- T U R K E Y -
S t r e e t P h o t o g r a p h y
A C O L D M O R N I N G I N B U R D U R
2 years ago we were hitchhiking in Turkey. After camping in the south coast sunny beach of Olympos (pictures here), we started going north to reach our next volunteer project, in the countryside of Burdur, our first stop.
We started hitchhiking out of Antalya (check the street bazaars album here) and it was already about 4pm, which means that probably we would still be in the road when the night hits, even though hitchhiking in Turkey can be quite easy.
The first ride came after waiting about 20min, and they were a young couple rolling huge joints, Turkish style. So they took us to a high point of view, it was a nice way to say goodbye to this city which was my home for about one month. After all the smoke, they left us in a gasoline station in the entrance of the highway, it was already dark, and I tried to hitchhike in the big road for some time, but it was kind of scary, no light, cars passing too fast, impossible. Back to the gasoline station, the workers started calling us for the usual çay. We told them our story and they talked with 2 guys who were changing the publicity there, they agreed to give us a ride north when they finished their work. We offered our help but they didn't accept. The ride was great, I had enough space to play guitar and we went all the way singing in English, Portuguese, French and Turkish too. They ended up taking us all the way to Burdur, leaving us in the train station.
We slept there, and we made a good friend in a little restaurant who kept offering us sandwiches, telling us to hide it because his boss could not know about it. This is typical in Turkey, people keep giving you food, even if you're broke you'll not starve.
We hitchhiked from the train station to the city really early and there we had a great Turkish coffee.
In Burdur the morning came really cold, but the sun was out. We found the big central market, and it was so early people were still preparing it.
Burdur is not a turistic city, and people were often curious about us. Like usual, most of them didn't speak English, but that didn't stop us from comunicating and sharing some smiles.
Burdur was not so small after all. We kept on walking and ended up in a kind of industrial area.
In the end of the afternoon we took the time to buy some food and wait for the bus. It was easy to find out where to take it, as most people there are not so used to see foreigners around, and when they do they think right away they are trying to reach Lisinia.
It was the case, and when the little bus came it was very funny, for there were not a lot of sitted places inside, and some people were carrying their own chairs to sit inside. As the bus travelled around the big lake, people were starting to go out and we were almost the last ones to do so, already in a little road, in front of the doors of Lisinia project, where we wanted to stay for some time taking care of wounded wild animals. We did so, and it was a great experience, I'll share some pictures later.
photos and text by:
Oliveira de Carvalho ©
photographer // videographer
open for submissions and suggestions
+33 6 48 60 53 53
carvalho25n@gmail.com
This was the beautiful road where the bus left us.
You can see Burdur on the other side of the lake. Here, on the countryside, we had a great time helping the wounded wild animals. Wolves, owls, eagles, a wild pig called Miss Piggy, and much more. I will be sharing the pictures and the story behind Lisinia Project soon.
