I travel

When I was in elementary school I had my best friend Cinar and the one game we loved most was missing the school bus and exploring the way back from school. We would go around the neighborhood villas with a wide awake imagination and all the narrow roads would be full of adventures, the monstrous guard dogs would want to eat us alive while we would try to reach the last piece of food left on earth, the cherry on that tree.

Then when I grew up things changed just a little bit but still today, sitting and watching the 3rd typhoon of the year hit where I live with full strength, I tend to see it as God getting too hot and turning on his fan a bit too strong while we desperately struggle to keep our clothes dry. I’m happy to be here now to see one more manifestation of Godly power.

Even when I was very young I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with staying in Turkey (mostly because I’m from Turkey) but at first I was thinking I could find another place and settle there. Traveling helps one learn about himself much faster and one of the first things I learned about myself was that I couldn’t be happy stopping for too long. I needed to discover.

I am so thankful to my parents who sponsored me for one month interrail trip to Europe when I was 16. After a few more visits to the West I saw it clearly that whatever I was looking for was not there. And I had a few pushes sometimes when I tended to stop. After my 2 years of hibernation in Istanbul, having a steady work, steady girlfriend and a nice rented house, I was kicked out of Turkey by the army which wanted me to wear uniforms and carry orders for 18 months after they give me a risky operation on my spine. India was welcoming and extremely rich, richer than I could ever imagine any land to be. So for a few years I thought I could settle in India and keep traveling in that country which is anyway 5 times the size of Turkey. But it was not to be.

What it gave me was this sense of being a traveler. [I’ll explain it separately how different for me a traveler and a tourist are]. There I started to live down to earth, travel in remote places, cook and enjoy local food, learn local language, make a few local friends, and in short be there rather than see there.

This required more time than just traveling with a schedule and a camera. Since I didn’t carry a camera, I had to sit in front of that mountain and take it in slowly. Mostly I would just rent a house there and do everything right in front of that mountain until I was sure I had it in me. I don’t know what else I took in during those days but one of them is the traveler’s bug for sure.

I was very fortunate for having a rent income to support my travels but just because I don’t have to work, not everything is hunky-dory. For a long time I stubbornly insisted on local ways. I felt this is the way I can deserve what I am already given. I wouldn’t take any touristic buses or eat in touristic restaurants. I was in India for 3 years and I haven’t seen Taj Mahal. I would generally try to live on the cheapest edge. Which taught me a lot of things and made me a stronger person. But the time comes when one says “ok, now I know I can handle the 20 hours of bumpy jeep ride, so I can take the super deluxe bus this time”. Another hard thing about traveling is all the family and friends back “home” calling me back all the time. Two out of 3 communications with anyone back there has the question “when are you coming back?” while I don’t make such plans. If I made such plans, for example, to go back to Turkey, let’s say, in 10 months, I’d feel I have to speed up and do all the things I want to do and be in all the places I want to be in before I go to Turkey. I want to be back to Thailand and Indonesia, I want to visit Nepal and Sri Lanka on the way back. I want to dive a few more coral islands and surf some more, perhaps go up a few more volcanoes, but putting this in a time frame is somehow impossible.

On the other hand I’m aware I am not a hard-core traveler. I am very slow, and lately, pretty touristic. My friends who were with me in Thailand when I first arrived in SE Asia about 20 months ago have been all around Asia, some went to Australia before we met back in China and now most of them are in the Americas already. I’m still here.


I can go on for hours when I start to talk about traveling. I believe everyone should travel. I believe the world would be much less problematic if more people traveled (and I’m talking of traveling and not a one week tour where one stays in a global hotel, eats global food and meets only other tourists). I really would do my best to inspire anyone to travel. So I’d love to answer any questions that would make traveling clearer for you (as long as it is not “what’s the meaning of life?”. That you have to find out for yourself.)


When I was in the university I met these two Brazilian travelers. They spent some weeks with us and we gave concerts together and made good friends. One of them, Marcus Borges Dias, gave as much time as it takes to tell me what traveling is all about, how they arrived in Portugal with a one year open ticket and traveled across North Africa doing all sorts of things. I don’t know if he knows that he became my guru but I received his guidance from the universe and I wish I have the occasions to return it.

May this blog be a means to giving a hand to other travelers.