It was lunchtime when I arrived in Nazilli, (population about 120,000). I walked up to the first restaurant I saw and ordered a lunch of kasarli kofte. Once again, the cook recognized me — he had seen me in the local papers or on the local TV, he couldn’t...
I reached the town of Kosk (population 9,900) early, at only 10:45 a.m. I had planned to spend the night there but since it was so early I decided to keep walking right through Kosk. Once I passed through the town and had a broader view of my surroundings, I noticed...
I had been walking through the Menderes River Valley for a couple days, and I was starting to recognize the local patterns. The straight road where I was walking ran predictably about 100 miles through the valley created by the Menderes River. Parallel to the road is...
At 5:15 a.m., shortly before sunrise on September 2nd, the wail of the muezzin’s call to prayer over the loudspeakers of the minaret rising over me stirred me out of my sound sleep. Not only was sleeping by a mosque safe and convenient, the mosque came with a built in...
Back at the mosque, I pulled my sleeping bag and tent out of my pack. I marveled that no one was walking up to me and saying, “No, you’re not allowed to do this! You can’t walk across Turkey like this and sleep at our mosque!” I set up camp feeling like an imposter....
Saturday, 1 September 2012 (cont.) As I arrived I saw Joy Anna already at the docks, playing fetch with a mangy dog while she waited to join me for the first day of the walk. The dog was a stray she’d just befriended. Joy Anna was a 30-year-old American woman from...
