William Sutcliffe posed this question in his comic novel Are You Experienced?, a singularly uncharitable, snarky, and (in the end, dammit) uplifting tale of a callow English youth embarking on a three month odyssey of India. He goes because he wants to get into his best friend's girlfriend's pants, which is, I suppose, more than enough reason to suffer through the pains of subcontinental travel. The answer, to paraphrase, is "You know, kind of sit around drinking, talking, smoking." Of course he learns something about himself and his fellow man, but the sentiment is an honest assessment of most days on the road for the budget traveler.But we also read. A lot. I just finished Bill Bryson's Made In America, in which he discourses on the rambling route American English has taken over the last five hundred years. It's a great read for a lot of reasons, not least among them the following gem that answers (in part) some questions raised by the intro to the last post in these pages. To wit:
A not unreasonable question is how a native American bird came to be named for a country four thousand miles away. The answer is that when turkeys first appeared in England, some eighty years before the Mayflower set sail, they were mistakenly supposed to have come from Turkey. They had in fact come from Spain, brought there from Mexico by Hernan Cortés's expedition of 1519. Many other European nations made a similar geographical error in naming the bird. The French thought they came from India and thus called them chickens 'd'Inde,' from which comes the modern French dindon. The Germans, Dutch, and Swedes were even more specifically inaccurate in their presumptions, tracing the bird to the Indian city of Calicut and thus gave it the respective names Kalekuttisch Hün, kalkoen and kalkon. By the 1620s, the turkey was so well known in Europe, and its provenance had so long been assumed to be the Near East, that the Pilgrims were astounded to find them in abundance in their new-found land.Bryson doesn't comment on what turkeys are called here in Turkey, but clearly the hindi is further evidence of the geographical error made by the French, Germans, Dutch, and Swedes. In any case, they're delicious roasted or deep-fried and go well with American football and cranberry jelly, and that's the last I'll write of them. Promise.
So yeah: What do backpackers do all day? We improve ourselves, bitches. Recognize.
Aside from that, we gripe a lot about how we're priced out of certain areas of the Turkish Riviera by pasty, cankled oldsters in white linen capris (the dudes too) spending pounds and euros. The last few stops on our trek around the southwestern coasts of Turkey have shown us that even before the beginning of the tourist season (Anzac Day on 25 April) the local tour and travel agencies have moved their quotes for kayaking, sailing, and other such leisure activities as one might expect in a land edged by crystal blue water from the Turkish lira (YTL) to the aforementioned currencies, which all go a fair bit further than the same amount of dollars. We've spent the last two days in Kaş sitting in cafés, reading, sipping Turkish çay and walking through one of the most beautiful seaside towns I've ever come across. The mountains behind the town slope into the sea and are terraced up their first halves with vacation villas and hotels for the well-heeled Europeans who flock here in the summertime. It feels a bit like housesitting for a wealthy relative, as most of the hotels aren't open, the cafés are largely empty but for the backgammon-playing Turks who call Kaş home, and we have the run of the place......so long as we don't actually want to do anything.
Turkey is not India, as I mentioned last time. Our daily budget in India would just cover most of our accomodation options here, and then there's food and tea and beer and such to consider. We have found a number of affordable options for all the above here, however, as this town of 6000 doesn't eat all its meals at home. Not so in Pamukkale, where we spend two days last week walking past places offering döner kebabs at 7 YTL (normally 2-4, and the high side in İstanbul). Pamukkale is mostly served these days by day-trip tours from nearby cities to the magnificent calcium hot springs and the natural travertines (cascade pools) that flank the hundred-meter mountainside at the top of town. Faced with the daily influx of short-stay visitors who spend two weeks in Turkey without venturing ten meters on their own outside their air-conditioned buses, many of the locals have gotten ambitious in their pricing.
Hit 'em fast, hit 'em hard, and know you'll never see 'em again.
But we scored a good room at our asking price, and there were nooks hidden among the village's winding streets where you could find an honest meal at an honest price. There was one great little joint at the foot of town near our pension that sported a prominent rotisserie oven with whole chickens and sheep's heads rolling over the fire all day, each basting in the other's juices. The guy in charge whipped up a mean kokoreç (a hash of intestine and liver meat with peppers, onions, and garlic) for 1.25 YTL (almost exactly US$1) on half a loaf of crusty white bread. Alas, we didn't get to try the sheep's head, which apparently wound up in a similar hash of brain and cheek.
(Eyeballs optional, bring your own toothpicks.)
So, cheap room and food secured, we felt we could splurge our first night on a small bottle of rakı, the national aniseed liquor, which tastes a bit like Greek ouzo.* We took the hooch back to our place, sat at a table by the empty pool and browsed the new Lonely Planet Turkey, which goes into much more depth than our Europe on a Shoestring. After a short time and a drink or two we found ourselves talking with T&T, two Czech backpackers who came to Turkey for two months of mountain climbing, and A, a Moroccan kid who bought a stake in the pension last summer. Over glasses of local wine we introduced each other to games of risk and daring: we brought out the Jenga Junior set we bought in Ahmedabad, A taught us the burning cigarette/paper napkin/coin-in-the-wine-glass game, and T&T tried to teach us a Czech card game that played like Hearts and that nobody (save the Czechs) understood. By now we were in our cups, it was late, and the Kiwi mum staying downstairs came out to ask all of us very politely to please keep it down. We weren't aware that we were being loud, but apparently--as is true of all language barriers-- by shouting the rules for Czech card games you can overcome the lack of understanding caused by three different native tongues and a couple bottles of Pamukkale Red. Suddenly aware of the time, our collective state of inebriation, and the unacceptable possibility of retiring quietly to our chambers (the Czechs to their tent) for the sleep of the dead, A decided it was time for a defining moment:
"Why don't we take some more wine and climb the mountain?"
We thought that sounded positively brilliant.
Two further bottles stuffed into his waistband (even though it ain't thievin' if he owns the joint), A led our motley crew through the silent streets of Pamukkale, up through the town square to the public park at the base of the travertines. We tiptoed past the sleeping watchman and began the long slog through warm pools of glassy water, marveling at the starry clear night and the lights of Denizli twinkling in the distance. The half moon overhead lit the calcium pools, so white in daylight, a luminescent ice blue as we picked our way through the moonlit, watery dark to the top of the hill, where the ruins of Hierapolis loomed out of the darkness. A short climb further and we were atop a 2000-year-old amphitheater, in the nosebleeds, and A was cracking the wine. Electric footlights still lit the ancient stage below us, adorned by massive columns, statues, and sections of bas-relief marble, cordoned off by a ring of wooden security fencing from the accessible upper reaches of the theater. Warmed by the spring-fed pools we traversed on the way up and the wine, which tasted better and better, we all sat in awe of the ruins--remarkable in daylight, the night made them positively extraordinary, so white against the inky night above. Our conversation roamed and rambled along separate lubricated trains of thought until A hushed us abruptly and we turned to see two security guards, cigarettes burning, the reflective stripes on their uniforms digesting and spitting back the stage lights far below."Aw, snap!" thought I, or something similarly urbane. "It's da po-po!" Visions of Midnight Express flashed across my brainpan, of teary showers and burly men named Mustafa and breasts pressed against visiting-room windows, but A was cool. He spoke to the guards in his accented Turkish, they smiled and sat down to finish their smokes a respectful distance behind our party, and we continued drinking and talking under the white flag of truce, easily won.
After a few minutes, I started to wonder. These guys seemed cool enough, weren't asking us for tickets (which we did not possess), so my natural instinct was to see how far I could push our luck. Against the advice of AT&T, and over D's acquiescent shrug that said to the rest He's gonna do it regardless, just get ready to run, I walked over to the guards with a shiteater splitting my face and a very fine vintage enlivening my breath.
"Merhaba," I began, and that was the limit of my Turkish as I spun some thin bullshit about my wife over there, how it's our honeymoon and it'd be great if we could go down to the stage for just one minute. While I gesticulated semi-controlledly in her direction, D waved and smiled as AT&T cautiously observed the scene, corking the wine and preparing to make like trees, quick-like. "Bir minute, ji," I pleaded good-naturedly with the guards, using the Turkish for "one," some English in the middle, and calling them both "sir" in Hindi in case, you know, they spoke that.
So I've got one guard on my side, he's smiling as my unintelligible request draws to its conclusion, and I reflect his smile over to his buddy, who's a little more stone-faced about the proposed dereliction of duty. They confer for the briefest of seconds as I stand there, then a nod comes from Hard Sell and Good Cop holds up his hand, fingers splayed.
"Five minute," he tells me. "Beş, beş."
I thank them in their language, mine, and one or two others for good measure and assemble the gang, we saunter down the huge stone steps, eel through the security fencing, make our way onto the stage. The enormity of the structure became so much clearer from that vantage point; looking up in the direction of the guards to wave another thank you, I couldn't pick them out of the surrounding darkness above. Turning to the gang I set it down: "We've got five minutes down here, it's cooler than shit, and I say we make the most of it. Pick a favorite tune in your native tongue and belt it out for the cheap seats." T&T discuss for a moment before launching into a Czech mountain folksong in wavering duet. I follow suit, let roar my deepest, most operatic baritone rendition of "Camptown Races," which seems to be the only song I can remember on command these days (that and "Stairway to Heaven"--it's been too long since I had access to good music and god it hurts so bad). Paralytic with laughter, D opts out, but it seems A knows at least the "Doo dah, doo dah" from singalongs with his adopted American father, so he joins the tuneless fray.
Our Turkish Idol karaoke exhibition drawn to a merciful close, we set about exploring the stage and taking some quick pictures, including a group shot I set up and ran to join as the camera tilted at about 15 degrees before the shutter tripped, but we were all leaning a bit by that point anyway. A clucking sound from the darkness above summoned us off the stage and we bowed, dutifully clambered back up the stone decks, took last pulls of the wine, thanked the guards and rolled on out.So I guess I've only explained what backpackers do all night, before they trip home with burning sides to the first round of rooster calls and the faintest whispers of sunlight in the east. I apologize. Maybe I'll fill in the other details some other time. Right now there's a good book**, a cup of tea, and some meat rotating on a spit somewhere that are as close to free as anything in this life. As a wise man*** once wrote: "We make our own fun. Everything else is just entertainment."
Peace.
*: The Turks enjoy their rakı with salty cheese, olives, and fish, much as the Greeks drink their ouzo. Known euphemistically as aslan sütu ("lion's milk"), rakı is clear in the bottle but becomes cloudy with the addition of water. It's a colloid like Sambuca, but not as thick and cloying. Incidentally, the "ı" in Turkish is pronounced "uh," whereas "i" is pronounced "ee". Hence "İstanbul" while "rakı" sounds more like what a Boston grandparent sits in than a North American mountain range.
**: Money, by Martin Amis.
***: David Mamet, in his film State and Main.
