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This is near the village of Alahan / Gecimli, on the second day of the descent from Sertavul Pass.

This is Ramazan, maker of breakfast this morning for a hungry foreigner who showed up out of nowhere carrying a big backpack, speaking pidgin Turkish, and greedily scraping every crumb off of every plate like some kind of starved homeless person.

There are 30 goats out back of Ramazan’s restaurant, but none of them were harmed in the making of this morning’s breakfast.

This photo was taken Friday morning, after I broke camp (I panicked because I heard a flock of sheep coming — the sheep never showed up, but I broke camp and got an early start to my day).

Angie has been a friend of mine for about 17 years. We both worked for Zygon International back in 1995.

View from the south side of Sertavul Pass. In the distance is the Goksu river valley, the river valley I’ll be walking out to the Mediterranean. It took all of a day or two to go from looking down on these hills to looking up at them, but it’ll take me a full week to get out to the sea.

The south side of Sertavul Pass has a lot of houses made out of rock, tin, and flimsy wooden branches. I don’t know who lives in them or what they do or when they do it, but yesterday at least all the houses were empty. It was kind of creepy, seeing all those unoccupied shanties.

EDIT: A couple people have suggested to me that maybe those are storm shelters for shepherds and their flocks. That sounds pretty plausible, and definitely takes some of the creepiness away.

Finally reached Sertavul Pass yesterday. 5400 feet (1650 meters). End of Karaman province, beginning of Mersin province. Reaching Sertavul was a major milestone, because it marked the end of my days on the Central Anatolia plateau.

This is the road to Sertavul Pass. That section off in the distance is the last part of the climb to the pass. On that climb, the truckers weren’t going a whole lot faster than I was.

Wednesday night was my last night camping on the Central Anatolia plateau. The night started out with a full moon and a completely clear sky, but by morning clouds had rolled in. I was glad to get out of there before it started snowing. This photo was taken Thursday morning before I broke camp.

This is a snow-capped mountain, the name of which I don’t know. When I passed by it a few walking days ago it was shrouded in fog and I didn’t see it. Today it’s nice and clear out.

The territory between Karaman and Sertavul Pass changes quickly. The earth can’t decide whether to be a flat plain with little foliage, or a mountain with lots of evergreens.

This is my least favorite road surface for walking. I’ve only run into it a few times, so it’s no big deal. But man, it hurts to walk on. I suspect it’s the cheapest surfacing option — let’s just lay down some tar and throw some rocks on it. It’s used mostly on lightly-trafficked country roads. It hurts to walk on because it’s one layer of rocks on top of an unforgiving surface, so the rocks push into the soles of my feet. Thank god I only run into this occasionally.

In this video I say I’m walking out of Mut, but I mean I’m walking out of Karaman. I’ve got Mut on the brain this morning — Mut is the next town up the road, three or four days from now. All day I’ve been saying Mut when I mean Karaman.

Richard is my uncle (my mom’s sister’s husband). "Gecmis olsun amcam" means "get well soon, uncle."

Across the street from the Karaman Ogretmen Evi (Teachers’ House) is a small restaurant called Kubra, named after the woman who runs it.

Kubra is a family-run restaurant with just two tables inside, and about four in the patio outside. Kubra serves about the best manti (imagine a meat-filled ravioli in garlicky yogurt sauce) I’ve ever tasted in my entire life.

Here are two of Kubra’s four children, Enes and Omerfaruk. Kubra herself was too shy to be included in the photo.