cautious optimism
This post is about a 22,6km walk from Imrenli to Sile. It rains even harder than the day before. But I am optimistic about something.
All my stuff had dried overnight, and they were all warm from the radiators. So I put on warm clothes and warm shoes and a warm hat, and then I threw on the poncho. It felt nice. Then I opened the door. It was raining harder than the day before, and it was windy. Fuck, I thought, fuggidifuggfuggfugg.
Then I started walking.
the backup of the backup
I had done about twenty minutes on an uphill gravel road when I received a call from the guesthouse. They had found two of my SD-cards. I looked back at the road and despaired.
A few minutes later Ferhat appeared in his car. He was bringing me my SD-cards, and he was all smiles. People often asked me what it was like to walk through foreign lands. Wasn’t I scared? The answer was a cliché, but a nice one: most people felt happy when they had a chance to be kind to others.
how do they do it?
A couple of uphills later, I arrived in a village. There was a mosque, and next to it, as was customary, there was a teahouse. I parked the Caboose under a canopy and went in. Everyone was looking at me as if I had fallen from the sky. I took off my dripping poncho, my dripping hat, and my dripping jacket. I asked for tea, and someone stopped the baker’s van outside so I could get some bread.
Then I sat there, and then slowly, we started talking. They seemed to think that I was crazy to be walking around in the rain. I couldn’t blame them. I for my part was wondering how the owner of the teahouse made a living. One glass of tea cost 1.5 lira. There was nothing else on offer, and many of the patrons weren’t even having tea. They just were just sitting there.
I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to be intruding. But I wondered.
Şile
As soon as the rain had eased up for a few minutes, I left the teahouse. Of course it came back stronger than before, but it didn’t matter. I was cold and wet anyway. Şile, Istanbul’s favorite Black Sea resort, lay ahead. And I had received an email from the Turkish Ministry of Tourism, saying that they wanted to help me get a permit to cross one of the bridges over the Bosphorus.
Dragging one wet foot in front of the other, I slowly walked on, allowing myself to feel a spark of optimism.
pictures
In my poncho:
Ferhat, bringer of SD-cards:
Wet horse:
In the teahouse of Akcakese:
Teahouse owner:
Teahouse patron:
With the Caboose in the shelter of a highway overpass:
Ipek and her boyfriend:
The road to walk from Imrenli to Sile:
More of the wet road to walk from Imrenli to Sile
Mosque in Sile:
“Trust And Stability”:
Central Sile: