This mountain was my road companion for the day. When I still had 6 hours of walking to go, I could see this mountain peeking out at me through the other ridges.
Maybe someday these’ll be pretty ruins people will travel from the four corners of the earth to see, but right now they’re just bridge supports for the wider highway they’re building between Konya and Beysehir.
Don’t get any funny ideas about waterskiing or picnicking on the beach. Altinapa is a work-only reservoir supplying water for the city of Konya (approx population 1 million).
Chocolate-covered cookie/marshmallow sandwiches and water. Breakfast of champions, or people who haven’t seen a bakkal (corner market) in a couple of days.
Taken from this morning’s campsite, shortly before beginning the walk for the day. Last night’s rain clouds were gone, leaving a nice clear sky for the morning. This was one of my favorite campsites so far, mostly because the road (a two-lane highway) was...
The scenery was nice, but what you don’t see in this shot is the dark rain clouds rolling in, so instead of stopping to take in the scenery I started looking for a place to camp (I found a nice one about 3 km (2 miles) later).
This is from yesterday, but I had neither bandwith nor battery to upload photos. Yesterday I was thinking of my Polish doppelgangers, whose spirits have been with me even though I haven’t seen them since the second day of the walk.
I arrived in Konya and am settled into the Ogretmen Evi. I smell like sweat, dirt, and mothballs (picked up some woollies the other day). I haven’t eaten real food in a few days. My clothes haven’t seen a washing machine in two months. They won’t see...
My sleeping bag is nice and comfy and warm. Nature is calling though, urgently, so I scramble out of the bag and fumble with the zipper on the tent’s door. The air outside is cold, and I am shaking before I get three steps from the tent. While I answer...
Had tea this morning at a paint store across the street from where I stayed last night. Mehmet the owner, his friends Mehmet and a man whose name I can’t remember, the manager Ali, and their employee Yilmaz. The tea wasn’t ready for a while, but the...
I’m about 60 km (36 miles) outside of Konya. I thought there was a lot of holiday traffic on the road yesterday, but I was badly mistaken — that was nothing. About 2:30pm today it was like someone opened the floodgates and half of Konya came driving up...
Today’s walk went pretty quickly. There weren’t many places along the way to stop and rest, have a cup of tea, chat with the locals, etc. Actually, there were none. So I rolled into Sarikoy, my originally-intended destination village, more than an hour...
Along the road throughout Turkey are little "mini-mosques," usually uninhabited, but available in case anyone wants to stop for prayer. Mescits can usually be found at rest stops, airports, bus stations, and many gas stations.
