Thunder and lightning

The sun rises over Phellos and we feel the benefit of camping high. Nice to eat your coco-pops in the sunshine. We strike camp quickly and start winding down the trail to Kas. We reach a very pıcturesque village apparently stuck in time and then stride across red earth tracks though fields to the very edge of the precipice overlooking the sea. We are at about 600 metres and down below us is Kas town and the Mediterranean Sea. The path appears to descend the cliff face beneath us. At first it is well-built, but soon deteriorates to shale and dirt. At the very end we have to clamber down to the newly-tarmacced road. The road builders have dug away the final few steps. Morons.

Kas is a modern touristy town but feels normal enough at the end of the season. We are planning a quick jaunt to a Greek island but have to wait until Monday, so we have a restful weekend wandering around and catching up on our books. Each night there are big storms - heavy warm winds and then rain, culminating in thunder and lightning. Quite glad we're not in our tent! We have been eating well - lots of steam-tray food, buckets of bread and kebabs. There are regional variations of the kebab, named after their origination e.g. the Adana is spicy, the Tokat made with aubergine. We have adopted this nomenclature to describe bowel-movements - a frequent topic of conversation for us travellers. Thus one might have a Trabzon, an Urfa, or if you really are not well, a Safronbolu........

Lots on the TV about the possible invasion of northern Iraq. In the one english-language newspaper there is absolutely no discussion of a political solution to some of the issues the PKK have. Interestingly many Kurds have voted for Erdogan because he talked about having more control over the army. The prime minister seems also to be pressing the US for support at a time when an "Armenia" bill is being discussed by the US Congress. Is it all just noise? The real issues seem to be about the economic development of the South East and for the Kurds to have more cultural rights.

More walking and not walking

Rain - it's definitely going to rain. We are road-walking past a sea of polytunnels and the sky is very menacing. You can see the rain coming over the mountains. We pass three men sat outside a small building. "Dolmus?" Now, I seem to have given Gayle the impression that I do not wish to walk all 500km of the Lycian Way, and I may have received some criticism for this. But neither of us hesitate to jump into the minibus. The rain falls. We looked out in wonder - it's been a while, you understand. We hang around for the sky to clear before heading to Xanthos which was the capital of the city-federation of Lycia. Mark Anthony lay siege to the city and trashed it. Then 2000 years later a British "explorer" came across it and with the help of the navy removed one of the few remaining buildings. It now stands in the British Museum - which is a fat lot of good for those walking the Lycian Way.
After a wander around we head to the beach of Patara. We find a great hotel just about to close for the winter. It is still hot and sunny most of the time, but the rain this morning is a taster of things to come. Patara was the port for Xanthos - but the estuary silted up and now there is the longest beach in Turkey - remarkably unspoilt. The ruins of Patara are also buried in sand - with a few exceptions - the amphitheatre and the council building where representatives of the federation met. After a couple of days rest we continue on an old Roman road which contours inland through pine forest. We emerge at an aquaduct which was airtight to create a siphon and draw water uphill. Our trail follows the bed of the aquaduct back inland and we stumble out onto an unfinished new highway which leads to Kalkan. A workman leads us down over boulders and through a brand new appartment complex to the street. A flash salesman pulls up in his car. "Would you like to see a duplex?"
Kalkan was probably once a lovely fishing village but now it's spread out and there are holiday complexes and new appartments everywhere. We take a room in an old pension. The owner tells us he now has lots of English neighbours. We find a little cafe to eat in and watch the evening parade of holidaymakers out on the town. Next day finds us climbing up the mountain above Kalkan on an old migration route - a lovely stone road which leads us to the summer pastures and cooler air. It's a long haul though and halfway up I'm struggling - sunstroke I think. Gayle reckons on last night's beer. We stop for tea at a small tea house with the old men of the village. They all stare at us for five minutes and say hello, then thankfully someone pulls out a deck of cards and their attention switches. We take a dolmus to the next village and then walk in the late afternoon sun to Gockoeren. We're looking for somewhere to stay. On the road into the village a couple of dogs detect our presence and menace us. They are with a goatherd but the idiot can't call them off. We get past them and stagger down the main road looking vainly for a pension sign. An old man spots us and takes us in to his daughter's house. They feed and shelter us. After tea the family and neighbours come in to talk to us. Gayle is game so we get out the phrasebook and with a bit of pictionary she soon has them laughing.
Our next day leads us down a forest track and then climbs old paths up to the head of a wide valley which we circle. It's a nice walk although we spend a bit of time thrashing through scrub bushes. Not much water on the uplands though and we fill up for the night at about 2pm at a fountain that is no more than a trickle. After a long day we climb to a ridge with the overgrown ruins of Phellos. It's an atmospheric place with views out to sea and inland to the high mountains. We pitch the tent and watch the stars come out.

Walking and not walking

The Lycian Way seems popular until we realise that we are passing day-walkers trying to walk off their Full English Breakfast. The path is well-trodden as it traverses the steep slopes above the coast. We start to climb and pass a sweaty heavyset man coming back. "Sticks eh?" he comments, " You'll need those." "How do you know?" Gayle asks. Above us paragliders ascend and descend in spirals. Below us turquoise water and rocky headlands. İt is really too sunny and hot to be walking with our packs and I am worrying about water after we pass the third dry cistern. But we drop over a ridge and outside a small village is a running fountain. Gayle shoves her head under the tap.

The views are tremendous back along the coast and above us Baba Dagi - the mountain from which the paragliders are leaping. We find shade in pine trees and pass by hundreds of bankers boxes. Except they're not. They are beehives. Finally our path begins to descend through another village and along a narrowing valley and we emerge at the tarmac road in Faralya. Here we find a lovely pension with a swimming pool run by a beautiful Turkish man with blue eyes. He knows he is beautiful and this makes him ugly.

We meet Jenni and Chris here. Chris has twisted his ankle so the next day we walk the short leg to Kabak with Jenni and Chris takes the dolmus. The walk is brief and we descend to the beach at Kabak. It turns out to be the kind of place you get stuck in. There are a few pensions wıth wooden huts and tree houses and we pick one that looks the oldest but best laid out. Communal meals are taken in the shady restaurant. There's a network of paths leading up and around the old olive terraces on which it sits. The beach is pebbly and quiet and the water clean. In the afternoon we find Luke and Cali pitching their tent at the pension. The evenings are extremely sociable.

It takes us four days before we summon the courage to leave and walk out of the bay with Jenni and Chris. The onward path is an old route that winds its way up what looks like vertical cliffs from below. We lunch together at the top and then part ways and continue to another headland just beyond the village of Gey.

It is Eid or Seker Bayrami- the end of Ramadan. In Gey we stop at a house to ask for water, 5 litres. They have a small dowser in front of the house. There's a bit of a family gathering and they invite us in for tea and biscuits. Fresh grapes are produced for us and we are urged to sit and eat and drink. We manage to communicate a little bit and are glad of the rest in the shade. As the sun drops we say goodbye and stagger off with our fresh water supply. About half an hour later we camp on a tiny flat pitch just as night falls.

Our next day takes us on steep paths along the coast to Bel, another small village where we ask for water and are again invited in for tea and biscuits and the usual mime show. The generosity of the people is quite wonderful. As we relax a guided group walks past. We set off to catch them up and do so on a forrested ridge. The path has moved off the coast but emerges down a very rocky descent to an empty village. We have a choice - to take the contouring coastal road or a short up and over. Foolishly we take the latter. We slog up a forest road and find a fountain dripping into a tank. It takes 40 minutes to fii up for the night. We then struggle through the forest and over the ridge and all the way down to a ruined fort at Pydnai. We are at the very end of a huge bay with a 30km beach. The whole estuary is a mass of polytunnels full of tomatoes. Exhausted we camp behind a cafe at the beach.

Ghost Town

After a very relaxing week or so around Goreme we take a bus back to Antalya. From the infernal August temperatures the days are now more comfortable in the late twenties. We deposit spare clothes and books at a pension in the lovely old town and then catch a bus on to Fethiye from where we want to start walking the Lycian Way. This way-marked path is the first of its kind in Turkey and we have a guidebook and map of the route which runs along the coast from Fethiye to just south of Antalya. Fethiye feels quiet and normal when we arrive and we find a room in a tiny cheap little place run by an old woman who speaks no English. Gayle haggles hard in sign-language and basic numbers. After some shrugs, raised eyebrows, fisticuffs and a bit of hand-wringing we agree to stay and unpack our super-light rucksacks. We have a bare room on a shaded roof terrace over-looking the marina. The ensuite bathroom is typically tiny - the kind where you can have a shit, shave and then shower all in the same spot.

On the terrace we meet Cali and Luke - a couple who have cycled here from Lancaster and look like it. Gayle is fascinated by the idea of cycle-touring and they are soon getting the Twenty Questions. They are great company and we find out they have been blogging as they go ( http://www.slowwayround.blogspot.com/ ). They kindly show us how to change the language on the blogspot screen when we log in to it here - the default language is always Turkish - and this means we can finally start posting blogs.

We fill our packs with trekking food (packet pasta sauces, chocolate spread, museli and coco-pops, mmmmm ) and head off on the preliminary stage of the Lycian Way climbing stiffly out of the town and over a peninsula down to Kayakoy. The day starts badly with our first canine 'brush' - a German Shepherd left to guard an empty house shows his displeasure at our route choice along the road in front. We try to argue reasonably that we are on a public road and the Lycian Way is signposted in this direction but he just won't have it. I hurry past with unseemly haste and take to the old cobbled road in a sweat.

Kayakoy is an old abandoned Greek village which has become a tourist attraction. The town was abandoned in 1923 with the exchange of Greeks and Turks after the Turks won their War of Independence. In most places the houses would have been taken over by Turks but it's believed the Greeks cursed this place and now it is a ruin and subject of a Louis de Berniere novel. After a bit of toing and froing and knocking at a closed pension a man walks out of a shop and accosts us. He takes us to the Kayakoy Art Camp. It's finished for the summer and they have a room set in lovely gardens. It's perfect for us and we doze in the hammocks and ignore the two toy dogs that want to play. Later we stroll around the ghost town set on the hillside above the fields. It's a big place. Apparently the town was so wealthy that the roof tiles were imported from Marseilles. What an odd fact. I wonder if Louis de Bernieres picked up on this detail.

The next day we catch a dolmus to Ovacik from where the Lycian Way starts properly. The village is one huge resort catering to Brits - an overspill of the already over-developed beach of OluDeniz. There are signs everwhere advertising Full English Breakfast Live Premier League Football Azda Happy Hour Sunday Roast Dinner. It is a depressing sight. We walk past the Pink Palace - a restaurant and swimming pool presumably named after the naked pink punters all lying out around the pool. We wonder whether the Greeks' curse had a wider reach than the Turks realised.

A lot of hot air

Cappadoccia is Tourist Turkey there is no doubt. We are visiting Goreme's Open Air Museum. It's a small area packed with rock-cut churches which are covered on the inside with defaced frescoes. We have paid a whopping 10 Turkish Lira each to enter and now find we can't get in any of the churches because there are pack after pack of tourist groups who have rolled off their buses and joined a crocodile of other groups. Each tour guide spends 15 minutes inside each church talking about goodness knows what (if only we could hear them!) and then is ımmediately replaced by the next group. It appears endless so we go and sit in the shade for a while. Finally there's a dip in the flow and we squeeze ourselves in between a group of Australian teenagers who could possibly be evangelical christians and a gaggle of young Japanese who say "ohhh!" everytime they enter a church. Ultimately we are disappointed - we might have sight fatigue or tour group fatigue or both.

The landscape around Goreme is pretty weird and wonderful. It looks like a flat plain has been split into many valleys full of oddly-shaped rock formations. The rock is formed from volcanic ash from ancient eruptions. Some of the valleys have water and are cultivated mainly with fruit trees - apple and pear - and grapevines. Other valleys are dry and barren and full of misshapen rock sculpted by wind, water and humans. This is cave country. Whole villages full of cave houses. Whole caves full of villages - there are at about 36 "underground cities" where villagers dug down into hillsides to build labyrinths. We visit one and it's a strange place - about 9 levels deep. Forunately it is lit and signposted - it looks so easy to get lost - and only five levels are open. These places date back to the 7th century BC and possibly as far back as Hittite times (way back). The walking through the valleys is also fun and on one day we climb up and out after a pleasant shady walk with no sense of where we might be or what direction we are going in. But we are not lost - from on top you can see the lie of the land.

We're staying at the Kookaburra Pension. The owner is the most miserable and moody Turk we have come across. He looks and acts like a drinker. However, his pension is very nice and we have a barrel-vaulted room with rugs and there's a roof-terrace to sit out on and meet others staying here. We recklessly eat our breakfast here, opting not to pay the extra for one to be provided, and people ask us quietly, with a nod to the surly owner, "Doesn't he say anything to you?" He doesn't, but he does accuse us of stealing a guidebook from his bookshelf. In fact he accuses everyone in turn. It's amazing he has any customers.

Each evening has been spent chatting to Warren and Gail, youthful septugenarians from Canada, who are heading to the Middle East like us. They are full of stories which Warren peppers with phrases like "Holy Hannah!" Gail has decided to take a hot-air balloon ride over the wonderful landscape. Some mornings we have been awake early enough to see a balloon floating over Goreme. The rides all set off at sunrise - what was one company's good idea has now been copied to excess and the rides are compulsory for the tour groups. We are tempted by the idea but put off by the cost. However we agree with Warren to climb the highest ridge overlooking Goreme at dawn to catch the take-off of the ballons. It's a wonderful sight - 28 balloons lifting out of the valleys as the sun comes up. The wonder is enhanced by the early hour and the peacefulness of the scene which is only interrupted when a gas-burner roars more heat into a balloon. They float over us and off into the distance.

Big Heads

We move westwards to Nemrut Dagi - a mountain that now certainly does attract the tour groups. It takes us all day to get close to it - including a long stop in a small nameless town where all the men wore pale lilac arab-style headscarfs (very fetching) - and we find ourselves sat on the side of the approach road trying to hitch a lift up the mountain. A car stops and we load up and the driver explains he is chef of a pension. We are not sure if he means he is the cook or the owner. However the guidebook describes the pension's pleasant back garden as a great spot to camp, which is what we plan to do. The guidebook doesn't describe the gravel carpark or the strange smell which we eventually trace to a dead cat thrown over the wall.
But it's cheap and there other happy campers - a nice couple from the Czech Republic. The chef arranges for the cat's disappearance and we pretend we can't smell it anymore and pitch our tent. The Czechs have negotiated for a ride up to the mountain top at sunset and we join them. There is some initial confusion as to whether we are going or not and finally the chef has to abandon his pots and pans and drives us up there at the last minute. The ride is a 12km pull up a brand new cobbled road. The car stalls a couple of times on the steep stretches and the chef is evidently concerned about getting back in time to cook the tea for his other guests. We ignore his plea to hurry back down to the carpark.

At the top of this mountain is a man-made summit of crushed rock with two ledges - one facing east and one west. On each ledge is a series of huge stone statues. The heads have fallen off due to earthquakes and they now lie before the headless bodies. Each one is about 2 metres high. They are big heads. They were put there by a local king round about the time of Christ and his tomb is thought to lie beneath the false peak. Beside a sculpture of himself sit his fellow gods. It would appear he did actually have a big head.

As the sun drops to the horizon the light softens and the cameras click away. There must be about 60 other tourists here - more than we've probably seen since we left the Kackar mountains. We join the melee and enjoy the sunset. A big moon is already high in the sky. We are about 2500m and the view is wonderful. Old King Antiochus certainly picked a good spot. As we descend back to the carpark and the tour buses and trinket sellers we realise that we are just back on the edge of Tourist Turkey.

The next morning we move on to Malatya for a night. It's a pleasant modern city of about half a million and we idle about the market and along the tree-lined streets. We have chosen a slightly expensive hotel - the cheapie in our guidebook demanded an inflated sum for a grotty room with shared bathroom so opted for something much better. We know it's a good hotel because the sheets actually fit the bed.

"I love the English!"

It's not a statement we often hear, and even now we are tempted to disbelieve this man. He has started talking to us as he washes himself at one of the fountains before entering the Ulu Camii (Big Mosque). We are taking photos of the courtyard and the call to prayer has just reverberated around us. The man is an English teacher and he explains that he has just returned from Bodrum working with Thomas Cook over the summer. We express our embarrassment at the imagined daily summer scene on the streets there : bright red beer bellies, fags and tats - and that's just the women. But he assures us that the English are great tourists - so polite and they tip well. Not like the Poles and Russians who arrive at the bar in the morning and just shout "Beer!" at the bartender. We are not tippers so I feel slightly more embarrassed. And then he asks why we are visiting Diyabakir. He didn't think the English were interested in historical sights or ruins.
There are a few other tourists we pass in the bazaar, but not many. It's not so long ago that the army were fighting the PKK in the streets here - which is hardly a way to attract the tour groups. The city is enormous though - over 600,000 and probably growing. We were told that the army have cleared villages out in their long battle with the PKK and so there are many rural migrants. On our ride in we drive through a modern busy city with parks and smart cafes. There is a real mix of people on the streets and many young men and women trying to look cool and trendy - all drainpipe jeans, converse trainers and gelled hair. We stay in the old city which is encircled by huge black basalt walls - a throwback to Byzantine times and a reflection on it's important location in times past. The city has been fought over many times. On the main road running through are two surviving caravanserai or han. One is now a hotel but the other has shops and a cafe in its courtyard and is a great place to escape the heat and the noise and bustle. But off the main road the backstreets are unpaved and scruffy and very poor. It reminded us of Morocco - with a modern town built next to the old town. Small annoying boys would run up to us shouting hello money money - fairly rare in Turkey - and I wondered if this was what our English teacher has been teaching them to learn. There aren't many sights and we seek out churches built by Syrian Orthodox, Chaldean and Armenian christians. The last is abandoned and derelict but the others are still used by a handful of families.
It's still Ramadan and we go to eat along with everyone else at 6.30pm. Our restaurant is packed when we arrive and deserted when we leave. The locusts have gone and the staff are mopping up the debris.