Nepali Flat – Ups and Downs of a Trek in the Gurung Hills

The plane circles through the March haze, dropping lower and lower until you break through the smog haze of a Kathmandu afternoon to see the terraced hills, sprawl of breezeblock apartments and houses that carpet the convoluted valley.  A topography that resembles crinkled aluminium foil, It requires rather tight banking to eventually bring you down to land.  Then you pass through a calm and cheerful immigration process that carries you sweating, but accompanied by easy smiles, through to the muggy air and the taxi rank outside.  You’re now in Nepal and it only gets better as you continue. 

We had ten days to spend in the country.  Only a cruel tease, really.  Just enough time for a sneaky peak at a couple cities and a four day trek.  To that end, within a couple days we, myself and a colleague and a Nepali friend, were let off at the side of the main road west from Pokhara to start hiking up into the Gurung hills – home, strangely enough, to the Gurung hill tribes - that lead to the Annapurna range. 

The Gurungs’ origins are Mongolian.  About sixty nine percent of them are Tibetan Buddhist, following a mixture of that religion and Bön, a shamanistic Mongolian forerunner of Buddhism.   The rest are Hindu, with some converts to Christianity.  They live a largely pastoral and agricultural way of life, growing rice, wheat, maize, millet and potatoes on their terraced mountain slopes.  Apart from that they also make some living from sheep breeding for meat and wool.  However, some also rely on the salaries and pensions of family members serving in the army – the Gurkha Regiment being one branch they are represented in.  They speak their own language ‘Tamu Kwei’, which is considered a Tibeto-Burman dialect.

A guidebook I read before leaving was kind enough to point out that mountain views in March were often obscured by haze, but, as consolation, the rhododendrons were in full glory at that time of year.  To be honest, I’d come to look at mountains, not rhodendrons, but ended up seeing more of the latter.  Still, they are beautiful and they’re absolutely everywhere.  Apparently they’re quite edible.  We mostly stuck to noodles, dhal bhat and muesli bars from the Pokhara supermarket.

Of course the Gurung hills don’t permit cars or anything that doesn’t move on anything between two to four legs.  It’s a place that has missed the invention of the wheel. The trails are very well kept, often paved with slabs of shale or cobbles.  It’s not been done for tourists either – these paths are the highways that connect all villages to each other and allow the passing of goods.  All trails pass through the main ‘street’ of a village where cafes, souvenir sellers and cake shops vie for your trade.  Housewives sit weaving in the shade of their patios and greet you as you pass, or shyly avert their heads.  Aside from the hordes of foreign trekkers, there’s a constant traffic of porters carrying impossibly heavy burdens of building materials, tourist rucksacks or foodstuffs on their short, but sturdy frames.

Too often they are carrying up to three overloaded backpacks strapped together so that their owners – foreign trekkers, often in perfect physical health - can stroll up swinging only their cameras.   This makes it possible for tourists to carry huge shampoo and toiletry stocks, tonnes of unnecessary clothes and laptop computers.  A suggestion:  it’s simply not good enough to bring loads of un-needed crap then chuckle at your bad packing abilities while some poor porter sweats it up and down thousands of metres on your behalf for a pittance granted to him through the agency you booked your trek through, which wildly overcharged you, but shortchanged him.  If you’re too lazy, or simply not able, to carry it yourself, at least have the decency to make the porter’s lot a bit easier and carry a minimum of stuff – put yourself in his plastic shoes.  Just a thought.

‘Namaste’ means hello, roughly. It comes to your ears in many versions throughout the trekking day: the most often heard one is the breathless whisper from the overloaded and underpaid porter still sweating his way up one side as you stroll down the other; then there’s the tourist one between foreigners getting into the role; there’s the sing-song lilting one of children and ladies that starts on a high note and swoops down at the end, carried off on the loveliest of smiles you’ve ever seen…  It’s the sweetest greeting I’ve ever heard and it never gets old.

Moaning about having to walk uphill in Nepal is like going to Egypt and complaining that there’s too much sand.  But very soon you start to mumble under your breath when you’re told the next part of the trail is the oft-heard oxy-moron ‘Nepali flat’: in other words, ‘a little bit up, a little bit down’, as it says on the t-shirts.  Everything being relative, in Nepal almost nowhere is flat – apart from airport runways and lakes, but hearing it does raise hopes of about five minutes of gentle hills before the next sweat-wringer of a switchback uphill trudge.  I also heard distances mentioned as ‘Nepali 5 minutes’, which is anything but, erring on the side of excess in all cases.

We arrived in Tadopani as evening fell.  We found a guesthouse, run by smiling ethnic Tibetans from the autonomous northern region of Mustang, settled in and decided.  We were all well scrubbed by nightfall when dinner was ready.  We decided to forgo the ‘dinning hall’ (sic) and eat in the smoke-blackened kitchen where everything was prepared and local friends dropped by to drink and chat.  We were made comfortable at a big table and Dorje, our Nepalese friend, had arranged for one of the chickens that, an hour previously, had been enjoying life’s twilight moments in the courtyard to be added to the pot.  It was a lovely meal in the gloom of the poorly lit kitchen.  We complimented ourselves on our wonderful performance in getting there during the day while the Mustangi girls chatted and giggled as they cooked and cleaned.  Every hiking day should finish like that.

I live in a country where shepherd dogs are evil, big and violent, and love to attack hikers.  Imagine my delight upon discovering that most of the dogs in Nepal were peace-loving and lazy, more interested in sleeping in shade.  A few stroppy corgis did, in fact, try to intimidate me in the odd village, but then seemed to lose their nerve…or maybe it was simply the canine version of namaste…

My trip to the Gurung hills has made me look at pot noodles in a whole new way.  Our first lunch on the trail was one of those oft-copied–but–never-equalled concoctions of cheap packet noodles, local herbs and curry that was a religious experience.  It was magnificent.  Wherever you go, there always seems to be a sure supply of the stalwart brands - Mayo or the catchy-named Shakalaka-Boom instant noodles - and a dash of local flair for turning the mundane mulch into something epic. 

….and when it’s all over, you get some form of public transport to get you back to the, relatively swinging, lakeside city of Pokhara.  Next to its calm waters you can rest your weary parts and wander the tourist shops, buying ripoff North Face gear or carpets.  You could stay at the ‘Lubbly Jubbly Guesthouse’, but I would recommend the Celesty Inn, where we stayed and were treated very graciously.  There in the garden we ate breakfast and drank tea as lunatic tourists flew over in microlight aircraft, trying to catch a lazy, but risky, glimpse of the mountains to the north.  Life rarely gets better than this…

Enjoy the Silence: Why Words Can Only Do Harm

It strikes me that oral or written accounts of hiking trips – the descriptions of trails, flora, injuries, tiredness, the supposed adventurous hijinks that hikers get up to - could only be of possible interest to another hiker planning to cover the same route and wanting to know what they’re up against, or maybe not… 

I borrowed a guidebook to the Kaçkar mountains of northeast Turkey a month or two before setting out thinking, as you do, that I would get busy reading it and be well briefed on the lay of the land before actually getting there.  I was wrong, of course.  It sat on my shelf and collected dust before I finally wiped it off and gave it back before leaving for Turkey.  With the exception of the useful map it contained there was really no motivation for me to read it.   I did try, but couldn’t do it. 

Apart from a very general background to the place you’re headed, you really only need a decent map and all the gear to be ready.  There’s very little return to be had from reading beforehand that ‘when you come to the broken cairn, turn left at the white rock to behold a glorious vista of post deluvian scree slopes and moraine…ten minutes vigorous scramble up this will bring you to a boulder strewn amphitheatre…’.  Why spoil the surprise? 

Then, at any rate, you’re doing the hike and trying to keep a journal about the days’events.  It doesn’t work, does it?  You’re too busy gawping at the…jaw-droppingly beautiful and ever changing play of light as the sun sets, basking the pinnacle rocks and snowfields in an ethereal magenta glow that cannot be copied with any paint pallette known to man….to bother writing about it.  And forget about recording it for posterity later in your tent at night by the light of a headlamp, wrapped up in your sleeping bag.  It’s more interesting to listen to the wind buffet the flysheet, or just…well, go to sleep because you’re tired from that earlier vigorous scramble.

There’s a Turkish saying related to travel that I like which goes ‘Yediklerin içtiklerin sende kalsın – gördüklerini anlat’.  Good, isn’t it?  Ok, it says ‘Whatever you ate or drank on your travels is your own business – tell us what you saw’.  Indeed.  There’s nothing more unforgiveable than boring others with descriptions of food you had while away.  Suffice it to say that, generally, trail food is crap.

You’re reduced to eating serial soupy concoctions involving quick cook noodles, sausage, a potato sometimes, and some soup mix by Knorr.  Each evening you try to vary it, but it’s always more or less the same thing.  It’s the kind of muck you would never subject yourself to in normal circumstances.  It only makes sense at the time.  At the end of a long day’s hike it seems like the best thing you’ve ever eaten.  The reason is twofold: you’re extremely tired so even a sushi-ed rat would taste like ambrosia, and secondly you’re watching eagles and hawks reel above you in absolute silence and the freshest of air, which is proven to make otherwise normal people temporarily insane, enabling them to knock back the trail slop. 

So why do we put ourselves through this if it’s all so bad?  Because we do.  It’s sweaty, uncomfortable, at times dangerous, often tedious, tiring, rewarding and the best sport on the planet, that’s why.  And as everyone knows, the word ‘sport’ is actually an acronym for sweat, pain, odour, repetitiveness and tightened buttocks, so hiking ticks all the boxes, really. 

However, knowing all that should be enough for the hiker who wishes to create a verbal picture of what they experienced.  Better not to bother.  So you’re only left with what you saw. Of course the best way to express this is through pictures.  That’s why people create ‘photo essays’ – basically a euphemism for ‘admittal that if you can, in a photo, see what I saw, then you don’t need me to tell you about it’.

So, the previous paragraphs are a long winded way of introducing my own photo essay on the Kaçkar mountains, though, in my defense, not half as long as had I decided to write down the several thousand words that the pictures say better than I could.

For those who might have come across this in a Google search for ‘Kaçkar’ while trying to get background info for their own trip (I don’t delude myself into thinking that anyone ever knowingly chooses to read this blog), I’ll mention that the pictures represent two hikes.  One was from Olgunlar village to Dilberdüzü, and the other was from the former to Yukarı Kavron via the Çeymakçur/Naletleme Pass in July and August 2010.  If you’ve got this far, you’ll know that there are certain books on the area which you can buy, and (not) read, if you’re so (dis)inclined.  Anyway, this is what I saw.

On the State of Turkish Railways

In 1993, Christmas eve, I took a train from Ankara to Erzurum.  Or, rather, I would have, had it not hit a lorry at a level crossing in the city of Kayseri, breaking the train’s engine.  No one was hurt.  It had already taken twelve hours to cover the distance a bus could’ve done in six.  While a new engine was sent for, the snow was falling thick and heavy and I pictured even more delays, so I decided to spend Christmas eve in Kayseri instead and jumped train.  I gave up on Erzurum in the end.  Such was winter train travel then.

In October 2009 I took another train fro Ankara again, but on a similar route, intending to travel even farther, to Kars on the Armenian frontier.  This time I made it.  Indeed it was only three or four hours late in finally pulling into Kars’ desolate station.  The lack of snow could’ve had something to do with that happy result, but I also noticed Turkish State Railways have come along over the years.  The clapped out old rolling stock has been replaced and the new trains move a bit faster than they used to.  In fact they now have super high speed ones between Ankara and İstanbul that can cover the distance in an outrageously modern short time.  Not surprisingly, they’re called ‘The Fast Train’. 

However, apart from those turbo trains, some things haven’t changed much and travelling out to the as-yet-quite-wild east by rail still eats up more of your time than long distance buses.  They call the services ‘Express’, but that’s relative to jogging.  But if you can spare the time, it does have its benefits.

You can go for regular strolls down the length of the train to get some exercise and ward off deep vein thrombosis and other recently invented travel ailments that didn’t exist seventeen years ago.  You can stop off in the restaurant wagon for some dinner, which greatly amuses the staff as no one else seems to go there other than you.  As the train stops off at almost every small town and village along the way, there’s a constant change of passengers and they’re all happy to chat and share their packed lunches with you, which perhaps explains why the restaurant wagon staff are left with nothing to do but loll about text messaging their friends and reading yesterday’s paper.

The pictures accompanying this piece were taken on my recent trip, made all the more enjoyable by the ticket staff who set up camp in the front wagon of the train, where I was sitting.  They boiled tea on their little gas ring and pulled out their prepared picnics of tomatoes, cucumbers and stuffed peppers their wives had prepared for them.  They invited me to join and I contributed my own things and we fell into that easy Turkish chumminess that tends to make you think you’re always with family wherever you happen to be. 

Later, at prayer time, a few of the more devout ones twisted the rotating seats around askew, facing Mecca to the train’s right, and got up on them to perform their prayers.  Passengers who had questions about their tickets or journeys simply had to wait until the ritual had been performed, when the conductor could look right, then left, rub his hands over his face and once again make that abrupt transition from that world of the spirit, where all are equal before God, back into this one of first and second class.

So train travel in Turkey is still fun, just more comfortable and a little bit quicker than it used to be. In all the best senses some things haven’t really changed at all over the years.   The railways, like just about everything else in the country, is still that odd blend of old and new.  Anyway, here’s a little atmosphere piece from that anti-climactic trip to Erzurum in ‘93.  I’ve also thrown in a few shots from the recent trip to Kars.  Enjoy.

T’was six o’clock in the morning, the day before Christmas.  All the city were tucked snug in their beds, and I felt like the only creature stirring at this lonely hour.  Walking briskly along the dark deserted street to make it to the station with time to spare, and find escape from the biting cold of the Ankara winter.  Coal smoke from thousands of dying fires filled the thin air with its acrid smell.  In another hour or so hearths would have to be re-stoked as a new day began on the cold, sleeping steppe.  I envied these citizens their warm houses as I crunched through the grimy snow, the frozen air turning my breath to frost and numbing my face.

Soon enough I was walking up the icy steps and through the tall ornate doors of the station.  Here inside, at least, it was considerably warmer.  A few tired and dazed people wandered about, dispelling the notion that I was the only one awake.  A floor sweeper pushed a broom aimlessly around the hall.  A few would-be travellers wandered in and out carrying suitcases or ragged shoulder bags.   The only ones not moving were the ticket clerks, and a few forlorn travellers were camped by the ticket windows, asleep amongst their baggage.  A simit seller patiently arranged the round sesame covered bread rings on his tray, so I bought one and sat down on my rucksack to have breakfast.

The station had changed little in five or so years.  New computer-monitors told one of the comings and goings of the few daily trains where once had been a huge hand-painted sign.  Aside from these, the echoing Bauhaus style foyer was still gloom and smoke-tainted high ceilings. The news kiosk in the corner was still selling the same newspapers and comics it was years before.  The old man who ran it was busy in his old, blackened oak world unwrapping bales of the morning papers and slotting them together on the counter in front of him.    
  

Through the doors onto the platform could be heard the whistles of local commuter trains as they came and went.  After one’s departure, two soldiers came in marching a handcuffed prisoner between them and lazily swinging their Kalashnikovs at their sides.  Perhaps a captured militant of the PKK, or an activist of the far left, a deserter?  Whatever he was, he must have been important because the lieutenant carried a leather brief containing the details of this unfortunate.  In another day or two he would probably be pictured on the front of one of those newspapers in the kiosk.  They went into the heated waiting room and I followed them.  They sat down together in a corner and out came cigarettes.  The lieutenant lit one for the prisoner and put it in his mouth.  There they sat waiting for their train and chatting like old friends rather than captors and captive.

Around the room sat several dozing strata of Turkish society: some city intellectuals in thick spectacles and berets reading the country’s quality press or novels; middle class families in copies of European fashions, their children misbehaving and shattering the silence, and rural peasant families – men in flat caps and the women-folk in veils and baggy trousers.  They sat surrounded by boxes done up in string and plastic jugs of goats’ cheese or yoghurt – probably on their way to family in other obscure Anatolian villages, but stranded between trains in the capital.  The villagers stared up in unconcealed awe at the high ceiling and faded splendour around them. Their middle class compatriots watched them with a look of mixed amusement and pity, while the intellectuals paid neither of them the slightest notice.

Towards seven o’clock the ticket clerks began to stir and we shuffled into the great hall to buy our tickets onward.  I gave my destination to the surly man behind the glass, keys were tapped and a computer-printed ticket spat out of the machine: second-class to Sivas on the seven-thirty Vangölü Ekspresi.

The possession of a ticket sent most people out onto the cold platform, as if the train would duly arrive.  I stayed indoors until the train’s horn and coughing engine told me it was indeed here.  Back outside in the frozen air, the sky was beginning to turn steel-grey as the sun rose behind the brooding apartment blocks bordering the tracks.  Our train stopped at the platform in a great hiss of steam and squealing metal.

Heavily burdened families, both in material possessions and weighty humanity, jumped down, and equally encumbered new families pushed to get onto the near-empty train.  I walked along until I found my carriage and climbed up the icy steps into the old accordian coupling where snow had collected in corners and icicles hung from above.  After finding an empty compartment whose windows had not been frozen open, I threw my bag onto the rack above the seat and went back outside to wait for departure.

The platform was a scene of calm hysteria as family elders argued seating arrangements with conductors who ran to and fro, blowing whistles and wiping at the ice crystals hanging from their moustaches.  Most of the blackened train was covered in ice and frozen snow, having come through the night from Istanbul, and would be much more so when it finally arrived at its destination – the city of Van – eight hundred miles away to the east, a few days later.  After what seemed ages, all the passengers were tucked away somewhere on the train, the excess ice had been hammered away from the couplings and the ‘all aboard’ whistle blown.  I got back into my compartment.

The heater was now beginning to come to life and I scraped at the frost on the window until I could see out of it.  After a few false starts the old train heaved, sighed and began to lurch out of the station in spite of itself – its tired metalwork groaning in cold agony as it did so.  I dozed for a bit and came to again as we passed through the city suburbs.

Office workers, factory labourers and schoolchildren in their hundreds had now stirred and were crunching off through the snow to their daily recesses in the city, wrapped up and still shivering as they waited at level crossings or bus stops.  Rude homes of breezeblocks and cement let thin wisps of smoke into the air from metal chimneys.  Inside, at the other end of those smoking flues, no doubt, sat housewives and grandparents in big sweaters around the stoves having their morning tea and bread.

As we progressed through the hinterland of the city, the houses deteriorated in quality.  We were passing the shantytowns, or gecekondus, where the lower strata of labourers and Kurdish émigrés from the east built their humble dwellings on top of each other, clinging to snowy, barren hills around the city.  Along ‘streets’ of frozen mud, barrowmen pushed handcarts of roasted chestnuts or frostbitten vegetables as they do everyday.  The ones who had already found their street-corner pitches were busy lighting their gas burners, or setting bins of old wood and rubbish alight to keep warm.

So, for me it was the day before Christmas, but for them it was just another bleak day dawning as I slipped unnoticed through its back door – I on my way, and they on theirs.  I was warm in my compartment as we clunked along and the heater began to melt the frost on the window.  I had the compartment to myself so, feeling my eyelids dropping, I stretched out on the long seat and fell asleep to the rhythm of the swaying, creaking train, now at full speed and gently moving over the joins in the tracks.   

A Shore, and an Island, of Lost Souls Found

Yet more nostalgia.  In fact when this was written, sometime in the late nineties, it was an indulgence even then, cobbled together from notes taken during a cycling trip of some 300 kilometres along the west coast of Turkey in 1993.  It was a magic time.  Those who weren’t there then wouldn’t quite ‘get it’, but some of my readers who were might.  It was a very happy time – one I, we, had a feeling would never be equalled, or forgotten.

This one’s for many friends from that time, and still, namely: Ross, Şinasi, June, Tamer, Zeki, Hülya, Klaus, Feto and others.  Thanks for the memories.

            




“En güzel deniz henüz gidilmemiş olanıdır” 

     “The most beautiful sea is the one as yet undiscovered”

                                                     Nazim Hikmet (1901 – 1963)

The hill you sweated to climb up, and all the discomfort it caused you, is quickly forgotten when you reach its summit.  All the better when presented with a tantalising view of where it is you are headed, looking better than you ever expected...

Ayvalık is a wonderful place.  I want my ashes sprinkled atop one of its wooded hills when I die.  Let them gaze out over its red rooftops, islands and churches for the rest of eternity.

The town, like virtually all of them along Turkey’s Aegean coast, was once a Greek port.  Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, this Hellenistic past seems to have ceased only moments before you arrived.  The old stone townhouses still carry the date and builder’s initials in Greek letters on lintels above the front doors.  Cluttered corner shops seem as if they have never been re-decorated since the days of Dimitri or Stavros the shopkeepers.  Only the goods on sale have changed, but the ancient man dozing behind the counter might still remember either of them.  And when he’s not to be found – maybe away at prayers – an upended broom leaning against the open door serves as his ‘back in ten minutes’ sign.

Greeks lived here alongside Turks, happily engaged in fishing, commerce and smuggling up until 1923, after a bitter war with Greece ended in a tragic mass population exchange.  Greek-speaking Turks from Crete were re-settled here while the Ayvalık Greeks were sent back to Thrace or Athens.  So the story goes that before they left Ayvalık, they buried their gold and family heirlooms under the floorboards then got on the steamers that took them away to their new homes in a strange country.  Many thought the diaspora to be temporary – surely Greece and Turkey would make peace – hence the hidden gold.  The peace never came, and none of them ever returned.

This tragic tale was repeated everywhere along the coast until they were all gone.  Today only their architecture remains and, once in a while, a coach-load of Greek pilgrims, come to see the towns their ancestors had to leave behind.  Every time a sudden gust of wind stirs up without warning and as quickly subsides I fancy imagining their returned souls wandering past amongst the islands, hills and olive groves still, wishing, like me to spend eternity here, or maybe try and get at the gold.

It is still a beautiful, if somewhat melancholy, place.  Nestled in a small bay surrounded by pine forests and olive groves, it looks out upon a beautiful scattering of islands.  The biggest among them is Alibey, or Cunda as it is known by the locals, and more or less encloses the bay.  On Cunda and some of the smaller surrounding islands small abbeys and monasteries sit abandoned amidst wildflowers.  The scene at once fills you with joy for having found such a place and pity for those who had to leave it all behind.

The signs I’d seen since the outskirts of the town kept their promise of a fully equipped campsite though I had to pedal right over the island to get to it.  I was well-rewarded for my efforts.  Ada Camping is a little piece of Paradise hidden away in a small wooded cove.  From there it looks out on a few of the smaller uninhabited islands rising out of a crystal-clear sea and, ten or so kilometres beyond, the island of Lesvos.  When I arrived, the girl at the reception hut said, “Welcome, how long are you planning to stay?”

“I don’t know, a night probably.”

“Oh, that’s not enough, once you’ve settled in you’ll never want to leave.”

Next morning I was up to my neck in the sea, paddling about by the wooden pier when she called siren-like to me from it, standing hands on hips and looking vindicated:  “So, are you leaving today then?”

“Errr, no, I think I’ll stay a bit longer.”

“See, I told you!”

Shortly after dawn a couple days later I was up and paddling gave way to peddling back up the road that takes you to the town of Alibey itself.  In the harbour is an old coffee house known as ‘Taşkahve’, or the stone café.  What I believe used to be a big old dance hall – all fanlight windows, high ceiling and plaster cornices – is now a wonderfully derelict coffeehouse-cum-aviary.  High up in the cracked cornices and sagging ceiling braces are scores of swallows’ nests and the atmosphere is alive with their chirping and rush of wings as they fly in and out through the open windows and doors. 

When someone has left their table covered in crumbs from breakfast, the birds descend and peck it clean again.  The place is vast.  Amongst the forest of mismatched wooden tables and chairs sat a few old men staring into space through great clouds of cigarette smoke while their coffee went cold.

The great days of provincial fetes and ballroom evenings are long gone.  Now the old hall is a repository for old furniture, birds and tall stories over short coffees.  On the walls hung huge Victorian framed mirrors, the silvering wearing off the backs, which never again will reflect back happy dancing couples, or the stern looks of their anxious mothers and fathers sitting on hard chairs in the corners.  Where they once kept vigil over the moral well-being of their children now sit old washing machines and stacks of soft drink floats covered in tarpaulins.

Leaving my bike in the care of the owners, I left the café to wander around town before I left.  I decided to walk up to the top of the hill above town where sat a small ruined church.  At nine o’clock the narrow, winding streets were virtually deserted.  The wind raced down through them from the windward side of the island, stirring up mini cyclones and sending bits of paper flying.  The old townhouses, in varying states of decay, were mostly still shuttered up.  A horse and cart clattered down over the uneven cobblestones and stopped outside one of the houses.  The old driver called up to the window to tell those inside that he had a sheep to deliver.  This morning was Kurban Bayramı, the Feast of the Sacrifice, and any family that can afford to slaughters a sheep and gives the meat to the poor.  The doomed creature was taken in, legs bound, by the man of the house and a bundle of notes pressed into the old man’s hand.  He tilted his cap to all in the doorway, wished them a happy bayram then climbed back up onto his cart.

Coming up the hill past the houses, I started scrambling over rocks until they gave way to a grassy knoll.  It was covered in hundreds of bright red tulips, waving gently in the sea breeze.  The silence was total save for the wind, which made a mournful whispering sound as it passed through the crumbling stone walls of the little church at the top.  I stopped once to look back down on the town and the bay.  Beyond the tiled rooftops and the old cathedral the water basked in a silver glow.  A few sailboats floated lazily past the small island and its ruined abbey in the middle of the bay.  Looking back up to the church again, I beheld a strange sight.

Next to the ruin stood a brown, emaciated woman wearing a tatty old flowery dress.  She stood still, hands on her hips staring straight at, or through, me.  I stopped in my tracks to watch her as she wandered around the church.  She ran a bony old hand through her matted black hair, looking forlorn, as if she had lost something.  This lone spectre stared off into the distance wile the wind moaned through the walls of the gutted old church.  She seemed not of this world and I felt a slight shiver.

Then suddenly, I must have blinked, she was gone.  I jogged the rest of the way up to the ruin to see where she had disappeared to.  I looked all around, but she was nowhere to be seen.  I scanned everywhere and had finally given up when I caught another glimpse of her, apparently gliding down the other side of the hill.  In another instant she was gone again, for good.  Only the wailing of the wind remained.  But very soon after she had disappeared so to did the strange howling sound.

Later on, back in the old café, I fell into conversation with an old fisherman.  His name was Murat and had retired several years ago to, it seemed, take up permanent residence in the café.  He knew a lot about Ayvalık and could vaguely remember when the Greeks still lived there.  Somewhere in our conversation I mentioned the woman I had seen up on the hill and he looked at me and smiled strangely.  “Oh, so you’ve seen her too, have you?” he chuckled.  “She’s a famous old ghost here in Ayvalık.  You’re not the first one to spot her.”  I asked if there was a story attached to her.

“That woman, or ghost if you like, that you saw was a Greek girl – Maria Charalambos was her name.  She was the daughter of a quite well off merchant here by the name of Spyros.  I don’t know what it was he actually sold, but I do know part of his wealth came from smuggling alcohol in from Lesvos.  You couldn’t get it here in those days.

“Anyway, he had just the one girl, Maria, and she was a beauty so I’m told.  All the boys in the town were after her – Turks and Greeks alike.  Partly because her father guarded her jealously, none of them could ever get to her – he rarely even let her take the ferry over to Ayvalik to shop.  But the main reason was that she already had a beau and both were madly in love.  They must have both been in their late teens and wanted to marry.

“There was one big problem though – the boy was a Turk, by the name of Ahmet, I think…I can’t really remember.  Anyway, as you can imagine, a Christian girl and a Muslim boy getting married in those days was not an easy thing to do.  I mean it did happen quite a lot, but as I understand, both families were very much against the idea.

“So, some time passed and they had to find a way to meet in secret so they used to go up to that old church where they could be alone and so their romance carried on for some time, by all accounts.  The church was usually empty, except for Sunday mass, so they had the perfect hiding spot.

“One day they were seen together up there by a neighbour.  As you know, gossip spreads quickly in Turkey and it wasn’t long before Spyros found out.  He was furious.

“Not many people know the rest of the story very well, but it seems Maria’s father somehow contrived to make acquaintance with Ahmet.  Ahmet was poor and helped out his family by doing odd jobs for people in Moshonis – that’s what they used to call this town.  So Spyros offered him some pocket money if he would help his ‘fishermen’ go out and lay their nets at sea one night.  Ahmet jumped at the chance to make a good impression on Maria’s father and a few nights later off they went.

“The boat came back hours later without Ahmet.  What happened no one knows for certain.  The men on the boat said he fell overboard and drowned.  Most people believe he was murdered by one of the other men on Spyros’ orders.

“So, when Maria heard of her lover’s death, she was heartbroken as you can imagine.  She never got over it.  Some years later she just vanished and no one knows what became of her, though some say she went to Istanbul – what for I don’t know.  Some say she went to work in a brothel, some that she dove off a bridge and drowned herself.  She never did get over the loss of her beloved Ahmet.

“That was just before the Greeks left.  A few years later the Charalombos’ and all the rest were gone from here as well.  But, as you’ve seen for yourself, her ghost still wanders up there looking for Ahmet.  People don’t see her very often, but usually on a windy day, when it’s the Poyraz, some say you’ll hear a strange wailing sound up there.  They say it’s Maria crying for Ahmet.

“Myself, I don’t take it too seriously, but it’s a good story, don’t you think?”

Indeed it was, and one I thought of on the ferry crossing back to Ayvalık.  I mulled it over as I left there and set off down the coast road on my way back home.  In fact, I’ve thought about it on and off the past years and it still makes a good story.  Whether or not you choose to believe it is not important.  Perhaps Murat Bey made it up.  Maybe I did.  Whatever its provenance, it’s the kind of story you hear everywhere up and down the coast, and you can never be certain whether it is fact or fiction.  But then, a good tale is always better than a dull truth and it may tell you more about the facts than you think.

Whatever the truth is, it’s hard to escape the feeling that this coast is haunted day and night by the lost souls of times passed.  The ghosts of returned exiles and unrequited lovers, like Ahmet and Maria, and their stories, real or otherwise, are as much a part of the landscape as the olive groves and old towns they once roamed and, as such, they have never really left. 

 Muchlaterward

This past summer I had a chance to return to the area for the first time since this trip was made.  I saw Ayvalık and Cunda again in more or less the state I remembered them.  Some things are the same, some changed.  The Taşkahve is still there, though the birds have seemingly moved on elsewhere.  The stone church on the hill has been unsympathetically ‘restored’ and a museum complex and restaurant added to it.  Still, though, the streets remain spookily quiet and that haunting wind stirs up, then disappears again.  Ada Camping is still in business and the owners even remembered me after all these years. 

You might laugh, but I did look out for Maria around the church.  I didn’t see her.  I assumed she didn’t like the renovations.  However, I’m sure one day I will.  We might even become friends.  She was probably luring me up that hill, that day, to look at something.  Looking back now I like to fancy that trip in 1993 was me, with a little help from a ghost, casing the coastline that is to be my own haunting place one day, when all the hills I’ve sweated to climb up will quickly be forgotten and  the tantalizing view of where it is I’m finally headed looks better than ever expected.