keep on walking, don't stop
We ended our cruise near this village called Olympos. The town itself is a bit of a backpacker/dirtbag nexus, close enough to the big city of Antalya that you can get here in an afternoon if you need to, but inconvenient and remote enough that you don't come here unless you want to do a whole lot of nothing. There's a beach, and there are some ruins, and rock routes to climb if you'd like, but it's a lot of pensions and courtyards with young travelers putting in a lot of work on their tan. It is, in other words, the perfect place to transition from four days of dedicated idleness on a boat.
We spent a night in Olympos before ayun left in the morning, heading back to Fethiye and Rhodes, hugging us one more time to make sure it lasted. couplingchaos, mishak and I went down to the beach to do a bit of swimming and perhaps climb one more sea route. The obvious option was this twenty foot high outcropping poking above the sea. There were already a couple of folks diving from the cliff. And as we swum out and had our turn with climbing and launching ourselves from the rock, this young Texan swam up to us and asked us if we can hold his GoPro while he gave the jump a try. Because, of course, anything worth doing is worth documenting.
We hung out on that beach for a bit of the morning, waving down a street food vendor carrying a tray of steamed mussels stuffed with rice as a bit of breakfast, but eventually we chose to leave Olympos early to get on our way to Antalya so that we can sort out our next destinations: mishak and couplingchaos heading to Seljuk and Ephesus, and I to Cappadocia. It was on the overnight bus to Goreme (the main hub town in Cappadocia) that I sat down and noticed that my seat neighbor looked familiar.
"Hey," I asked, "were you in Olympos earlier this morning jumping off a bunch of cliffs?"
"Hey! Yeah, crazy to see you here! Where are the others?"
"Ah, they're heading to Ephesus. We just split up here. I assume you're going to Goreme?"
"Yeah. That's next. So, mishak was saying you guys were on a gulet from Fethiye? How long you've been in Turkey?"
"A little more than a week now? We started in Istanbul, and did the overnight to Fethiye. You?"
"Well ... huh ... that's complicated.
"We got ten hours on this bus."
"I got into Turkey about a week ago, but I've been here since ... late July? But I did a two week break to meet my parents in Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro."
"Oh yeah? Which route did you do?"
And the kid looked at me like he wasn't sure if I was testing him or not. I probably was. A little.
"Uhhh my parents planned it ... it was the Whiskey, I think?"
"Oh, the Machame? Yeah, I heard that's pretty."
"Have you? Have you done it?"
"Yeah. I think it was, like, six years ago? We did the Rongai. It was up by the Kenyan border, and came in from the north to the base of Mawenzi, then crossed the saddle to Kibo then summitted from there."
"Was it hard for you too?"
"Hardest fucking thing I've ever done. Was it cold for you?"
"Yeah, totally cold. Funny, I was in Scandinavia in May, and that wasn't anywhere as cold as Kili in August."
"Oh, so you've been on the road a while?"
And the kid told me that he was a recent college grad from the University of Texas, and he'd been saving since he was 10 for this trip. He started in Norway four months ago with a backpack and a Eurail pass. He's been doing his own version of The Grand Tour working his way south through Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Italy and Greece. He's been staying in hostels and doing the classic trade of all young adults, swapping almost limitless time for money, taking trains then buses once he was outside of the Eurail network.
"So, where's next after Turkey," I asked.
"I don't know," he said, "not much left, but it's been a good run. I was thinking maybe Morocco? Or crazy enough, just go home and save it for Mexico or something."
"If you can swing the flight, Argentina's super cheap."
"Man, how do you get to travel so much? You seem unimpressed by everything I've said."
"You're asking me that? You're the one on an epic four month self-funded sojourn. Haven't you figured it out?"
"What?"
"This doesn't have to be your only adventure. I mean, for sure, this trip that you're doing is impressive, and you ought to be totally proud of giving yourself the time to do it. But, you going through this journey and thinking it's going to be your only chance at travelling? That's disappointing.
"When you get back, get a job, and save your vacation days. Save your pay. You know how you've been budgeting through this trip? Making sure you don't spend too much cash each day 'cause you gotta make it last? Keep doing that. Keep setting some money aside, and don't waste it on stupid distractions. Then, before you know it, you've got another couple of grand and that'll get you to Patagonia, or South Africa, or Japan. Then you go."
"you make it sound simple."
"Well, you know, this thing that you're doing? The idea of taking a four month trip seems crazy and intimidating to most people when they look at it from afar, but you know now, once you're on the road, then everything becomes simple right? Figure out where you're going to go today. Figure out how to get there. Figure out where you're going to sleep. Figure out what you got to eat. Everything becomes simple when you keep your goals simple. It's all the other stuff in life. Careers. Love. Who you're going to vote for. That shit's complicated. This is simple."
We slept for much of the rest of the bus ride, waking groggily as we arrived at Nevsehir, a transfer hub towards Goreme. Then we watched quietly as the sun rose over the open desert of Cappadocia, and we watched balloons rise in the sky, looking like titanic particles of pollen adrift in the wind.
I don't know if I'll see that kid again. But I'd like to imagine that I will. Somewhere else in the world. On some cliff somewhere with a pounding ocean beneath us. He'll ask me to hold his GoPro, and I'll continue to look unimpressed for different reasons.