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| Our first campsite |
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| In good spirits despite the cold weather |
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| Holding Beard Pass |
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| Dinner preparations at the old school boarding house |
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| Did I mention about the rain? |
As would be expected, the idea came from the mountain man
Benoit. Our goal was to reach Manavgat, starting from Seydisehir, following the
Melas Canyon route, which according to some was part of the ancient caravan
route, or according to others was part of the Roman route Via Sebaste, and was
recently marked for trekkers and hadn’t been explored much. Our team was
nothing short of the A-Team: our natural leader Benoit; equipped with GPS and other technologies our
head scout Ali; supplies and food manager Asena; mushroom expert Gamze; and
natural born tea-man myself. We all met at the bus terminal in Konya, with Ali
and Asena arriving from Gokova where they live on a boat, Gamze from Istanbul
by bus, and Benoit and I flying in from Istanbul without much sleep after going
to a very pleasant concert by Elif Caglar the previous night. After a three
hour bus ride to Seydisehir we arrived to the starting point of the trail. We
were thinking of taking it easy on the first day but right away found ourselves
climbing a steep mountain. After a two hour walk we set up our camp at the
first plain we came across. It started raining right as we finished setting up
the tents. We took refuge under a large tree, build a fire, and being at the
begining of the tour with tons of food to choose from we had bean stew and
mushroom chicken with rice for dinner. After some bonfire chatting we retired
to our tents and had a deep sleep listening to the free jazz style sounds the
raindrops hitting the tent were creating with the rain going nonstop all night.
The next morning after completing our crash course on how to
pack your tent the fastest under rain successfully, we had breakfast and hit
the road. One of the hardest legs of the whole trail was waiting for us ahead.
It was a long leg with a lot of steep uphill climbing and just naming the
places we past by was enough to write an epic story: holding beard pass(or was
it pulling beard?, don’t ask me, it doesn’t make any sense in turkish neither),
no return mountains, and nine detour fields!! Through the fog without getting
bored, passing by fountains with jubilance we kept on going and going for it
was never ending. Finally we started asking everyone we came across how much we
had left until reaching the town. The very first villager we came across told
us we had 2-3 km, or about 15-20 min walking distance left. We were overjoyed
to find out that we were so close so kept on walking in good spirits. After an
hour and a half of walking we decided to ask yet another villager, and the
answer we recieved left us in deep suspicion: we had about 2-3 km, or 15-20
minutes of a walk! As we were going to verify it over and over again during the
rest of the trip, my dear countrymen had no sense of time or distance, and the
answer was always fixed: 15-20 min., 2-3km. Realizing that we weren’t going to
be reaching our destination, we decided to swerve away from the route to the
closest town and right at that moment three extremely healthy and big shepherd
dogs with their stentorian barks in an unfriendly manner started approaching
us. Comandante Benoit ordered us all to grab a few rocks and walk in small
steps, but the enemy was way too smart and had started surrounding us in all
directions already. Of course I got furious and was about to set them straight,
but my friends held me back and told me that they’re not worth it. Seeing how
formidable I was, and perhaps partly due to the shepherd woman calling them,
they left us alone without having a taste of our salty skin. I don’t think I
need to write the answer we got from her regarding the distance left to reach
the town. Finally arriving at Suleymaniye village, we went straight to the tea
house. Along with two or three old man sitting at the tea house we all started
sipping our teas including Asena, who got a very stern answer from the owner
about not having coffee at the place, and waited for the reeve (reeve: head
official in small villages). Once the reeve arrived we told him that we were
planning on spending the night at their village and asked him whether or not
there was a suitable place for us to stay. Probably because of our shabby looks
he took us to the old school building instead of the guest house, which the
existence of we found out later. At least the unused housing for the school
building had all the amenities we would need. We concluded our second evening
after having dinner and drying out our clothes and shoes at the wood stove.
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