Salih holds a weekly reading session with some of his students on Sunday mornings. They get together and read silently for an hour, just to get in the habit of reading regularly every day. After the reading session two of Salih’s students were adamant about...
Joy joined me for the first day of the walk way back in September, a day of the walk about halfway across the country, and for the final day too. Here we are touching the fence at the Turkey-Iran border.
Foreground, left to right: Yonca, Donna, Tolga, Alper, Hasan, Gerdi. Background: Diego, Vahap, and Ulrike. Hidden or barely visible: Salih, Joy. Working the camera: me
I was going to break three champagne bottles on the road at the end of the walk, but there was no champagne available, at least not conveniently. So I broke three bottles of apple-flavored sparkling soda water instead. Sometimes the bottles would not break, no matter...
"Van kahvaltısı" (Van breakfast) is famous around Turkey. So when in Van, have breakfast. And have breakfast we did. Oh, what an orgy of food it was! We ordered enough for "two people," and six of us barely ate half of it. Fortunately, Yonca...
Posta is one of Turkey’s national newspapers. Some people look down their noses at it, since it is chock full of photos of half-naked women. In Turkey, though, a newspaper chock full of photos of half-naked women doesn’t mean it’s a Posta, it just...
Friday, 5 April, the last full day of the walk, was for my mom and dad. Without them I would be unable to do pretty much anything in life because, well, I probably wouldn’t be here to start with. But seriously, thanks Mom and Dad. Your restraint when your sons...
I get a lot of help from strangers who, I have to continually remind myself, consider me a stranger too. It astounds me that people here stop regularly to help, or offer help to, a foreigner who barely speaks the local language and is, get this, out WALKING in a...
This was the walk’s highest point. I reached it Friday. 7500 feet (2300 meters) above sea level. For some reason I was expecting a marching band, a big parade, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony of some sort, but all I found when I actually got there was a stiff...
Today I walked to Saray, the last little town I’ll see on the way to the border. By the way, my heavily-accented Turkish doesn’t work really well around here. "Is this the road to Saray?" comes across as "Is this the road to Syria?" and...
For more than 3 months I have been walking mostly 30’s (30 kilometers, or 19 miles, in a day). Today was the last such day. I have two days left, and they are both under 20 kilometers each. It takes me 6 hours to walk 30 kilometers. I often walk those 6 hours...
On the way out of Van today I walked past a garbage dump. A bunch of mangy dogs barked at me. I walked a little further. A puppy, probably only about 10 weeks old, raised its head and started screeching at me. I hadn’t heard a dog make that noise before....
Perhaps this video should be called the “God, Matt looks tired” video. 😉 The camera battery died on me in mid-sentence too, and I didn’t even bother to change to a new battery. I just thought, “I guess we’re done then,” and stuffed...
