shores of Lake Egirdir I’ll pass near Yalvac, formerly known as Antioch, the capital of the Roman province Pisidia. St. Paul visited Antioch many times in the early days of the Christian church. He was from Tarsus by the way, a city I’ll be walking through later on in the journey.
Ruins at Yalvac
In fact, when first arriving at Lake Egirdir I will intersect a trail called the “St. Paul Trail,” an offroad trail which runs north from Antalya, climbs the Taurus mountains, skirts Lake Egirdir on the lake’s western shore, and ends at Yalvac. The St. Paul Trail project was organized by Kate Clow, a British woman who also developed the Lycian Way trail and some similar projects officially recognized by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In researching this trip I’ve corresponded with Ms. Clow a couple times. I highly recommend that anyone interested in old Roman roads or the pre-Ottoman history of this part of the world talk to Ms. Clow. She has spent many years building up a wealth of knowledge on the subject and bringing it to life via tangible trails and guidebooks.
Lake Beysehir at sunset
A few days after passing Yalvac I will come upon Lake Beysehir. Lake Beysehir is the largest lake in Turkey’s Lake District, about 28 miles long and 12 miles wide. At its southeast corner is Beysehir, a city of about 45,000 people. Hundreds of years ago, before Beysehir was known as Beysehir, it was known as Viransehir, “Wasted City,” even though it was a great place for people from nearby Konya to build summer residences next to the lake.
Between Beysehir and Konya
This entire leg, lakes and all, is on the Central Anatolia plateau. That doesn’t mean everything’s board flat though. In the two weeks (about 125 miles) out of Egirdir, I will climb from the lake’s elevation of 3100 feet to about 5200 feet. The land along that climb becomes pretty arid once I leave the shores of Lake Beysehir. I’ve seen territory like this once before, on the road west of Ankara, but I was in a bus and have never walked through an area like this. I am eager to see it.
Arriving in Konya
After reaching 5200 feet I drop quickly, over the space of about two days, into Konya, a city of about 1,000,000 people at an elevation of about 3350 feet. Konya is said to be one of the more religiously conservative cities in Turkey, so I am looking forward to seeing how it compares to the big bad den of iniquity known as Istanbul.
Whirling dervishes
Konya is also the home of the Mevlevi Order, its whirling dervishes and all things Rumi. Rumi was a 13th century mystic who also goes by the name Mevlana. He was Persian but came to live in Konya when his family fled the expansion of the Mongol Empire.
After laying over in Konya for a week or so, I’ll head south off the plateau and down through the Taurus mountains to the Mediterranean. More on that next leg later.