*** A famous quote by Benoit Paul Denis Joseph Marie Yves Hanquet
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| Gorgeous fall colors along the way |
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| Aysun and Emirhan enjoying the merry go round |
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| Three Musketeers |
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| Deep in thought |
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| Our accommodation for the night |
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| Yaylim Point |
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| Beydili village |
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| My best buddy Emirhan |
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| Our dining/living/bedroom in the house |
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| The best prepared of us all, Benoit first gets tucked in his sleeping bag, then covers himself with the blanket |
The next morning we headed over to a village called Çobanova
that contained about 150-200 people living in it. The villagers talked us out
of driving over to the Beydili village with our rental car and recommended
higly to pay the truck driver to take us there.
It was a dirt road of about 10-15 miles, and given the dry weather and
good road conditions we could have easily made the trip with our car but didn’t
want to take the chance after the convincing arguments of the villagers. Well,
you gotta support the local economy too. Beydili village was even smaller, with
only 20-25 houses, with many of them deserted, there were only 25-30 people
living in the village. It’s situated in an isolated area, surrounded by
mountains, and because of its lower altitude compared to the other village,
villagers move here during the cold winter days. All the houses were
constructed with the same stone that covered the whole terrain, therefore from
a distance you couldn’t tell apart the houses from the rocks and trees. Electricity
came to the village after the 1980’s, they still get the water from the wells
and cisterns, they have only been connected to the other villages by a road for
the last seven years. Until then the only way of getting over to the village
was by taking a long walk for a few hours (longer with the load of animals). Thyme grows abundantly in the area and
provides a second source of income for the villagers after the goats they heard
on the steep, cliffy mountains. The
family who was hosting us in the village had a 3 year old son named Emirhan,
who instantly became the mascot of our group, and accompanied us on our walks.
We took a walk to Yaylım Point, which was on a cliff looking over a valley
cutting deep through the high mountains. We all meditated in our own way
watching the impressive view. We returned to the village, and were welcomed to
a delicious dinner. By the time we
finished our meals, sat around and chatted for a while, we were feeling like it
was getting close to the bed time, but it was only 8 or 9pm, which was way too
early for any of us going to bed, and made us realize how slow the time passes
in an isolated village without all the distractions of an urban life. Houses in
the village are very much similar to each other, in which there’re two rooms,
one to sleep in, one to sit, dine and such, with a small patio in front that
has the fireplace which is used as the oven, and a storage space underneath the
house. Even though the family prepared both rooms for us to sleep in, it was
way too cold in the bedroom without any source of heating, so we decided to
share one room with all our beds laid out on the floor around the wood stove. We were just about ready to fall in a nice
deep sleep when we heard some squeaky noise coming from behind the built-in
wooden cupboard in the wall. Aysun was
alerted immediately, claiming that it was a mouse making the noise, and that it
was going to come into the room and eat off our ears and noses at night (which
she really believed was going to happen). We calmed her down and fell into a
sweet sleep by convincing her that the noise was coming from something else
such as wind or flies, even though we all were well aware that it was a cute
little mouse talking to us behind the cupboard…
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