Turkey,
Uncharted

It was late September, the kind of afternoon where the Anatolian plateau holds its breath before autumn arrives. I had been tracing a minor road out of Kayseri — unmarked on any travel app, barely a line on the provincial map — when the shepherd appeared beside a crumbling stone wall, his flock quiet behind him.

The valley he pointed to had no village, no café, no sign. Only a broad sweep of amber grass flanked by basalt ridges, a half-collapsed caravanserai from the Seljuk era sitting at its centre like a forgotten library. I spent two hours there alone, eating bread I had bought that morning in a Kayseri market, reading the carved stone as if it were a letter someone had left for me personally.

This is what I keep trying to explain on this blog — Turkey's most significant landscapes are not on the covers of magazines. They live in the spaces between the well-known places, waiting for someone willing to slow down, ask a stranger, and follow a creek bed. I will mark this valley on my map. One day I will share the route. For now, it stays unnamed.