We’re back from 5 days in the mountains. St. Paul’s way, Turkey’s second long-distance trekking route, is much more rugged and wild than the Lycian Way. It runs through rough terrain, sometimes for days without meeting civilization (except the occasional goat shepherd). The person responsible for both these routes, an Englishwoman named Kate Clow, has published a guidebook for it. Since the Turkish government doesn’t release detailed mapping information for the country, citing security reasons, a volunteer Hungarian mapmaker made a map on his own, a very impressive piece of work: he took the topography from ancient pre-Turkish-republic maps, and overlayed the roads and cities from a modern map. This piece of wonder comes with the book. Not quite like the 1:50000 maps we’re accustomed to in Israel but better than nothing. According to the guidebook, the route itself is waymarked according to the strict French Grande Randonee standard, so armed with this book, as well as our still-unused camping equipment, we took a bus to Çandir, our starting point.
We arrived by evening; after passing through the village the driver took us where he figured we’d be most interested to go — a favorite picnic spot for Turkish families, at the mouth of the Çandir canyon. We didn’t find our trail there, so we waved goodbye to the Turkish families (who were too busy barbecuing to mind us anyway) and trudged back to the Çandir village itself. There we found our waymark and after slogging our way through ankle-deep mud, we set up camp on a beautiful miniature grass meadow.
After a few card games we went to sleep; around 11 PM rain started. It rained throughout the whole night. We slept nervously, not knowing what to expect from our new tent, but in the morning found out that it was a good investment: after a night of pouring rain, we remained dry. We passed the first test, thanks to our outstanding German equipment. Danke schön.
The rain exacerbated the mud situation, but in fact we had a bigger problem on our hands: the guidebook specifically warned about slippery rocks in the first segment of our route, and after a rainy night, it might be impassable altogether. What to do now? We had no idea. Back at the village we asked about the morning’s north-bound bus, in an attempt to skip this part of the route, but it was Sunday, and no bus was running. We were marooned in Çandir. After watching us sitting on the sidewalk and nervously splitting pistachios the villagers invited us to some tea, and we sipped it while pondering our options. Eventually we decided to go back to the picnic place and walk a bit around the canyon. It is a beautiful place; we had a little picnic ourselves, after which, completely by chance, we found our trail’s waymark inside the canyon itself. The sun was shining, we were now warm and happy, and the mud was behind us, so we decided to go ahead on the trail and see what happens.
The trail climbed up through a forest to a magnificent pass with a view of a lake. From the pass it continued climbing. We ascended more than 700 meters in a few hours; during the most difficult parts a goat was watching over us, trodding around us on the trail and bleating relentlessly as if to persuade us to give up our foolish climbing attempts. The rocks had dried in the sun by then, so we kept on going.
According to the original plan we were supposed to cover the distance from Çandir to Sütçüler, a relatively large village and our first re-stocking point, in two days; we were so excited to be on the route that we almost completed it in a single afternoon. We camped just an hour shy of Sütçüler, and strolled into the village the next morning. One of the beautiful things about this trek is that it is quite untouched by tourism; there’s nothing like the organized groups of German day-packers that flood the Lycian Way during the season, and most villagers we met on the way only see foreigners once in a very long time. As a consequence, they consider us as their guests, not as an industry and a source of dollars. They were always very amiable and helpful, offering help before we realized we needed it, even though they never quite seemed to understand why, for heaven’s sake, we were going through the trouble of walking all this way on foot when there’s a perfectly usable bus service connecting all the places we were visiting. Either way, in Sütçüler we were recommended a great little restaurant which provided a much-needed break from our diet of bread and canned food (we were too lazy to pack a stove, a big mistake which we will certainly not repeat). There’s nothing like a plate of meatballs, moussaka and rice with beans to start a good day of walking. The problem: no waymarks, and a very vague and inadequate route description in the guidebook.
We spent more than an hour looking for the waymarks. We even enlisted the Turkish army to help us — the guard of an army post that we passed mustered all his English attempting to explain to us where we should walk. Eventually we found the waymarks half a kilometer outside the village.
Our next destination was Adada, a “lost city” of sorts, a Roman polis so important that in its time it minted its own coins and sent representatives to church conferences, now lying in ruins barely explored and completely untouched and undug. The ascent from the valley into Adada up on the hill couldn’t possibly be more atmospheric: the original Roman Via, a wide road made of massive flat slabs of stone, is largely intact, and is mighty impressive. The ruins themselves are striking as well; much has survived, many walls are still standing, and the agora, the main assembly square, paved with stones and thus unclaimed by vegetation, is still almost as grand as it was.
We camped on a hill above the city, and come morning, again in the absence of waymarks, we navigated our way out by sun, map and instinct.
We spent much more time in the canyon than we planned, but the beauty of self-sufficiency on the trail is that all you need as the sun sets is a small flat patch of grass to pitch your tent. We can make up for the delay later. We camped in a forest and continued our trek to the village of Sipahiler the next day.
From Sipahiler we descended to the road, and as the day drew to a close, started hitching a ride back to Egirdir where we started. It took no more than 3 seconds; a beat-up Lada screeched to a halt next to us as soon as Dana lifted her hand. Inside were Osman, the driver, a quiet fellow, and Hasan, next to him, drinking beers and chatting to us in sign language. We shared the back seat with our backpacks and a rather menacing chainsaw; Hasan considered it important to stress that it was made in Italy. 15 kilometers later we were back in our friendly guesthouse on the shore of lake Egirdir.
April 29, 2011