{"id":68628,"date":"2013-03-24T20:04:17","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T18:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=68628"},"modified":"2023-04-06T13:47:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T10:47:24","slug":"turkey-exploring-the-ancient-meander-river-delta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/03\/24\/turkey-exploring-the-ancient-meander-river-delta\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: exploring the ancient Meander river delta"},"content":{"rendered":"
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During a month-long canoe trip down the length of Turkey’s Meander river, Jeremy Seal rests in a tiny town big on history and hospitality that becomes one of the highlights of his journey<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
\n
    \n
  • \n
    Jeremy Seal<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • The Guardian<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    \n
    \"Jeremy<\/p>\n
    Jeremy Seal on the last stretch of the Meander before it empties into the Aegean.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    \n

    I left the river where it nearly met the lake, and dragged my filthy and battered canoe across the single field that lay between them. For a month, I had been travelling the Meander river, as it was known in classical times \u2013 it’s now called the B\u00fcy\u00fck Menderes. I’d followed every last bend of it, from its source in the uplands of western\u00a0Turkey\u00a0to where it empties into the Aegean.<\/p>\n

    The expedition had paid off in history and hospitality \u2013 two of Turkey’s strengths. All along this fabled valley \u2013 scattered with ruins of King Xerxes, Alexander the Great, campaigning Byzantine emperors, Crusader kings and raiding Turkish sultans \u2013 locals who were kindly if bemused had unfailingly put me up, fed me and helped me on my way.<\/p>\n

    The problem was that the solo travelling had been as tough on me as on my canoe \u2013 what with the nights spent in welcoming but basic village houses, forestry huts and pumping stations, the original winding river had done me in.<\/p>\n

    On my approach to the coast, where the Meander delta meets the Aegean between the resort towns of Didim and Kusadas\u0131, I had begun to doubt that I could stay the course. A well-earned break was called for, which explains the short portage I was now making towards Bafa lake, a protected natural park, and to the haven of Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131, on its eastern edge.<\/p>\n

    Travellers unfamiliar with Turkey tend to the binary assumption that they must expect either concrete resort sprawls \u2013 think precisely of Didim or Kusadas\u0131 \u2013 or a mountainous interior associated with Islamic traditionalism and poor plumbing. The truth is that a gloriously rewarding course can often be steered between the two \u2013 and it leads straight to places like Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131.<\/p>\n

    \"Turkey<\/strong>I paddled down the pristine lake within its hem of hazed mountains, passing island heronries topped by the crumbling crenellations of fortified Byzantine monasteries, and ran my canoe ashore on Seychellois-white sands of powdered shell.<\/p>\n

    This glorious beach could have been a shoe-in for sun loungers and parasols, but it lay deserted except for a shawled villager who had been collecting the driftwood now stacked on the back of her donkey. I shoved my canoe in among the faded fishing ca\u00efques with their high prows and looked beyond the beach to where a magnificent set of city walls rises from olive groves around the ancient harbour city of Heraclea. Complete with parapets, posterns and ramparts, they date from the third century BC. I walked among ruined colonnades and temples, tottering arches and ashlar tiers, and scattered blocks of carved frieze to find myself among the makeshift stone cottages and tended kitchen gardens of the site’s present-day occupants.<\/p>\n

    Heraclea has been left to Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131’s farmers and fishing folk to picturesque effect. In most of Turkey’s ancient cities a museum service in thrall to the tidying tendency has cleared away rustic communities.<\/p>\n

    The place exists on its own terms, without boutiques, bars or interpretive centre, where subtler pleasures include clocking the casual ways in which ancient Heraclea’s stones have been customised by present-day Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131 \u2013 as garden tables and as tether posts for donkeys. Or even as a boot jack: I watched an arthritic elderly man ease off a worn leather heel against a column drum at his front door, finding a functional use for the stone’s fluted corner which its ancient carver probably never anticipated.<\/p>\n

    By the agora, the main square of the village from ancient times to now, and the site of the football pitch, is the\u00a0Agora Pansiyon. As with the village’s other pansiyons, this family-run guesthouse has for years been attracting refugees from the busy resorts \u2013 history buffs, birders, botanists and hikers.<\/p>\n

    \"Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131 village, on Bafa lake. Photograph: AlamyIn its shaded grounds, I found a hammock-slung terrace and a cushion-strewn\u00a0k\u00f6sk<\/em>, a traditional raised lounging platform. The timbered interiors were hung with binoculars and stacked with books about the region. My immaculately clean room was light, spacious and television-free. This cultured country lodge also boasted an excellent and generous kitchen, as I discovered over a dinner of salted eel, lentil soup, lake-caught bass, and a potato and dill salad soused in the family’s own olive oil.<\/p>\n

    Orhan Ser\u00e7in, owner of the pansiyon, and a former mayor of Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131, advised me that my first priority must be the mountain, the myth-haunted Latmos (Besparmak to the Turks), which rises directly behind the village.<\/p>\n

    “It’s why most visitors come,” he said. “The landscapes are like nowhere else, and the history is extraordinary \u2013 prehistoric, classical and medieval all at once, with plenty of myth for good measure.”<\/p>\n

    I saw what he meant the following morning when Mithat, his son, guided me up through orchid meadows and olive groves, past gates fashioned from old sticks, to house-high boulders, which the elements had hollowed out over the ages.<\/p>\n

    Within these surreal caverns Mithat showed me ochre and red cave paintings said to be some 8,000 years old. At the ruined monastery of Yediler we picnicked on cheese, olives and enormous tomatoes, close to a hermit’s cave, its walls frescoed with a vivid crucifixion scene.<\/p>\n

    We completed this outstanding hike by descending to the lake-side temple dedicated to Endymion, the mythical shepherd whom the moon goddess serially seduced on the heights of this holy mountain.<\/p>\n

    One afternoon I returned to the lake and paid a fisherman to ferry me to the deserted beach at Ikizada, where I swam in the lightly brackish waters (the lake was a gulf in the Aegean until the sea passage silted up) and dozed in the shade of oleanders before pottering among the Byzantine ruins on the headland.<\/p>\n

    \"ByzantineByzantine ruins in Bafa lake. Photograph: AlamyAnother day I found my way up the verbena-scented\u00a0kral yolu<\/em>\u00a0or royal way, a mountain road as old at least as the city walls and paved with super-sized cobbles, an extraordinary engineering feat. The road had once carried the armies of Alexander’s generals, and the villagers now use it for bringing in the olive harvest. It was a particular pleasure to wander the lanes of the village where farmsteads and smallholdings abutted the old walls and cattle grazed the tumbled tiers of the overgrown theatre.<\/p>\n

    In the afternoons I dozed in the hammock to the clack of the rummy players from the village tea house. I fell asleep each night to lowing and barking, and woke to the call of the village muezzin, and amid the history and the hospitality, I stayed until I had recovered to the point of facing my canoe again.<\/p>\n

    On my final morning Ozgun, Orhan’s wife, served an epic home-produced breakfast of bread, yoghurt, eggs and a bewildering variety of jams. Heavily ballasted, I returned to the river and continued downstream to another historic highlight \u2013 the ancient port of Miletus, once the greatest city in the Greek world \u2013 and from there to my journey’s end at the Aegean. After my stay at Kap\u0131k\u0131r\u0131, one of the most evocative spots in Turkey, I was ready for the final leg of my long meandering.<\/p>\n

    \u2022\u00a0Meander; East to West Along a Turkish River, by Jeremy Seal (Chatto, \u00a316.99). To buy a copy for \u00a313.59 with free UK p&p go to<\/em>guardianbookshop.co.uk<\/em>. Jeremy will be talking about his trip at theKings Place Travel Festival\u00a0on 23 June. Other speakers during the two-day festival, including Michael Palin, Sara Wheeler, Barbara Nadel and chef Atul Kochhar, will explore the world from England’s bramble-lined pathways to the vast, empty expanse of Antarctica through food, music, crime-writing and their own journeys<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Way to go<\/h2>\n

    Getting there<\/strong>
    \nEasyJet (easyjet.co.uk) flies to Bodrum from various UK airports. Pegasus Airlines (flypgs.com) flies to Bodrum from Gatwick and Stansted<\/p>\n

    Where to stay<\/strong>
    \nAgora Pansiyon (+90 252 543 5445,\u00a0agorapansiyon.com) has doubles from \u20ac100 per night, half board.\u00a0Kaya Pansiyon and Restaurant\u00a0(+90 252 543 5380,\u00a0bafalake.net) has doubles from around \u00a329 a night half-board<\/p>\n

    \"Jeremy<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/travel\/2013\/mar\/22\/turkey-canoeing-meander-river-buyuk-menderes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    During a month-long canoe trip down the length of Turkey’s Meander river, Jeremy Seal rests in a tiny town big on history and hospitality that becomes one of the highlights of his journey Jeremy Seal The Guardian Jeremy Seal on the last stretch of the Meander before it empties into the Aegean. I left the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":782220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1094],"tags":[140,1200],"class_list":["post-68628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tourism","tag-bodrum","tag-turkeys-mediterranean-and-aegean-coasts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}