Kiss of Medusa the Gorgon

Now I’m looking through the feed of friends who are posting photos of their New Year’s holidays. Most spent their holidays on mountain hikes in the snowy Carpathians. But I had a different plan. Exactly the opposite. I wanted warmth and sun! I confess - I’m tired of the snow and the wind in my face, the dampness and cold. But I wanted to go on a hike. A solution was found: a hike through the warm Turkish mountains along the Mediterranean Sea. Lycian Way.

Flight to Turkey

At one time, when the Inter-City train was still called the “Capital Express,” the train to Kharkov would certainly return from the first track. Then the government changed, and the Kharkov Express was moved to the ninth area. “Who took his place? Where to now from the first?” I thought then. And here's where! My route lay through Lvov (from there it was cheaper to fly to Turkey).

When boarding the Lviv-Istanbul flight, we discovered that the mayor of Lvov was flying with us. The same Sadovy with his family. Passing by his place, Sergei said hello: “Good afternoon!” But the mayor did not answer, he just shook his head vaguely.
“See,” I said. - He didn’t send it... Europe!

Tombs in the garden

As you know, in Turkey everything is so ancient that if you accidentally cut your leg in a pond, it was not broken glass, but a fragment of an ancient amphora. There are so many different tombs and remains of ancient walls on the Lycian Way that the locals simply SAW at them (in an oriental accent). This is understandable, if in every garden there can be a tomb, you cannot fence it off. Only the most monumental ruins are tourist spots.

For example, you can kiss Medusa the Gorgon.

But the bas-relief seems to tell about the life of this glorious husband. During his lifetime, the deceased loved hunting, singing songs or reciting poetry. Died in the war. The right guy for his time. Clear.

At some excavation site I even saw fragments of ceramics neatly folded and apparently forgotten by archaeologists. Nothing like that - archaeological garbage, it seems. But it lay unguarded by anyone. I even thought about picking it up. And what? I am a descendant of the ancient Hittite-Lycian tribes. These are, in fact, my vases. But I was careful. Suddenly they will burn at the cordon.

March Star

Mitya can be considered the definite star of the hike along the Lycian Trail with the company outdoorukraine.com. Already looking at his backpack, the thought occurred to me that the smaller the backpack you take, the less you will carry. The second thought was about the umbrella. “I could still grab a suitcase,” I thought then.

And I was wrong. Mitya turned out to be an experienced tourist who simply decided to experiment. He slept under a very light canopy (without a tent). The umbrella was useful only to protect the sleeping place from slanting rain and wind. But the main thing is that he was constantly laughing. I won’t retell his stories about his service in Afghanistan, because... it won't convey the colors. But I laughed until I cried. Mitya constantly spoke in the voice of Ravshan, thus mimicking the Turks:

“Waaashmee,” he said when he ate something tasty.
- Ghoul? – he turned to his brother, urging him to put on his backpack.
- Gul! - answered brother Igor.

In Turkish, bread is ekmek. “Let’s go, let’s break the ekmek,” suggested Mitya. “Ekmek bash (head) everything,” he stated.
They called Turkish liras “chatli”, and Russian rubles “rupias”.

But most of all I liked the story about the guy with whom Mitya went, it seems, to the Khibiny Mountains (Khibiny, as he called them, hinting at the remoteness of this mountain range). This guy has read a lot of fairy tales of the peoples of the north. And when the conversation over the fire fell silent, he suddenly began to broadcast something like: “... this is the seventh day Nigosonyan has been walking across the snowy tundra.” So, in this epic there was a Heavenly Woman with breasts like two plagues.

“Truly,” I always said, “tits are the quintessence of absolute goodness!”

And about the weather. Mitya had a watch that measured the air temperature.

- How many degrees? – we asked, shivering from the cold as dusk fell.
“Plus nine,” he answered.
- How many degrees? – we asked after a cold night.
“Plus nine,” answered Mitya.
- How many degrees? – asked the instructor (Kirill Yasko), tapping on the ice found in a small puddle in the morning.
- How many degrees? – we asked, stripping down to T-shirts on a hot afternoon.
“Well, about plus eight and a half,” Mitya shrugged.
Then it turned out that the thermometer showed the average temperature for the trek.

But, seriously, the weather was very good. It rained twice, there was a little wind near the sea. Yes, at night it was better to have a warm sleeping bag. But during the day – beauty!

As a rule, Turks greet like this: merhaba
But one grandfather, who entered the bus at the stop, greeted everyone: as-salaam-alaikum!
- Glory to Ukraine! – Sergei politely answered him.

Tractor on the beach of Butterfly Valley

One of my friends read that, according to the BBC, the Lycian Way is one of the ten most picturesque tourist routes in the world. Mainly thanks to butterflies. And there are especially many of them in the valley of the same name – the Valley of Butterflies.

You need to get down there by clinging to ropes. Quite difficult to reach. This is a picturesque gorge along the bottom of which a mountain stream flows, and one end of which ends in the sea. There are some plank bungalows here. Very cool place. Directly created for savage tourists. I immediately remembered Meganom. But Kirill Yasko disappointed: it turns out that during the season, stacks of drunken Germans are brought here by boats, and taken back in the evening.

So in this Valley of Butterflies I saw a picturesque tractor, a cactus growing next to a fir tree and a palm tree, but not a single butterfly was found. It's not the season.

A little gothic

The rays of the setting sun barely broke through the thick paws of pine trees when a small group of tourists moved deeper into the gorge, moving further and further away from human habitation. It was drizzling. It was decided to stop at the first more or less level clearing right next to the trail.

When the tents were already set up and the first tongues of flame illuminated the area strewn with stones, Yulia exclaimed:
- This is a cemetery!
“No,” someone corrected her, pointing to the mounds that looked a little like miniature mounds lined with stones, “the tourists piled that up.”
- What is this? – Julia pointed to a stone that was clearly installed at the head of one of the mounds. - And this?

Everyone has already seen stones that contain traces of processing: one is of a regular rectangular shape, the other with a groove clearly carved by a person. There was nothing left to do - it was too late to look for another place for a new camp... A long night lay ahead...

As I already wrote, there are many similar artifacts on the Lycian Way. Well, some abandoned burial grounds a long time ago... Maybe even “residential”. There's plenty of that there.

This olive oil squeezer seems to be as old as the local tombs.

As you know, many adventures of tourists begin with the words: “let’s take a shortcut” or “shouldn’t we go along the azimuth?”

This is exactly what happened when, a long, long time ago, my friends and I were on the classic Crimean route “Cave Cities of Crimea” after visiting Chufut-Kale and having lunch at a Karaite eatery, we decided to turn off the well-trodden path. We were bored. It's not interesting to go like everyone else.

I don’t remember now who suggested it. But instead of the trail, we rushed head-on up the mountain, deciding to cross it and then find the way to the cave city of Tepe-Kermen. Needless to say, as a result of several hours of climbing through dense bushes, we found ourselves at the top, did not find any path, spent the night in some gorge without water, met creepy foresters who looked more like Chechen militants, but never got to Tepe-Kermen.

I also didn’t get to the ancient ruins of the Pydnai fortress, which is on the Lycian Way. Many of us passed by. But not because we decided to cut it. Vice versa. The road was too smooth, and I personally noticed the ruins overgrown with forest too late.

Results

I think it’s time to end the Lycian Way. A few required words.

In my opinion, the route itself is very easy and picturesque. With the exception of some unpleasant stone sections, when your leg tries to give in. The weather was wonderful. During the day +15, +20. At night around zero. Therefore, it is worth taking a warm sleeping bag. Very similar to May Crimea, but better. I would recommend it to those who are going camping for the first time.

Infrastructure. In the villages everything is almost like here. But there were pleasant moments. For example, a very cool modern tram in Antalya. Ilya Varlamov would have liked him. Unlike our Kyiv high-speed tram. Good buses run from city to city.

The route is full of orange trees everywhere. The roadsides are dotted with fruits. In principle, they can be plucked directly from trees. If the owner of the garden is not around. If there is, he may be a little indignant, but, rather, for show.

People. The simple rural Turks looked friendly. They smiled, and when driving cars they always honked when they saw tourists. We said hello. The sellers of all sorts of souvenir junk are also friendly, but somehow different.

On the last day we went to a cafe furnished with old radios and photographs of local jazz stars. Looks like the local bohemia gathers here. The menu is written on a plate. In addition to the usual dishes, there is something for 160 local chatls (80 bucks). What this is, they could not explain to us. They said it was a cold appetizer. Black caviar, no less.

I don't like the way Turkish sounds. But there were two musicians playing guitars and singing something. Very positive. As they say, atmospheric. I didn’t understand shit, but it seemed like it was about love. Some of our men got fat from the music and beer and began to give flowers to the doorkeeper. Clap your hands loudly and express your approval to the musicians. Most of the local visitors sat on the street where the pump was located. It's just us opposite the musicians. They liked it, and they did not remain in debt. We tried to play something English-language. We even tried to do nothing else matters, but it didn’t work out.

Oh, and we also visited the homeland of Santa Claus. No, not in Lapland. But where Saint Nicholas worked. As Kirill (the instructor and organizer of the tour) said, Noel Baba (that’s the Turks’ name for Nicholas) is the patron saint of children and drowned people. This is how he is depicted on the monument.