OR, WHEN IT WARMS UP YOU FEEL THE SUMMER HEAT IN AEGEAN TURKEY IN THE MOUNTAINS.
It might be warm at the coast but it’s very fresh up here.
An abandoned house and garden in a largely abandoned village.
Walking up the mountain alone most days it was lovely for my friend Ege and his brother to come to visit. They were so enthusiastic and made me feel like I was seeing it all afresh. Instead of moaning about the effing Rottweiler, the bane of my life on the walking shortcut, I take most days, I could enjoy going up to the mosque and spring water fountain by car. Beyond there we walked and what a beautiful landscape unfolded before us.
Well, finally this old bird got to swim in Cleopatra’s pool!
The background is not foaming sea but the top bed of calcified spring water!
Going to Pamukkale from Tire requires a three-hour drive. I was drained and bone weary from the ghastly band and its thumping bass keeping me awake till two in the morning. The weather was shit and I was a reluctant passenger at the beginning. However once on the road, I was reinvigorated and regained my energy and adventure lust.
Climbing the side of the mountain you rub your feet raw trying to get to the peak
The countryside is spectacular. Valleys, mountains, lakes, rivers, deciduous woods, coniferous forests and the eternal olive groves are everywhere. I saw places of poverty as well as more affluent communities. The arrival vista at Hieropolis is, however, another thing even in the grey misty weather.
Cleopatras Pool. with column ruins below the thermal pool bubbles like champagne as it aids your health in many ways
It stretches over a mountain top, glistening white like a huge, white snowy blanket of an ancient giant, thrown casually down landing atop a mountain full of bubbling hot thermal springs. It has a secret bonus, the ruins of the major Greek ‘Holy City’, Hierapolis.
INLAND TURKEY IN SPRING, IN LIKE A LION AND OUT LIKE A LAMB.
Alert: Sorry for the big delay but my plans obviously changed after the ghastly events here with the earthquakes. On finally deciding to come I had a few other hiccups. My Turcel phone decided that it wasn’t working after me topping it up with a data package, well it worked but just for one day. It’s crazy we have spent literally hours on the phone trying to find out why they are insisting that I set up an account over three months ago the idiots! Also, yesterday, when I was writing this, Google decided something more had to be paid on my email so I had that drama too as I kinda need emails for tickets etc. Also, I was told my photo limit was full so I couldn’t store pics. I spent hours trying to resolve it all and had no luck. Other bits threw me off so I sulked a bit, drank beer and got nowhere. I’ll fix it on my return to London but as we know travel always throws a few curved balls to check your mettle!
Loving the fresh mountain air and bubbling streams of the spring water
Springtime in Turkiye is a beautiful thing, especially when you’re escaping a dreary down-in-the-mouth London. It’s full of little lambkins and alpine flowers, olive trees as far as you can see and the soft green fuzz of fresh grass. Water can be heard along the way gurgling in the mountain streams. The villages are stirring after the short but sharp winter and life starts new and fresh. This is the time most tourists don’t see and indeed it is a very different land from the parched land in the summertime.
Breakfast on my first morning
My usual preparations of cleaning and tidying my place in Soho left me clear-headed and ready to travel. I was heading for a village inland from Izmir, having managed to book a little chalet at an extensive lodge in the foot lands.
OR, LAKE BAIKAL WITH ITS -40 WIND CHILL IS REALLY NIPPY!
Alert: Just wanted to look back on my Trans Siberian Express adventure birdies. I can say it was a truly magnificent solo trip and very suitable for lone travellers. The beauty of seeing the huge terrain, art and culture keeps one busy and happy with no loneliness creeping in. Links of various places are available when underlined and in bold type.
Just because it’s cold and wintry we are all complaining, normally we would welcome this for the festive season but our heightened awareness of the rip-off bills that will ensue. Escape with me on trips when I thrilled at all bracing weather as I knew it would be toasty wherever I was staying.
Purple cheeks near frostbite!
I had left in February so knew it would be a winter viewing of the harshest time of the year but I loved every brutal minute. I know that Russia is being demonised at the moment but I was talking to a lovely lady the other day who was desperate to get on that magnificent choo-choo before she dies.
View of the frozen Lake Baikal at sunset.
So here I recall a previous reminder of those chilly trips until my next trip actual to Turkey in January. Enjoy the frostiness and the ride!
ARE YOU MAD REBECCA?!!!..COLD, COLD PLACES AND HOW TO PREPARE.
Siberian winter from train.
…NO I’M NOT. A LOT OF YOU WILL ONLY WANT AND FEEL SAFE TO TRAVEL MUCH LATER THIS YEAR AND YOU SHOULD PREPARE FOR YOUR….
Alert: This is from a page on my site with bits added. It’s to get you old girls prepped up for colder trips when the travelling will have become a lot laxer again hopefully. Until then get yourself ready and take note from this post the way to approach any cold trip. There are links all the way through to help a bit
My trusty boots that served me so well and didn’t cost a fortune
I come to you just the day before a bit of a milestone birthday, it’s sixty-five. Boom. Well not really. I always say I’m a year older so I’ve been that for the last year. I lie about my age in a different way, sort of back to front, a year older every year.
This is a very apt video I made for my blog at the very beginning.
In love with life, I don’t really care how old I am I just love living it and that involves learning and exploring day by day. Without this, as I’ve said before, I am a shell of a person and no longer able to function. I think that’s how most people are but they aren’t lucky enough to pursue walking on the wild side and this eventually leads to going to seed mentally and physically and ultimately dying from lack of input and loneliness.
OR SUNSTROKE HITS HARD AFTER OVER-ENJOYING BEING A MERMAID.
Up close and part of a magic kingdom
You had to be an old mad bird to end up with sunstroke from being too in love with a turtle.
Porcupine fish
I’m a dummy. That beautiful girl, my turtle, took me for such a ride that I hadn’t wet my head once in the half hour I was with her and returning to the boat. This was in the searing midday sun in Indonesia central! I would be more penitent later as the full horror of proper sunstroke waved over me. I should have known better I’d had it before, but this time it was horrendous. I was pretty much bed bound for the next couple of days before I left this island paradise.
“Animal telepathy is mind-to-mind communication. It is feeling across a distance. We are all made of energy and connected by a vast web of energetic pathways. To speak to an animal telepathically, you just tune in to the right energy channel,” says animal communication expert and author Mary J. Getten.
My love, my companion my spiritual awakening.
Falling in Love with ‘my’ Turtle.
Her normal distance from me for twenty minutes.
A fresh morning at my new pad and a day that would change my life. I had slept well and had a lovely early breakfast before being picked up for another look at this amazing underwater environment. While there I went on seven snorkelling trips and upon returning, was constantly waiting for the next one. I never got bored and I never stopped having that lurching feeling in my stomach just before jumping in off the boat each time. The butterflies continue until you adjust to the alien underwater seascape and you adjust all your senses and become truly immersed. It’s an odd feeling, and if you’re like me you will not raise your head again above the waterline unless your goggles malfunction or you want to check where you are in relation to your boat. So basically you are very fishy for the half hour or so that they give you at each spot. Sometimes it’s at shipwrecks, sometimes it’s the main coral reef, sometimes it’s a spot near an island where they don’t have to fret over you too much.
I had survived my lengthy trip from Jakarta with all its trials and tribulations and arrived in Bunaken and got back from my first fabulous official snorkelling tour and was a little singed and sandy but triumphant. I had stopped and had a cocktail at the beach and got back to my dwelling ready for a shower and dinner before hitting the sack. I was knackered. I’d had little sleep the night before and had swum about for miles with all the excitement of being in this amazing place. As soon as I got back the woman told me that food was ready and to sit down out on the large terrace, my food was ready.
OR, ESCAPING JAKARTA AND THE JOURNEY ON TO BUNAKEN, SNORKELLERS HEAVEN.
And finally paradise.
I rushed to leave Jakarta for my final destination of Bunaken. I was so happy to be on the road again (or should I say in the air) that I never even contemplated it being dark when I arrived at the bustling port of Manado in North Sulawesi. It was, and the hotel was scary, and the place was alarming, but I had got there and would spend the night before bartering for a boat ticket first thing the next morning.
Old Bird Travels Solo! 