I walked across Turkey

Yes, you read that correctly, I walked across Turkey, from one end to the other. Every meter. It took me 7-1/2 months.

I started on 1 September, 2012, at Kuşadası, on Turkey’s Aegean (western) coast. I then headed east through Konya, dropped southeast to Adana near the Mediterranean Sea, and then headed east again to Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa. From Şanlıurfa I walked east-northeast to Diyarbakır and Van. From Van I walked the last 100 kilometers to the Turkey/Iran border.

Sometimes I camped on the side of the road. Sometimes I slept in mosque gardens. Sometimes I stayed in peoples’ homes. I even slept in a municipal vehicle maintenance yard once, and a K’uran school once.

The walk was a very social event. I met a lot of new people, I spoke at schools along the way, and I ate a lot of great food. Every day I walked I dedicated that day’s walk to someone special to me, and some friends came from around Turkey to join me for the final day of the walk.

Now I speak to groups about the walk (basically, I tell stories and answer questions), and I wrote a book about it too.