Blindly Walking in Turkish Darkness
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
11
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Fethiye,
Turkey
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
The Dolmus is a minibus. Each minibus has a set route through certain destinations but some routes have many minibuses. Sometimes the dolmush doesn't leave until it is full. Other times it leaves on a schedule and picks up paying riders on the way. Certainly the driver will stop for anyone anywhere along the way as long as he doesn't have anyone sitting on his lap (because it is otherwise completely stuffed - dolmush actually means stuffed in Turkish). When I say it is the most capitalistic system I have ever seen, it is for these reasons: There is no discernable regulation beyond traffic laws and vehicle requirements. The drivers are owner operators so there are no runs on routes that have no riders. Where there are few riders there are few minibuses, and then where there are many riders there are many minibuses, and the dolmushes zoom around each other to catch riders at stops along the road.
The one on which I pondered economic efficeny had few passengers and I was one of them. I was on a route that had very little demand and was poorly advertised because mostly locals take it at this time of year. My stop was along this route and again being wintertime the bus didn't go exactly where I wanted it to because the tourist volume doesn't demand the route. The driver circled the city a few times and filled up with gas, picked up a friend and dropped him off and only eventually left the city. But it was an inexpensive ride once we got going. I wondered if the requirement of waiting for it to be full would be considered an inefficent waste of man hours, but given the cost of gas a ride that leaves too soon may not be profit maximizing enough. I don't know the figures. But now I will depart from business related thoughts.
I got off the dolmus 4 km from the ruins I wanted to see; those being the ancient city of Tlos. It was another abandoned city and at this point my memory has failed me of its historical significance (for shame!) but it was a rare spot above the polluted cities I have seen and the view from the acropolis was magnificent. It was an uphill walk the whole way so I was lucky to have some locals pick me up and give me rides for portions of the way.
I ended up walking only 2.5 of the 4 km so I was happy for that. One of my drivers spoke fluent German and he told me that he had a house in the area because the air was fresh. For those of you who have seen third world or LA pollution, you will know what he was escaping from in Turkish cities. For everyone else, imagine being in a permanently smoky restaurant (A no smoking bylaw in some of these places would be utterly pointless).
I had planned to see two sites on this day: The very long dolmus ride of one and a half hours was only half that on the way back. Tied with the time it took me to walk up and down from Tlos my day was eroding quickly and I had planned to also see the abandoned Greek city of Kayakoy. Now obviously all of these ruins I am seeing are abandoned (apart from goat colonies) but Kayakoy was only abandoned 80 years ago and the buildings' stone walls are still standing (but there are no floors - the wood has been removed).
In 1923 after a greco-turkish war, the sides agreed to a population exchange, where Greeks who had been living in Turkey (since antiquity) were shipped over to Greece in exchange for the Turks who had moved to Greece during the hundreds of years that the Turks were Greek overlords. There where more Greeks who moved to Greece than Turks who moved back to Turkey, so a few villages were not filled back up. Kayakoy was just about completely abandoned, and eventually made into a tourist attraction. But I got there after the entry booth was closed so it was free for me.
There isn't much to say of the site - hundreds of houses without windows, doors, or floors, and the houses cover the side of a long hill. Otherwise there is a lot of grass and shrubs. A cow was tied up in a cave. Again the Turkish approach to maintaining sites was apparent - "hold your children's hands" was the only precaution against falling into wells and pits that are in the site. I can just see someone falling down a 3.5 meter hole at the end of the tourist day and waiting there until someone eventually comes by. But if I fell in I suppose that I couldn't ask for my admission back.
When I had seen enough, I ventured toward the dolmush stop. The market dictated that there would be no dolmushes for another fifty minutes so I thought I could walk back to Fethiye sooner. Although the total distance travelled by road from Fethiye to Kayakoy is 21 km, the road makes a gigantic U and from the maps I had seen it looked like only one big mountain separated Kayakoy from Fethiye. I could see a distant dirt road that climbed a hill toward Fethiye, and I thought to myself that I could take it and in a few kilometers I would be there. I started walking.
The road was in really tough shape and it made sense that no driver who loved his dolmush would ever drive it, so as the sun set I started along. Actually the sun had just set, but I figured that I would be able to do the few kilometers (I estimated four) while there was still a lot of light. I made it to the top of the road on the distant hill in about half an hour but I couldn't see Fethiye. I thought to myself that it could be over the next hill and then no problem. There was no traffic on the road and none in sight - but at the same time I was not discouraged because no one would be travelling toward a ruin at night. I kept walking through another and another (...) hill as the light grew less and less, and by six thirty it was completely dark and I was in the middle of the forest. The lights of Fethiye had not yet appeared.
There was a certain point when I stopped along the road for a moment. I had come at least six kilometers, it was completely dark and the forest was completely silent. I looked at my watch, decided that it was too soon to give up, and that I would probably be okay in the forest because all the predatory animals were killed off eons ago (farm animals wander in freedom across roads and such and clearly farmers are not worried about wolves or cats) and because no sane brigand would be on a road that no one ever travels (I still hadn't seen anyone on it - but that wasn't necessarily a good sign). It did occur to me that I was on a loging road or the way to a quarry, but it continued to wind toward Fethiye so I continued stubbornly along (I have been finding out that I am stubborn).
I saw a few lights through the trees about ten kilometers along and I started to hear noises, like the banging of metal and wood. These sounds rang out through the wilderness and increased as I got closer and although I knew I was getting toward people it was a quite surreal - as if I had wandered into the Lord of the Rings and perhaps I was stumbling across a Dwarven Foundry in the middle of the woods. Eventually the dirt path came to an asphalt road and I knew I was okay (but it was still so dark I had to touch the surface to be sure of it) and I saw construction lights illuminating ships under construction and repair. The lights of Fethiye shone across the bay and soon I was on the water. All told the walk was about 12 km. Great fun in the dark.
