A year of travelling is a long time, and there are moments when you feel defeated. The travel schedule can be exhausting, and there is no comparable frame of reference to your ordinary life. I often think about home, imagining a typical week and the passage of time over that week, of how long I’d spend sitting at a desk at the office, or riding the subway, or grocery shopping and cooking tomorrow’s lunch, and try to imagine what I’d be doing right now if I were at home. Maybe I’d be on the computer, or reading a book, or doing nothing much. I certainly would not be riding a 12-hour bus to the next town on a Wednesday, or negotiating the price of a dormitory bed with the hostel staff at five in the morning. Nor would I think nothing of spending five hours in a café playing backgammon with a couple of Turkish university students. Life is short.

But when you’re travelling, life is long. Unless you’re visiting a country with some kind of job or volunteer work or task to do, you’ve got to find ways to fill the time. You can go sightseeing, but that lasts only for an hour or two, so what now? It’s only 2 PM. Most towns don’t perk up until the sun goes down.

After weeks of sightseeing, buses, trains, border crossings, and hostel staff, what should be considered a “vacation” starts to feel like an immense chore. My spirits were flagging a little bit as I reached the Goreme Valley. I’d had a busy day exploring the Goreme open-air museum with the Dutch guy I keep running into in every town I visit. He had an overnight bus to Istanbul leaving at 8 PM. We ran into some Canadians we’d met in Selcuk who had plans for the evening that involved an open bar and five-course meal, costing about 60 YTL (50 bucks or so). Too rich for me. With the Dutch guy leaving and everyone else I know having other plans, I was left with nothing much to do for the evening, and not much energy to be bothered.

I retired to my hostel. In Goreme, the thing to do is stay in a cave hotel. Mine was a small, musty dormitory room with heavy blankets and almost no air circulation and very little light. It was the sort of room that offers no compelling reason to stay there except for sleeping. You couldn’t read, couldn’t write, couldn’t even sit. The hotel itself was virtually empty (it was low season), and the entire town was dark.

Restlessness took over me. I wandered into the town and into a crowded bar, which I quickly left, not being in the mood. I went back to my room, got into bed, and thought about things. Today wasn’t fun. What’s so great about volcanic rock formations? I could just look at photographs of those. This hotel sucks. There’s nobody here. Can’t meet people. And if I did, what would we do? Go to a bar and drink? Is that all I know how to do?

I was feeling depressed. I know that feeling when I see it. And the next day, I had an overnight bus to Istanbul, so I had the whole day to kill. And now I’ve “done” Goreme, seen all the sights I wanted to see. Tomorrow would be the worst and most boring day of my entire life.

At breakfast the next morning, I met a British lady who was living in Turkey. She had a long braided ponytail and a t-shirt saying “NOT IN MY NAME”—an anti-war slogan, apparently. We talked about my travel plans. I told her I was off to India next, and she’d been to India five times, and told me all about the place, and also about some of the other places she’d been like Columbia, Sri Lanka, Iran, and so on. Her enthusiasm for travel was endless; she’d been on the road for almost 19 years, stopping to work for a few months in each place before heading off to another destination, sometimes doing humanitarian/UN work, other times teaching English. Talking with her, I began to feel the pangs of anticipation coming back, the feeling of looking forward to the next place. I was excited again.

She gave me simple advice for nights like the previous one: when you start to have more of those nights than the good kind, it’s time to go home. And the truth was, I’d had weeks of great times punctuated with a boring night or two. Hardly a cause for concern. I felt good.

With newfound resolve, I decided to take a day trip to the underground villages of Derinkuyu. At the bus stop a guy sitting on his backpack began talking to me. He asked if I was going to Derinkuyu and I said I was. So we sat on the bus together. He smelled rather bad (or as my pal Dave would say: “He smelled rather poorly”) and looked to be in shabby condition. His backpack was like a large, dirty duffel bag that he strapped to his shoulders. He looked like neither his clothes nor his person had been washed in weeks.

His name was Raphael, from Australia. His English was with an Aussie accent, but it seemed either that English wasn’t his first language or he was a little slow. I didn’t press him on that.

We began the usual gambit of fellow-traveller questions. Our conversation lacked rhythm. His manner of speaking was peculiar to me: he seemed to think everything over thoroughly before talking, and only when he decided on what to say did he say it. I started in on how I was going to India and how I was a bit nervous about going there, India being a tough place and all. As I spoke, I became aware that I was bragging about this. He hardly said anything, and waited for me to finish talking.

Then I asked him where he’d been before Turkey and he said “India.” He did not offer this fact while I was discussing India. He’d been for five months “this time”, as well as to Pakistan, Iran, the “stans”, not to mention Eastern Turkey. Wow. Did he find it difficult? How did he get around? Any trouble?

“No,” he said. “Most people will give you a ride for free.”

Wait. You… hitchhiked?

“Yes.”

This guy hitchhiked across India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey. Suddenly my travels felt so mundane, riding government buses and staying in touristy hostels, drinking beer with people from Germany and California. This guy was one of those rare creatures we see in the wild, the Serious Traveller. I was merely a dabbler. But how does one get the idea to hitchhike across that part of the world? I suppose it’s cheaper that way. I had so many questions.

“Did you make it to Sri Lanka?”

“No.”

“Aha!” I thought. Got ya. As people tend to do when they meet someone far more interesting than themselves, I began trying to make myself appear more than a total novice. I said something along the lines of “I’d like to try some challenging places like that too. But I’m not about to go to Afghanistan or anything.”

“Why not?” he asked.

Oh man. Tell me you didn’t hitchhike across Afghanistan too…

“It’s not that dangerous. You just read the newspapers and pay attention to the political situation, and when things aren’t busy you just go in.”

He did! He spent two weeks in Afghanistan, not only in Kabul but in other places. He was confused at how I might find that a strange thing to do.

“I’m not about to go to Baghdad,” he said. Good to know.

We arrived at Derinkuyu, a fascinating series of underground caves shaped into a little village, where people lived for months at a time while their real village was under siege. Raphael very much wanted to worm into the very narrowest, darkest passages, unimpeded by such things as claustrophobia or discomfort.

I pulled out my camera. “Take your pictures,” he said. He wasn’t taking any. Didn’t even have a camera. The more time I spent with him, the more I began to feel like the strange one. Why did I need pictures of everything? I have a memory, don’t I?

And why don’t I visit Pakistan and Iran? How bad could it be? Millions of people live there, for God’s sake. I began to realize that travel is a skill, and I was still learning. Raphael was a master. He had no tourist accoutrements whatsoever. No modern synthetic-fibre’d clothing or state-of-the-art backpacks or expensive hiking boots. He dressed simply. He could fit in anywhere. And he didn’t travel to show his friends his pictures or brag about where he’d been, just as he didn’t speak without thinking first about what he would say.

We left the village, and he asked me if I wanted to stop for tea. But it was Ramadan, and drinking tea in public during the day would be impolite. So we shook hands, and he wandered across the street with his backpack over his shoulders, stuck out his thumb and began hitchhiking, hoping to reach Antalya by sundown.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 3:21 am and is filed under Turkey.