Hoofprinting with Evliya

Evliya Çelebi Way in the Press again: Time magazine, History Today and the International Herald Tribune

2012-01-20T23:15:00.000-08:00

Here are details of three recent articles on Evliya Çelebi and the Way. Unfortunately the first two cannot be read in full directly from the sites where published, but they will surely show up somewhere on google eventually. Or you may find hard copy of the magazines at the dentist... The third is immediately accessible.

'Back in the Saddle: The Spirit of Turkey's Greatest Adventurer Rides Again', an article by Pelin Turgut on riding the Evliya Çelebi Way, in Time magazine 23 January 2012, written when she accompanied a group of equitourists on the Great Anatolian Ride in September 2011:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2104216,00.html

'Evliya Çelebi: Traveller's Tales', an article by Caroline Finkel giving background information about Evliya's life and work, in the British popular history magazine, History Today, November 2011:

http://www.historytoday.com/caroline-finkel/evliya-çelebi-travellers-tales

'Doing it the Evliya Çelebi Way', an article by Andrew Finkel on the Evliya Çelebi Way, in International Herald Tribune Latitude blog, 13 December 2011:

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=evliya

Evliya in Brussels at the Yunus Emre Center: Professor Suraiya Faroqhi

2012-01-01T07:25:00.000-08:00

Evliya in Brussels

2012-01-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

EVLIYA IN EUROPE

2012-01-01T06:43:00.000-08:00

Paris, 14-15 November
Hosted by UNESCO, a major international two-day conference on Evliya took place in Paris between 14-15 November. See the INALCO website: http://www.inalco.fr/ina_gabarit_article.php3?id_rubrique=2640&id_article=5088&id_secteur=1

Brussels, 12 December
After a long and sometimes exhausting year of events celebrating his 400th anniversary, Evliya finally made it to Brussels. The historical Evliya never came this far, of course, despite the fantasy sections in which he claims to have accompanied Tartar irregulars on raids as far as the cities of the North Sea, including what appears to be Amsterdam.

But on 12 December, thanks to the Turkish Studies programme of Ghent University and the Yunus Emre Centre in Brussels—formerly the Istanbul Centre there—Evliya was the talk of this European capital.

Introduced by Yunus Emre Centre director Ebru Costa, and by Hilmi Kacar, founder of Turkish Studies at Ghent, the event was moderated by author and journalist John van Daele. A panel of Evliya experts introduced a packed auditorium to our equestrian traveller. Renowned Ottoman historian, Suraiya Faroqhi, spoke eloquently yet learnedly on the ways that Evliya’s Seyahatname has, and has not, been read over the years. Evliya’s manuscript first saw the light of day in printed form in von Hammer’s Englished version of the first volumes, while the earliest printed ‘editions’ in Turkish were short selections that gave Evliya the reputation of merely writing fantastic tales. Although reliable editions of the manuscript are only now starting to appear, Evliya became widely known throughout Turkey during the 1970s as the ‘hero’—alongside his noble steed Küheylan—of a popular cartoon series broadcast on Turkish television.
The Evliya Çelebi Way project’s own Mac suggested that Evliya deserves serious consideration alongside William Shakespeare as one of the world’s greatest authors. Yeliz Ozay of Bilkent University spoke of how Evliya characteristically varied established traditions when reporting ‘wonders’ and ‘marvels,’ showing how his literary artistry defies definition in terms of fact and fiction. Guneş Işiksel from the College de France in Paris followed Evliya to Africa on his travels there, and evaluated his status as one of the earliest historians of sub-Saharan peoples and cultures.

After a short break, the auditorium packed out again. After a brief welcoming by the Turkish ambassador to Belgium—HE Ismail Hakkı Musa—van Daele sparked off an animated discussion of the possible relevance of Evliya to today’s world. The audience quickly picked up the theme, which was pursued for well over an hour. Mac managed to squeeze in a reklam for the Evliya Çelebi Way project and guidebook, assuring all that walking or cycling were real alternatives to taking to the horse. Everyone was pleased to adjourn for a koktayl and meze reception: rumours of future Evliya events to be hosted by Turkish Studies at Ghent circulated freely.

The perfect present: the Evliya Çelebi Way guidebook

2011-11-01T00:45:00.000-07:00

Now that the guidebook to the Evliya Çelebi Way has appeared, we have interest in the English-language Turkish press:

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-261013-evliya-celebi-way-turkeys-1st-long-distance-walking-and-riding-route.html

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-261122-evliya-celebi-way-turkeys-1st-long-distance-walking-and-riding-route-2.html

The dedicated new website—where the book can be bought, and with practical information about the route—is now working: www.evliyacelebiway.com

www.cultureroutesinturkey.com is the mother site for all 13 official Turkish cultural routes.

The Turkish translation will soon be published.

We hope to see you there!

Equitourists ride again!

2011-09-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

The Great Anatolia Ride 2011, along the first section of the Evliya Çelebi Way from Hersek village to Kütahya, is over. We set out on 2 September, and reached Kütahya on 13 September, with time to sightsee (and shop) in İznik and Bursa en route. Our group was led by Ercihan Dilari (Akhal-Teke Horse Riding Center) on Anadolu as ever, with Susan Wirth on Elis. I was there as historian-in-residence, on Spirit, generously lent by Mehmet who with Serdar looked after us and our wonderful horses.

We had the pleasure of the company of Australian equitourists: Sue K on Zenobia, Margaret Mooney (of Horse Safety Australia) on Sahra, and Rhonda P on Kelebek; and Americans Rich Klauber (master farrier extraordinaire) and Susan Pieper on Leyla and Gül.

The weather was fine all the way!

I was riding the route for the second time, but it was every bit as exciting as the first—the exploratory ride in 2009 that established the Evliya Çelebi Way. We rode rivers and forests, plains and mountains, and marvelled at gorgeous landscapes and dramatic views; we camped in comfort in isolated villages, where we met local people and shared their daily lives; we stopped often for tea, and delighted any children who happened to be there with 'pony rides' around the square; we visited cities and sights that Evliya saw and wrote of, and compared his impressions with ours; we ate utterly scrumptious food; and we left our hoofprints on forest roads, Ottoman paved roads, goatpaths and across open country.

Amazing, even to Australians and Americans, lands where there is plenty of space, is that you can ride all the way from the Gulf of Izmit to Kütahya without having to negotiate a gate or a fence. That is one of the great joys of riding in Turkey, unimaginable elsewhere.

The final highlight was the Balıklı Hamam in Kütahya, where Evliya bathed—on the men's side of course—where we were cleansed of the accumulated grime of our days on the road by the skilful Ayşe Hanım. This, too, we unreservedly recommend, as a fitting conclusion to a journey that began with eager anticipation and ended with a deep glow of contentment.

Such a wonderful trip, in such excellent company. Nostalgia sets in immediately, and next time is too long away...

We have fabulous pics, lots and lots of them, and we will post some once they are sorted—watch this space.

Other news on the Evliya Çelebi Way... the guidebook is at last out. You will soon be able to buy it on our dedicated website. And once you have the book in hand, you can ride, walk or bike the Way. The guidebook is currently being translated into Turkish.

No excuse to stay at home—the Evliya Çelebi Way is open every day of the year, and it is free!

Caroline Finkel

Evliya Çelebi Way—latest news

2011-08-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, 30 August, is both an important Republican holiday in Turkey and also the first day of the feast of Şeker Bayramı that follows the holy month of Ramazan. A palpable sense of anticipation is in the air, and for we Evliya obsessives too. In only a couple of days time, on 2 September, the third group of equestrian tourers will saddle up and ride from the start of the Evliya Çelebi Way at Hersek village on the Gulf of İzmit, to Evliya's ancestral home in the city of Kütahya. We are particularly excited because this year is, as all are aware, the quatercentenary of his birth. Ercihan will lead the expedition; Susan and Caroline will also be along. The programme is found at: http://www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com/en/ozeltours/8/great-anatolian-ride.html.
The guidebook to the EÇW is in the process of distribution, and will be available very soon—from various bookshops, from Kate Clow's site: www.trekkinginturkey.com, and from Cornucopia magazine: http://www.cornucopia.net/aboutecw.html. It can also be obtained from the dedicated website: www.evliyacelebiway.com (under construction, functioning imminently), and via www.cultureroutesinturkey.com (that links you to www.evliyacelebiway.com).

Pending publication Caroline has done various media appearances in Turkey. Further, an article by her on Evliya will appear in the British popular history magazine History Today (scheduled for the November issue).

Evliya Çelebi Project: Rides, Ways, Reflections

2011-07-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

The Evliya Çelebi Project: Rides, Ways, Reflections
Gerald MacLean

During 1-15 September 2011, riders again led by Ercihan Dilari will take to the trail following Evliya Çelebi from Hersek to Kütahya, on the first stage of his 1671 pilgrimage route to Mecca. As thoughts turn towards taking to the road in Evliya’s traces once again, I have been reflecting on our 2009 journey, in which the Evliya Çelebi project team pioneered the cultural route The Evliya Çelebi Way. Later this month, The Evliya Çelebi Way, the guidebook by Caroline Finkel and Kate Clow, with Donna Landry, will be available from Upcountry (Turkey).

What follows first appeared in the Turkish Areas Studies Review, 17 (Spring 2011).

Many more people have heard of Evliya Çelebi (1611-c.1683) than have read any part of his 10-volume Seyahatname or Book of Travels, one of the world’s greatest works of travel writing. Among the aims of the Evliya Çelebi Project is to encourage broader familiarity with Evliya and his text. The recent publication of An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi, translations into English by Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim (Eland, 2010), brings Evliya to English readers.

While the Evliya Çelebi Project centres on the Seyahatname, our multiple origins and evolution into a team with distinct interests and skills mean that the range of our ambitions and methods extends further. So allow me to back up and start by describing who the project involves and their interests since the project itself, and the ways that I think about Evliya and why his work is so important, take shape and focus from our conversations and discussions over the years. I will end with some reflections on what I learned from travelling for forty days and nights across western Turkey, on horseback, in the hoof prints of the great Ottoman traveller.

At more or less the same time, the 1990s, that Donna Landry and I were imagining how wonderful it would be to travel across Turkey on horseback, Caroline Finkel was thinking much the same thing, except that her plan involved travelling on foot. Soon after we met in 1999, the two schemes began to combine, swiftly moving from topics of dinner conversation into serious possibilities. Donna and I were already part of a research group exploring how and in what ways historical re-enactment was a useful method in historical and cultural research, but it must have been Caroline who introduced the name of Evliya Çelebi for the first time. While finishing Osman’s Dream (2005), her narrative history of the Ottoman Empire, Caroline had been working with Kate Clow on pioneering trekking routes across Turkey. Kate was establishing The Lycian Way and St Paul Trail, seeking to promote sustainable inland tourism away from the coastal resorts. For Donna, re-enactment is most fascinating when it entails horses and riding; she had already begun field research on native breeds on our travels in Turkey and working with Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript journals of her equestrian travels in Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Donna’s recent study, Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture (2008) is only a start publishing research begun back then. For my part, I was finishing a book about seventeenth-century English travellers in the Ottoman Empire and we were revisiting, as best we could, the routes followed by my authors. So Evliya was soon an important focus of all our interests: he travelled by horse along routes that we could try to follow again.

If the project was to re-enact sections of Evliya’s route with a view to establishing sustainable cultural routes, doing it with horses became essential once Andy Byfield joined the team. Having recently published his major study of Anatolian flora, Andy was back in the UK working for Plantlife International. He is also a keen horseman, eager to revisit Anatolia from the saddle and study land use. Horses continued to open up further layers to our project. In rural areas, the equestrian sports of rahvan and cirit are flourishing, and players are often aware that these sports have their origins in the Ottoman world that Evliya knew and recounted. Players are also breeders, and make claims about the ancestry of their most successful horses. Donna is working with the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, collecting and documenting samples of mane hair for DNA evidence in hopes of tracing vanishing Anatolian breeds. Leyla Neyzi of Sabanci University joined the research team and is studying the culture of these equestrian games, which are of considerable interest as seemingly organic expressions of what in other registers might be called neo-Ottomanism.

Horses means horses. Once we had committed ourselves to 2009 as the year in which we would be taking to horse and riding along some of Evliya’s route, we needed horses. Evliya had wealthy sponsors, and was regularly awarded horses as gifts or spoils from battle. We had better fortune having Patricia Daunt join the team and lead us unerringly to Ercihan Dilari for our horses. With a second sense for how to do things, Caroline found not only the patrons and sponsors but also the energy left over for the onerous task of planning our route linking villages and sites mentioned by Evliya. And so it came about that the Evliya Çelebi Ride of 2009 took place. This was, to adopt a certain idiom, an epic journey lasting a legendary forty days and forty nights, that has forged the way for a European cultural route through western Turkey. Between the 22nd of September and the 2nd of November, an international group of scholars and horse enthusiasts retraced on horseback the first section of the haj itinerary of the greatest of Ottoman travellers.

Evliya set out for Mecca in 1671 with three companions, eight servants, and fifteen pedigreed horses. The core group of the Evliya Çelebi Ride were Ercihan, who supplied the seven horses and guided the expedition, Caroline, Donna, myself, together with support vehicle staff Metin Aker and Sedat Varış. Riders who joined for shorter or longer periods included Patricia and Andy, Turkish Jockey Club vet Ayşe Yetiş, Cappadocian entrepreneurs Özcan Görürgöz and Alper Katrancı, trekkist and academic Pınar Durmaz, Montreal advertising executive Thérèse Tardif, and photographic editor at the New York office of Der Spiegel, Susan Wirth. The expedition was accompanied for part of the journey by Mehmet Çam and other members of the Istanbul production company Ajans21, who shot beautiful footage for a potential documentary about Evliya and the expedition.

From Hersek, on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, we followed Evliya to Iznik, Bursa, Kütahya, Afyon, Uşak, Simav, Çavdarhisar, and back to Kütahya, Evliya’s ancestral city. Thanks to the brave and agile horses, we forded rivers, climbed mountains, made friends with local villagers, drank tea and Turkish coffee in countless kahve-s, explored ancient sites and Ottoman cities, attended rahvan (pacing) horse races and mounted cirit (javelin) matches, and camped under the stars in unspoiled landscapes of staggering beauty. Some 1300 kilometres later, the horses and core riders fetched up in Kütahya, unfazed by adventures and ready for more.

One thing that we established beyond a doubt is how suitable the Turkish countryside remains for riding, trekking, and other forms of sustainable tourism. So long as traditional agricultural practices of semi-nomadic grazing and farmers’ shared use of the land keep the countryside open and unprivatised, Turkey remains one of the very few places in the developed world in which it is possible to make such long distance cross-country journeys unhindered by ‘No Trespassing!’ signs and barbed wire fences. Turkish hospitality guarantees travellers safe passage and a warm welcome. The expedition proved such a success that, in the late summer of 2010, Ercihan led commercial rides along part of the Evliya Çelebi Way established by our 2009 journey and plans future rides for 2011. The guidebook will soon be published in English and in Turkish. A multi-authored book presenting the interdisciplinary research findings is also in the works, as are plans for exploring further Evliya Çelebi Way routes for walkers and riders.

Another thing we learned was just how widely Evliya is still known wherever he went. In every village that we passed through where there was a school, the children had all heard of him; in some villages, elder statesman reported what they believed Evliya to have said about their locality. We knew that the name of Evliya Çelebi was known beyond his readership, but were struck by how true this was along our route. All of us have notebooks full of such fascinating observations arising directly from our form of travel, and I would like to end by returning to my notebook and the question of ‘were horses necessary?’

One of the assumptions of re-enactment as a research method is that you don’t know what you will find until you get there. So, while I set out with general rather than precise research goals and questions, my main quest was to find out what the trek itself would offer: for example, what new ways of thinking about my interest in Evliya would come about? What was it like to travel in this way, on horses, camping every night, finding and preparing food for ourselves and the horses, adjusting to temperature changes: how do these alter and shape the understanding of a place as it is now, and as it appears in Evliya’s description of 400 years ago? We didn’t ride on Ottoman saddles or wear Ottoman clothes; but neither were we comfortably outnumbered by our servants as he was. We were accompanied by a support vehicle that converted into a kitchen and carried our tents and luggage as well as hard-feed for the horses and a motor cycle. And unlike Evliya, we were seeking to establish a route that could be used by walkers, mountain bikers, and horses: one that provided an adequate series of camp sites where the presence of a group of horses and people was not merely welcome but advantageous and certainly not an ecological disaster. For of course, not everywhere is suited for a group of horses and people suddenly to camp, and the fear of nomads suddenly becoming residents is not far from the thoughts of most villagers. So there were logistical answers that had to be found for establishing a route others after us would be invited to take. We didn’t want to lead them to villages where they would be less than welcome, though I must admit we found only one of these, such is the continued culture of hospitality throughout rural Western Anatolia, as we found it.

Many rural areas have changed little since Evliya’s day, and for short periods we rode along paths and even old cobbled roads that Evliya would have travelled along. The most spectacular instance was the view as one drops down onto the plain towards Altintaş. I have extended notes on this. As far as common experience with Evliya goes, such moments are important I think because they demand one recognise the utter beauty of the scene ahead—a route shaded by tall thin poplars leading towards what is clearly a city though more than ten kilometres away, but since it is placed in the midst of a plain so vast that the eye cannot register its size, it can only tell how very, very far all the encircling mountain ranges are, except the one that is just behind—and the way it demands you to stop and think about the way the landscape has been inhabited as well as the demands of writing about it. I have yet to find out if Evliya described this moment, but such moments are crucial in any case because one is riding on a horse. I have ridden extensively for more than thirty years, have led treks regularly over areas of Dartmoor and ridden on treks in numerous countries before. But one thing that travelling every day on horseback, sleeping at night in a tent, taught me was the perceptual and conceptual shifts that occur when, after about two weeks or so, you have been riding for so many hours every day that you have forgotten what day of the week it is and your body is not in the least interested. No one got ill on the entire trip, despite ad hoc sanitary practices and the enormous amount of energy it requires simply to travel that way for weeks. But along the way, moments and scenes arise that announce they are important and insist that they will be written about, and often that comes as a sudden change in subjectivity and perception, a break in the rhythm or a change in the way your horse goes forward.

So what did I learn about Evliya, the Ottoman traveller who journeyed by horse, slept in tents, and enjoyed the hospitality of people in different villages and towns? Well, I learned why Evliya so often recorded the regional specialities—apples from here, local pasta from somewhere else, the local yoghurts and walnuts, the breads and tomatoes, the peppers and garlics—and that was because they are incomparably wonderful. And we learned that they are still freely given to travellers who arrive on horseback. He wrote about them because you cannot forget these things. Like the beauty of the Turkish landscape as viewed from the saddle, they too demand to be written about, and Evliya recognised that fact. He also took strange and exceptionally indirect routes, and it is so easy to imagine how local hospitality must often have been responsible. How could Evliya resist an invitation from someone who has suggested a visit to some friends in the next village, which is only a day’s journey by horse, not at all out of the way, and where they serve the most wonderful fish?

The minute particularities of place do matter, not just local culinary specialties, but linguistic, social, architectural and intellectual specificities, and although places change over time, they also retain a distinctive character: that is something important I’ve learned from following Evliya. What is most striking is how much variety there is in western Anatolian rural life, replete with village to village differences, dramatic shifts in architecture, religion, and language or dialect only a few miles apart. Multiple layers of migration and immigration testify to the ethnic diversity and cultural heterogeneity of the Ottoman Empire, especially as its borders shrank during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before its dissolution and the founding of the Republic of Turkey. The character of the traveller is also a feature of Evliya’s writing that remains tellingly imprinted in the mind after reading him. Unlike UK government insistence that academic research be instantly marketable, Evliya’s much richer purpose was the gathering of information for its own sake, driven by curiosity. Only by compiling all the facts of a place, all the stories he heard, the events that happened while he was there, only then could he hope to discover the world, all the ‘races of men,’ and the scientific and mystical nature of things.

For details of the forthcoming September 2011 ride, check out the Great Anatolian Ride at www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com

References and Further Information:

Ajans 21, Istanbul www.ajans21.com

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge www.mcdonald.cm.ac.uk

Byfield, Andrew. Important Plant Areas in Turkey. 2005, 2010.

Çelebi, Evliya. An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from The Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi. Translated with a commentary by Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim. London: Eland, 2010.

Clow, Kate. The Lycian Way. Upcountry (Turkey), 2000.

Clow, Kate. St Paul Trail. Upcountry (Turkey), 2004.

Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream. The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. London: Murray, 2005.

Landry, Donna. Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture. Baltimore, MD, 2008.

MacLean, Gerald. Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire before 1800. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007.

MacLean, Gerald. The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580-1720. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004.

Neyzi, Leyla, and Kharatyan-Araqelyan, Hranush. Speaking to one another: personal memories of the past in Armenia and Turkey. Bonn: DVV, 2010.

Evliya and the World Arabian Horse Organization

2011-03-10T04:56:00.001-08:00

From the 2011 Newsletter of WAHO:

THE EVLIYA ÇELEBI RIDE AND WAY PROJECT, TURKEY

We at WAHO thought you might be interested to hear about the
Evliya Çelebi Ride and Way Project which has been gathering
momentum for the past couple of years.

Evliya Çelebi (1611-c.1683) was the greatest of Ottoman travellers but he remains largely unknown outside Turkey and Ottoman scholarship. Evliya
authored the ten-volume Seyahatname, or ‘Book of Travels’, a work that appears
to record every fact and retell every story that the vastly curious Evliya discovered
along the way over forty years of travel. In an animated TV series on the Turkish
national channel TRT in the 1980s, ‘Az gittik, uz gittik’ (‘Travel a little, travel far’), Evliya and his horse Küheylan were the stars. They deserve to be even better
known.

The Long Riders’ Guild have included him in their online index, and
UNESCO has included the 400th anniversary of his birth as one of the official
anniversaries with which they are associated for the year 2011. (Since 1956,
UNESCO has participated in the commemorations of historic events and in the
anniversaries of eminent personalities, in order to give them worldwide significance
and draw attention to the personalities, works or events that have contributed to
the mutual enrichment of cultures helping to promote international
understanding, closer relations among peoples and peace.)

Today, the Evliya Çelebi Ride and Way Project seeks to promote awareness of
Evliya Çelebi and his times, as well as to stimulate popular interest in Ottoman
and equestrian history.

Evliya states his love of horses explicitly when he tells us in the Seyahatname
that he has never been without the companionship of horses, that he has always
owned between five and ten during his whole long life. He cites the Qur’an
regarding the divine gift of horses to mankind, and how horses provide him with
wings. During his account of a campaign on the Hungarian frontier, Evliya portrays
in affectionate detail his horse Hamis, ‘my soul’s companion, my zephyr-swift
steed Hamis’, who is ‘noble as an Arab thoroughbred, dearer to me than my own
brother’. The horse’s loyalty and intelligence loom large in the story, as does the
closely observed interaction between Hamis and a magic ram who may have been
divinely sent to assure their safe passage (see the excellent recent translation into
English by Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim, An Ottoman Traveller: Selections
from the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi (London: Eland, 2010), pp. 181-89).

The son of a palace goldsmith, Evliya received a courtly education in Istanbul,
became known as a hafez, or reciter of the Qur’an, and was commissioned as a
cavalryman before embarking on his career as a diplomatic representative,
campaign companion, and tax collector. For over forty years he travelled
throughout the Ottoman empire and beyond, journeying as far as Tabriz, the Sea
of Azov, Vienna, Greece, Hungary, Egypt and the Sudan, recording details of
architecture, languages, and customs. Although it is unusual for seventeenth-century travellers to say much about the horses or other animals with which they travelled, Evliya frequently comments on horses and matters of horsemanship. Of particular interest to WAHO supporters will be Evliya’s observations regarding breeds and strains, beginning with a description of Sultan Murad on horseback entering Istanbul in triumph in 1635 after success in a Persian campaign:

“The Sultan was dressed in steel armour, and had a threefold aigrette in his
turban, stuck obliquely on one side in the Persian manner: he was mounted on
a Nogháï steed, followed by seven led horses of the Arab breed, decked out in
embroidered trappings set with jewels. . . The emperor looked with dignity on
both sides of him, like a lion who has seized his prey, and saluted the people as
he went on.”
Translation adapted from Evliya Çelebi [Mehemmed Zilli ibn Dervi ], Narrative of
Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the seventeenth century, trans. Joseph Von
Hammer, 2 vols., 1st vol in 2 parts (London: Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland; Sold by Parbury, Allen, & Co, 1834-1850), 1.i: 181).

Broadcasting his victory over the Safavids, Murad flaunts a turban in the Persian
fashion while riding a Nogay, one of the Turkic breeds of the Central Asian steppe.
He is accompanied by seven led Arabians, gorgeously equipped.
Here we glimpse something of the specificity of the breeds most valued by the
imperial court. The distinction between ‘Turcoman’ (Turkmen, protoAkhal-Teke)
and ‘Arab’ horses made by seventeenth and eighteenth-century European
visitors to the Ottoman domains operates in Evliya’s text also. Imperial military
displays, and many cavalry units, required Turkic-bred stallions who were taller
and up to heavier weights than their Arab counterparts. But it was the küheylan,
or purebred Arabian, who is mentioned most often by Evliya, and who
represented the gold standard of equine value during Evliya’s day. Crucial for the
symbolic self-representation of the Ottomans, who had ruled the Arab provinces
since 1518, küheylans serve as diplomatic gifts, and figure prominently in
ceremony, trade, sport, and the pleasures of the road.

When he describes the Sultan’s horses at grass in the imperial pleasure-park and resort-lodge at Kagithane near Istanbul, Evliya suggests that the imperial stables contain a number of Arab strains:

“When the horses of the Sultan are turned into the fields in the spring for green
food, the master of the horse dwells in this kiosk, where he gives a feast to the
Sultan and presents him with two Arabian blood-horses, for which he receives a
sable pelisse, and ten of his boys are taken into the Imperial harem as pages. It is
a beautiful meadow, where the Arabian horses called küheylan, jilfidan, tureyfi,
ma’nek, musafaha, mahmudi and seylavi are fed on the finest grass, trefoil and
oats. . . . So famous are these meadows of Kagithane, that, if the leanest horse
feed in them for ten days, he will resemble in size and fatness one of the large
elephants of Shah Mahmud (the prince of Gaznevis). The walk of the resort-lodge
of Ka ithane is celebrated all over Turkey, Persia and Arabia. Turkish poets have
praised its beauties in particular poems, called erengiz.” (Adapted from Von
Hammer 1.ii: 85.)

Evliya’s account registers the value of Arab blood horses in the equine
economy alongside practical matters of keep. Evliya’s naming of strains for the
most part coincides with Dr. Hazaim Alwair’s (2007 WAHO Conference,
Damascus, Syria, pp. 74-88). Evliya uses ‘küheylan’ as a generic term for ‘Arab
thoroughbreds’ as well as naming it as a highly prized strain in its own right,
with the substrains Jilfan (jilfidan) and Tureyfi; the strains of Managhi (ma’nek)
and Seglawi (seylavi) likewise remain among the most valuable today. We are
not sure today which strain ‘musafah’ and ‘mahmudi’ refer to and would be
very interested to hear anyone’s opinion on this. It is possible that ‘musafah’
could be a slight mis-spelling of ‘Musannah’, and it is possible that ‘mahmudi’
might refer to a Seglawi substrain belonging to Ibn Mahmoud or Ibn Amoud,
both of the Shammar. Evliya gives us at least grounds for comparison of
seventeenth-century Ottoman terms with today’s.

When in May 1671, Evliya Çelebi, aged 60, set out from Istanbul with 3
companions and 8 servants to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, he set out with
15 ‘küheylans’, the horses he chose for his personal comfort and pleasure. Well
over 300 years later, the Evliya Çelebi Ride Expedition of 2009 pioneered an
itinerary between Istanbul and Kütahya, Evliya’s ancestral city on his father’s
side. The first commercial rides along part of the route occurred in September
2010, with many of the horses used having Arabian blood. This Great Anatolian
Ride covered some 800 miles in 6 weeks, skilfully piloted by Ercihan Dilari of the
Akhal-Teke Horses Centre in Cappadocia. Similar rides are planned for 2011,
and it is also planned to map the routes for walkers. A Guidebook in English to
this first Evliya Çelebi Way cultural route is in preparation for publication in 2011
from Upcountry (Turkey) Ltd.

Given Evliya’s celebration of küheylans, and his extensive travels to Aleppo and
Damascus, a cross-border Cultural Route based upon the itinerary of a Turkey-
Syria Friendship Ride would seem an ideal next step. Any suggestions from WAHO
readers regarding such a project are welcomed.

More information can be found at these websites:
www.kent.ac.uk/english/evliya/index.html;
www.hoofprinting.blogspot.com;
www.thelongridersguild.com/LRG.htm;
www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com/en/19/great-anatolian-ride.html

Donna Landry FRAS, WAHO IAM and Professor of English and American Literature
University of Kent

Photo: Iznik, the Great Anatolian Ride,
September 2010. Photographer Susan Wirth.

WAHO OFFICE: Newbarn Farmhouse, Forthampton, Gloucestershire GL19 4QD UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1684-274-455 • Fax: +44 (0) 1684.274.422 • Email: waho@btconnect.com • Website: www.waho.org

Interview on the Evliya Çelebi Way on BBC Turkish Service

2011-01-23T00:10:00.000-08:00

Publicising the EÇW to Turks everywhere!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/turkce/multimedya/2011/01/110115_audio_arts.shtml

News of well-attended lecture on the Evliya Çelebi Way in London

2011-01-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

The podcast of Caroline's lecture to the joint Royal Asiatic Society-Geographical Club event in London on 6 January is at:

http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2011/01/caroline-finkel-travelling-the-evliya-celebi-way-equestrian-and-pedestrian-adventures-in-northwest-anatolia/

Happy listening.

2011: Evliya Çelebi anniversary year, and the Evliya Çelebi Way

2011-01-04T02:37:00.000-08:00

2011, the year proclaimed by Unesco as a year of celebration of Evliya Çelebi on the 400th anniversary of his birth, has arrived. Our project has gone in unexpected directions, and this year we will continue what we have started in the past two years. Ercihan will again lead equitourists on the Evliya Çelebi Way, as he did in 2010—to sign up, see: www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com/en/tours/8/great-anatolian-ride.html.

All but unmentioned on this blog has been the pedestrian aspect of the project. The EÇW will be a route for walkers and bikers as well as riders, and in summer 2010 Kate Clow, who set up the now well-trodden Lycian Way long distance path, and Caroline (once with Donna), made several walking expeditions to establish a GPS'ed route in EÇ's tracks that humans—with their fewer legs, and less tolerance for getting lost—can follow. The English version of the guidebook (which includes history of EÇ and of the area) to the EÇW will be out in the spring from Kate's Upcountry (Turkey) publishing company, in series with her other books (www.lycianway.com). The Municipality of the city of Bursa, one of EÇ's destinations, will publish the Turkish version.

The EÇW project is now working with Bursa Municipality towards establishing a further leg of EÇ's travels as a riding, walking, biking route. This will follow EÇ's 1659 itinerary in the region, beginning in Bursa and heading west to the Dardanelles. Ideally this route will then cross the Dardanelles, and run up the Gallipoli peninsula to meet the Via Egnatia in Thrace. Kate and Caroline (and any who want to join us) intend to walk this new route in stages in 2011, and Ercihan will lead an exploratory Ride as he did in 2009. A second guidebook will result.

The EÇW has taken on a new life, as an essential link in the cross-European cultural route that the European Institute of Cultural Routes hopes to create, to Jerusalem and beyond, to Mecca. We, and other creators of cultural routes in Turkey, are engaged in discussion with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism about how best to activate the Turkish routes established by us and similarly obsessed individuals. It has always been the hope of the EÇW team that a predictable, GPS'ed route would result, in order that modern travellers can find food and lodging in villages along the way, and the villagers thereby profit. The EÇW is also, like other non-motorised cultural routes in Turkey, a sustainable route, and the Ministry is recognising its merits.

Some events:

Caroline will give a lecture on the EÇW in London on 6th January: www.royalasiaticsociety.org/site/?q=taxonomy/term/2;

Mac and Donna and Caroline are on an EÇ panel at Şehir University, Istanbul on 23rd February;

Under the auspices of the British Council, Caroline is talking about EÇ, and the Ottomans in Europe, at various Turkish universities—Dumlupınar University, Kütahya is done; Gaziantep University is scheduled for 17 February; more dates to follow.

May your Evliya Çelebi anniversary year be full of good things; we await you on the Way, whatever your means of (sustainable) locomotion.

Good times on the Evliya Ride 2010 with Akhal-Teke Horse Center

2010-10-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

Anne & Monica

Rosemary & Sa'hra

Patricia

Support for Evliya Rides

Iznik, Sept 2010

At Yoldasimiz: Horses, our Trail Companions

2010-10-06T03:40:00.000-07:00

Ali and Sa'hra

Ilos at Hersek

Berrin, Avanos, 2010

Trekking in Turkey

2010-10-06T03:13:00.000-07:00

Here are links to a rich banquet of photos from the Evliya Celebi Way by Kate Clow, who will be publishing the Guidebook (by Caroline Finkel and Donna Landry) in 2011:

Around Usak
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=230040&id=558214984&l=15e2b3788e

And here are some from her prospecting in the Southeast for a possible future Evliya Way 2:

Around Gazientep
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=230083&id=558214984&l=aa077b48fc

Around Urfa
http://facebook.com/album.php?aid=230209&id=558214984&l=855bf7b30d

Kate's website for all your trekking queries:
http://www.trekkinginturkey.com/

Scenes from the Evliya Celebi Rides, September 2010

2010-09-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

Evliya Celebi Rides, September 2010

2010-09-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Following the route pioneered by Ercihan Dilari and his mare Anadolu during the first Evliya Celebi expedition in 2009, the first commercial Evliya Celebi Ride set out from Hersek on 31st August 2010. Baking heat one day, torrential rain the next: extremes of weather settled after two days into dazzling Turkish sun by day and crisp nights around the campfire.

The destination was Evliya's paternal ancestral town of Kutahya, the midway point as well as ultimate goal of the original expedition last autumn. In 2010, twelve riders came from Turkey, New York, London, California, Scotland, New Zealand, and Canada (British Columbia and Alberta). Four riders had been participants in the original expedition, as had six of the thirteen horses. Some riders joined as a result of the efforts of Bayard Fox of Equitours.com, whose enthusiasm for the experimental and adventurous is legendary.

The Evliya Celebi Way wends along the Yalak River, through the orchards, vineyards, and city walls of Iznik, hill villages perched above the Yenisehir plain, Bursa with its precious monuments dating from its years as an Ottoman capital, the villages of Uludag giving way to those in the Domanic mountains, and finally the grassy plains leading to Kutahya, gateway to ancient Phrygia, nestling on a mountainside. The first 2010 Ride set out during Ramazan, in the heat of early September, and finished after the Seker Bayrami with rahvan (ridden pacing) races at the Atli Spor Kulubu (Horse Sports Club) in Kutahya.

Now a second 2010 Evliya Ride is following Ercihan back from Kutahya to Hersek. What will have happened to George, the beautiful kangal who attached himself to the first Ride at Ortakoy and followed us faithfully all the way to Kutahya? How is Panoramic faring, the unlucky though lovely one, who suffered a kick on the second day and had to be left behind to recuperate, courtesy of the Cilek stud at Sukraniye?

Ercihan's horses at Hersek, September 2010

2010-09-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

Rules of the road

2010-09-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

Pursuing the strange and surprising along roads that never come to an end: this is the dream of committed travellers everywhere. Travelling on horseback, the day properly begins when one mounts up. Nothing is the same as it was for a mere pedestrian.

The view from between one's horse's ears changes things profoundly. The route maps studied at the campsite now unfold topographically in three and even four dimensions, the fourth consisting of a horse's sense of the appropriate pace for tackling each piece of terrain. The going is everything. Surfaces take on new meaning.

The red earth of forest tracks may translate into the desire to fly along twisting paths, or pick one's way daintily, acquiring galoshes of holding, clinging mud with every stride. Some mountainous ascents invite scrambles up ancient patikas, roughly paved stone paths unmoved by generations of farmers, shepherds, traders, and their working animals. Other ascents command more respect from the four-footed kind. They gather themselves, powerful hindquarters revving, to walk lightly uphill without wasting energy.

How often did Anadolu say to Ercihan, as clearly as horse can speak to human, THIS is the way? When he deferred to her, she was always right. Sometimes humans in the landscape can help with directions as well. Two tractor-borne farmers heading for Bahcekaya materialized seconds after we had not taken the sharp left turn uphill that would have been the most direct route. Such occurences happen so often in Turkey it is hard not to become complacent. The rule of the road, however, is that one must never take such magic for granted.

A view from the horse's mouth

2010-09-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Evliya Celebi Way is beautiful at any time of year

2010-09-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

2010-07-13T02:17:00.001-07:00

Long time no post. We are working away on various fronts: preparing for the first riding tours to ride the Evliya Çelebi Way 1 this September; arranging a press trip on the route, also in September; raising sponsorship for and organising the EÇRide 2, next spring, between Gaziantep, Aleppo and Urfa; attending various meetings and conferences where Evliya is the topic; and much more. Donna and Caroline, and Kate (Clow: www.lycianway.com) and Caroline, recently walked early sections of the EÇW1, thus beginning the task of establishing a walking and biking route alongside the riding route—Kate's Upcountry (Turkey) Ltd will publish the guidebook to the EÇW1 for riders, walkers and bikers, adding a new long distance cultural route to the growing number in Turkey.

Above is a photo of the tomb of the holy man Tatlı Dede, just W of the village of Şehitler, between Bursa and İnegöl. Visiting the tombs of holy men was one of Evliya's main interests; we are equally curious about these reminders of life in past times that still hold meaning for many people today.

The Evliya Çelebi Way advertised

2010-04-16T00:07:00.001-07:00

A piece by Caroline in the Guardian newspaper's first ever Turkey travel supplement, 10 April 2010:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/apr/10/trekking-turkey-evliya-celebi

Flas Haberler

2010-04-08T05:10:00.001-07:00

Flaş Haberler:

UNESCO 2011 yılını "Evliya Çelebi Yılı" ilan etti!

Evliya Çelebi (1611–1683/84) doğumunun 400. yıl dönümünde yaşamı ve eserleriyle birlikte anılıyor. Bir Evliya Çelebi Yolu -ve aynı zamanda da sürekli kullanılabilecek bir turizm yolu- saptamak üzere yapılmış olan 2009 Evliya Çelebi Gezisinin bu karara katkı sağlamış olmasını umuyoruz.

Şimdi siz de Ercihan ve onun şahane atları ile Eylül 2010'da Evliya Çelebi Yolu'nun bir kısmında seyahat etmek için yer ayırtabilirsiniz! Detaylı bilgi için www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com adresini ziyaret ediniz, 'Great Anatolian Ride'ı tıklayınız, ve daha sonra aynı sayfanın alt bölümünde yer alan 'itinerary' yi (güzergâh) tıklayınız.

British Council, yürütmekte olduğu Paylaştığımız Avrupa programının temel bir figürü olan Evliya konusunda, Young Foundation'na bağlı Maslaha'nın ortaklığında (www.youngfoundation.org; www.maslaha.org) bizimle çalışmayı tercih etti www.oursharedeurope.org.

Şimdi 2011 yılında başlatacağımız başka bir Evliya Çelebi Yolu Gezisi için sponsorlar arıyoruz. Gaziantep'den başlayıp güneyde Halep'e kadar devam edecek olan ve dönüşte Urfa üzerinden geçerek Gaziantep'te son bulacak olan bu gezi, "Evliya Çelebi Türkiye-Suriye Dostluk Gezisi" olarak adlandırılacak ve iki ülke arasındaki sıcak ilişkilere ve sınırların açılmasına işaret eden önemli bir etkinlik olacaktır.

Evliya Çelebi Gezi Yolu Grubu olarak 2011 yılında Evliya'yı anarken gerçekleştirmeyi düşündüğümüz çalışmalar şunlardır:

biniciler, dağ bisikleti sürücüleri ve yaya gezen seyyahlar için 2009 yılındaki gezi rotasını gösteren bir seyahat rehberi: İngilizce olarak Trekking Book Publisher tarafından basılacaktır. (www.trekkingin turkey.com)

geziye katılan farklı disiplinlere mensup araştırmacılar (Mac, Caroline, Leyla, Andy ve Dona) tarafından hazırlanmış olan ve bir araştırma metodu olarak yeniden sahnelemenin bize neler öğretebileceğini araştıran,
Kent Üniversitesi'den Donna Landry ve Exeter Üniversitesi'nden Gerald MacLean'in editörlüklerinde hazırlanmakta olan Evliya Çelebi Yolu: Seyahat ve Yeniden Sahneleme adlı resimli kitap.

2009 seyahatine dair 26 dakikalık bir film

geçmişte ve günümüzde günlük hayatlarında atlarla yaşamış ve çalışmış insanların hikâyelerini derleyen, Batı Anadolu'ya has at kültürü üzerine resimli bir sözlü tarih çalışması: bu kitap Sabancı Üniversitesi'nden Leyla Neyzi'nin editörlüğünde hazırlanacaktır.

Şu forumları takip ediniz:

Donna 2009 yılındaki gezimiz üzerine Uzun Mesafeli Sürücüler Derneği'ne bir rapor hazırladı (www.kent.ac.uk/english/evliya/index.html).

2011 Gezisi hakkında Caroline Finkel ile yapılan bir mülakat Hürriyet Gazetesinde yayınlandı (www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=on-the-footsteps-of-evliya-celebi--2010-01-28).

Ercihan ve Susan 2009 turumuzu takiben İznik'in kuzeyinden Kütahya'ya kadar uzanan 10 günlük bir binicilik turu düzenlediler. Böylelikle ilk turist kafilesi Evliya Çelebi Yolu'nu 2010 Eylül ayında kat edebileceklerdir. Detaylar için 'Great Anatolian Ride'ı ziyaret edip aynı sayfanın alt bölümünde yer alan 'itinerary' yi (güzergâh) tıklayınız www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com.

Donna ve Mac Türkiye Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı'nın Londra Ofisi ve Redmint İletişim ile birlikte çalışarak Evliya turlarını tanıtmaya ve medyanın ilgisini bu konuya çekmeye çalışıyorlar.

Caroline, Donna ve Tricia'nın Cornucopia dergisi için hazırlamış oldukları gezi günlüğü derginin gelecek sayısında yayımlanacak.

Caroline, Royal Asiatic Society Newsletter'in gelecek sayısı için gezi hakkında bir yazı hazırlıyor.

Caroline, Türkiye'den gelen maddi desteği artırabilmek için çalışmalar yürütmektedir ve bu amaçla Gaziantep'i ziyaret etmiştir. Bütçe gereksinimlerini karşılanabildiği taktirde 2011 yılında yapılacak gezinin anısına bir film ve bir gezi rehberi hazırlanacak ve ayrıca bir turizm rotası ortaya konulacaktır.

News flashes!

2010-02-03T02:15:00.000-08:00

UNESCO has announced that 2011 will be 'The Year of Evliya Celebi'! Our man lived from 1611-c.1683, and we reiterated in many press interviews during our Evliya Celebi Ride that 2011 should be his year. We hope we might have contributed to the decision to honour Evliya with a 400th anniversary.

You too can now book to ride part of the Evliya Celebi Way with Ercihan and his fantastic horses in September 2010. Go to http://www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com/, then click on Great Anatolian Ride, and then click again at the bottom of that page for itinerary details.

The British Council have chosen to work with us on Evliya as a key figure for their Our Shared Europe programme, http://www.oursharedeurope.org/, in collaboration with Maslaha and the Young Foundation, http://www.maslaha.org/ and http://www.youngfoundation.org/.

Sponsorship is now being sought for the second Evliya Celebi Ride, a 2011 'Turkey-Syria Friendship Ride' from Gazientep to Aleppo and the environs of Urfa. The expedition will produce a Guidebook to the route and a documentary film as well as scholarly and pedagogical writing.

Further works in progress by the Evliya Celebi Ride and Way group to commemorate Evliya in 2011 and after:

* a guidebook to the 2009 route of our Ride for riders, walkers, and cyclists, the English version to be published by Upcountry (Turkey) Ltd (http://www.trekkinginturkey.com/)
* an illustrated academic book, Evliya Celebi's Way: Expedition and Re-enactment, authored by Mac, Caroline, Leyla, Andy, and Donna, on what re-enactment as a mode of research can teach us from different disciplinary perspectives, edited by Donna Landry, University of Kent, and Gerald MacLean, University of Exeter, UK
* a documentary film about the 2009 expedition and Evliya, introducing the first Evliya Celebi Way trekking route
* an illustrated oral history of horsefolk of Western Anatolia, recording the stories of people who have lived and worked with horses in their everyday lives in the past and continue to do so in the present, edited by Leyla Neyzi, Sabanci University, Istanbul
* obtaining permissions and sponsorship for the 2011 'Turkey-Syria Friendship Ride' to mark the renewal of warm relations between these two countries and the open borders familiar to Ottoman travellers
* a documentary film based on the 2011 Ride

Watch These Spaces!
* a report by Donna to the Long Riders' Guild is online at www.kent.ac.uk/english/evliya/index.html
* an interview with Caroline about plans for the 2011 Ride has appeared in Hurriyet Daily News: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=on-the-footsteps-of-evliya-celebi--2010-01-28
* Ercihan and Susan have prepared a riding tour on a 10-day stretch of our 2009 route, from north of Iznik to Kutahya; the first tourists may ride the Evliya Way in September 2010; see http://www.akhal-tekehorsecenter.com/ for 'Great Anatolian Ride'
* Mac and Donna are working with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, London Office, and Redmint Communications on promoting future Evliya Rides and generating media interest
* Caroline, Tricia, and Donna have written a Diary of the 2009 Ride to appear in a forthcoming issue of Cornucopia magazine
* Caroline is preparing a piece on the Ride for the Royal Asiatic Society, to appear in the next issue
* Caroline is endeavouring to raise further Turkish sponsorship, and has already visited Gazientep for this purpose; one-third of the budget for the 2011 Ride has now been promised; we welcome futher contributions from sponsors.

koyun kaçırmak: Not the Evliya Celebi Way . . .

2010-01-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

no wonder some villagers thought we were sheep rustlers as we passed through on the EÇR. this picture, which accompanied an article in a Turkish daily on an actual attempt, shows what can be done:

Tomb of Hersekzade Ahmet Pasha at Hersek

2009-12-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

Titiz and Sarhosh tethered at the Baghdad Restaurant

2009-12-23T11:42:00.000-08:00

The Evliya Celebi Ride: Logistics, Details, Maps

2009-12-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

The expedition accomplished its mission of covering Evliya's route between Hersek and Kutahya, a ride of some 1300 kilometres.

All horses finished up sound and well. None was ever lame, and nobody even lost a shoe.

Dramatis Personae

Horses (all Turkish-bred mares supplied by Ercihan):
Anadolu, Akhal-Teke Thoroughbred cross, completed the ride
Titiz, Thoroughbred who looks like an Akhal-Teke, completed the ride
Sarhosh, Arab-Anatolian cross, completed the ride
Ilos, Arab-Anatolian cross, completed the ride
Elis, Arab-Anatolian cross, no rider for last section of ride
Asya, Arab-Anatolian cross, no rider for last section of ride
Hidalgo, purebred Arab, no rider for last section of ride

Humans:
Ercihan Dilari, Akhal-Teke Horse Centre, Avanos, Cappadocia, Expedition leader
Metin Aker, Artist, shaman, chef, driver
Sedat Varis, Horseman, logistics expert
Donna Landry, FRAS, Professor of English and American Literature, University of Kent
Caroline Finkel, FRAS, Honorary Fellow, Edinburgh University
Gerald MacLean, FRAS, Professor of English and Co-Director of Turkish Studies, Exeter University

Susan Wirth, Photographic editor of Der Spiegel, New York
Therese Tardif, Advertising executive, Montreal, Canada

Patricia Daunt, Writer, wife of a former ambassador to Turkey
Andy Byfield, Botanist, PlantLife International

Ayse Yetis, Vet, Turkish Jockey Club
Ozcan Gorurgoz, Entrepreneur, restauranteur, Cappadocia
Alper Katranci, Entrepreneur, balloonist, Cappadocia
Pinar Durmaz, Trekkist and academic, Istanbul Kultur University
Ramazan Bey, Muhtar of Ucbas

Route and Maps:

The initial idea had been to follow Evliya's route from Istanbul to Izmir (see first map on blog). However, research revealed the importance of Kutahya as his ancestral town, and the appeal of the city itself as a final destination for sustainable tourism, rather than urban Izmir. The thriving rahvan (ridden pacing racing) community is another important feature of Kutahya, alongside its historical restoration projects and interest in Anatolian and Ottoman heritage culture. Hence the second map on the blog. This one shows the route Evliya took, and which we followed, a route that is indeed a typically Evliyan circuitous route from Kutahya through Afyon, Usak, and Simav, before heading back to Kutahya.

A second change of route was made during the ride; this change too proved felicitous. There was a problem or perhaps textual crux in Evliya's description of his route between Afyon and Banaz. He appears to have gone in two entirely different directions and we could not see a way of combining them but hoped to choose the better route. Instead of following Evliya from Afyon to Suhut and Sandikli and thence to Banaz as originally intended, we decided to ride from Afyon to Boyali, Sinanpasa, and then Banaz. Evliya's descriptions of these latter places are much richer than what little he has to say about the plain between Sandikli and Banaz. Since we discovered some of the most fascinating horse country and stunningly beautiful landscapes of the expedition during this part of the ride, we think it was the right decision.

Shortening the route in this way also meant that the expedition was completed before the coming of winter.

Following Evliya has proved to be a more rewarding research exercise than any of the expedition party had ever imagined it would be.

a radio spot for the EÇR

2009-12-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a recent radio interview in English that Caroline did for Turkish Radio, San Francisco. It is 17 minutes long: http://turkradio.us/k/evliya/.
The interviewer's father was once the chief veterinarian at the Karacabey Arabian stud near Bursa (http://www.tigem.gov.tr/)—horse habits are for life!

We will soon be posting links to the various TV and press interviews we have done in English and Turkish.

Happy listening!

autumn turns wintry at Kestel: Titiz and Donna

2009-11-22T17:28:00.000-08:00

the beautiful Anadolu always finds the way

2009-11-22T17:20:00.000-08:00

Metin Bey: artist, shaman, philosopher, diplomat

2009-11-22T17:14:00.000-08:00

Ercihan finds the way

2009-11-22T17:11:00.000-08:00

Ercihan, expedition leader extraordinaire

2009-11-22T17:08:00.001-08:00

Mac plays nursemaid to Emine and Pamuk

2009-11-22T16:58:00.000-08:00

Sedat Bey plays cirit

2009-11-22T16:55:00.000-08:00

Andy Byfield plays cirit

2009-11-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

2009-11-22T14:37:00.000-08:00

From 2,000 year-old hamam to eastern-most temple of Zeus in Anatolia. Donna writes:

We had arrived at dusk at Sefa Koyu the night before. The day’s ride to Sefa Koyu had unfolded during the first seriously gloomy weather since our journey began in September. A cold wind was intermittently blowing. Ercihan, Caroline, and I had been joined on horseback by Pinar, a trekkist and friend of Ercihan’s from Istanbul. Mac was still riding the cab with Metin, Sedat, and the puppies Emine and Pamuk, trying every day to get his boot on over his wounded toe and not quite making it. He had hopes of being able to ride into Kutahya in a few days’ time. Mountain passes, mountain villages where apples and apple peelings were being dried on the terraces and in the streets, occasional drifts of woodsmoke, and many cats, marked our journey from our camp outside Kalkan near Simav. We rode through Kalkan and Senkoy, which both had lovely curving streets and old wood carvings on many houses. Then we skirted Inlice, another mountain village built of wood, but unlike the others not humming with life. Inlice was indeed the Turkish equivalent of Oliver Goldsmith’s deserted village. All the population except one elderly woman had gone, leaving her, as Goldsmith wrote, ‘the sad historian of the pensive plain’, or in this case, pensive hillside.

This was a district of wonderful textiles as well as late season harvests of fruit and vegetables. Alongside or under the drying apples were colourful kilims and chuals -- woven storage bags. We found a big kilim partly burned and discarded by the side of the road, in shades of brown, black, green, cream, and yellow. Stopping to perform a Nomadic Artifact Rescue Operation, we cut away the burned sections and tied what would become exceptionally eye-catching and comfortable saddle blankets back home in Avanos onto the backs of our saddles.

Stopping for tea at Kestel, we were reunited with the van crew and warmed ourselves at the kahvehanesi with several glasses of chai. A few kilometres more, we were told, and there would be a suitable campsite. But when we arrived at it, it turned out to be at the edge of a ploughed field on a windswept hillside just off the road, with hardly any grass for the horses and hardly any flat spaces onto which to pitch tents. It was cold, and growing colder by the moment.

As so often happens in Turkey, some people turned up just then, telling us that, if we rode on, in less than another ten kilometres, we would come to another village with a hamam, a ‘misafirhane’ or guest house, and plenty of good grazing. We agreed enthusiastically to press on since there was still just enough daylight left.

And so we came to Sefa Koyu, where thermal springs have been providing local people and weary travellers with hot bathing pools, showers, and spa treatments for millennia. Inside an enclosure, but open to the sky, lay a stone terrace with a deep pool steaming in the cold. Next to it an even hotter shower plunged perpetually. The horses were turned out in grassy parkland, dotted with picnic pagodas, which provided them with windbreaks and us with shelter as the rain came on. We pitched tents in torchlight because the promised guest house had not been cleaned in some time, and Metin declared it ‘pis’, and entirely unsuitable. But with a thermal spa on hand, dating from before the Roman occupation, and a reasonable place for the horses to spend the night, we were content.

It was the end of October, and the weather appeared to be turning with the calendar page. November beckoned, promising to feel less like autumn and more like winter in this hill country.

The next day we said goodbye to Pinar. Ercihan, Caroline, and I were partnered with our usual horses – Anadolu, Sarhosh, and Titiz -- with Ilos (who had been, and was intended to serve as, Mac’s mount and had carried Pinar) as stand-by or ‘yedek’. Our policy with yedeks had been to lead them if there was any danger of traffic or interference with local lifeways, or if we were following tracks where we needed to leave as few traces as possible. But in open country, if they peaceably followed the others, there was no need to lead them. Ercihan’s horses are usually very good about this, as about being picketed, or if one of the ‘serbest’ or free ones, staying in camp even if not tied.

There had been days of riding along in rivers, for instance, with the sunlight glancing off the ripples, and beautifully clean river bottoms glistening in the sun. We might ride for a long way in the river itself, cooling the horses’ legs, or we might make frequent crossings from bank to bank. Usually the yedeks behaved themselves, splashing along happily as if being ridden, and making it easier for us to negotiate steep and wooded banks without being encumbered by a led horse.

On this morning, however, Ilos, who is very forward going, seemed determined to enjoy herself in wilful ways, rushing ahead of us, taking her own line, attempting to lead the ride instead of Anadolu, who resented this, and even disappearing at times as we tried to stick to our course and not be diverted by her antics.

Ercihan’s brilliant sense of direction and eye for country meant we kept making good time in spite of having to outwit Ilos. On steep and wooded hillsides, away from roads, it made more sense not to lead her but to keep persuading her by various strategies to rejoin us.

Then we came to a narrow river overhung by trees, which looked black and possibly fathomlessly deep, but it was difficult to tell in the gloom. No obvious ford presented itself. Ercihan and Anadolu went down the bank cautiously, but Anadolu, having put one foot in the water, trembled on the brink. She danced from side to side and finally tried to jump across instead of fording sensibly. She cleared the water, but only just, hitting her knees on the opposite side and scrambling to her feet. She and Ercihan recovered instantly, no harm done whatsoever. However, I thought it would be better for my horse not to have to have me on board if she too were to hit the bank. I had spotted a makeshift bridge nearby, a single plank, the wooden equivalent of a granite clapper bridge, and, dismounting, ran across it to the other side of the stream. Holding Titiz’s reins, I encouraged her to jump across to me. ‘Look out! She will jump on you’, shouted Ercihan. But by this time, our partnership was such that she knew exactly what to do, and she jumped across to land safely next to me, although she still hit the bank and landed partly on her knees as Anadolu had done. Not like Irish hunters, these otherwise handy Cappadocian steeds.

As the least experienced rider, Caroline was frightened and worried about what to do. She too dismounted. Giving my horse to Ercihan, I went back across the plank, took her horse’s reins, and got Sarhosh to jump across to me just as Titiz had done. Caroline then walked the plank, visibly relieved. Ilos was left alone on the other side. We thought she would jump across to join us.

Normally Ercihan’s horses are phenomenally good about this kind of obstacle. They do the sensible thing rather than panicking or causing trouble. We had learned much from our Turkish horses about how spoiled and silly most English and North American horses are. But on this morning, Ilos behaved perversely. She refused to cross. We mounted up, calling to her. Even when we attempted to ride on in a tempting fashion, she stayed on the opposite bank. She was not behaving like a brilliant Akhal-Teke Riding Centre expedition horse, but like . . . a normal horse. Which is to say that like cats, horses can and will be perverse. How I wished I had just gone back across the plank again and led her while she jumped across, as I had done the other two. And which I would have done if riding on Dartmoor or in the States, because one does not expect the kind of rational cooperation from most horses that we had come to expect from Ercihan’s. In the end, he dismounted, went across to Ilos, and led her over. Everybody was beginning to feel a bit tired and pinched with cold and impatient to get going again.

This was the only river crossing during our entire expedition in which the horses did not ford quietly and sensibly, or on rare occasions of leaving the floor, pop over without a fuss. I have to say that jumping is not a strong point amongst these horses. Although they are very sure-footed, and excellent at climbing and descending even the steepest of mountains, they often leave their legs behind if there is a biggish ditch or other obstacle to jump. Sarhosh, Caroline’s little gray mare with the heart of a lion, was the only horse to jump the stream cleanly that day.

After Karbasan, we stopped to eat the biscuits we were carrying in our pockets. We had alternated between field and forest crossings and unmade roads.

The cold is now unrelenting, and we can see what must be snow on the high tops of distant mountains. We dismount and lead the horses for a while. Then we come into Dushecek, a name suggesting a village at the end of the world. Here we are delighted to find tea available in the centre of town, and a small market in progress. Many men in tailored jackets and flat caps gather round to admire the horses. We buy carrots for the horses and bananas for ourselves and gratefully drink the hot sweet tea.

We are about to descend to the plain in which we will find Cavdarhisar, ancient Aizanoi, a city of Hellenistic and Roman antiquity. It is reportedly a fantastic site, though not much known about on the tourist trail. Having only heard the vaguest of descriptions, I am filled with anticipation to come upon a city of marble with bathhouse, amphitheatre, and great temple . . .

Sleet begins to fall as we descend. We are now riding on earthen tracks between ploughed fields in red clay country. The horses pick up galoshes of red clay on their feet.

Then suddenly the footing improves. We decide to pick up the pace a bit. Caroline, who began the ride not really having ridden since she was a girl, and rather apprehensive about riding at speed, is now willing to have a go. First we trot, Titiz stepping out as she does, with her lovely floating action, so that I can see her putting her toe out with every stride. We sustain this pace steadily for nearly the first time on the whole expedition. We have most often walked at a smart marching pace, with occasional bursts of speed. Often the going has been uncertain or treacherous. Many enticing stubble fields are riddled with ‘gelincik’ holes. (These gopher-like long-tailed weasels hibernate for the winter and had already gone to ground in late September. We have only seen one on our entire journey, though many signs of their existence.) For almost the first time ever, Caroline manages to keep Sarhosh happily trotting behind Titiz. Without Caroline and Sarhosh breathing down his neck, about to gallop on his heels and upset Anadolu, Ercihan too is trotting purposefully. He and Anadolu appear carefree. The kilometres fly past. We draw rein and walk for a while to catch our breaths. Then Ercihan mischievously says, ‘Why not canter?’

Some of us have been longing for this moment, having sneaked in short canters and even shorter gallops here and there, but not having been able to suggest that the entire group move on at speed in a sustained way with confidence. Now happy with how Sarhosh performs when settled behind Titiz, Caroline agrees. We canter. We are neither running away nor being run away with. We are rolling merrily along in a hand canter. No pulling or throwing our heads in the air. The rhythm of our hooves drums excitingly on the earthen track. We are flying, but not in an uncontrolled way. It might even be called a good ‘hunting’ pace, perfect for covering whatever terrain looms up out of the unknown when travelling across country. If only we had all been in such tune with our horses from the beginning; if only the going had been as good as this; if only . . .

When Anadolu’s canter slows, Titiz and I begin to trot. Titiz has a big stride, both at the canter and at the trot. Her ordinary trot is the equivalent of many shorter-legged horses’ canter. Sarhosh sees a trotting horse ahead and makes a dash for it, passing us, laughing a horse laugh. Ercihan and Anadolu pull up, now that this mighty lion-hearted dynamo is once again on their heels. . .

We are coming into the red clay galoshes country again now, anyway. The plain has become like fenland, with ditches and dykes and concrete irrigation watercourses on legs ranging alongside the ploughed or fallow fields. It is drizzling lightly and the light is failing although officially there is still an hour or so of daylight left. We come to a main road and are joined by Sedat and our new hosts from Cavdarhisar in a car. Sedat and Ercihan switch places, though Sedat rides Ilos, bareback and in a headcollar, and leads Anadolu. We follow directions, cross fields, come to another road where the car is waiting again with further instructions.

Is that a temple we can glimpse in the distance? On the other hand, I think, it could be a sugar factory. . . We continue to cross fields, come to a village where a man in a suit escorts us on foot in the gathering dusk though orchards and gardens, and finally come to a main road lined with ancient remains. There is indeed a temple, and what a temple. A huge temple of many columns. A veritable Parthenon. I have been told that this was Zeus’s easternmost outpost in mainland Anatolia. The road is lined with huge blocks of marble, many of them carved, Corinthian capitals on their sides, sarcophagi. We have arrived at Cavdarhisar.

I believe we have another three days’ easy riding to Kutahya from here, first on the plain but then again in mountains. And there is snow on the mountains already.

Once during the day, on a particularly cold hillside, Ercihan had whispered to me that he thinks that this will be the last day’s ride. I want to protest but cannot at that moment. Our journey cannot be over, surely, not yet, not yet. I want it never to end, but at least we should have another week or even a few more days. At least enough time for Mac to get back in the saddle. At least enough time for Caroline to put her newly found confidence and pact with Sarhosh about travelling calmly at speed into effect again and again.

Ercihan thinks he cannot go on, and he is worried about the horses. The weather is certainly against us. Crossing the mountains that surround Kutahya will be particularly hazardous if there is snow and ice. If it is this cold already on the plain, what will it be like up in the high country? The horses must not be kept outside in the cold if there is snow.

Tonight the horses will be stabled in the village, and we will be put up in the belediye guest house.

Little do we know that the police will impound our van the next morning because of a question of title left over from a previous owner. This logistical difficulty has nothing to do with Ercihan and everything to do with the dealer who sold the truck to him.

So go to Kutahya we must, with greatest possible speed, our support vehicle under police escort, and with the horses riding in another truck, kindly supplied by our friend and mentor in all things cultural and equestrian in Kutahya, Birol Bey.

After a press conference in the mayor’s office the following morning, we will officially have fulfilled our obligations. We will have completed the initial phase of the Evliya Çelebi Ride to establish the Evliya Çelebi Way. But nothing is over until it’s over. And there are miles to go and further reports and reflections to convey. Watch this space.
file:///Users/henryflo/Desktop/blogging%20cavdarhisar.doc

Map

2009-11-18T04:01:00.000-08:00

The Finest View in Europe

2009-11-18T04:00:00.001-08:00

Roadways

2009-11-18T03:45:00.000-08:00

More photos

2009-11-16T02:51:00.000-08:00

Mac and Elis

Susan and Asya

Route planning

A day at the Races

The Evliya Çelebi Ride mug (artist: Nesrin Şarlıgil)

2009-11-10T21:49:00.000-08:00

Dream horses: hayal—huyul

2009-11-07T06:53:00.000-08:00

Dream horses: hayal—huyul

Caroline writes:

It all seems so very long ago. We were suffering bouts of nostalgia even before it ended. The Ride is now over, and we are back on the hard ground. It feels rather like returning to normal life after a time spent at sea. Every slope, every forest, every field, every river one drives past seems to invite a return to the saddle, and the landscape all around demands to be crossed in the gentle and harmonious fashion that was our privilege for the past weeks. Indeed, in retrospect the Ride seems like a fleeting dream. It is no wonder that Arabic and Ottoman have words for dream/hayal and horses/huyul that share the same root (correct me if I am wrong).

Simav is where we left Evliya's route to return to Kütahya, his ancestral home. From Simav he continued towards Izmir and eventually reached Mecca as was his aim. From Simav our remaining riders—Donna and Ercihan and Caroline—rode around the north of the Şaphane Mountain, so as not to retrace their route from Eski Gediz to Simav, which followed Evliya's southerly route. For the first day, which took us from the Simav plain up into the mountains, we passed through the villages of Şenlik, Inlice, Kestel, and Halifeler, to camp at Sefaköy where there are hot springs of ancient date. We had with us Pinar, a friend of Ercihan's who is more at home on her feet, as a climber and mountaineer, but who soon felt relaxed on Ilos. The usual mixture of patikas, village roads, old roads, no roads, and a few unavoidable stretches of asfalt.

It was a wet, wet night, and the weather turning colder. Stories of floods elsewhere in the country dampened our spirits, and we had a late start the next morning but set off, minus Pinar, to reach Çavdarhisar—site of the wonderful yet too little visited site of Aizanoi with its stunning Zeus temple and ruins scattered around for miles. A cold, cold wind harrassed us for much of the way, but mercifully the rain was not continuous. A route through the villages of Karbasan, Düşecek, Abaş and Ağarı—probably some 40 kilometres—brought us to Çavdarhisar where the horses had a stable and we a room in the Belediye guest house. It was cold, and the first snows had begun to fall right on cue, 31 October/1 November, after weeks of T-shirt weather.

We had no idea that our Ride was to come to an abrupt end in Çavdarhisar, with our last day or two back to Kütahya unridden, but in retrospect we choose to believe that fate intervened to make it last for a blessed 40 days and 40 nights. The streets of Çavdarhisar were empty of cars that Sunday night—except for our exotic support vehicle (see Susan's photo)—and the police ran a check on the number plate and found that it was saddled with an outstanding debt. The fact that this was not ours but that of the previous owner did not concern them, and if it had not been for the intervention of high-level authorities in Kütahya, we might yet be in Çavdarhisar. Our van was eventually allowed to leave under police escort, and the next stop was the Kütahya police pound where Ercihan and Metin managed to resolve the problem after some effort.

But, the Ride was ended. Without the support vehicle we could not continue. Saved from inclement weather by the police of Çavdarhisar.

Kütahya again, where we were greeted with hospitality by the Mayor, Mustafa İca, and his colleagues all—particularly Aylin Hanım and Yaşar Bey—and entertained by our dear rahvancı friends—notably Birol Babanoğlu and Mehmet Koçak, who have helped us so much along the way, and to whom we are deeply grateful.

Sedat returned to Avanos with the remaining of our calm, brave, horses, in a truck supplied by the Turkish Jockey Club; Ercihan and Metin drove the van back home; Mac and Donna and Caroline returned to Istanbul by minibus (courtesy of Kütahya Municipality).

We have incurred so many debts, to our sponsors certainly, but also to the numerous individuals who gave generously of their time and expertise, as well as to the people we met along the way who greeted us with interest in what we were up to and with open hands and hearts. We think warmly of you all.

Now the work begins. First of all there is a guide book to be written and a documentary film to be made. Both these pleasurable tasks are in hand—Ajans21 in Istanbul already has 15 hours of rushes taken on the Ride—and there are TV and press interviews to do.

We returned to the exhilarating news that 2011 has been designated the year of Evliya Çelebi by Unesco. We set out on the Ride intending to commemorate this great traveller in our own modest way on the 400th anniversary of his birth, and now find we will be joined by many others around the world who will ensure that his 40 years of journeyings (again that 40...), and the 10-volume record of them that he left to posterity, become far more widely-known and deservedly-appreciated for the remarkable phenomenon they are.

Watch this space. The show goes on.

over the hills and far away, to Simav and after

2009-10-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

Camped near Kalkan, just outside Simav (Donna writes) . . .

Delighted with Susan's pictures, posted from New York, those of us remaining are already remembering the Evliya trail with nostalgia. Her photos capture so much of the spirit of our adventure so far. Village hospitality has been overwhelming. Our stays in or near cities and towns have also been made most comfortable by thoughtful hosts. Metin Bey continues to provide feasts of all descriptions, again as Susan's photos show. Metin also continues to make our arrivals in belediyes and villages much smoother and more graceful than they would otherwise be. He can speak of Evliya and the project more eloquently than anybody else. Every project should have a shaman and Sufi philosopher to back it, a fixer and diplomat who can charm the most recalcitrant of officials.

Ercihan Bey continues to find the way with panache. His horses (our horses, for the duration, and we wish they could be ours forever by now) are brilliant. They cross rivers, climb mountains, hardly ever run away from camp, and are as feisty at the end of the day as at the beginning. They are wonder horses indeed. And all Turkish horses! İ cannot imagine parting from Titiz, who has been such a sensitive and gallant companion on all of the route. She is also a fruit eater extraordinaire, which makes travel with her more fun as we can share what we pick or are given along the way. Ercihan has an uncanny knowledge of country, and an eye for a landscape and how it might be ridden that is unmatched by anybody else we know. He can also speak persuasively about the project. One of his missions is to improve local knowledge of horse culture and horsekeeping. He has advised the cirit players of Usak about harsh as opposed to gentler bits, for instance. Always he finds an attentive audience. Maybe this will make a difference eventually. Four hundred years ago, when Evliya was travelling, Ottoman horsemanship and the regimen of 'kind leniency', as one European traveller wrote, were the envy of the world.

Sadly, we have begun the countdown of the last days remaining until our return to Kutahya. Some of us, perhaps all of us, don't really wish the ride to end. We would much rather continue to travel, as Evliya so often did, month after month. Did he enjoy riding the horses he prized and acquired as we do ours? Or were they much more like vehicles, means to an end?

Mac, who injured his foot on the ramp of the van (while awaiting the arrival of Tricia Daunt and Andy Byfield back in Aydinlar, outside Afyon) wonders whether he will be able to get a boot back on in time to ride again before the tour ends. He has had the stitches out after a fortnight but can only imagine riding barefoot and bareback at the moment. Given the mountainous terrain we have been crossing and continue to face, a saddle would seem to be recommended. He has been part of the camp and logistics crew since the accident and is developing a new angle on the tour which might indeed have pleased Evliya beyond expectations. (Watch this space.) İt should be said that the only accidents so far have not involved horses at all but motorized vehicles (Mac's slip up on the van's ramp and Bekir's motorbike accident on the very day he arrived from Avanos.) İnshallah these will be the only mishaps.

We sent three horses to Kutahya by small lorrie from Eski Gediz three days ago. The four remaining are enough for Ercihan, Caroline, Donna, and Mac, if he can get his foot in the stirrup in time. Or for any visitor or friend we meet along the way. Meanwhile, we hope to be joined by Mahir from İstanbul in a very few days. İf he can get away from Gocmen Ranch after the Yirmi Dokuz Ekim holiday, he will ride with us too. And somebody can try the van's eye view as a contrast to the view from the saddle. Which is, after all, a very particular view.

Simav, which travellers used to speak of as lying on Lake Ancyra, is where the routes of Lady Anne and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and of Evliya converge again. The Blunts travelled from İstanbul to Bursa as we did, and as Evliya did, but then they went westwards rather than to Kutahya. Simav in 1873 was situated in a pampas-like plain, according to Lady Anne, spring fed, and full of flocks, herds, and fine horses grazing. This plain lay adjacent to a lake that used to be much bigger than it was when they saw it, she speculated. Wilfrid caught fever in this marshy country. Now the lake is largely dried up, and poplars stud the plain, but there are still hot springs, kaplagis, where people go to take the healing waters.

Tomorrow we set out for Cavdarhisar and the old road to Kutahya.

2009-10-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

2009-10-27T15:16:00.001-07:00

ciriting around usak

2009-10-24T00:39:00.000-07:00

From the campsite near Mesudiye outside Usak (Donna and Mac write):

Today we will speak of Sedat. We are in the heart of Turkish and Ottoman horse country here. Tricia, who first came to Turkey in 1960, and can make comparisons between past and present the rest of us cannot match, says that the cavalry always came from around Usak. Back in Banaz, the next town to the East, Evliya reported the region to be inhabited by sipahis (the famous Ottoman cavalry officers), so the region has long been a home to equestrian cultures. Many of the villages now have cirit clubs, and we went to a practice match at Kediyunu ("cat fur", so named after the huyuk or tumulus alongside the village) last night. Andy had a go and did not disgrace himself (photo to follow).

But first we must speak of Sedat. (Metin comes later.) Tricia observed that Sedat was "absolutely indispensable, a good horseman and a real friend. He has maintained the horses so well in difficult conditions." The whole logistical team has been impeccable, in fact. Sedat hopes he can join the cavalry training unit when he does his military service. We too hope so. He would be a real asset. He adopted two puppies in Buyuk Oturak. Initial sceptics are now their biggest fans. As Caroline observed, Mac has become a wet nurse (photo to follow).

Sedat Varis is a national treasure. His contribution is one that the army should not waste. His potential to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of equestrian culture is unassailable.

Followers of the map will notice that we have arrived at Usak rather suddenly. When we left Afyon we decided to follow Evliya's path to Boyali and Banaz, followed by Usak, rather than going eccentrically south to Suhut and Sandikli as he claims he also did. Time is pressing and the weather, currently golden Indian summer though cold at night, could be about to change at any moment. We must get into the mountains near Gediz as soon as possible.

In the last few days we have made some amazing discoveries. Fortunately we not yet had the Banaz itch Evliya spoke of, which could only be cured by taking the waters up in the hill country. Perhaps camping near Kucuk Oturak and then at Ovacik has inoculated us against it. We fell foul of the newest muhtar at Ovacik after receiving incredible hospitality from the previous muhtars and their families. Banished to the village common by the former after having been first offered the misafir hane, the village guesthouse, by the latter, we were then awoken in the middle of the night by the jandarma and yeni muhtar in case we might have been sheep rustlers. This muhtar is giving the wonderful village of Ovacik a bad name! The village is beautiful and most of the people most hospitable. The landscape looks like a painting by George Stubbs or Breughel. The ploughed fields and harvested stubble fields are still dotted with veteran trees, old oaks of many varieties and black pines. There are also signs of replanting, and maintenance of patches of woodland and hedgerows. Although many farmers have tractors, many also plough and harrow and harvest with teams of horses and mules. We have ridden through the first real galloping country we have come to during the last few days. For once there were not so many gelincik holes, so many stones, as there have often been. The terrain we have been traversing since Kutahya gave way, from mountainous prospects and the Frigian (Phrygian) plain, to the volcanic landscapes around Afyon, and then to this rolling hill country just north of Banaz and Usak. It is no wonder so many Turkish horsemen come from around here.

Tonight we will go to another cirit match at Susuzoren, south of Usak. This javelin hurling mounted game is exciting, bloody, and very popular here. The horses kept for playing the game in Usak all seem to be former Arabian racehorses. Many have come from the hippodrome at Izmir. Last night's practice match featured eight stallions, all very good looking and in beautiful condition. The tack is based on Ottoman saddlery and still made locally. The riding is probably no rougher than in polo, according to Andy, who plays, though the bits and the sharp stirrups are severe. When the horses themselves take a hit from the javelins, there can be blood. Evliya himself lost some teeth playing cirit. Andy knows players who have lost an eye. Lodged between the cushions of the Ottoman or Circassian-style saddles, some riders drew blood with their stirrup edges, which function like spurs. The players played with sharpened sticks of apple wood. The horses spun and galloped, spun and galloped, turning from riders' legs. One player leaned from his saddle and retrieved a stick from the ground; another cued his horse to rear on command. As dusk fell, the audience of all ages accompanied the horses back to the muhtar's office for tea. There were many girls at the match, walking horses and looking after them, though none were playing the game. Andy had put his polo training to good use, galloping and hurling his stick with the best of them. He said that the horse he was given to ride, a dark bay, was beautifully trained, a really nice horse. Perhaps Andy will have another go tonight before he and Tricia and Therese depart from the group. Susan, sadly, left us last night to return to New York. We await her posting of her wonderful photos. We and the horses miss her company very much already.

Map of the route

2009-10-19T02:53:00.001-07:00

2009-10-19T02:48:00.000-07:00

addicted to afyon

2009-10-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

here writes caroline:
after our trouble getting an internet seat last sunday in kutahya because of the soldiers on their day out, we are again short of time because of filming for the evliya celebi documentary that will be made of our trip, and also feel enervated by the hamam e just had, with the best kese/scrub ever. we went to the imaret han, from bayezid II's time, after visiting the fabulous ulu camii from the 13th century, with 40 wooden columns, each with a different carved capital. the great richness of anatolian urban architecture is just one of the delights of this trip. here in afyon the old houses are now being done up with government support, and saved for posterity. afyon is famous for its castle that evliya climbed in 1671, with his skirts hoisted up, as he writes. he also talks of how the town bustled with trade-- a sea of men, 'adem deryası', so crowded that you cld barely find a placetostand on another's shoulders. he says that most went around on horses in the town and, sure enough, we saw a teenager on his rahvan/pacer going off to buy the bread. beats getting into the car, of having to lock your bike.
Evliya also writes of the wonderful saddlery here, and also that addiction to opium was rife: the men, he says, slept in the coffeehouses because with their women also enjoying the habit, two addıcts in one house would have been too much.
otherwise our trip continues with as much joy as ever.. every day is different, and each better than the last. continual change of landscape and of terrain. from kutahya we took a circuitous route out of the town to avoid the main kutahya-afyon road, up high into the mountain to the west, staying in recently harvested fields and threshing places. the plain between kutahya and afyon is like the bermuda triangle, the seytan ucgeni. we got lost here last year when checking
evliya's route by car, and finding our way from village to village on horseback was equally tricky in the mirage of the ever receding horizon.
but we are here, clean, and tomorrow continue circuitously towards usak. one night has been frosty but otherwise we have been blessed. i am still riding in two tshirts only. we have been rained on once, hard. andy byfield, formerly of dogal hayat koruma dernegı, and patricia daunt, formerly the british embassy, ankara, have joined us now--there is a long way still to go, but we are not tired, nor sore, nor wishing for a feather bed.
hayat biter, yol bitmez!

2009-10-13T07:45:00.001-07:00

2009-10-13T07:44:00.003-07:00

2009-10-13T07:44:00.001-07:00

2009-10-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

Made it to Kutahya, the city of Evliya

2009-10-11T03:59:00.000-07:00

After Bursa, the route became trickier and more challenging day by day. We left the comforts of the ranch, carrying gifts from the Cilek company as well as the Bursa Belediye. Now little girls along the route have Cilek key rings and perfume as well as impromptu history lessons to remember. We climbed through the hills to the west of İnegol and found villages visited by Evliya. In Babasultan we found a beautiful dede's tomb ensconced in a garden with the hugest and most majestic plane tree we have ever seen. The villagers of Babasultan are very proud of their long history. They refuse to marry with more recent arrivals, even those who came to Turkey from the Balkans or from Georgia in the nineteenth century as the empire shrank. Each village has a different demographic profile, and we hope to learn more about Ottoman policies for settlement of the many Turkish-speaking peoples of the empire who took refuge in Anatolia when imperial frontiers contracted. Skirting İnegol by the high ground, we enjoyed mayoral and municipal hospitality at Cerrah and Deydinler, including the famous İnegol kofte (spiced meatballs made of lamb and beef). We rode into the forest near Domanic, climbing higher and higher. Evliya waxes poetic about these mountains -- but as the hideouts of robbers, bandits, brigands, and highwaymen. The closest we came to being held up by brigands was being hailed from a cliff top by a man with a gun and two dogs. He was hunting wild boar but hadn't found any. There were also meant to be bears ın these here woods but we failed to encounter any, and also feral horses whose forebears were 'let go' by the vıllagers as tractors took over. Later on the trail, this hunter hailed us again to help us find the right path to Bahcekaya. The user-friendly wayfarer and man of the forest seems to have replaced Evliya's highwaymen. Two nights later, though, in Seydikuzu, we had to convince the muhtar, or head man, that we were not brigands ourselves. Word of a sort of travelling circus who might be sheep rustlers had reached him and he didn't want us to camp in his domain. Once we had met, and the local jandarma had spoken to him as well, and we had showed him our letters from the Turkish ambassador in London and from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in London and in Ankara, he was most hospitable and even gave us a load of firewood for our campfire. The next day we faced a long ride ın the forest to Senlik without many villages along the way. Ercihan had left us for a week to take riders from the USA on a tour of Cappadocia, so Sedat had to take the lead ın route planning and learning from local people. We were feasted royally at Elmali for lunch. This picturesque and friendly village should be on the list of Slow Food capitals of the world. Everything we were fed was grown organically and produced by the residents of Elmali, and cooked for us by Selime Hanım. There was homemade soup, pasta to die for, brilliant tomatoes and peppers both roasted and fresh, and honeycombs just harvested as well as bread, crumbly cheese and fresh butter. The horses also ate well -- beautiful aromatic hay was given to them in fresh bundles. And so, well fortified, we set off. We were given two different sets of directions by Osman, who drew a map, and by the muhtar İlyas, and after a very steep descent on foot, leading the horses on a path more suitable for donkeys than for our thin-legged and spirited steeds, we came to a lovely river valley. But the rocks were volcanic, treacherous, and very slippery. We had to cross the river several times, each crossing more perilous than the last. When we arrived at the Yorukler Cesmesi, the fountain of the Yoruks, the ancestral nomadic people of Elmali and other nearby mountain villages, we had to decide to follow Osman or İlyas. We went righthanded and not left. Three hours later as it was getting dark we came to a crossroads of mountain paths. We were clearly not where we were meant to be and had taken a wrong turn. We built a fire to send up smoke signals, phoned the ormancilar, the forest rangers, giving them our GPS coordinates, and waited for advice or help. As sirens resounded around the surrounding mountain tops, we knew we were at the mercy of the Turkish government. Modernity had arrived in the shape of the forestry fire engine. The ormancilar were very kind and didn't make us feel as foolish as we felt. We rode for another hour in the nearly full moonlight far behind behind their red tail lights to where Metin was waiting for us at a new forest campsite. We were the only night riders this time, not brigands but foolish travellers who had lost our way.

And so to Kutahya. Several visits to this city that is Evliya's ancestral home, and boasts a rich history from the days before the Ottomans became Ottomans, brought us generous sponsorship through the agency of the Mayor, Mustafa Ica, and the Vali. The foremost commercial
enterprises here are those of the Gural family--Kutahya Porselen, Gural Porselen, and Gural Art and Craft--and their support has enabled our project to become a reality. We thank them fulsomely. Entering the city was not an experience we would choose to repeat. We were accompanied on the last kilometres by Birol Babanoglu, chair of Horse Sports here, on his rahvan (pacer) Sultan. Our horses took agin her, of course, but worse was the traffıc roaring past as we rode along the main road into the city. A safe haven for our horses was the new Horse Sports establishment that Birol is building with the support of the Municipality to promote horse(wo)manship and remind people that horses are not just part of their history but also their present.
We rolled into Kutahya only 2 hours later than planned, to find the Mayor and the Vali's assistant and the press and various dignitaries waiting for us under the hot sun. Horses are not machines was our cry, our excuse for tardiness.
Our arrival coincided with the city's European Cultural Days, when the Minister of Culture came to celebrate Kutahya's remarkable past and the monuments that have survived the ravages of time. We attended the opening ceremony, but then went back to the horses with our great
supporter, renowned equine veterinarian Professor Ross Williamson, who examined our horses for wear and tear, and also the rahvan horses of Birol and his fellow rahvan enthusiasts--from head to toe, we spent a fascinating day learning much about local practices along the way, and the local horsemen were likewise exposed to information that they otherwise have trouble accessing.
Another highlight was a visit to the Balikli Hamam, which Evliya mentions at length, especially
celebrating the lovers who hung out there. The fish, of course, are in the men's side... Ayse Hanim who scrubbed us receives few visitors, what with domestic plumbing and all, but locals do go on Sundays, she says. The hamam is in need of serious attention if it is not to become a ruin. It is apparently the only haman still functioning as such in Kutahya. Many monuments have been repaired recently, and so we make a plea for the Balikli Hamam also to be repaired.
We visited the Evliya Celebi Museum, where Mucahit Bey and Edip Bey received us as on earlier visits. Evliya is commemorated in this house which is locally thought to be his family home. He left no likenesses nor possessions behind, and the Museum honours him by being a centre teaching the arts of Anatolia, notably music, calligraphy, painting, and Sufi philosophy.
Ercihan has now rejoined us, and Ross's veterinary skills have been supplemented by those of the best horse vet in Turkey, Ayse Yetis, who will be with us for a few days. Tomorrow we head off on the next big adventure, the next section of our route through Afyon, Sandikli, and Usak, making a meandering loop as Evliya himself so often did. . .

From Bursa on Wednesday

2009-09-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

First, our thanks to the Belediye of Bursa for a day of visiting in style all the major Ottoman buildings and tombs, for lunching us at the Bursa Kebabcisi in Tophane and staying late so we could check in with the rahvan-cis. Without Isik Bey and Aziz Bey of Osmangazi Municipality, and the transport, we would have been lost. We also visited the ethnographic collections of Esat Uluumay, former international dressage and showjumping judge, which is housed in a medrese far too small to accommodate the rich collection. Among his treasures are a number of saddles, each more uncomfortable-looking than the last. Not to mention a couple of bits of horrifying aspect. The collection of traditional costumes, each one revolving, allowed us to scrutinise the remarkable details of workmanship from every angle. Every part of the Ottoman empire was represented.

We must also thank the Bosniac community of Shukraniye, the Cilek company, and our immediate hosts for hospitality on the ranch where the horses are enjoying their stay in the sand school. We have thoroughly enjoyed the kindness of our hostess in particular.
Tomorrow--Thursday--we may or may not meet the ranch's owner, and we will not be able to stay until the weekend to meet the president of Bosnia, unfortunately. We must pack up and leave for the hills (or are they mountains?).

Over to Caroline:
Our day in Bursa and the nights at the ranch were a pleasant antidote to being suspects in a couple of sheep-rustling cases which the local gendarmes had set themselves to solve, what with kurban bayrami coming up soon. The first team were kindly and indeed one fancied himself a horseman, with his superior who had done some years in New Jersey, but word of our adventure had clearly not filtered through from the Ministry of Culture to the various fields where we slept, and the other lot dragged us out of a warm sleeping bag at midnight with questions as to our purpose. Only doing their job in a quiet neck of the woods, and 'our firmans from Constantinople', as Fellows of Xanthos fame, or infamy, wrote in the 1830s, did their work.
Such entertainments apart, we are smiling all the way as we and our noble steeds negotiate all manner of terrain and vegetation in our quest to tread where our hero Evliya trod--or rather, rode.

On the road

2009-09-28T07:12:00.001-07:00

(Apologies for strange characters as a result of inexperience with Turkish keeboard. Sic.)

We met the horses at Hersek. Here is where the little ferries used to dock bringing horses across the Sea of Marmara from İstanbul.
Camp was picturesque with tents and horses and our support vehicle all hunkered down there waiting for rain which came on cue.

We camped overnight after meeting the muhtar and local people in the cafe (kahvehanesi) near the mosque built long before Our Man passed through here.

The next afternoon we set off in rain to reach Soğuk Su. Here the spring once upon a time brought water to the acqueduct at Hersek. We camped in a fıg grove next to the river.
We met farmers and a local landowner who told us there was buried treasure at the foot of the Shepherd’s Castle (Coban Kalesi) we would see tomorrow.

Next morning in brilliant sunshine we set off following the River Dracon of antiquitie.
The river dazzled it was so clear and shallow. Herons and egrets were fishing.

We rode in the river much of the time with Ercihan finding the way with no difficultie whatsoever.
The horses loved it. We splashed along happilie for two and a half hours with occasional deviatıons to the riverbank and road.

We had lunch at the Bagdad Restaurant which lies on the Ottoman ‘road to war’ but also the Silk Road – the road of trade and pilgrimage.

We camped at Kizderbent. The village welcomed us and the village scholar read from Our Man’s text in the main square. The children rode our horses around the square.
Then we were shown to the mera – the village commons grazing.

Our filmcrew the two Mehmets from Ajans21 will be interviewing us tomorrow about the next daıe’s ride from Kizderbent to İznik.

Watch this space!

Camping

2009-09-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

`The worst thing about camping is . . . `. Andy paused. We all waited. It was crowded in the pub. `Camping!`

The thing is, he was absolutely right. Our travels on horseback would be much less daunting if we could look forward to having a roof over our heads, and the horses too. So far this September in western Turkey has been the wettest in years. There have been floods in Istanbul. At least 32 people have died. For the last several days, there has been rain during some part of every day. The sky is turbulent, with massive clouds forming and reforming, and occasional flashes of sunlight that remind us of how we had expected the weather to be. Not like this, not like this.

Tonight there will be a farewell dinner for the riders. Some of us haven't met each other yet. Tomorrow we will meet the horses near Hersek, on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara. This is where Evliya would have ferried his horses across from the northern shore, having ridden them from Uskudar, on the Asian side of Istanbul, along the Baghdad Road, the road to war, or trade, or pilgrimage. Yesterday we drove along this road in the holiday traffic to collect some bridles and bits from a woman who imports tack from India. The road has always been famous for its trees and fountains, from where thirsty travellers and their horses could drink. We saw one fountain, anyway, amongst the Prada and Marks and Spencers and Armani shops. It was the last day of ramazan, as the Turks call ramadan. Today is the first day of the bayram, the Eid al Fitr, that marks the end of the fast and the beginning of three or four days of festivity.

We had hoped that setting off in Evliya`s tracks to follow his route from 1671, when he embarked upon the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, would be a good way to commemorate him. And that celebrating this great Ottoman traveller would be in keeping with the spirit of the season. It remains to be seen if the weather will be kind.

Riding tours past and present

2009-09-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

Nomads

2009-09-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

Nomads appeal to sedentary, post-industrial people. Our lives spent with All Mod Cons in electronically wired/wire-less flats and cottages make us fret for space and the adrenaline rush of the open. There is room for romance when the horizon appears boundless. Nomads embody freedom: freedom of movement equals freedom of spirit. The title Lords of the Horizon sold Jason Goodwin’s book about the Ottomans long before readers bothered to crack the dustjacket. Nomadic life on horseback looks and sounds even more romantic than other forms of mobile lifeway, accompanied in the sedentary reader’s mind by the drumming of hoofbeats on the steppe. From the far distant horizon the dust gathers force and surges into the middle distance. Here come the nomads!

‘What’s so special about nomad love?’ ‘It’s in tents.’

Nomads appear to travel light. Their lives are about mobility and being able to carry whatever is needed for survival. No fixed address. No big-ticket items, no trunks, no unwieldy suitcases, no wheelie bags. As the Long Riders Guild website phrases it, the dream of travel on horseback is the dream of freedom, of partnership between human and equine, but it’s also the dream of shedding ‘physical possessions’ and replacing them with something else: the allure of the boundless horizon.

Why then have preparations for the Evliya Çelebi Ride largely been about two things: money and equipment? In less than a month now we will mount our horses and embark from Hersek, the traditional staging point near Istanbul where previous travellers, including Evliya, set forth for their travels into remote corners of Asia. With sponsorship now beginning to come in (see home-page for logos) and acute financial anxiety only somewhat allayed, we are now almost free to focus on the latest priority: our gear. What is this fixation with physical possessions, exactly the things we were supposed to be leaving behind? Why are we acquiring more of them?

If we were with Ercihan and the expedition’s horses in Cappadocia now, instead of scattered across Europe, North America, and the UK, we could obsess about the horses instead. But we aren’t, so we can’t. We have to leave the horses’ preparation entirely to him. He is the undisputed authority, the başbakan, the head of the official stables. They might as well be the imperial stables. He is the imperator of their domain. Besides, his horses have made camping expeditions before. They probably know far more about what we about to embark upon than we do. We have been too preoccupied with seeking sponsorship and getting official permissions to travel, to film, to have the right paperwork to show the jandarma wherever we go; we could never have found and bought our own horses and prepared them for a long-distance adventure. That was the original plan, but it would have taken years and not months. Once again, we are up against the most typical constraints of Modernity: time and money. Time is money. Money is money. Buying gear, especially from online sites, relieves anxiety because it makes us feel we are doing something to prepare for the expedition.

So we obsess about tents, torches, raingear, what to wear, how to sleep, what to take with us. We gave up on the idea of re-enacting Evliya’s tack and dress—those wonderful yellow boots!—even before we started. This will not be ‘history in fancy dress’, as re-enactment gets called sometimes on the BBC. In the first place, we couldn’t afford to acquire even reproductions of seventeenth-century Ottoman costumes and saddles. Apparently there are saddlers in Poland who make beautiful repro-Ottoman tack. But we can’t afford such museum pieces, and it would be a shame to subject them to such an expedition anyway. In the second place, we know how uncomfortable they would be likely to be unless we also (re)learned how to ride in them. Having sat on old-fashioned Turkish saddles a few times, this we know already! It might have been an idea, according to Mahir, at least to have had some of those yellow boots made, like those Evliya would have worn. But this too was not so easy to organise, and far from cheap. And there was resistance to the very idea of historical costume on the part of several participants. Surely we should use the travelling gear appropriate to travelling in the present, just as Evliya did in his day, and not inflict a fantasy seventeenth century on the local people we hope to meet?

So now we obsess about what sort of available modern saddles we will use and how best to dress practically for long hours in the saddle. What will the weather be like? Ercihan says a yağmurluk, a raincoat, is essential. Since we will be riding for at least five or six hours a day for sixty days, how best to cover our legs is also a concern. Boots or chaps? Half chaps or full chaps? Leather chaps or fleece-lined waterproof ones? Ercihan says it might even snow in the high places. Imagine camping in the snow. Sounds like Moscow Central rather than Istanbul Central. Not my idea of Turkey at all, even though we have visited in winter and autumn before, and have seen it snowing on the streets of various Anatolian cities. We have had to get four-season ‘mountain’ tents, not the usual Turkish summer tents that would let the weather in. We must be prepared for serious atmospheric conditions, for real weather. It sounds all too much like riding and camping on Dartmoor, where ‘Four seasons in one day’ is a typical experience. No wonder Orhan Pamuk is always writing about snow, and not only in his novel Snow, set in Kars. In his literary essays, it is hardly ever sunny and hot in Istanbul. It is usually raining and often snowing. This weather adds to the hüzün, the feeling of collective melancholy that he finds so characteristic of the city. What if it is characteristic of the whole country too?

How to keep everything as light as possible is another concern. We really don’t want to carry more than the bare minimum on our horses. We will have small saddle bags, and those can barely hold tethering ropes and water, perhaps some bread and cheese. Taking advice from a seasoned horseback traveller, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, we will have a ‘support vehicle’, lent to the project by the Avis-Koç company. Ercihan will be bringing two helpers along, to drive and cook and also help us with the tents and the horses. The support vehicle is called a kamyonet, literally ‘lorry-ette’ or ‘truck-ette’. It will have Ercihan’s ‘camping box’ fitted on top of it. This apparently has a kitchen, and it will be quite full already with provisions for the horses, the most important thing. Our baggage had better be totally minimal, since it will have to include at least seven tents, each with mats and sleeping bags, our overnight kit, some changes of clothes (not many!), some human provisions as well as horse ones. The horses will have woven Turkish feedbags for their hard food. Won’t they need the inevitable rubber bowls for water too?

Another preoccupation that has required purchases is how we will record the trip in its every detail. This last requirement is the most interesting but also the most worrying. Besides notebooks and pens and sketchpads and cameras, we now have a recording device with which to produce broadcast-quality radio copy. To avoid anybody bringing a laptop, Mac and I are refusing to bring ours. I wonder how many laptops and mobile phones will need to be charged at every opportunity. Mac has bought a Power Monkey we can use to recharge phones and cameras. That needs charging as well, but not so often. We hope.

This trip has been organised mostly by email. Does it actually exist apart from screen images and email messages and files exchanged, apart from websites and images of the Ride projected long before it has taken place? None of us knows all the other participants. Ercihan has met most of the people going on the ride. Caroline, Mac, Andy Byfield, and I know one another, and we were the original team who first had the idea to make a long-distance ride across Anatolia. Our plan was to commemorate, and re-enact, not the plethora of Western travellers who will have gone before us, but those less well known trail-blazers, Eastern, Ottoman travellers. We would unlearn Orientalism, the Western grid of perceptions regarding the East, as we went along, as we entered in, as we learned from the local culture. We would do what Edward Said has accused many Western scholars of not doing – attempt to leave our previous assumptions behind and learn from the other. Having done some homework, it became clear that Evliya Çelebi was the Man to Follow. Not only did he wear a ring inscribed ‘Evliya Çelebi, World Traveller’, but he carried letters of introduction that described him as ‘a man of peace’, and a man who hoped ‘to study the many nations and races of mankind’ as he went along, recording the stories, dreams, histories, jokes, lies, and fantasies of the people he met along the way.

When Caroline introduced us to Mahir, it was exciting that he had had the same desire to follow Evliya on horseback. Mahir has often spoken about Evliya on his radio show, ‘Adeta Dörtnala’ (Walk and Canter) on Acık Radyo (‘Open Radio’, the Istanbul equivalent of PBS in the States). Mahir also knew Andy Byfield, as it happened; they had even ridden together. Leyla will be teaching, so she won’t be riding with us but hopes to join us along the way. She was introduced to the group by Caroline. Her knowledge of Anatolian village culture has already elicited some great stories we will be following up. It was Patricia who introduced most of us to Ercihan, and Ercihan who got Susan and Thérèse to come along. If Françoise Joe finds the funds to come along to make a film, that will fulfil a dream she has had; we met six months ago at the Istanbul Centre in Brussels, courtesy of Andy Finkel, journaliste extraordinaire.

Evliya’s manner of travel included companions as well as servants, and far more horses per person than we will have. In fact the ratio is totally different from ours: when he set out from Mecca in 1671, he took with him three companions, eight servants, and fifteen horses. We will be a motley crew of nine, without any ‘servants’ as such. Two people will travel in the support vehicle, and there will be seven or eight horses, one horse per rider, with possibly a spare horse. There will be masses of baggage in the luckless kamyonet, but we won’t have pack saddles to struggle with.

Evliya clearly loved travelling for its own sake, and also recording everywhere he went and what he saw and heard. He was a self-styled nomad who wrote the equivalent of a blog in his ten-volume manuscript. He appears never to have been in a hurry to get anywhere unless he was on an official mission. Then he could make tracks, for example going between Istanbul and Diyarbekir, and back again, in a matter of days. But left to his own devices, he accepted invitations to visit people, he followed up suggestions of interesting sites to see, he hung around for days at a time enjoying hospitality, he exchanged gifts, and then he took to the road again.

Evliya was a very civilised nomad. He will be a hard act to follow. Maybe we should have done more to imitate him in our plans for re-enactment. Maybe we should at least have worn those yellow boots.

(Picture: Gavin Hamilton, James Dawkins and Robert Wood discovering the ruins of Palmyra, 1758. National Gallery of Scotland)