The Lycian Way: Day 1

After a quick flight, taxi ride and half an hour or so in a minibus, Damon, I and our backpacks found ourselves full of excitement in Fethiye and almost ready for the journey ahead. We exited the otogar, crossed the road and filled up and cheap and cheerful Turkish fare. Next was a half hour dolmuş ride to the wrong place.

Perhaps due to our combined level of excitement and anticipation, we bounced off the bus, onto the road and soon realised that we weren't actually where we had hoped we would be. A man with finely sculpted hair and a lascivious look in his eye soon approached us and with a phone call and exchange of monies his friend and taxi driver quickly transported us to where we actually wanted to be.

We had begun.

Already the late afternoon was upon us so it was going to be a short walk the first day. Within minutes the outrageously blue waters and classic ruggedly macho Mediterranean coastline of Ölüdeniz spread out before us. The town itself is an over-hyped but much cherished destination for the English, fleeing their miserable climes at the earliest moment to lather up on solar rays, fresh fish and probably quite a lot of sex with handsome locals. However, Damon and I, neither of us being English, headed up over and around until we reached 500m and every word uttered was in amazement at the view.

Unknown to me at the time, my camera lens was as filthy as my underwear drawer and so it's with more than a scintilla of disappointment that I now bemoan the general state of my photographic ineptness. Still, here's Damon looking cheesy as Hell and unaware of just how incredibly soiled that hair is going to be in a week. I tried to capture that 'Lonely Planet cool' but feel that Damon's overall look adds an edge and perhaps even another dimension to travel photography.

We continued up, around, down, over and behind some other prepositions of movement until we met with our first of many pine tree groves. I was already regretting the weight of the third T-shirt and traveller companion's English-Turkish Bible I'd so hastily packed, but panoramas, vistas and other scenes abounded in beauty. I soon forgot about the provisions I'd packed and would carry around the entire week without once using them and instead focused on the dying light, my inexperience at mounting a tent in the dark and questioned whether in fact I was really going to manage without Starbucks caffe latte for this stretch of time.

Over the saddle of the hill we came upon a flat green pastoral scene and decided this would make a suitable location to pitch a tent. night was falling at at higher elevation the cold seemed to creep up on us as did the incredibly rapidly encroaching and all enveloping mist.

To end the first day with precipitous views, our tent was placed as close as possible to the edge of a 600m drop, to ensure that any ill-thought plan to sprint from the tent opening in the middle of the night, perhaps to meets the urges of nature, would certainly end in death with a spectacular view on the way down.

At some point between going to sleep and getting up again, the wind started to rage. At midnight we were heavily asleep under orange nylon, unaware of what Mother Nature had in store for us just an hour or two later.

As you can plainly see, the little orange dot halfway down the left hand side of the image was going to be no match for Nature's fury.