Day One
Early next morning, the tout picked me up in a taxi at my hotel in Paharganj. For an astoundingly low price, he had arranged for me a plane ticket from Delhi to the city of Srinagar, which sits in the north of the Indian territory of Kashmir. He told me all about it in the taxi.

“It’s so beautiful, my home. The lake, so beautiful. When I go home, I go fishing, I bring my children. You will love it. Kashmir is best place in India. Kashmiri people so good, so much love. That’s all I want in life, to live there with my family.”

His bubbling about Kashmir went on for quite some time, and though it grew repetitive, his eagerness to please calmed me, as in these early hours of the morning the fears and doubts of last night had not faded, and continued to churn. I still couldn’t understand how I’d been brought to say Yes to this, and there would be no relaxing until I was sure they weren’t leading me, the hapless tourist, like a lamb to the slaughter.

We pulled up to the departure gate. The tout gave me a big hug, and reminded me that his family expected me and was lovely and that Kashmir was lovely and that I should call him if there were any problems. He seemed about to cry. I said goodbye and tried visibly to stoke some enthusiasm about what was coming my way.

The Delhi domestic airport was predictably chaotic. I boarded the Air Deccan plane after a convoluted luggage check-in, and sat next to a young Muslim woman in near-total burqa (she had lowered the veil for the flight). We chatted, and while we chatted there was a commotion under the plane, noises and shouting, and twenty minutes later there was an announcement that they were unloading all the luggage onto the tarmac and that every passenger would have to go outside, identify his luggage, and put it back on the plane himself. A reminder that I was not going to Orlando, Halifax, or Frankfurt, but the heart of Kashmir, and in that area of the world some people have been known to blow things up from time to time.

The woman turned out to be a Ph.D in Genetics, and was heading home to Srinigar to visit her daughter “for the first time”. Meaning that, immediately after giving birth her daughter was taken from her and put in the care of her (the woman’s) mother for a period of one year, while the woman took the first flight back to Delhi to continue working, without seeing the kid once. Maternity leave is apparently for wimps.

At the Srinagar airport, a man named Bashir was waiting for me. This was the tout’s father. He looked just like the tout except with grey hair, a penetrating gaze, and the effortlessly cunning smile of a Cheshire Cat. We got in a taxi and left, barely exchanging a word.

My first impression of Srinagar was that it looked like any other place, except with hundreds of armed Indian Army personnel, razor wire, sandbagged sentry huts, and checkpoints. There was a man holding a semi-automatic weapon on every street corner. I did not see tanks rolling down the boulevard, but it would be no surprise to see tanks rolling down the boulevard.

The funny part was that all the military stuff—people, vehicles, even buildings—was needlessly decked out in camouflage, as if some gun-toting Indian walking the streets of downtown Srinagar was going to hide by blending in with the shrubbery somehow. Or that a two-storey watchtower covered in razor wire would hide itself behind the bazaars and houseboats to throw the militants off the scent. But I do not question the affairs of military personnel, at least not to their faces.

Bashir brought me on a short “shikara” (boat taxi) ride to his houseboat on Dal Lake. The place was lovely. The boat itself was docked next to a small house on the shore, crawling with children, some belonging to the family and some visiting from the neighbourhood. Three ladies sat on the floor and waved to me from a knee-high window. Bashir showed me my room, with its sumptuous king-size bed, bathroom w/ hot water, etc. They made me some delicious tea which was called Kashmiri tea, and I spent the day lolling about on the roof, hanging out with the kids, and relaxing. It was suprisingly perfect.

With every passing minute my doubts drifted into the recesses of my mind, a faint and distant echo, only their memory remaining.

Day Two
The night was cold, and I buried myself in blankets to keep warm. After rousing myself awake, I took a breakfast of a kind of English muffin thing that they called Kashmiri bread, an omelette of some kind, and more Kashmiri tea. Bashir made it known that if I wanted any kind of food or drink at any time, he would tell the three ladies to make it for me. As far as I could tell, the three ladies never left the kitchen, and whenever I looked over to their little window they gave me a wave and a smile.

Bashir took me on a little walking tour of the city. Srinagar is a Muslim town, so there is not much to see besides mosques and assorted Islamica. The place seemed like a Middle Eastern city, the kind you see on the news, with all the dirt roads, men in white robes and kufis, political slogans, crumbling minarets, etc. On the walls were badly-Photoshopped posters depicting Kashmiri martyrs. But the mosques were spectacular. They had a somber simplicity, a starkness that imposed far more than ornamentation could. Some also had spectacularly gaudy paint jobs, and others, very amusing signage.

What impressed me most was the prayer. Muslim prayer in Srinagar seems to be a kind of free-form affair, where as long as you are bestowing the proper degree of adulation upon the shrine at which you are praying, it’s all good. In the first mosque I saw terrified old ladies backing out the front door on their knees, lips quivering, kissing every post and banister-knob. In the second, shawl-clad men sitting cross-legged on the bare floor and giving a kind of low-pitched, ululating prayer in perfect unison. In the third, a man sitting facing the wall, crying, chanting, and rocking back and forth. They seemed to be experiencing such a deep feeling upon stepping inside the mosque, a kind of rapturous dementia, all the body’s energy employed in the task of worship and adulation. I found it puzzling and sad, but also beautiful, beyond reason, as if electricity were being channeled straight into their souls.

That night, Bashir and I shared a bottle of whiskey, and watched a Bollywood action movie with truly awful fight scenes.

Day Three
It’s hard to fill the day on the houseboat. The chief problem is that I’m in the middle of the lake, so I can’t head out into town without either Bashir or the oldest son, Raja, taking me there on a shikara. And if they take me somewhere they want to come along. My prefered method of exploring a new place is by aimless wandering (hence this blog’s title) and not by visiting a set of carefully curated map-points. But I don’t know what I’ll do today. Maybe Bashir has something planned.

At breakfast, I saw my first “tout shikara”: a guy paddled up to the boat and tried to sell me cigarettes, mineral water, and “Kashmiri apple juice”. Bashir smiled.

After breakfast Bashir sits me down in the living room and pulls out a few photo albums. Take a look, he says. Here are the trekking spots in the area. You can go mountain climbing here, or parasailing, anything you want. I’m going to sign you up for one of these, he says. You figure out which one you want and I’ll sign you up.

His demeanour seemed different, more serious and imposing. Instead of laughing and smiling he spoke in monotone, with an unnerving confidence. I felt the familiar tingle of doubt.

So, he wants to sell me a trek. First of all, how much? This is India, and in India if you want to buy something, anything, you first ask how much it costs. And then you close off all possible avenues the salesmen might take—hidden charges, commission, the ubiquitous baksheesh (tip or bribe)—for raising that cost without your consent. Then, and only then, do you say Yes.

Bashir informed me, with his Cheshire-grin, that the cost of a four-day trek in the nearby mountains was 35,000 rupees. Something like 180 dollars a day. For walking. This was beyond absurd; it was criminal. I could probably live in India for a whole month on 180 dollars, with a bed and a hot shower and everything.

So, thanks but no thanks.

He offered me a few more packages. How about this two-day trek for 18,000 rupees? Or this four-hour boat trip for 4,000? Ridiculous prices. He said, you think about it, I’ll ask you later. But there was no thinking needed; it was a ripoff, plain and simple.

I spent the afternoon watching Indian television, which is something of a marvel. I especially love the commercials, which are far more clever, daring, and unabashedly Indian than they have any right to be. One commercial depicts a scenario where the ancient Hindu-Muslim conflicts of India come to a peaceful end by the Maharaja’s announcement that everyone gets their very own mobile phone number. Nearly every commercial stars Shah Rukh Khan, and there is often a cricket theme. India’s love for cricket goes a little too far sometimes: in one commercial, a blue cricket ball lands in the center of a maxi-pad and dissolves into liquid, to demonstrate its absorbency. Another, a hostage-taking scenario on grainy surveillance video where if the assailant doesn’t get a 24-hour cricket network with up-to-the-minute scores, statistics, and highlights, somebody’s gonna get it.

But I could not concentrate. Since that meeting with Bashir, the attitude on the boat had changed. Every time he walked past, he shot me a smile that said “I’m gonna get you.” My doubts were back in full churn, and avoided the subject of trekking whenever he brought it up, saying that I needed more time to think about it.

“As you like,” he said.

Day Four
The main industry, maybe the only industry, in Srinagar is tourism. Since the outbreak of separatist violence towards the Indian Army in the 1990s, the tourist industry has dried up totally. On Dal Lake sit as many as 1,600 houseboats—each with catchy names, some clever, some derivative (such as “The Taj Mahal”, and next door “The New Taj Mahal”)—and most of them are devoid of visitors. The lucky few that snag a tourist for a week or so are, thus, hoping to get as much out of them as possible. Likewise, the Kashmiri handicraft, carpet, textile, and saffron industries rely heavily on tourism, and their presence on the waters of Dal Lake is like that of an invasive species, crawling into every empty space. The houseboat owners and merchants often work together to expose tourists to as much product as possible.

At breakfast a guy wandered onto the houseboat and told me he’d bring his shawls and rugs over tonight for me to take a look. I looked at Bashir. He nodded to the man.

“Yes, he would like very much,” he said.

It took me a couple of days on the houseboat to realize it was getting lonely. I was the only tourist. Every single day Bashir would say they had other tourists on their way from Delhi. “We have a South African guy, really wants to do some trekking. He should be here tomorrow.”

And then under his breath: “Or the day after…”

I knew this to be a complete fiction. There was no South African, or Dutch, or American on his way. He was hoping to get me excited for trekking, so excited that I’d gladly fork over enough cash to feed his family for the next three months.

Today Bashir wanted to take me on a little tour of the lake. Sure, I said. He made a show of calling a shikara over to our boat, and we got in. We made the short trip over to one of the islands, and as we paddled along, more tout-shikaras came up next to ours, selling shawls and saffron and cigarettes.

Kashmir was really starting to piss me off.

He took me to a couple of nice spots on the lake, and to the Mughal Gardens, and then he produced a picnic basket with our lunch inside. This boat tour was a professional affair, a little too organized to be Bashir’s whim. It then occurred to me that the tour was none other than the 4,000-rupee ripoff that he had suggested to me the other day. But there was no price mentioned, not even any talk of paying for anything. Oh, I’ll just take you on a little boat trip, he says! Fancy that! Was he going to say tomorrow that he’d just take me for a little walk in the woods, lasting about four days?

I was very angry. Sure, I said yes to it, but he wasn’t exactly upfront. I kept quiet, for if I started to get quarrelsome, things could take a turn. This was Kashmir. My position on their houseboat was that of a hostage, and these people depended on me utterly for their livelihood. I’ve heard of much worse things happening to houseboat guests than the loss of a few hundred bucks.

Since that lunch my mood towards Bashir changed completely: I was now taking a stance of complete and total resistance to his advances. I would say yes to nothing. If need be, I would sit in my room for the next two days, and then leave, and if I had to sneak out of this houseboat at four in the morning, or swim to the shore, then let’s have it.

Later, we sat down for dinner. After the first few days the family started inviting me into the house for meals, and I sat on the floor with them. The Indians eat with their hands, and even pass food to each other with their hands. Someone says pass the rice, the other makes a rice-ball with his fingers and then hands it to him. Thankfully they let me have a spoon, and I imagined bitterly that they’d charge me a per-spoonful usage fee. The grownups spoke in Urdu amongst themselves, while the children watched the tourist eat.

Despite all the extortion, I grew fond of Bashir’s family. The three ladies never left the floor of the kitchen except when they to do other menial chores, like scrubbing the floorboards of the deck, or hanging laundry. The men sat nearby, watching them toil, not deigning to lift a finger in assistance. I felt bad for these ladies, but the smiles never left their faces.

(I later discovered that in the room behind the kitchen sat a nargile, a tall water pipe, and the ladies would lean out the door every so often and take a haul. No wonder they were so happy.)

That night, Bashir and I shared some more whiskey. He asked me to play rummy, a game I’d never played. So he taught me, we played a few games, and then Bashir insisted we play for money. No, just for fun, I said. A few more games. OK, now for money? I knew where this was heading, so I said, sure, but we’ll play for only a few rupees a game. That didn’t satisfy him, but too bad, I said. Predictably, all of a sudden he became this amazing rummy player. He won nine games out of ten, and then got all offended that I stopped playing.

His policy towards me was that of cash maximization. If he could find a way to get a few rupees here, a few there, he would. That night he asked me, good and drunk, once and for all, which trek did I want? And I told him, I don’t want any trek. Not for 35,000 rupees, not for 15,000, not for 10,000. Nothing.

I expected him to fly off the handle at this, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and said:

“As you like. But now you have to pay for the whiskey from the other night.”

Day Five
I paid for five days up-front back in Delhi, and today was my last day. Now Bashir was trying desperately to get me to stay the weekend. Ramazan, the Muslim month-long fast, was ending, and they called the weekend of ensuing festivities “Christmas”. Yes, Christmas.

That day, the Kashmiri sales squad was out in full force. Did you want some Kashmiri shawls today, sir? Please just look? How about some Kashmiri saffron? Would I like some more Kashmiri honey with my Kashmiri bread? Everything in this place is “Kashmiri”, as if they think half the world was invented here. They are like little programmed Kashmiri robots. Perhaps this is the fate of a tormented people, used by larger forces as a pawn in ways beyond its control or comprehension, seeking nothing but a simple and tranquil independence—but all I cared about on this day was my independence from Kashmir.

I passed the day in silence, keeping away from everybody. The oldest child knocked on my door wanting a wrestling match. I indulged him for a while by bodyslamming him on the bed a few times, but then kicked him out and shut the door. I packed my things and prepared for the quickest getaway possible.

Bashir brought over his account book and asked me to fill out the comments, watching over my shoulder as I wrote (so I would not leave negative comments, I suppose). He tried to sell me some more things. I said no, no, no. He was starting to give up on me. But not before finding one more way to get money out of me.

“I can’t wait for my baksheesh,” he said excitedly. Ahh, there’s that word again, baksheesh. He was demanding a tip from me outright? I couldn’t believe it. Then again, this is India. Without thinking, I shot back:

“Get ready for your five rupee baksheesh.”

He smiled in a way that said, you’d better not even think about not giving me good baksheesh. But he only said:

“As you like.”

Epilogue
The next morning, I had breakfast with the family. I sat on the floor against the wall of the kitchen, with the entire family—children and grownups alike—sitting around me in a semi-circle, watching me eat. When I finished my Kashmiri bread with Kashmiri honey and Kashmiri tea, I stood up, and in that moment, in a way most fitting to end this week of endless badgering, trickery, and deception, everyone in the family smiled, held out their hand and demanded some baksheesh.

By day three in Delhi, fatigue was setting in. My world was split in two: into the relative tranquility of my hotel room and attached café, and the steaming, stifling mess of city around me. In here, I could read, watch TV, or just sit for a while. Out there I had to avoid getting clipped by passing auto-rickshaws, bitten by dogs, pawed at by cripples, and blinded by the heat and pollution. To go sightseeing, or walking, or exploring the city involved being out there, and not a single fibre in my body wanted to go out there. I needed to get out of Delhi.

I took a mercifully brief walk to the New Delhi train station to pick up a ticket to Amritsar, departing for 6 AM the next morning. The touts were in full sprout that day, with the singsong refrain of “hello my friend!” ringing in my ears repeatedly, almost rhythmically, as I walked.

India’s touts are legendary in the backpacker world, owing to the utter lack of timidity by the Indians to do or say anything for a few rupees, no matter how absurd, shameless, or sad. You might feel it a cruel fate, but you’d have to be made of stone not to laugh; desperate as these Indians may be, it would be barbaric to let actual human concern interfere with plain amusement. Everyone on the India backpacker circuit has stories: warnings of riots or fire near your hotel (so he can take you to another one), offers of taxi rides in a car with only three wheels (parked strategically to obscure this fact) or no brakes (a fact discovered only when the driver enters a parking lot and circles to a halt), and so on. As I approached the station, a tout approached me, and as we both stared at the thousands of people there—people at every information counter, platform, and ticket booth, and even sleeping on the floor—he told me that the train station was closed and that I’d better go with him. I thanked him for the laugh.

On the way back, one tout said hello and for some reason I decided to say hello back. The Main Bazaar is a confusing place, and I was looking for a shop that would sell me a plug adapter for India, and thought to ask this fellow. There was nothing unusual about this tout. He was a beefy guy with short hair, without moustache (in India this is rare enough to help distinguish people). He led me to a shop, without talking, and I bought an adapter from a guy for 30 rupees, and then I went back to my hotel, which happened to be next to his shop. Would I like to come in for a chai (tea)?

I said yes. I felt confident enough in my tout-repelling abilities to amuse myself for a little while by hanging out with a local. If he wants to sell me something, I’ll just say no and that will be that. After all, tomorrow morning I was off to Amritsar.

It turns out he’s from Kashmir. This fact put me on guard immediately, because the Main Bazaar is full of people selling vacation packages in Kashmir. While I have a great desire to visit Kashmir—in fact, my trip to Amritsar is the first step on my journey up to the north which will end in that same Kashmir, or at least, I think so—I didn’t want to buy an arranged tour package of any kind. I’m a low-budget traveller who can make his own fun, thank you.

He insisted on showing me pictures of his home and his family in Kashmir, and I thumbed through his albums uninterestedly. “Very nice,” I say. “Looks good. Nice lake.” He puts the albums away for a while and we talk about other things. His shop was a small crafts shop, selling necklaces and shawls and pipes for all that Kashmiri hashish, but he wasn’t selling me anything. I kept looking at the door.

His nephew was there too, and we played a game of chess (I won). The chai was good and sweet. Nothing much happened. They seemed like very decent people, fully aware that there’s no reason for a tourist like me to trust some guy chatting him up on the street, but I haven’t got much to say to them, having only been in India three days, and not really enjoying Delhi much. Out of the blue, the tout says: “Come to my house for dinner tonight!”

And off goes every bell in my head, every flashing sign that says “GET AWAY”, every siren and whirring red light. I did not fear for my safety, but more for the inevitable post-dinner conversation where he would sit me down in front of a series of informational brochures about trekking trips in Kashmir and parasailing expeditions in the Himalayas, with a contract and a thick black pen with which I’m supposed to sign away my dignity.

I said no thanks. And he said, no problem, I understand.

“Forget about business. Fuck money. Money ruins everything,” he said. It sure does, buddy.

But hey, wouldn’t you like to do some sightseeing in Delhi today? It’s your last day here after all. Earlier in our conversation I may have proffered the fact (can’t remember) that I would indeed like to see some things in Delhi, like the Lotus Temple, and some other stuff. He suggested that the nephew take me to some of these spots, since he knows Delhi and will get a “local” rate on auto-rickshaws (true). Sure, I said. That would be fine.

The first rickshaw ride was very long, maybe even one hour, and cost 80 rupees (2 dollars). It was to the Lotus Temple, the principal shrine of the Bahai faith, which I had never heard of. It was lovely, and the nephew was a very agreeable fellow, and we got along very well. His uncle is just selling stuff, he said, but he’s a good dude. And I agreed, he was a good dude, I just didn’t want to buy what he was selling.

After the Lotus Temple, he took me to a fascinating Muslim shrine somewhere in the heart of Delhi, in a neighbourhood that looked nothing like the Delhi I knew. It had the noise and the dirt and the beggars, yes, but this was a Muslim part of town, and it looked like a different country altogether. We wandered into a sea of white robes, into the depths of this strange tomb full of quivering, prostrating, crying Muslims. Bony children sat in front of their Ramazan meals, unable to eat them until dusk.

A tout followed us around for a while and then asked for 120 rupees for being our “tour guide”, and I told him to go piss up a rope.

My guide insisted on bringing me to the nearby mosque for the upcoming prayer. We left our shoes in an enormous heap, walked underground, washed our feet in a square pool, and then joined the prayer line in a bare, carpeted room. He didn’t tell me how to pray in a mosque, but I knew how it worked from my time in Turkey. Mostly I just copied what he did, and afterward, he said I was doing it all wrong.

We went back to the shop. I was so delighted by what I had seen that afternoon, and was so trusting of the tout’s nephew that I decided, okay, I’ll have dinner with you guys tonight.

Their apartment was nothing more than a single room with no furniture except a TV and fridge. They shared a kitchen and bathroom with the adjoining units of their apartment building, and one other small guest room with a Muslim shrine taking up half the space of the room. Their entire living space was smaller than my parents’ kitchen, and my parents’ kitchen ain’t big. But they had cable.

The nephew prepared a lovely, Kashmiri-style chicken curry and rice. We sat on the floor and watched cricket and ate: the tout, his nephew, his nephew’s friend, and me. They gave me a half-frozen Kingfisher and I shared it with them. Mostly, they talked amongst themselves in Urdu the whole time.

After we put the plates away, the tout said, okay, now we talk business.

He knew I was a tough customer, so he wanted only to book me on his houseboat, bobbing blissfully on lovely Lake Dal in Srinigar. It’s like a luxury hotel, he said. Showed me pictures. Yes, it was lovely. He gave me all his contact info and also that of his nephew, and they were legit. There was no obligation to do any mountain treks, any arranged tourist crap. Just go and hang out for a couple days, and then leave if you don’t like it, no questions asked.

Lonely Planet says: “Under no circumstances should you book a houseboat outside of Kashmir.” They had a point. After all, what way was there to verify what I was buying? What if his “houseboat” was a lean-to made of particle board and had a cut-out hole in the floor for a toilet? He showed me pictures but you know how pictures go; everyone always shows you their best one.

I was hesitant, but at the same time, I liked these people. Not just because they offered me food and sightseeing. They were genuine and decent. We got along splendidly. I just didn’t want to buy anything from them.

My defense was to pepper him with question after question. Tough ones. And he answered them well, very well indeed. He understood my reservations, but had a good and convincing answer for each of them. Not some half-assed Indian answer. This taxi didn’t have three wheels and no brakes. And after I’d exhausted every ounce of my ammunition, I waved the white flag and said, okay, I’ll stay for a couple days on your houseboat. I can’t say why. I had grown to trust this guy and his family, and had actual feelings for them, and in the glow of the moment I insisted on going along with the feeling, letting events play out as they may, so that my faith in humanity could be either confirmed or shattered to bits. So I said Yes.

But one last question… what am I supposed to do with my ticket to Amritsar? His reply: I’ll give you a refund for that ticket myself, and handed me the money right there. And that made me feel much better.

And the next day I was off to Kashmir.

There is no possible description of Delhi that does not use or imply the word “hole”. Whether prefixed by “hell-” or some other fragment, no other term could truthfully describe Delhi except as a pit, indentation, or aperture filled with some noxious substance.

Within minutes of leaving the dumpy Indira Gandhi airport in a taxi cab, clouds of smog and dust enveloped me. My eyes burned and I could feel something bad happening inside my nose. It was after midnight and my hotel manager was nice enough to pick me up from the airport, for what seemed like the modest price of 500 rupees (12 bucks or so – a ripoff, actually). Our car cut through the plumes of dust, weaving between motorbikes, bicycles, rickshaws (motorized and pedal-driven), horse-drawn carriages, and of course, cows. We passed slums, crowds huddling around enormous bonfires in the middle of the street, one-legged men begging at our window while we stopped at the red light. Parts of Delhi at night seem not so different from what I imagine Hell to be like.

I arrived at my hotel room and threw my bag on the bed. The room was freezing, the staff having left the air conditioner on all day in anticipation of my arrival. The ceiling fan whirled as if possessed by a demon. The toilet did not flush and the shower was a bucket. Outside, a lady screamed at her neighbours while a man slapped a carpet against his balcony. Was this my next three months?

Having hardly slept a wink, I moved to another hotel at Paharganj, also known as the infamous Main Bazaar of New Delhi, a teeming beehive of India’s finest merchant mayhem, with aggressive touts, beggars, and hustlers trying to grab your attention (or your wallet) as you scurry past. It is also the unfortunate site of most of Delhi’s budget hotels, meaning that us cheapskates have to run this gauntlet several times a day in order to get anywhere. At the end of the street is an mind-boggling pile-up of rickshaws hoping to take you somewhere for twice the normal price. Everywhere, there is filth: gravel, garbage, cow shit, dead animals, broken glass. I even saw a jawbone.

The Main Bazaar is the only place for which I’ve had to prepare myself mentally before stepping out the door. “Okay. Going outside now. Inhale and… ahhh.”

Within a few days, though, the havoc turns to background noise. A properly assumed Paharganj mien, your eyes pointed to the horizon, your ears turned off, your resolve steely and single-pointed toward your destination, is essential. With a bit of aimless wandering, before you know it, the hole known as Delhi actually starts to reveal itself as a sort of charming hole. The Indians are a nutty people, and high tragicomedy lurks around every corner.

For example, there’s a well-known scam in Connaught Place, the enormous circular plaza of New Delhi, where a shoe-shine man will point to your shoe, revealing shit smeared thereupon. But you don’t remember stepping in any. And the shit is on the side or the top of your shoe, not on the sole… so how the heck did it get there? Turns out… he threw it himself! Yes, there are actually people who sit around throwing shit on shoes in order to clean them off for you. Which pretty much sums up India: sad, funny, infuriating, beautiful, baffling, and ultimately nonsensical. Welcome.

As the postings here at Woolgatherer have been lagging significantly behind schedule (I’ve actually been in India for over a month now), what follows is a condensed version of the rest of my time in Europe and Turkey.

Back in Istanbul with ten days to kill before my flight to Munich, and feeling maybe a little sick of the streets of the Sultanahmet tourist area (sadly, a very unavoidable place), I decided to slip into Bulgaria for a little while. I took the first overnight train to Sofia, the capital, sharing a room with a 19-year-old Australian kid who’d spent the last year traveling Russia, the Baltics, and the Balkans. I don’t need to tell you how old this made me feel. He was on his “gap year”, which is something many Aussies and Brits take before entering university.

The kids today. In Austria I’d met a 19-year-old Brit girl with model looks and a stunning maturity who’d spent half a year in Laos and Cambodia. I can’t imagine not only having the money to travel the world at 19, but having the interest, or even the idea to do it. Not to mention the courage. When I was 19 I was still getting over being allowed to buy beer without having to cross the Quebec border, and beaming with pride whenever I’d get IDed.

Travel often brings about feelings of inadequacy. You feel that you’re doing the same ol’ thing as everyone else, experiencing the same things, following a predetermined path set out by the gods of Lonely Planet, and so on. And you meet people half your age doing the same things and having identical reactions to their surroundings. Or people twice your age. Travel is sort of ageless that way. The 19-year-olds are indistinguishable from the 45-year-olds. All your life experiences and wisdom, all those years of paying your dues in the real world, don’t seem to matter very much.

Anyway, Bulgaria. It’s lovely. Probably my favourite place on the trip so far. It could be that in contrast to loud, aggressive, messy Turkey, Bulgaria appeared to me as a calm sunset after a long day of pounding heat. The city of Sofia is a gentle place. The trains run on time, the pedestrians don’t spontaneously break into wrestling matches, nobody yells at you or offers you a tour of their handicrafts shop.

You can get a pizza slice the size of a football for about a dollar, and the Bulgarians go ahead and put ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise on the thing. As a devout condimentophile and sauce-ist, I approve of this conduct. They also have these strange convenience stores (or dépanneurs, if you prefer) in the basements of buildings, visible to the public only by a tiny knee-high window opening out of the sidewalk. You’re supposed to squat down and tell the clerk what you want (in Bulgaria, usually cigarettes), and they reach up and hand it to you. It is like sticking a tin cup into a hole in the wall with five bucks inside, ringing the bell, and pulling it back out full of whiskey. Why can’t we have nice things?

I made a half-hearted attempt to day-trip to the top of the mountain just outside Sofia. The gondolas up to the summit weren’t running that day, and I was instead chased by two enormous dogs and one bearded woman. But I still love Sofia.

Even better than Sofia was the hillside town of Veliko Tarnovo in Central Bulgaria. I have a fondness for places where you’re always walking either uphill or downhill no matter where you’re going. Veliko offers a most vertical experience of small-town life.

I stayed for almost a week, in the Hostel Mostel, one of the best hostels I’ve seen. Only two others guests were there (low season), a funny Dutch guy and an enormous, bear-like Englishman, and we spent the week dining on pig knuckle and mashed potatoes, having a beer, playing chess, cavorting about with the Bulgarians, and generally doing not much of anything. It was like a vacation from my vacation.

I returned to Istanbul to catch a flight to Munich via the distant galactic outpost known as Sabiha Gökçen International Airport. Now, in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, around the end of September and into the start of October there is some kind of “beer fest” happening. I hear it’s a pretty big deal. So I arrived in downtown Munich via the express train from the airport, stuffed my bag into a storage locker, and made my way to the fairgrounds of this supposedly popular festival to meet my pal Steve.

The week or so that followed was an enormous black hole. I think of the periods of “de-tox” taken by serious drinkers (a “corporate restructuring” as called by J. Tesauro and P. Mollod in The Modern Gentleman), and can only conclude that Oktoberfest is something like a yearly “re-tox”—a flushing-out of all the body’s health, a severe tax on the immune and nervous systems, and a prolonged period of self-afflicted morning malaise. It is like taking a nourishing retreat from human dignity.

I wanted to write a sprawling epic of drunken mayhem here, not unlike Hunter S. Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, but I am no Good Doctor, and am in fact, badly in need of an appointment with same.

Without a doubt, the very greatest thing about Oktoberfest is an antiquated contraption known as the Teufelsrad (Devil’s Wheel).

The Teufelsrad is nothing more than a flat, spinning wheel on the floor, surrounded by thin protective padding and a crowd of screaming, leiderhosen-clad Germans. Contestants pile onto the wheel and find their grip, while the sweet sounds of Bavarian drinking music fill the air. The wheel spins faster and faster. The contestants try to hang on for dear life, the devilish wheel trying to throw them all off. Then, slowly, a large padded “wrecking ball” descends from the ceiling, controlled by one of the “hired goons”, whose sole duty is to knock you off that wheel with it. If you somehow survive that, the goons try to hog-tie you with ropes.

The wrecking ball knows no mercy. Whether you’re a man or a boy or a little old lady, the wrecking ball swings the same cruel path. In the spirit of German schadenfreude, I couldn’t help but laugh cruelly at the sight of glassy-eyed teenaged girls and small children getting cold-cocked in the face by this thing, necks snapping back violently, their screams muffled by the crowd noise. The degree to which the Teufelsrad would not be allowed in Canada is immediately evident; after all, not only is it vicious, sadistic, and dangerous… it’s also fun.

And if that weren’t enough, every so often they have a “boxing round”, where the contestants are given boxing gloves and instructed to beat the hell out of each other in the midst of all this. The whole spectacle of the Teufelsrad is augmented by the fact that nearly everyone involved—participants, crowd, staff—is drunk. It is almost the Platonic form of human debasement. Needless to say, I highly recommend it.

Next stop, India.

A year of travelling is a long time, and there are moments when you feel defeated. The travel schedule can be exhausting, and there is no comparable frame of reference to your ordinary life. I often think about home, imagining a typical week and the passage of time over that week, of how long I’d spend sitting at a desk at the office, or riding the subway, or grocery shopping and cooking tomorrow’s lunch, and try to imagine what I’d be doing right now if I were at home. Maybe I’d be on the computer, or reading a book, or doing nothing much. I certainly would not be riding a 12-hour bus to the next town on a Wednesday, or negotiating the price of a dormitory bed with the hostel staff at five in the morning. Nor would I think nothing of spending five hours in a café playing backgammon with a couple of Turkish university students. Life is short.

But when you’re travelling, life is long. Unless you’re visiting a country with some kind of job or volunteer work or task to do, you’ve got to find ways to fill the time. You can go sightseeing, but that lasts only for an hour or two, so what now? It’s only 2 PM. Most towns don’t perk up until the sun goes down.

After weeks of sightseeing, buses, trains, border crossings, and hostel staff, what should be considered a “vacation” starts to feel like an immense chore. My spirits were flagging a little bit as I reached the Goreme Valley. I’d had a busy day exploring the Goreme open-air museum with the Dutch guy I keep running into in every town I visit. He had an overnight bus to Istanbul leaving at 8 PM. We ran into some Canadians we’d met in Selcuk who had plans for the evening that involved an open bar and five-course meal, costing about 60 YTL (50 bucks or so). Too rich for me. With the Dutch guy leaving and everyone else I know having other plans, I was left with nothing much to do for the evening, and not much energy to be bothered.

I retired to my hostel. In Goreme, the thing to do is stay in a cave hotel. Mine was a small, musty dormitory room with heavy blankets and almost no air circulation and very little light. It was the sort of room that offers no compelling reason to stay there except for sleeping. You couldn’t read, couldn’t write, couldn’t even sit. The hotel itself was virtually empty (it was low season), and the entire town was dark.

Restlessness took over me. I wandered into the town and into a crowded bar, which I quickly left, not being in the mood. I went back to my room, got into bed, and thought about things. Today wasn’t fun. What’s so great about volcanic rock formations? I could just look at photographs of those. This hotel sucks. There’s nobody here. Can’t meet people. And if I did, what would we do? Go to a bar and drink? Is that all I know how to do?

I was feeling depressed. I know that feeling when I see it. And the next day, I had an overnight bus to Istanbul, so I had the whole day to kill. And now I’ve “done” Goreme, seen all the sights I wanted to see. Tomorrow would be the worst and most boring day of my entire life.

At breakfast the next morning, I met a British lady who was living in Turkey. She had a long braided ponytail and a t-shirt saying “NOT IN MY NAME”—an anti-war slogan, apparently. We talked about my travel plans. I told her I was off to India next, and she’d been to India five times, and told me all about the place, and also about some of the other places she’d been like Columbia, Sri Lanka, Iran, and so on. Her enthusiasm for travel was endless; she’d been on the road for almost 19 years, stopping to work for a few months in each place before heading off to another destination, sometimes doing humanitarian/UN work, other times teaching English. Talking with her, I began to feel the pangs of anticipation coming back, the feeling of looking forward to the next place. I was excited again.

She gave me simple advice for nights like the previous one: when you start to have more of those nights than the good kind, it’s time to go home. And the truth was, I’d had weeks of great times punctuated with a boring night or two. Hardly a cause for concern. I felt good.

With newfound resolve, I decided to take a day trip to the underground villages of Derinkuyu. At the bus stop a guy sitting on his backpack began talking to me. He asked if I was going to Derinkuyu and I said I was. So we sat on the bus together. He smelled rather bad (or as my pal Dave would say: “He smelled rather poorly”) and looked to be in shabby condition. His backpack was like a large, dirty duffel bag that he strapped to his shoulders. He looked like neither his clothes nor his person had been washed in weeks.

His name was Raphael, from Australia. His English was with an Aussie accent, but it seemed either that English wasn’t his first language or he was a little slow. I didn’t press him on that.

We began the usual gambit of fellow-traveller questions. Our conversation lacked rhythm. His manner of speaking was peculiar to me: he seemed to think everything over thoroughly before talking, and only when he decided on what to say did he say it. I started in on how I was going to India and how I was a bit nervous about going there, India being a tough place and all. As I spoke, I became aware that I was bragging about this. He hardly said anything, and waited for me to finish talking.

Then I asked him where he’d been before Turkey and he said “India.” He did not offer this fact while I was discussing India. He’d been for five months “this time”, as well as to Pakistan, Iran, the “stans”, not to mention Eastern Turkey. Wow. Did he find it difficult? How did he get around? Any trouble?

“No,” he said. “Most people will give you a ride for free.”

Wait. You… hitchhiked?

“Yes.”

This guy hitchhiked across India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey. Suddenly my travels felt so mundane, riding government buses and staying in touristy hostels, drinking beer with people from Germany and California. This guy was one of those rare creatures we see in the wild, the Serious Traveller. I was merely a dabbler. But how does one get the idea to hitchhike across that part of the world? I suppose it’s cheaper that way. I had so many questions.

“Did you make it to Sri Lanka?”

“No.”

“Aha!” I thought. Got ya. As people tend to do when they meet someone far more interesting than themselves, I began trying to make myself appear more than a total novice. I said something along the lines of “I’d like to try some challenging places like that too. But I’m not about to go to Afghanistan or anything.”

“Why not?” he asked.

Oh man. Tell me you didn’t hitchhike across Afghanistan too…

“It’s not that dangerous. You just read the newspapers and pay attention to the political situation, and when things aren’t busy you just go in.”

He did! He spent two weeks in Afghanistan, not only in Kabul but in other places. He was confused at how I might find that a strange thing to do.

“I’m not about to go to Baghdad,” he said. Good to know.

We arrived at Derinkuyu, a fascinating series of underground caves shaped into a little village, where people lived for months at a time while their real village was under siege. Raphael very much wanted to worm into the very narrowest, darkest passages, unimpeded by such things as claustrophobia or discomfort.

I pulled out my camera. “Take your pictures,” he said. He wasn’t taking any. Didn’t even have a camera. The more time I spent with him, the more I began to feel like the strange one. Why did I need pictures of everything? I have a memory, don’t I?

And why don’t I visit Pakistan and Iran? How bad could it be? Millions of people live there, for God’s sake. I began to realize that travel is a skill, and I was still learning. Raphael was a master. He had no tourist accoutrements whatsoever. No modern synthetic-fibre’d clothing or state-of-the-art backpacks or expensive hiking boots. He dressed simply. He could fit in anywhere. And he didn’t travel to show his friends his pictures or brag about where he’d been, just as he didn’t speak without thinking first about what he would say.

We left the village, and he asked me if I wanted to stop for tea. But it was Ramadan, and drinking tea in public during the day would be impolite. So we shook hands, and he wandered across the street with his backpack over his shoulders, stuck out his thumb and began hitchhiking, hoping to reach Antalya by sundown.

Antalya is yet another Mediterranean paradise, with sprawling beaches cut into cliff rock, palm-lined boulevards, and of course, many Turkish men trying to huck their goods. I arrived in the early evening at my hotel, the Sabah Pension in the Antalyan ‘Old City’. After passing a quiet evening with a plate of lamb kebab and a borrowed Lonely Planet guide, I went to bed early to wake up at sunrise and walk along the waterfront and take a picture or two:

I quickly took a standard “Turkish breakfast” (boiled egg x 2, feta cheese, tomato + cucumber salad, olives, bread, Nescafé) and walked out into the cool morning air while the sun slept, towards the Hadrian Gate at the entrance to the Old City.

A shoe-shine man stood next to the gate, and tried to lure me over to his stand.

“Hello my friend, where you from? Come here please.”

Pointing to my sandals, I offered him a glance that said “oh ho ho, good sir, but the un-shoelike nature of my footwear has thwarted you!” and continued on. But he persisted.

“Yes please, it’s no problem. Come here, I show you.”

With such a stern manner did he say this—as a command rather than a request—that in my early-morning stupor (Nescafé offers a meagre caffeine kick, after all) I did exactly what he said.

This proved to be a grave mistake. In Turkey, as anywhere else where tourists are regularly accosted by street merchants, it is usually the correct move to ignore anyone trying to strike up conversation using any of the following intro lines: “My friend…”, “Hello sir, where are you from?”, and that Turkish peculiarity, “Yes please…”. You’ll note that none of these lines can be responded to with “no”. Their aim is to get you talking, and where there is talking, so begins the selling. Just walk away.

But I didn’t. Instead I wandered over to his shoe-shine stand. It was little more than a metal foot rest with some creams and brushes scattered around it. He kept talking, and without looking down, scooped up some paste with his finger and tried to apply it to my sandal. I anticipated this, and moved my foot out of the way.

“No no no no, it’s OK sir. Just to test. A test.”

I told him I didn’t want any.

“Where from? France? Belgium? Ahh, Belgium! You from Belgium, yes?”

And with a bit of legerdemain he quickly thrust his finger out and smeared my sandal with the paste before I could move.

Now I was angry, and told him to wipe it off at once.

“OK sir,” he said, and reached for a cloth. But his hand veered away from the cloth and instead grabbed a wire brush, and he began scrubbing the paste into the leather. I was livid, but powerless to do anything, lest I walk away with a single paste-encrusted sandal. So as he scrubbed, I continued to scold and berate him for being so rude.

“Is this how you make your money? Ripping people off?” I said.

“No, it’s OK, no money, no money!” he replied, as if he expected not to be paid. Hospitality has its limits, even Turkish hospitality.

When he finished with my right foot, he lunged forward with both hands to try to grab my left foot. I shook him off, and simply walked away. He offered no protest, and I offered no money, for it would be wrong to reward such rudeness, would it not?

So what was a man with one polished shoe to do? With the bitter taste of the attempted con job still in my mouth, I went down to the beach and scuffed up the sandal real good. Take that, shoe-shine man.

I spent quite a few days at the lovely ANZ Guesthouse in Selcuk. The place sits just up the hill from the Selcuk bus terminal, behind a small carpet shop (”Ali Baba’s”). It’s operated by three Turkish guys, one of whom spent something like eighteen years living in Australia (and speaks English with a proper Outback twang), hence the Australiophile motif (”ANZ” = “Australia/New Zealand”). The ANZ is a fantastic hostel. The rooms are cheap and clean. For dinner they offer BBQed meats prepared by a pro chef. And the staff were some of the nicest folks I’ve met.

Mehmet was one such guy. He spoke not much English (and when he did, he somehow spoke it with “a Turkish accent”, his words), but he looked after all of us with the most sincere generosity. On my first day there he took me out for soup and Coca-Cola (old-fashioned glass bottle), and talked about small-town life, and about his girlfriend in Vancouver. They kept in touch by Internet, and hope to marry soon. I couldn’t help but fear that this girlfriend was, if not a fictional creation, at least some cruel woman giving him the run-around. What does a Canadian girl want with a small-town Turk who barely speaks English? But he insists they hoped to be married, and Mehmet is a good man, so I give him the b. of the d.

In talking with a few Turkish men they seemed to have a very practical approach to marriage. “If we cannot be married,” Mehmet says, “I marry someone else, it’s OK.”

Selcuk has many attractions, such as the ruined Greek city of Ephesus:

The highlight for me was the mountain town of Srince (shrin-JAY), home to the Selcuk wine industry:

Srince is one of those Mediterranean postcard dream-lands, where grape vines cling to Spanish-tiled rooftops, pomegranates hang at eye level from bushy trees, wrinkled old men ride around town on bicycles, and the rain always seems to fall elsewhere. I went up there via dolmus (taxi-bus) with a newly engaged Canadian couple from Calgary. We found a wine vendor in a three-piece suit who let us sample each of the fifteen or so flavours of fruit wine local to the region: apple, peach, cherry (regular and x-tra strength), blackberry, black mulberry, blueberry, kiwi, apricot, pomegranate…. All were delicious, and my Canadian friends and I picked up several bottles, to be drunk that afternoon over games of backgammon.

The most amusing sight in Srince came as we were having lunch in an outdoor restaurant on Srince’s main street, and a series of open-roof tour jeeps full of passengers made their way past. It is something of a local tradition in Turkey’s small towns to douse tourists with water, and while we were spared this fate, the tourists in the jeeps were not. Each of the restaurants on this strip had evidently prepared hours in advance for the jeeps’ arrival, and brought out enormous jugs—more like oil drums, really—of water, and with expert timing, launched litres of water into the air at the exact moment when it would provide the most thorough drenching to the helpless tourists inside. The final jeep in particular received an almost unbelievable dose; easily enough to leave them sitting in six inches of water when all was said and done. Our laughter turned into a cringe, not only in memoriam of all those poor digital cameras, but for the fact that drums of water can’t be all that easy to come by in rural Turkey.

The wine got us good and drunk, and that night I had a memorable conversation with two Turkish guys around my age, university guys who were in town to do some skydiving (”better than sex!”) at the local drop zone. One of them was an accountant, the other an aspiring mining engineer. The Canadian guy and I talked Turkish politics with these two, or at least what we knew of the subject. It was most enlightening. The common wisdom is that Turkey is torn between the secular, Euro-flavoured government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and the conservative Islamic movement which hopes for a thoroughly Muslim Turkey ruled by Shari’a law. The latter faction is currently in power after having squeaked out a victory in the general election on Jul 22, and the accountant guy gave me a sample scenario of how this result has begun to play out.

He took and passed a difficult exam to become a chartered pro accountant, fully qualified to step into a lucrative job in Turkey’s civil service. But when he applied, he was passed over for another, less-qualified candidate who happened to be a supporter of the AKP. He insists this is because he is a secularist who wants to work “for Ataturk”, and this government will always choose “one of theirs”. So he has been rejected as a gov’t accountant and has had instead to take a job with Deloitte and Touche, or as he calls it, “some fucking French or English”. He explained how the new prez won his power not with his ideas, but by giving the people simple things: roads, infrastructure, budgetary prudence. “Just like Hitler,” he says.

I don’t know whether he’s right or wrong, of course. But Turkey strikes me as one of those countries where everything people say about it is exactly true. For example, everyone says “Turkey is part European, part Asian”, which is not only literally true (Istanbul straddles both continents) but a more or less exact description of Turkish culture. And when people say Gen. Ataturk “created” the modern Turkish state, they are not merely suggesting he passed a few simple reforms through the Parliament or appeared as a head of state for a few treaty-signings. No, he single-handedly stirred Turkish nationalism after the occupation of Anatolia during WWI, leading to the Turkish War of Independence. He then shoved Turkey into the 20th century, giving them a Euro-style secular government and even a new language, for chrissakes. The guy really did create the country called Turkey, and Turkey is truly everything people say it is.

There are types of days every round-the-world traveler has and must be prepared for. They’re usually chalked up as “travel days”. The hardest part of traveling the world is just that, the travel. Going from one place to the next. Dealing with ticket-booth employees and late trains and hostile signage, lugging your backpack all over the place. These days are not always tough, but they are rarely pleasant either. So many things can go wrong, and the consequences are usually worse than on non-travel days. You could end up in the wrong town, or arrive late and have nowhere to stay, or be held at the border without anyone telling you why.

This was a travel day. I’d woken up late after staying up until 3 AM playing checkers on the rooftop bar with a Croatian guy. After spending the morning in a profound sloth, I wanted nothing more than to seat myself in a nice air-conditioned place with some fruit and crackers and prepare myself for my overnight bus to Selçuk, a trip that I was a little nervous about. I’d been fighting a pretty serious case of, shall I call it, gastrointestinal duress (for which I’ve learned the Turkish cure is two needles, one in each butt cheek, plus antibiotics) and it wasn’t slowing down. So many things could go wrong on a ten-hour bus trip. Would I have to use one of those awful bus toilets after the snack break? Or what if there was no toilet on the bus? The possibilities were too gruesome to enumerate. I resolved to do as I’ve done all trip long: not worry, and accept all outcomes as another step in fate’s ineluctable march, and furthermore, not to complain. Everything I’d read about the Turkish bus system was highly complimentary.

The day passed with little incident. I talked at length with an Iranian fellow who spent some time living amongst the nomadic tribes in northern Iran, shoeing horses and pulling oxen around by the nose and things like that. Fascinating stuff. I played some more checkers, ate ice cream, said my goodbyes. When the time came, I took the tram to the Otogar (bus station). Bus stations are crazy everywhere, but the Istanbul Otogar is a special kind of crazy. There is a sort of serenity to the madness, of tuxedoed hosts jumping effortlessly between buses reversing blindly, drivers shouting destinations, baggage strewn everywhere. No one seemed put off by any of this. There were hundreds of buses packed together very closely, and it’s a miracle any of them could get out of the terminal and onto the road (it would not be unrealistic for them to install traffic lights).

My bus to Bodrum via Izmir (my destination – I’d take the minibus to Selçuk when I got there) was comfortable enough. Lots of legroom, clean, stiff air-con, and… wait a second. No toilet? How can this be? Ten, maybe eleven hours and no toilet? This is inhumane! The Turks are a society of barbarians with strong bladders!

My fears began to subside when they started serving drinks—water, tea/coffee, soda, more water, and some truly disgusting bread. If little old ladies in hejabs can hold it for eleven hours, so could I.

The bus pulled into several other Otogars, each one crazier than the last. It took us a full two hours to even get out of the Istanbul area. I dozed off a few times, only to be woken by the hostess serving something or by a sudden stop. They showed the film “Baby’s Day Out”, a terrible movie that nobody watched. Most people shifted in their seats, but the guy across the aisle managed to drift into a deep slumber, sitting perfectly upright with arms folded, snoring like a motorcycle engine.

Occasionally, the bus pulled into rest stops along the highways. These rest stops were little malls with cafeterias, shops, and even street vendors. And, what’s that I see… bathrooms!

It turns out the Turkish bus system really does live up to the hype. Turkey has a geography that allows bus travel to make good sense. Not only are there many populous towns scattered evenly throughout the country, but also great variations in terrain between one place and the next. In some parts of the country, a railroad would have to wind its way through colossal mountain ranges and bisect tiny villages, places the bus can handle easily. Furthermore, the Turks seem to do a tremendous amount of inter-city travel. Every bus is packed solid, even on routes you wouldn’t think busy. Laying track between every town in the countryside would be a huge undertaking. So the bus is number one in Turkey, and it’s clean, efficient, punctual, and usually cheap. This was my very first time on a Turkish bus, and it was much better than I expected.

We pulled over to the side of the road at 5 AM. Usually, Turkish buses stop to pick people up on the side of the road, not just at specified bus stops. We must be doing that, I thought. But the driver cut the engine and the lights went out. He stepped off the bus and we were left in silence. We felt the rear compartment of the bus open. Minutes passed, and people began to stir in their seats. I could still hear snoring. Some younger guys got outside to have a smoke. After a few fruitless minutes trying to sleep through it, I got out to have a look.

The driver stood staring at the rear compartment. It was the engine. Had we overheated? We might just wait a little while. We stood on the shoulder, looking around. Nothing but wilderness. There were a few large hills and a couple of fields full of weeds. No signs of human life except a few radio towers far off in the distance. It was cool. Traffic rushed by, mostly other buses and trucks.

I went back inside.

Sleep was now next to impossible. The air conditioning had been cut along with the engine, and it was growing hot inside the bus. The silence, previously blanketed by the air-con, made every movement heard. I closed my eyes, but could only think of what a bus company would do in such a situation. I knew very little about the action plan in a case like this. We were only two hours from Izmir, so surely they could send a replacement, if it came to that. But what about a driver? It was 5:45 AM. Is being a bus driver an “on-call” job, like a doctor or a network admin? I had no idea.

The guy across the aisle snored on.

I went back out. Now we were joined by a large stray dog, a friendly golden retriever with a blood stain on his neck. The bus driver spoke frantically into a cell phone. The rest smoked quietly. The hostess was in a full and total freak-out, running up and down the shoulder trying to keep order, even when it seemed that order was being kept quite well on its own. The engine looked worse than before; a large amount of black fluid had leaked out onto the bumper of the bus and was starting to dry. The host closed the cell phone and said something to the group in Turkish. It was now after 6 AM. People started to gather their things. It looked like we were changing buses.

I took this to mean that they were going to send another bus, and we’d all get on it. But instead, the host and hostess walked along the shoulder up a small hill, and then began flagging down buses from the same company as ours. Since most of the buses were packed, and there are heavy fines in Turkey for filling a coach beyond its capacity, most buses simply drove off, or else took one passenger and seated them in the host’s chair at the front of the bus. It would take hours to get everyone off in this way, but we had no other choice. The bus company was not going to send another bus.

At about 7:30 AM, my turn finally came. Dazed with fatigue, I sat in the host’s chair, and the host was not pleased about this, because it meant he had to sit on the floor. I fell asleep immediately. When a seat opened up behind me, he tapped my shoulder and gave an unceremonious “take a hike” thumb gesture. I got to Izmir at about 9:30 AM, and immediately caught the next minibus to Selçuk. I slept through the entire ride on that bus, so I don’t know how long it took.

I hate travel days.

“My friend, are you lost? Where are you from, my friend?”

This scene plays out hundreds of times in an Istanbul day. Any traveler who so much as makes eye contact with a Turk while walking past can expect to be chatted to. The Turks are friendly and outgoing by disposition, which is a trait reflected in the structure of Turkish economic life, a merchant culture, everyone with something to sell. In Turkey you’re always talking to people as a matter of daily business, and when Turks talk to foreigners, usually they’re trying to talk them into something, whether it’s visiting their carpet shop, staying at their brother’s hotel, or even just to come inside for a çay (tea). A Brit I met described Turkey as a “society of hustlers”, a perception which is more or less correct, though you’ll seldom get ripped off if you know how to haggle. Salesmen push themselves into your personal space everywhere you go, under the guise of polite conversation. Sometimes foreigners have witty rejoinders at the ready (”Table for how many, sir?” “Zero.”) but you’ll find the Turks are very good at what they do. Their politeness and warmth makes them harder to ignore than, say, a tout in Thailand barking a sales pitch in your ear as you step off the train.

But this gentleman wasn’t standing near any wares. He simply wanted to help us out.

“Take tram up, three stops, then to funicular and ride to Taksim square. Is cheaper to get akbil (Istanbul transit pass) so you don’t pay every time.”

He was a large man with a thick head of wavy hair and a big smile. We asked him some more transit questions and he answered them splendidly for us. He then asked us a few things, about Canada, about traveling and how much money it costs.

“Both of you rich, yes? In Turkey you must be rich to do this. Canada, get paid lots of money?”

He was quite a nice fellow, but we wanted to get up to Taksim before it got dark, and I kept feeling the urge to just thank him for his help and move on. But he stood very near to us, and his body language was such that we could tell he wanted to have a nice long chat with us Canadians, and that it would be impolite not to let the conversation wind up on its own. So we chatted a while.

It turns out he was actually a carpet salesman. He pointed to his shop further up the street. He was on his lunch break, and didn’t want to sell us anything, he said. But he liked talking so much he just wandered the streets on his lunch break talking to people.

“It’s not always about business,” he said.

We told him we work in computers. This is almost always an invitation for people to ask you to fix their computer, and this time was no exception.

“I play this game, FIFA 2007. Manager mode. I love it. But I make season, first place, and I lose it. The save game, gone.”

Well, that’s a drag. The save file for his video game disappeared. Can’t help you there, pal.

“I think it is because of the sexy sites.”

Huh?

“These sites I look at. Internet sexy sites.”

Oh. He thinks he caught a virus from looking at Internet porn. Well, I suppose it’s possible. He then proceeded to tell us, in graphic detail, about each and every one of said sexy sites (w/ URLs provided) and segued this into a more general lecture on the kind of pornography he likes (e.g. “these American black man”) and doesn’t like (no comment). We were now growing uncomfortable. As entertaining as this was, we were now being sucked into a conversational vortex from which there is no escape except either by death or by having this guy invite us into his house to show us his porn collection. I backed away a little, and Will did the same. He moved a little closer, and carried on with his discourse. Will offered him a bottle of water, hoping to distract him a bit. It didn’t work. I checked the time on my cell phone to make it look like I had to be somewhere. He didn’t notice. His eyes lit up as he described sex act after sex act. Eventually I had to cut in and tell him, regretfully, that we could not carry on this conversation any longer because we had to be in Taksim. He understood, but before leaving he was sure to write the URLs of the sexy sites on a piece of paper and insist we take it.

“For when you get home” he said. “Souvenir from Turkey.”

Our first night in Istanbul, we stayed at a hostel in the Sultanahmet district equipped with a lovely rooftop terrace. Cold beers in hand, we chatted up a couple of Polish girls, N and A, who had been in Turkey a week already. N had short hair and a smart pair of glasses, A a head of electric blonde hair and huge door-knocker earrings. Evidently they had stayed in this hostel for some time, and knew all the staff by name. We were in turn introduced to two Turkish men, agents at the hostel’s travel agency, V and M. V didn’t sit with us right away, but M curled up next to A and asked us where we were from, how long we’re in Turkey. A few others appeared at the adjoining tables, the Turkish men kissing each other on the cheeks as a greeting. It was a beautiful night and the rooftop was coming alive.

Behind the bar, the chalkboard read: “DJ Käfteci (real one) tonight @ 11:30 (craziest party!)” Well, the DJ himself graced our presence and offered us a glass of Rakı, the traditional Turkish spirit. It turns out that “Käfteci” means “meatball”, his storied DJing talents being limited to switching CDs on a home stereo system behind the bar. V came back, and as he sat next to M he kissed her on her bare shoulder and put his hand over her knee. Apparently they knew each other better than I thought.

M was a younger guy, maybe twenty, with a chubby babyface and a big smile. Sensing that V’s success with foreign girls was nothing he couldn’t do, he scootched over right next to A and began putting the moves on without any pretense of decorum. He told DJ Meatball to bring over two cocktails and two beers, took one beer for himself, and gave the rest to N.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” he asked us. “Come on, say it.”

“Yes, she’s beautiful,” we said.

“She’s the most beautiful girl in the world! Am I right? Please, drink!”

He pushed her cocktail closer. A gave a laugh and an obvious eye-roll. She gave Will and I a look, a very specific girl-look that every girl knows how to make. The look that said “protect me from this guy.” She got up to flip through DJ Meatball’s CD collection, and Will took this opportunity to give him a little counselling.

“M, listen. You have some really good skills for picking up women. You’re fearless, you’re funny and you tell them you like them without caring what they think. But you need to fix your approach a little bit.”

“What? Yes, you will tell me what to say? One of us has to pick her up! One of you, speak for her now or else she’s mine!”

He seemed resolutely convinced that territory be established before the conquest began. Surely horrible things might happen if these battle lines were to be breached, but it was only my first night in Turkey and I hadn’t yet learned their rules of engagement.

“Just give me a chance!” he begged us.

We agreed that M and M alone should be allowed exclusive territorial rights over A for the rest of the evening, but in light of the look A gave us, it was clear that we were to stay on the sidelines in order to throw out the rescue ladder if needed. Anyway, we knew that M had no shot whatsoever, so we humoured him for a while.

“OK, so here’s what you say,” Will said.

“I tell her that she is beautiful and that I want to get her alone, yes?”

“No, no, no, that is all wrong.”

M appeared genuinely confused. It didn’t help that he was on his fourth beer.

“You need to talk to her some more,” I interrupted, “and you need to let her talk. Ask her what her interests are, why she’s travelling, you know?”

“She is travelling to find a man and for sex.”

Things were falling apart here.

“You shouldn’t talk like that to a woman, M. They hate that. Ask her some questions and listen to what she says. Then ask her more about those things. Conversation, you know?”

M broke into uproarious laughter. He laughed so hard it caused us to laugh too.

“Why you talk like this to girls? You probably want to marry them! Ha ha ha!”

M was a lost cause. Probably just drunk. But I looked over M’s shoulder to see DJ Meatball and A standing behind the bar, and DJ Meatball standing with his arm against the wall, blocking her path as she tried to squeeze past him.

“You’re beautiful! Most beautiful in the world! Won’t you give me a chance?” I heard him say.