Monday, 15 October
Then bright and early Monday morning, 15 October, I took a bus from the lake back to Sarkikaraagac and began walking again.
I’d gotten a late start. After a few hours it began to get dark, and I realized I wasn’t going to make it to Kireli, the village I’d hoped to reach that day.
I thought to myself, I’ve stayed in many places so far, but I haven’t camped, uninvited, on private land yet, and that’s an important hobo skill, so I should learn it sometime, and now is as good a time as any.
So I started eyeballing the land immediately to the sides of the road.
Off to the right was a large flat field planted with ground crops of wheat and barley. Nope, I thought, no good, nothing to hide me from drivers passing by on the road.
On the left side I saw a dense row of tall poplar trees used as windbreaks for an abandoned pear orchard. There were tractors working the adjacent fields but none in the pear orchard, and the poplars would hide me from anyone traveling on the road.
I still felt a little fearful, not so much of robbers or some other bad guys, but mainly that the farmers might see me camping on the property unannounced, and might not be welcoming. But I figured, Well, you’re going to have to get over this sometime. May as well do it now.
I pushed through the brush underneath the poplars, and sat down out of sight of the road. The nearby farmers would be able to see me though, so I stayed motionless so as not to attract their attention. I sat like that for about an hour, until the last tractor had left for the evening, and then I set up my camp in the falling darkness.
Once camp was set up, there was nothing else to do and it was cold outside so I lay in my bag. Since it was my first night sleeping on private property, I was kind of paranoid that someone was going to notice me there or that the police would come by. No one bothered me though, and I fell into a deep sleep.