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...
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)...
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...
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....
In 1190 Frederick Barbarossa, the German king and Holy Roman Emperor, drowned in the Goksu river while passing through this area during the Third Crusade.
Here the Goksu is about 20 kilometers from the Mediterranean, and the river valley begins to open up, becoming less steep as the mouth of the river nears.
For the past few days I had been walking with the river to my right. About 15 kilometers (9 miles) before reaching Silifke today, the road crossed the river. This is that crossing. In this photo the river runs from right to left. On the other side of the bridge,...
A few kilometers out of Degirmendere (the village where I spent the night) I noticed a man tending to his sheep. I crossed the road to say hello, and as I got closer I realized it was Ahmet bey. Ahmet and I had sat next to each other in the kahvehanesi (coffee house)...
God, it was so beautiful out there yesterday and today, walking through the Goksu river valley. I think it was the most beautiful part of the trip so far. Mountains, evergreens, rivers, streams, coyotes, thunderstorms, bright blue skies; reminded me of home so many...
Hilmi joined me during yesterday’s stop at the tea garden near Ortaoren. Hilmi is a sailor with the merchant marine, at sea for six months out of the year, home for the other six months. On his last trip he sailed to China, Indonesia, Portugal, Russia, and more....
This was the view out of the men’s bathroom at the tea garden near Ortaoren on 4 December. There have been a few times in my life when the view from the bathroom was so amazing I wished I could take just a little bit longer of a whiz. This was one of...
The day before I had been walking along the Goksu river too, but here it has begun to enter a more dramatic valley, which I walked for a day and a half.
This was my campsite the morning of 4 December, 2012. Early in the night there had been a huge thunderstorm, but it hadn’t rained most of the night, so things were pretty dry by morning. I went to sleep to the sounds of thunder, and woke up to the sounds of...
