According to my phone’s GPS, I’ve left Denizli province and entered Afyonkarahisar province. I did not see a provincial border sign to photograph, and I’m in no mood to walk back and find one. By the way, “afyonkarahisar” roughly...
…on why she backed the project: “I’m an old colleague of Matt’s from the mid 90’s. The reason I backed Matt, is that he is a man of his word and good character. In the past few years, I read many of Matt’s posts from his time in...
…on why she backed the project: “I always loved travels, traveling meant learning and freedom. But when it came to traveling in Turkey, it meant much more to me. It was discovering sincerity, generosity, the goodness we’ve long been missing, SHARING,...
As I meet more people on the road, there are more people who read this website using Google Translate. God bless Google’s heart, and I’m sure Translate does a number of things very well, but English-Turkish is not one of them. I feel sorry for people when...
Dozens of people along the walk so far have asked me to send them copies of the book when I’m done. I won’t be finishing the trip for another half year, so the book is a ways off still. But I’m going to need to publish it in Turkish, too. If you are...
By the way, in Turkey I have been assigned the name “Mert,” a fairly common name which is the closest Turkish equivalent to “Matt.” In Turkish, “mert” means manly or brave. I find this flattering and am perfectly happy letting my...
Of the $3900 target on Kickstarter, my existing backers have already pledged $3214. That means we’re 84% of the way there. The average pledge so far is $62. (Of course, there are plenty of options on Kickstarter, ranging from $1 to $2000.) That means the...
Dinner tonight in Cardak, with Eren (sitting to my right), Ozgur (sitting to Eren’s right), and Hasan (sitting to Ozgur’s right). Dinner was a delicious, and oh-so-filling, assortment of dishes: mercimek corbasi (lentil soup), coban salata...
I’m on the Central Anatolia plateau now. Tomorrow morning I head out of Cardak. The walk across Turkey is 12% done. I figure that for pretty much anything in life, if you can get past the 10% mark, and you’re committed to doing whatever it takes to get the...
Tonight I’m staying at a hotel in Cardak, a village of about 10,000 people at the edge of the plateau. Yesterday was a big walking day. Today wasn’t. I am on schedule, and I had no desire to push it. This is a very friendly village. I was just walking down...
Most walking days breakfast is just a pogaca or a simit (bread, basically) I grab on my way out of town. Today, however, I woke up especially hungry, so I sat down for a proper breakfast. By the way, I used to treat those bread baskets as if they were an afterthought....
Discipline is not running a marathon. It is not losing 50 pounds. It is not walking across Turkey. Discipline is running one mile, and then waking up the next day and running two miles, and then waking up the next day and running three miles. Discipline is losing one...
