Big Trip Day 29 – Konya to Cumra

This morning began with the usual ritual of trying to find my way out of town. I seemed to be surrounded by carts and horses and mopeds with trays and small vehicles like milk floats. I picked up a lift in a truck that to me about 50 km to the junction I needed for the road to Cumra. Similar to yesterday, there was a moment of tension when the driver (backed by his two mates) demanded payment for the ride. He pointed to my watch and passport, and held my backpack. He looked quite angry, but I kept calm. He smiled reluctantly and we shook hands as we parted company. I was a bit fearful that he might follow me down the lonely road with a knife, but thankfully that didn’t happen.

I think it is only in retrospect that I realise how vulnerable I was at times on this trip. I was naive and culturally unprepared. My journey through Turkey was my first exposure to Islamic culture, and I am sure a lot of people must have taken offence at my appearance and/or behaviour. Just a simple example – it is wrong to give money or take change with your left hand, because that is the one you use to clean yourself after using the toilet (to put it politely!). And guess what? I am left-handed.

After walking for about 30 minutes I sat in the shade with a group of forest workers. They were amused/bemused by the chain I wore around my neck with a copper tag engraved with “Char Lady” – don’t ask me why I wore it or where I found it! We were soon joined by a group of capped and uniformed school children. They insisted I walked with them to the school to meet their teachers. I of course obliged, and by the time I got to within 100 metres of the school it seemed as if the whole school was following me. As noted previously, I probably had a high curiosity value – “Look what we found!”.

More musings about hitch-hiking:

abuse, toughness, sticky moments, and those rare and transient golden moments of genuine concern and friendship, shading from the midday sun with Turkish workers; and now here comes another tea, getting to like it quite a lot.

The teachers (of maths, physics, history and chemistry) were keen to interact with me, despite the obvious language barrier. I communicated with chemical formulae (CuSO₄), quadratic equations (ax² + bx + c ) and the only formula I remembered from physics (V = IR). I played table-tennis for an hour and a half with the four teachers as they in turn took breaks from their lessons.

Later, the Maths and Chemistry teachers jumped in a dolmus with me for the 11 km ride to Cumra. A quick Pepsi in a restaurant and then we piled into a taxi to Catalhoyuk. This was a Neolithic settlement dating from around 7500 BC. Excavations suggest they lived in mudbrick houses clustered together like a honeycomb. Access was mostly through the roof. There were no streets or paths, and it seems that the roofs served this purpose. As I noted at the time, they lived underground like rabbits.

We returned to the restaurant in Cumra for a meal, after which we said our goodbyes. There was a bit of a debate about the bills for the meal and taxi rides, but in the end we agreed to split the costs between us (they had wanted me to pay for everything).

I strolled to my hotel around 20.30 hrs. The hotel had the same star rating as the one in Konya. There was a 4-bedded dormitory that I luckily had for myself. Less luckily, there was the same filthy sink and toilet. My notes describe my use of the latter in quite vivid detail, of which you shall be spared. I used my negotiating skills to get a reduced price for the night ( 5 lira instead of 10 lira) by using my sleeping bag.

Tomorrow finds me in a small coastal town about 250 km from the Syrian border.