Alternative title: How to drink heavily and fail at hitch-hiking. Apparently, the train tracks from Istanbul to the Bulgarian border are broken, so everyone was corralled into a bus and shuttled the four hour journey. Arriving at a… ‘quiet’ border town around 2am, we were helpfully informed by the station staff that the train wouldn’t…
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Istanbul is an easy city to be lazy in. It seemed like every day I would end up in a café for several hours, just sipping on tea and coffee with some people from the hostel. After all, it’s impossible to ‘understand’ Istanbul, a city of 12, 18, or 20 million depending on who you…
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The ferry trundled through the water towards Istanbul. The city slowly rose up from the horizon, a disorganized collection of three, four, five-storey flats, minarets, occasional greenery, and a myriad of other towers. By the time we were thirty minutes out, it fully occupied one half of the horizon. Eighteen million people, all living in…
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Kabak – and Turkey in general – seems to consume time terrifyingly quickly. I had no set departure date from Kabak, but when the friends I had made said they were leaving after three nights I decided to follow. If I had stayed at Kabak much longer, I think my time there would have morphed…
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I got off the bus to Pamukkale after a restless nights’ sleep, and was greeted by a massive wall of blinding white. It reflected the rising sun, looking like a salt lake’s tidal wave frozen in mid-crash. In reality, Pamukkale is a series of built-up calcium deposits, and mineral the local spring water is unusually…
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From the ridge at the top of the mountain, the craggy landscaped stretched out below us. Cracked granite boulders were scattered around, protruding from the softer earth. A snaking switchback gravel road receded into the valley and the village below. Two hawks hovered motionless, as if levitating, scanning the ground for anything edible. The odd…
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