Osman Kaya is a friend I made while I was walking through Isparta at the end of September. I met Osman on the side of the road as I was leaving the city, and then I saw him again later in the day at Lake Egirdir. I have seen him a few more times since, and he is a...
Years ago, maybe it was 1990, I was a university student in Chicago. One day some friends and I decided to ditch our classes and go downtown, west of Chicago’s Loop, to sit in on a screening of the Oprah Winfrey Show. This was before Oprah became a household...
I picked up my residence permit in Istanbul yesterday. Getting that residence permit lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. On the road I engage in a number of, shall we say, “activities of questionable safety,” but walking around with an expired visa this...
Some people have asked me about language, and what do I use when I’m traveling in Turkey. In Istanbul most of my communication is in English, simply because most of my friends in Istanbul are fluent or native speakers of English. On the road, however, I use...
I’m at the bus station in Konya, getting ready to head back to Istanbul for a few days to pick up my new residence permit. I stopped by the restaurant for a bite to eat (kuru fasulye, pilav, and sutlac, my “go to” meal these days). As I was putting...
Oh my god, there was a veritable orgy of food coming out of Karaman this morning. Barely 30 minutes after eating one all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, I came upon another and managed to find room. When it rains it pours. By the way, yes, that’s a big pile of...
About an hour into the walk today I passed a hotel advertising their breakfast buffet. This week hasn’t been the greatest breakfast-wise, so I gladly took them up on the offer.
Okay, I’ve been promising a geek post about my sleeping bag. Here goes… My sleeping bag is probably the single most important and hard-to-replace piece of equipment I carry with me. Maybe second to my boots, but a close second nonetheless. Something could...
Shortly after arriving in a small town called Kazimkarabekir today, my final destination for the day, I passed by a construction site. I kept hearing shouts, but I couldn’t see who was shouting at me, nor tell if it was me being shouted at. Shortly thereafter...
This morning I crossed from Konya province into Karaman province. I only have about four days of walking in Karaman province, and then I’ll drop off the Central Anatolia plateau into Mersin province.
Ilke is a friend of mine from Istanbul. The temperature was pretty cold last night, and it seemed to have affected the ink in the pen; I think that’s why it was lighter than usual.
Couldn’t stop thinking about how to do this stretch in four days instead of five. But in the end, my tired body won out. So I camped by the side of the road Thursday night. There isn’t a lot of tree cover in this neck of the woods though, so I was scraping...
This morning I stopped in to say hello to Ramazan at Cevahir Petrol. His District Manager, Mehmet, had come down from Ankara to talk business. We shared some tea while Ramazan and Mehmet talked about things like who was going out of business, and how to get more...
As I got off a bus to begin my work day, these guys got off another bus to end theirs. Ata, Ahmet, Emrah, and Kenan, just getting home from the night shift at a packaging factory.
Staying at the Belediye Otel (Municipal hotel) tonight in Cumra, about 12 kilometers east of the main road to Karaman. Note that Cumra is not the same as Icericumra. Two different towns near each other.
A few kilometers into the walk today some cops stopped me by the side of the road to chat me up and make sure everything was okay. Before they left they suggested I stop by the police station in the next town, have some tea, rest a bit, and meet their colleagues. When...
