The Trapped In Turkey Tour Ends

The Trapped in Turkey Tour is over. The tour was technically only three weeks long, but it felt like months. Maybe because of the breakneck pace. Or maybe because of the wild variety of sights. Whatever the reason, this tour has been one of the most fascinating trips I’ve ever taken. Most of the places I went had few foreign tourists. In Kabak, the majority of the tourists were Turkish; in the Southeast, most travelers were international expats already living in Istanbul or Ankara; in the Lake Iznik area we were the only discernible foreigners in town. There is good reason for the dearth of foreigners– the infrastructure for budget tourism is underdeveloped in most of these places. And yet I was struck over and over again by the sheer diversity of this country. Every city we visited in the Southeast was different than the one before it and vastly different from anything else I’d seen in Turkey. The farmlands and lake houses around Lake Iznik pointed to a simpler way of life just outside of Istanbul. Kabak, which does cater to a backpacker crowd, is tricky to get to and can be complicated if you want to stay alone (and not in a tent). But Kabak’s breathtaking natural beauty and hippie oasis vibes were intoxicating. I structured the tour as three mini trips, but each felt like it could have happened in a different country— except for the consistency in language and food. Heading into the Southeast made me realize how decent my Turkish comprehension has become– until everyone started speaking Kurdish. (Or Arabic.) I hadn’t anticipated the benefits of staying in a country I already knew: instead of learning about Turkey, I could learn about these cities in the context of what I already knew about Turkey. It created a deeper experience. On the bike jaunt, the ugly cities we passed through didn’t diminish my view of the country– I’ve seen ugly Turkish cities, they are not shocking. And in Kabak, the young hippie beach community just felt like a transplanted Kadikoy. In fact, I met a couple from my neighborhood in Istanbul– Kadikoy loves Kabak! I will be writing a lot more about each individual stretch of the journey. There’s a lot of thoughts to unpack, and piles of film to sort through. The pictures in this post are all from my phone, mostly from Instagram; consider them a teaser for the true upcoming feast. I called it the Trapped in Turkey Tour… lucky me, to be trapped in a country as interesting as this one.