Holiday Snaps: Wild Turkey Wattles

Beyond the norm

This is adventure for me, going off the beaten track and east of the boundary of the Central European time zone that has been the limit of my sojourns for a long time.

I am in what is in antiquity called Asia Minor, the part of Turkey that is geographically part of Asia but geopolitically aspires to be central to Europe.

The flight to Bodrum was fine apart from the severe turbulence as we left Amsterdam and the babies that cried for the problems with cabin pressure and inner ear issues; the disturbance was moderate as I whiled away my time with a number of Times Sudoku puzzles.

This country is mountainous to the extreme, much I did see from the plane especially for someone living in the Netherlands.

Another trip

I had arrived at the Ryanair equivalent of a local airport just 135 kilometres from my destination. We disembarked, got visas and baggage reclaim was within 15 minutes and then the second leg of the journey by bus to Marmaris on the Mediterranean coast and it appears it would be a journey of almost 3 hours with a 15-minute stop-o ver.

As darkness falls, I am in a country where my name is common but means something else, at least even in the Netherlands I have received letters seeking support for a mosque in Rotterdam, assumptions like that has made other expect to see a Japanese man and be utterly surprised – I like the chameleon nature of my name, a camouflage of identity that is useful and is bereft of the baggage that sometimes dogs its origins.

There is a good deal of time left of this journey and as bus jumbles and shudders on this macadamised trail and passes for a major road, I might well rock myself off to sleep, hoping I don’t suddenly grow wattles like a wild turkey due to the vibrations.

I forgot, I’m in Turkey.