Diary of a Foreigner Living in Turkey (Part 4)
31 October 1994
A Bike Tour in the Taurus Mountains:
or: A Sociological Study of Rural Turkey
Kurban BayramI (Feast of the Sacrifice), 21-24 May 1994
Copyright © 1994 Pierre Flener. All rights reserved.
Do not duplicate or redistribute in any form without written permission.
In early May, I bought a mountain bike (riding a racing bike here is
synonymous with attempting suicide), and those who know me well can assess
how important it was for me to again have a pair of wheels to spin! The
first thing I did with it was work out a trail from my apartment on East
Campus to my office on Central Campus. Ever since, I commute daily (the
weather being predictably good) over the steppe and hills joining both
campuses on their south ends: where else but here can you do so and ride
past a flock of sheep and greet its shepherd? The next thing, and I'm far
from being finished with it, was to explore the numerous trails across the
steppe east/south/west of Ankara. To those who know the area: I found
convenient dirt-road-only access to the campus of the adjacent Middle East
Technical University (a gem of a campus), to the GOlbaSI and Eymir lakes,
and so on. Most people, even here, think the steppe is boring, and they
never even venture out there. But if you do bother to have a look around,
you'll notice a wide variety of fauna (turtles, foxes, rabbits, mice,
(prey)birds, butterflies of all colors, bees, flocks of sheep, wild dogs,
...) and flora (an ever-changing colorful carpet of flowers, hence a
delicious honey, pine trees, thorny bushes, ...). Even water is
surprisingly frequent: large lakes, rivulets, and sources attest to huge
underground reservoirs.
For Kurban BayramI ("Sacrifice Feast" in English, "eid-al-adha" in
Arabic, in honor of Abraham's pledge to sacrifice his son (though God then
bade him to sacrifice but a sheep), i.e. the Islamic holiday in the middle
of "Hac" ("Hadj" in Arabic), the Islamic pilgrimage month to Mecca), I
drove with my Turkish friend TuGrul to the Mediterranean Sea for a
mountain-bike tour in the Taurus Mountains. Here's an account of how we
braved physical adversity and faced the impeccable logic of rural Turks.
Enjoy,
Pierre Flener
(and TuGrul HakioGlu)
Thursday 19 May 1994 (GenClik ve Spor BayramI)
silifke/TaSucu
Having driven to TaSucu, the harbor near silifke, the night before and
camped somewhere near the gOksu river, we park the car there and get our
bikes and luggage ready. After buying breakfast from the market and a
"bakkal" (grocery), and filling our water bottles, we set out, heading west
along the Mediterranean.
The Road
The road is first gently rolling, at a stone-throw from the sea. Few cars
ever take this road, that's why we picked this itinerary. As the sun
climbs higher and the heat increases, we stop somewhere for cooling off
while swimming, and then have lunch at a nearby road-side "lokanta"
(restaurant). After a short siesta, the hard work begins. Everybody had
warned us against the craziness of our project, and now we shall find out
whether it is feasible or not. Most of the time, the road still is at a
stone-throw from the sea, but now often vertiginously high above it!
We are on a horizontal and vertical roller- coaster road now, and
have to scale three (without knowing it yet, having no adequate maps)
passes of about 600m (from sea- level) until the next small-town, AydIncIk,
our intended first staging point. The Taurus Mountains literally fall
here, from over 2,000m, into the Mediterranean Sea. It is unusually hot
for the season (later we learned that we had to cope with peaks of 37C
during the entire week) and our energy reserves dwindle. Water is no
problem, though, with many roadside springs, and we eat up our fruit and
dry food during a generous sprinkling of rests (bottom, middle, and top of
each climb). Considering that we have done barely 300km so far this
season, we actually do quite well. Eventually, we do swish down the last
slope to sea-level AydIncIk, check in at a motel, and sip a well-deserved
cool Efes beer at its terrace. After an equally well-deserved shower, we
have a filling dinner and a good night's sleep.
Friday 20 May 1994 (don't tell my boss I was bridging two bayrams!)
AydIncIk
We take our breakfast from a bakkal to the nearest "Cayhane" (tea-house)
(this is standard practice in Turkey), and the owner even rushes off to the
grocery himself to bring additional food, which we then all share. We are
his first and only customers, and since he can talk to TuGrul, he becomes
quite talkative. He knows that this stretch of the Mediterranean
(approximately from silifke to Anamur) is the last one to be virtually
untouched by mass tourism, precisely because of the difficult access by
road. And yet he is melancholic as he sees the first symptoms that things
do start going down the drain. The first tourists start venturing out
here, so hotels and restaurants that cater to them are appearing, and the
downward spiral has started: reckless entrepreneurs and speculators will
bribe their way into building permits for ugly concrete pre-fab summer
residences (that will fall into pieces in a few years), grocers and waiters
will start over-charging foreigners, the local men will chase the so-called
"easy" foreign women, many people will become greedy as their wealth
increases, but happiness decreases. Good-bye, traditional life-style! I
assume many locals will start moving up the slopes again, rather than down
towards the sea as in previous decades.
The Road
Expecting the worst in road relief, we set out, again west along the
Mediterranean. The route is truly spectacular here, and we shoot quite a
few pictures of each other, without dismounting. The numerous pine trees
dispel a nice fragrance, birds sing, and the Mediterranean lingers in blue
on our left side. The road actually turns out much easier than yesterday
(or are we in better shape?), as it hangs most of the time high up in the
cliffs. There is only one big obstacle worth mentioning, the fabled "on-
sekiz" (eighteen) that everybody keeps talking about when we ask about road
conditions: it is so called because one of its slopes (luckily the
down-slope in our case) has maxima of 18% steepness. After this speedy
descent, the road turns virtually flat, and we ride along a huge bay, past
the seaside Mamure Kalesi (castle) (which must be very romantic at night),
and into Anamur.
Anamur
It's time for lunch, and we enjoy some excellent "pide" (a Turkish
pizza-like dish) near the beach, before setting out for the shade of a
Cayhane in order to raise our water/sugar levels during the biggest heat of
the afternoon and for the hardest effort of the tour. Indeed, we are going
to leave the coastline, heading north into the Taurus Mountains. According
to our "intelligence reports" (pretty reliable so far) gleaned along the
road, we face a more or less flat 10km through the hinterland of Anamur,
and then a 29km climb to about 1,700m, with a village called KaS just
before the pass. Pretty confident that we can do all this still today, we
linger around in Anamur for quite a long time, fuel up on Pepsi and some
chocolate bars at a bakkal, and leave only at 5pm or so. At the end of
Anamur, where there is no more ambiguity about our itinerary, some men in a
Cayhane start clapping their hands in applause, just as if we were the
leading riders of a race!
The Climb
The road indeed winds through the back-country for a while, until a nice
arched bridge over torrential water, where we find ourselves face to face
with, and virtually encircled by, the mountains. So now comes a long set
of hairpin switch-backs, and we slowly work our way up. A little dog took
a liking for TuGrul on the bridge, where we stopped for some photos, and
now faithfully waddles behind his bike. Miles later, I tease TuGrul by
telling him the dog is still there, because it exhibited some unusual
fitness in order to follow him for so long. It's still quite hot, and the
road is rather far from that torrent, so we have to rely on our
water-bottles for the first 11km, until we successively pull into a nicely
shaded Cayhane for a rest and a chat with the owner and his wife. We
actually enjoy that haven for too long, as it is 7pm and slightly dark, as
we set out for the remaining 18km. At least the heat is gone, but our
energy reserves dwindle too as we separately trundle along. I see a huge
decapitated snake on the road, and gulp twice at its sight, because it
dawns to me that we might have to camp out tonight. Indeed, when I have
about 6km to go, it becomes pitch-dark and I use the last rays of sunlight
to select a grassy, flat patch for the night. When TuGrul pulls in shortly
afterwards, I already have quite a few mosquito bites, and it turns out
that the whole area is literally infested by these little suckers. We
don't carry a tent, nor any mosquito repellent or net, so we start a fire
from what little dry wood is lying around. We don't have much food either
(just some peanuts and dried raisins left), and barely one liter of water
for the two of us, with no source in sight. To be short: we'll never
forget that hungry, thirsty, mosquito-ridden, and sleepless night! It was
horrible, as the options were either to cycle in total darkness, or to
sweat abominably in a closed sleeping bag away from the mosquitoes (and
dehydrate even further), or to donate countless drops of blood for the very
procreation of these beasts... We manage a combination of the latter two
options as we snap for fresh air from our wet sleeping bags, or as we lunge
out of them in despair: at 2am, TuGrul starts another small fire for some
relief, and at 3am, I spot an area a hundred meters away where there seem
to be less mosquitoes... But the whole place itself is very nice, and the
fantastic star-lit night offers unforgettable sights of the milky-way.
Saturday 21 May 1994 (Kurban BayramI)
The Pass
When we get up at dawn, disheveled and punctured all over, that new camping
patch rather looks like a place where sheep use to sleep, and the odors
indeed confirm this. But what the heck, it provided some comfort. After
about 2km on the road again, we flag down a descending car, begging for
water, which the driver has. Relieved and re-spirited, we eventually crawl
into KaS, the village near the pass, and into the Cayhane, which just
opened. The bewildered men ask us where we are coming from. "Anamur," we
reply. "Impossible since dawn," they correctly claim. "Sure, because we
slept on the road." "Allah, Allah! But the whole mountain-side is
infested with mosquitoes!" "Indeed," we weakly croak. Anyway, after some
tea and chocolate bars (not many other edibles available), we cross the
pass per se, and enter the gently rolling lands, a couple hundred meters
lower, of the "yaylalar".
The "Yaylalar" and Breakfast
A "yayla" is a summer pasture, usually on a mountain plateau. Peasants
move up there with their livestock (mostly sheep and goats) as the heat
becomes too intense in the valleys and plains, and they settle there in
temporary villages made of wooden or stone (or concrete, more recently)
chalets, if not tents ("yurt"). There may be several levels of yayla,
according to season, heat, and pasture-size. Life on a yayla is in
complete harmony with nature, but also a lot of hard work. People there
have an excellent reputation for hospitality. As the fall comes, and
temperatures in the valleys and plains become more attractive than the ones
on the yayla, the peasants withdraw to the lower levels of yayla (to
continue making yogurt, cheese, butter) and eventually back to their normal
residences to spend the winter there.
Our first such yayla village is almost a ghost-town (it's too early in
the year), but in the very center somebody has opened his Cayhane. There
are no permanent residents here, he explains, but some people occasionally
come up here to spend a bayram or a peaceful weekend. We ask him whether
he also serves breakfast, and immediately get a lesson in hospitality.
Normally, the answer would have been `no' (as we soon find out), but he
just calls his daughter and asks her to dish up a breakfast from his own
household! Which she does wonderfully.
"Why are you doing this?"
Every soul of the village comes to see us, the girls just parad- ing
around, the boys being intrigued by the mechanics and equipment of our
bikes, the grownups asking bewildered questions about our origins and
reasons to do this. The discussion we have is going to be a recurring
theme in the days to come. So far, along the coast, there seemed to be
some acceptance of cycling for one's own pleasure, although the heat there
is by no means less intense or the effort by no means less difficult. So
we guess that other cyclists have been missionarizing for our sport along
the coastline, but not up here. To the vast majority of Turks, moving from
point A to point B is a chore, and should be done only if strictly
necessary (food, water, firewood, ...), and then as fast as possible. "But
why don't you do this trip by motor-bikes or by car?," is a standard
question, "because you could do it much quicker and easier!" And you find
yourself at great pains to explain to them such urban/Western concepts as
ecology, (noise-)pollution, communion with nature, healthy exercise, sport,
physical challenge, self-improvement, and so on. The former concepts meet
blank faces (I'll get back to this in a later edition), and we try to
convey the latter by referring to football (the absolute #1 sport in
Turkey). "Sure, but when we are tired of playing football, we stop (and
smoke a cigarette)!," and you are back to square one. Not surprisingly,
with this mentality, only team-sports have significant numbers of
practitioners in Turkey (and the level of professional football,
basketball, volleyball is top-European quality). But, things are actually
even more complicated. No Turk in his right mind would even think of doing
such a hare-brained thing as cycling (even in any terrain), so we must
obviously both be foreigners. But in that case, since all
foreigners are empirically known to be rich (!), why do these ones travel
only by bike? Universe-shattering questions. Indeed, upon entering many a
Cayhane while still conversing in English, the local staring squads would
silently gather around us, watch our ceremony of getting off the bikes and
cleaning our faces/hands at a fountain, and speculate among themselves as
to our origins: "Alman? Fransiz? ingiliz?" Sometimes, I (instead of
TuGrul) would order the tea -- my accent of course betraying me -- and
everybody would become mightily relieved that we are indeed foreigners.
But still nobody would talk to us directly. Eventually, and before
overhearing touchy remarks, TuGrul would let loose a torrent of Turkish
sentences, enquiring about this or that, or chatting with the kids. "Where
did you learn such good Turkish?" "TUrkUm!" (I am Turkish!)
Having miserably failed to justify our effort (Turks spend bayram days and
weekends doing nothing (well at least the men, because the women
have to cook), it becomes equally hard to motivate our itinerary. "But you
are way off the tourist track: there are no archaeological sites here!
And the mountains are all the same, and so are the yaylalar, and so are the
villages. So instead of sweating your way from Cayhane to Cayhane and from
bakkal to bakkal, why don't you just sit down with us here for five days
and do nothing instead?!" It's hopeless indeed, everybody being locked in
his own logic and background. Cycling still has novelty value in these
areas, and some passing motorists don't hesitate at all to wave their right
hands at us, in a motion similar to screwing in a light-bulb (which gesture
bluntly means "you are crazy/stupid"). At one Cayhane, the ice-breaker was
"Did you eat your brains?" (sic), which means about the same. Usually,
once their curiosity had ebbed down, the menfolk would push aside their
disapprovement of our goals, and accept things the way they are.
The Yaylalar (cont'd) and Lunch
Fortified by the extensive breakfast -- and the owner adamantly refuses any
kind of payment (we barely manage to pay for the tea, because that's his
job after all) -- we continue our ride across the plateau. It's a pleasant
passage on gently rolling terrain, with pastures, tents, sweet-smelling
pine-forests, and a lot of heat. In another village, after filling our
water-bottles at a fountain, a man steps out of his house, sees us, and
shouts "Gel!" (Come!)
It's lunchtime, and the Kurban BayramI starts today, so we immediately
grasp what he is up to: we are invited, just like the other few villagers
around for the bayram, to celebrate "his" bayram with him! They will take
turns inviting each other, as the bayram stretches out for four days, but
inviting guests is a matter of hospitality, not a matter of give and take.
We gladly accept, especially that we are not likely to find an open
bakkal/lokanta for quite a few miles to go, and even more because this is
going to be a great experience for me. The sheep has already been
slaughtered in the morning, drained of its blood (according to Qu'ranic
prescriptions), cut into pieces, and is being prepared by the women of the
family. We are led into a small wooden chalet, and into a room where the
menfolk and boy-children sit cross-legged on kilims and against big
cushions. After the introductions (things being easier because TuGrul can
translate everything for me), and the obligatory debate on our motives, we
quickly get down to gossip and sports and politics and other non-trivia
(which bees make the best honey?, and so on). Eventually, the wife brings
in a hearty soup and bread, then the kebap per se with yogurt, and a superb
desert (a plate filled with liquid honey, into which a dried apricot is
dipped, and to which one adds yogurt to taste). After a few rounds of tea,
time has come for everyone to take their leave, but not until after our
taking a photo of the whole group (women included) and getting our host's
address (we eventually sent him copies of the picture and a few books for
his children). Great moments.
The Triumph of the Body over the Spirit?
The plateau stretches out further, but suddenly the road starts gently
winding down for quite some time, past another village, and then
vertiginously steeply all the way down to a river eating its way through a
superb canyon. We must be almost back to sea-level, but we have trouble
enjoying the beauty of the scenery: over the last 24h, everybody
told us that once beyond the pass, it would be "dUz" (flat) all the way to
Ermenek, our next staging point. "Rampa yok!" (No switch-backs, no
climbs.) I repeat, there are no adequate maps for cycling purposes. We
had attuned our minds, muscles, provisions, and timing to these promises,
and now find ourselves at the foot of a 10km climb (by far the steepest of
the whole trip), back to the yayla level at which Ermenek is hovering.
Deeply disappointed (along the coast, the "relief information" was very
reliable) and totally unprepared for this, we get off our bikes and decide
to wait until 6pm, because the slope is devoid of shadow and it is very
hot. We analyze how it was possible for all these people on the
road to agree on such dis-information. Part of it must be our mistake,
because we asked our questions the wrong way (eventually we would learn to
ask "how many times do you have to shift down on your car when going from A
to B?"), part of it must be that the locals didn't want to impart such
negative news and wanted us to keep our high spirits. But cycling is as
much mental as it is physical, and when you find yourself with no food and
no morale (and running diarrhea, as it just turns out in my case) at the
foot of a 10km 8% climb, things look pretty bleak. So we eventually set
out, with full water-bottles, prepared to "fight." I have diarrhea stops
at the first three switch-backs, but we keep creeping up. I believe I even
saw a butterfly go unhindered through the spokes of my front wheel. After
6km or so, around 7:15pm, we are totally drained of energy, and decide to
give up. For over an hour, and well into darkness, we flag down every
vehicle to ask for a ride, but this being a bayram, they are all jam-packed
with people and/or sacrificial sheep! So Allah, in his bounty, doesn't
allow us to have our spirit surrender to the flesh. Unwilling to spend
another food/drink/sleep-less night on a slope, and knowing Ermenek to be
so close, we eventually continue and at 9:30pm trundle triumphantly into
Ermenek.
Ermenek
After checking into a small hotel and downing a cherry juice at an open-air
cafe, we storm the local "pastane" (pastry-store) and power-eat our way
through mountains of baklava and other delights.
Sunday 22 May 1994
The morning after, we order a huge breakfast in a Cayhane. Its window
sports a small poster written in many colors by a child's hand, in French!,
announcing the possibility of eating there (a Cayhane usually doesn't offer
food). It's full of typos, but very nice and unexpected. Eventually, the
owner asks me whether I speak French, and tells me about the few years he
was working near Mulhouse in France.
The Road
It's time to leave, and we set out, but not without first mightily
impressing some kids that will for years after talk about these two strange
men who were cycling for fun with luggage (!) on very sophisticated bikes
(21 speed!) and who applied some milk (?) to all the exposed parts of
their skin.
The road hangs on the south-side of a ridge: it gently rollercoasts
there, doing long detours for crossing very deep canyons at their
shallowest points, taking us through eagle's nest villages, and
continuously offering breathtaking panoramas to the Ermenek river and its
lakes beneath. A very enjoyable ride, and we take it easy after the huge
efforts of the last three days, knowing that overall we'll lose a thousand
elevation meters today. Eventually, after a small pass, the road does take
us all the way down to the river level.
It's very, very hot in the valley, and our overall exhaustion amplifies
the thirst and hunger as lunch-time approaches. There are not many
villages here, so we stop at the first one and ask the kids for the
whereabouts of the bakkal. There is none, they say! And of course no
lokanta either. TuGrul tells me they have the typical accent of Kurdish
people when they speak Turkish, so this village of very poor general
appearance seems to consist of a (recently?) transplanted (or deported?)
Kurdish tribe from further East. No comment.
Twenty minutes down the road we find another village, with the
obligatory Cayhane, where we are told that there is a bakkal at the other
end of the village. So we ride to it, but the owner of the Cayhane insists
on showing us the obvious way by frantically pedaling behind us on his own
bike. We are soon to find out why he does so: the bakkal is run by his
highly attractive daughter, and her mother is not around to chaperone her
at this moment, so there is no way he would leave her alone with two young
men from out-of-town, and who, to top it off, are wasting their energy
cycling around through rough terrain in their underwear (read: shorts).
While nursing bottles of Pepsi to raise our depleted sugar-levels, we throw
sidelong glances at NazlI (whenever her father doesn't watch) as she is
preparing sandwiches from the bread, tomato, cheese, and eggs we bought.
She seems to be in her early twenties, but somehow miraculously unmarried,
which testifies to a strong character in such a rural area. The father
then escorts us back to his Cayhane where we eat, drink, and relax until
the hottest hours are over. Then, in order to fool NazlI's father, we make
a big show of filling our water-bottles and getting our gear and bikes
ready for a long ride, and set out for Mut. He doesn't follow us this
time, so after the three turns we are back to her bakkal, drop the bikes,
and enter for another round of Pepsi! But NazlI is not willing to be
caught in this situation and thus herself calls her mother to come down and
preside over the meeting! But at least we (well, TuGrul) may talk to her
this time and she tells us about her school, not without inviting us to
attend the Apricot Festival in Mut in June. Knowing who is going to be
Miss Apricot'94 (if they have any such elections), we finally bid them
good-bye and hit the road again.
It's an easy ride on the gently rolling banks of a river now, but the
big efforts of the last days are really taking their toll on us, and we are
glad to eventually stagger into Mut, a noisy small-town on the trunk-road
between Ankara and silifke.
Mut
We find a cheap hotel, take showers, and have dinner near the bus station,
before finding the energy to celebrate my 30th birthday. We somehow locate
two bottles of beer and get some ice cream, to be consumed in the lively
city park. The latter is actually segregated, a concept I hadn't seen
before: all-male adult parties must go to the men's side, all other
parties may go to the family side!
Monday 23 May 1994
The Road
During breakfast in a pastane, we decide to take the optional shortcut in
our planned itinerary, as we are visibly exhausted: instead of cycling the
long roller-coaster road to KIz Kalesi via KIrobasI, we shall ride the
mostly downhill or flat shorter main road directly to silifke. It will be
more dangerous with all that heavy traffic, but most people will not return
home until tomorrow evening. The landscape is superb, not to mention the
deep canyons of the gOksu river, which canyons we skirt and eventually head
into. "gOksu" means "sky water," and this descriptive name is very
accurate: it perfectly reflects the color of the sky. We have lunch at a
bakkal, and TuGrul spots a local specialty: "Salgam suyu", a juice made
from carrots and beets. Its sour taste definitely needs to be acquired,
but the drink turns out to be a potent power-provider and hence propels us
up the remaining three slopes to silifke. We ride past the monument
commemorating the spot where, in 1190, the German King Friedrich Barbarossa
had the good idea of taking a bath, after lunch, in the tumbling waters of
the gOksu river, and drowned. "Good idea" because he was leading a
crusade, and his followers couldn't agree on his successor, so they
returned to Europe without ever making it to Palestine, and hence
preventing many needless massacres.
silifke/TaSucu
At the top of the last climb, we finally see the Mediterranean again, and
the citadel of silifke. So we swish down to sea-level and show off cycling
in a fast pace-line through the vast sandy delta of the gOksu, heading
towards TaSucu. A few hundred meters from the end, we toast to our
successful venture (everybody had told us it wasn't feasible), drinking
beer at a roadside cafe. We then ride towards the car and have to move
everything back into it and the bikes back onto the rack. We check into a
hotel, set in an old Greek mansion that has definitely seen better days
before the current owners decided to let it decay. Then the usual evening
ceremony of shower, dinner, and sleep.
Tuesday 24 May 1994
After breakfast, we have a much-needed-and-wanted shave by a nearby
"berber" (60c) and set out feeling new-born, but in the car this time. We
of course decide to first drive the reverse of what originally was our last
stage of the cycling itinerary, that is along the Mediterranean to KIz
Kalesi, and then through the mountains to Mut via KIrobasI. There are lots
of things to see, so we will stop here and there, as described hereafter.
We actually skip KIz Kalesi (but I'll get back to that in a later edition),
because it must be overcrowded by bayram holidayers, who usually crave
beaches.
The Caves of Heaven and Hell
So our first stop is "cennet ve cehennem MaGarasI", which translates into
the "Caves of Heaven and Hell". These are actually 135m and 120m deep
natural holes in the ground, with natural caves at the bottom. We visit
the first of them, easily defeating everybody on the way out as we are in
super-shape by now. Interestingly, most trees have thousands of little
cloth-knots around their smaller branches: local custom has it that young
women come here to wish for husbands or children. This is definitely a
pre-Islamic tradition, and was maybe even imported from shamanist times by
the Turks?
UzuncaburC
After an interesting drive through hilly back-country, we get to
UzuncaburC, which features well-preserved, though little-known Roman ruins.
But first we are whisked by the friendly locals to a Cayhane, where
somebody dishes up a nice lunch for us. We also taste the local "tea",
actually an infusion from a local plant rather than the traditional
omnipresent black tea from the Black Sea. The people are very laid back
here, but also rather isolated. There is no running water yet, and hence
no infrastructure to cater to the tourists that would inevitably come to an
attraction such as theirs. But a pipeline is nearly finished, and we get
the same lament as a few days before in AydIncIk: plans for a hotel are
underway and everything will go down the drain once the tourist hordes
arrive. They say they are happy right now, even if many are un- or
underemployed, and they don't want to see their village and life-style
changed so dramatically, just like at the coastline. A young guy wants to
be our guide, just for fun, as he has nothing else to do. After visiting
the impressive ruins, he directs us by car to lesser-known sites, and it is
all very interesting and nice.
KIrobasI/Mut
Eventually we must set out again, though, and complete the loop to Mut, via
KIrobasI (where we have an early dinner), and past/through spectacular
canyons (there is indeed no way we could have done this yesterday by bike,
as initially planned). In Mut, TuGrul stocks up on Salgam suyu, and then,
as feared various times before, my car, which was increasingly reluctant to
start by a key-turn, completely gives up. So we drop it for repair at a
garage (Turkish mechanics will fix anything, and are incredibly
cheap for my standards, except the spare parts of course). It's already
dark when we finally get started. At a gas-station, we are asked to linger
for a while over some tea, in order to wait for the big rush to Ankara to
be over: it's the last day of the bayram, i.e. an evening notorious for
many spectacular accidents. The owner took a liking to us, because he
tries to convince us of the wellfoundedness of his invitation by saying
that the first truck with coffins just passed minutes ago. But we are
willing to take chances, because it's still a looong drive, and we both
have to teach tomorrow early in the morning.
Going Home
Traffic is indeed mad, but not as bad as it was on the road from Antalya
when I returned with Andrew from the Seker BayramI. Taking turns at the
wheel, and driving prudently behind "pace-making" cars from Ankara, we make
it back safely. Indeed, driving after dark is supremely dangerous in
Turkey, because so many peasants with completely un-lit horse-drawn carts
are on the roads, even on major trunk roads. Not to mention the
stupendously undisciplined drivers (I'll describe driving in Turkey in a
later edition).
This is the end of a highly spectacular, successful, and instructive
trip. TuGrul and I hope you liked reading it.
HoscakalIn,
Pierre