My pigeon-approved way of lifeI've

I've spent years NOT taking photos of pigeons
but in Venice, all things are beautiful

Sunlight on the feather caught my eye. Sliding through sunlight down from the eave above. The exuberant swirl as the grey and black piece of flight made manifest danced its way down to mere earth. My steps slowed a little to watch it. I didn’t stop, places to go things to do, but I acknowledged its beauty for a moment.

It was rather the flipside of reading the news these days, where a truly abhorrent man defiantly drowning himself in rage and petty ego to try and cover his sadness is leading a coterie of foolish greed, down off the upslope of history. Pronouncements we haven’t heard since Stalin, combined with the deliberate destruction of hope and protection, and I’ll tell ya, it’s enough to get a fella down.

But you just look at those, acknowledge them, participate when possible, care, but keep going.

So here was an afternoon of sunny sidewalk, and a descending path of a beautiful feather, give it the same treatment of slow acknowledgement and recognition, but keep going.

And the universe endorsed my response. Or at least the pigeon did.

The first gigantic gob of fecal surplus landed right in front of me, where I would have been had I not slowed to admire the falling feather. Then the second splash of posterior production, avian anal abundance, landed right behind me, where I would have caught it had I lingered a little too long.

I was framed in falling pigeon poo, pristine and untouched as I made my way forward into the friendly future. Perhaps the political offal we’re seeing will fall to either side as well, fertilizer for something better.

And if not? Well. At least I didn’t get shat on, on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

Who cares about cows?

Yeah, that looks like a homeland to protect and remember

Farm bills and agricultural subsidies are always a big deal, from the US to the EU, and definitely in Switzerland. This baffled me a bit. Swiss agriculture? In a country that wealthy and stable (take my word for it, or come on tour with me and I’ll explain) why are a few cows such a big deal?

The answer I always gave was national identity. The people of Country X want to see themselves as coming from pastoral roots. This didn’t make a ton of sense to me, since if you didn’t grow up on a farm why do you need to feel like your nation did? But I’m used to not quite understanding identity politics since I come from the rampantly, disastrously, shamefully dominant demographic set. Straight, white, middle-class, American male with full health, mobility, education etc? Having every advantage in life reduced the need for an identity to process it.

But other people will talk about such things until….(wait for it)...the cows come home.

Ain't she so pretty!

That expression was always a mystery to me. I’d picture farmers chatting on the porch until the cows meandered home in the evening light. Or was it that the cows would never come home on their own, so you’d talk forever? That could be, too, but let’s go with something else.

Because it’s wearing a floral headdress.

Every spring, the farmers throughout the Alps drive their cows up to higher pasture for the summer. They stay up there eating rich green grass and justifying Alphorns for the warm sunny months, giving some folks time off to talk endlessly (hence the phrase, I’m thinking) while a few heroes of national identity up in the mountain meadows churn butter and coagulate protein. (Ain’t that just the sexiest phrasing I could have chosen for cheese-making?)

Get on with your cow self!

Leave it to this last tour group I had, with their preternatural luck and timing, to arrive just in time for the almabtrieb, or viehscheid, the annual parade of cows returning from summer pasture. It was stupendous. The cows, dressed in their finest and caring not one udder about it, paraded through town in a ceremonious way that was most a-moo-sing. (You’re welcome.)

So what? So some cows walked through town, why should I blog about it, and why should legislatures spend so much time on ag issues?

In this year of an insane US presidential candidate, United Kingdomers choosing to leave the most successful diplomatic structure in European history, and Colombians voting to reject peace in favor of punitive measures and further bloodshed, well, it’s damn fine to sit back in the sun and watch something so hearty, so earnest, so down-home rustically peaceful and reassuring as a parade of decorated cows coming home.

Not a shabby looking place, that Switzerland

Is it worth it? All the tax revenue spent to prolong a procession of bovine ladies and tractors of cheese? Well, it did me good, and the whole town with me, so I guess the fiscal considerations are a moooo-t point.

Yes, it's a cat post

I’d seen cats hunting birds with ferocious ineptitude. I’d seen one climb the curtains with kitten claws and an “I’ve made a terrible mistake” expression. And I’d seen a cat sitting with absolute dignity despite the toupee of cobweb stuck on its head. All very normal feline behavior. But I’d never seen a cat worn like a scarf before.

My new apartment was fine, good location and a Japanese maple right outside my window, but it was when I met the neighbors that I realized I’d won the housing lottery. (Again.) The entire building was chock full of people I’d like to talk to, with just this one last neighbor to meet.

His name is Sullivan.

I’ve never met a cat I didn’t like (and only one dog) but this rather corpulent kitty took neighborly likability to a whole new level. And left me with the question, how did I survive three decades without learning about Maine coon cats? (Apparently they’re common in the best houses?)

I’m used to feline independence with the flavor of aloofness, but Sully’s self-sufficient roamings seem more like what he does while he’s waiting to run into you. And whereas I learned that each cat has a very specific set of regulations on exactly how you may be permitted to pet their majesty, with Sullivander? Anything goes.

He’s the only cat I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have to land on his feet. You can hold him upside down, he’s happy, then just sort of lay him down like a sandbag and he just...cooperates. Looks up at you to see what’s next.

When my lady’s five-year old comes to visit, and has the chance to practice getting to know an animal (allergies and modern schedules keep them out of his homelife) I could think of no better animal for it than the Sull-tan of Oakland. Those two fell in love immediately. And watching the two of them, I feel like purring.

My reply to my neighbor's text: "Is Sully with you?"

The Sullimander wanders the hallway like a love ambush, and the second I open my door will lynx slink through to take up puma possession of the premises. It is a battle to remove him, and one from which I don’t mind abstaining, just shove a shoe in the door so he can get out whenever he likes, and perhaps the best procrastination sessions of my life have been petting him until his purrs rebound off the walls and his drool of delight spatters my floor. Totally worth it.

But all good things must come to an end, and Sullivander Hollifield’s owners are moving out this weekend. I’ll miss the furry bugger, but am damn glad I got to meet him.

Big beauty, little biter

So small a creature, it was kind of laughable. But damn, that bite did sting. Or was it that sting that bit? With this particular little bullet of an angry bee, I wasn’t sure.

The hill tombs of Myra

My brother and I, far-from-fresh after a few days on the Lycian Way, had hitch-hiked across Turkey, headed to Demre to see the ancient hill-tombs of Myra. Our third ride heard our destination and paused, dubiously.

“Is Demre not nice?” I asked him.

“No no, Demre is nice. Demre is okay. But nearby is something better. You should go Kekova. My wife and I, this is where we go for our vacation.” He was considering something. Looked at his watch. “I am already a little late, but it is not too far, I can drive you there.”

Cevrelians!

This is the hospitality of the Turks. To pick up a pair of sun-singed hitch-hikers, carry them across a chunk of his country, and then make himself even later to get them quickly to a place with no timetable. I deeply love Turkey. I wish I could sort the Islamophobic masses of America into people who just haven’t gotten to see the truth, and the genuine jackasses. The latter are on their own, but the former should all wander around Turkey for a week or a year.

We eventually convinced our friend that we could flag down another ride, if he would show us which road. He pulled over across from it and flagged down a van to make sure we got there. We waved goodbye to another in the chain of wonderful Turkish people we’d met, and squished in with a family of even more.

What we were looking at when the attack began

They dropped us off in Çevreli, a town too adorable for quotidian orthography. We walked past greenhouses of tomatoes for tomorrow’s kahvalti, stone houses built by inhabitants’ ancestors, and these two giggling lads. Up the hill we paused, shocked by the beauty of this planet we were serendipitously born on, and enjoyed the breath of the wind.

Mean little bastard, he was

Until the wind attacked. A piece of the airy realm, curiosity congealed into belligerence, wedged itself in my brother’s hair. Finally flung free, it rested a mere moment on my finger, long enough to sting or bite or maul. Slapped down again, he wouldn’t give up until crushed beneath a well-hiked heel.

“You should probably rinse your finger, in case it put some of that threat-marking scent on you.” My brother remembered farmland lessons of bee’s ability to induce the aggression of their peers with pheromone markers. I rinsed my hand, rubbing well, careful on the spot that was already beginning to swell.

Not enough. The next bee attacked about five steps later. And so began an awkward, incredulous, this-is-ridiculous-but-kinda-freaky-anyway intermittent run/trot across the Turkish landscape. We reckoned we’d escaped them, then came around the corner to see the next batch of fields. Rows and rows of bee hives.

The apian menace

Turkeylurky goodness, and the Lycian Way

Falling behind on my links here, but there are two new Turkey posts on vagabondurges.com, including part one of our beginning of the Lycian Way... Unless you hate dogs. Then nevermind.

It's Feelgood Friday, even if you're not a rabbit

I get pretty down on corporations. When they are legally bound by the rules of corporate charters to do whatever it takes to maximize shareholder earnings, with no regard for ethics or morals (unless you can convince them it’s relevant to their profit margin), and when they own the political process, it’s a big scary world. And it’s no surprise that “The corporation” is an easy and believable default villain in the movies, now that we can’t just blame Russia (for the moment). Or did you think it was only Avatar?

This makes it extra precious, and extra important to note, when a corporation does something right, even if it might cost them moolah. And the world’s rabbits agree with me.

What, you think I'm above putting cute bunny pictures
on my blog?

I have no experience with angora sweaters. To be honest, if you’d asked me yesterday what they were made of, I probably would have guessed...uh...alpaca fur? Penguins? Angolans? But it’s bunnies! And it’s unbelievably awful! You can research the process if you don’t believe me (but I recommend you take my word for it, those images are truly nightmarish).

Bunnies!

So when Inditex, the world’s largest clothing retailer, agreed to stop selling angora products, it was beautiful news. And when they made the decision effective immediately, meaning they’d decline to sell about $900,000 worth of garments, I was impressed. And when they instead took those garments, and sent them to Syrian refugees freezing in the camps? I was speechless. (But luckily not text-less. You can send them a thank-you note here too.)

It always feels good to send positive feedback.

(Which reminds me, somewhere I heard the suggestion to make your first email of the day a positive one. I’m going to give it a try. You? I’ll be curious to hear how it goes.)

At what point does fondling an animal get weird?

At what point does fondling an animal get weird?

You may have never asked yourself that question, but hey, that's what I'm here for: to expand your territory. Is it when you rub the entire face? Stick a finger deep in an ear? How about several knuckles deep up the nose? Or if you reach in an animal's mouth and grab the tongue, pull it out the side, and kind of...play with it?

I should explain.

There are a lot of horses in Cuba, and most of them are trained in the all-too-familiar ways: beating, breaking, brutality. But Jorge Muñoz does it differently. “I would like to say that I am the only horse whisperer in all of Cuba,” he says, with the short unpalatalized U of native Spanish speakers, “and since I know of no other horse whisperers, I can say: I am the only horse whisperer in all of Cuba!”

Sound reasoning.

Assertions of Jorge’s individuality did not surprise me. Here was a man who lived in a gorgeous former-aristocrat’s house (his family owned several before the revolution; the new leaders of Cuba left them this one) with ornate blue tiling, crystal chandeliers, and large murky paintings of serious-looking predecessors,...and a horse.

Yes, Jorge lived in this elegant house with his family, his ancestry...and a thousand-pound mountain of horse-muscle. We sat on divans and chaise lounges among heavy dark wood furniture, and in walked his favorite steed, Luna de miel (Honeymoon), cloth-booted hooves thudding on the tiles.

Jorge owns several horses, and rotates them every few days, one in the house, the rest at his farm. This might seem odd, but as Jorge fondled every inch of that massive, powerful, clearly spirited animal, I had to hand it to him: he seemed to know what he was doing. I don't know that much about horses, but I'm guessing you normally wouldn’t want to get between their legs like that, nor pull their tails or search for boogers, and none of Jorge's horses have ever felt the bite of a bit or the lash of a whip.

In conversation with a member of our party who knew her horseflesh, he quoted several theories and techniques, and she seemed satisfied, but were these parlor tricks? Or the bizarre equine fetish of a man who has spent too long in the sun?

“Why would you want to stick a finger in her nose?” He asked, a question normally reserved for confused and concerned parents of small children. “Because there are some diseases she may get, and this is how you give her the medicine.”

Oh.

“And why would you want to stick your finger in her ear?” Ummm. If the music's too loud? “Because that way you can check for ticks or other pests that may be in there.”

Oh.

“And why you need to pull her tongue out?” He held the pink flesh in his hand as he asked. Breath check? “Because the tongue can tell you a lot about the health of the animal, with its color and things.”

Oh.

The face of a millionaire

“And why would I want to do this?” his voice emerged from somewhere in the tangle of horse tail that was now spread across his head. “Because this way I can become a millionaire with baldness treatment in America!”

Oh Jorge. You were doing so well.

Iceland has ponies. Laughing ponies.

Iceland is aptly named, sure, but I'd hate to give the impression that it only has frozen water. It's also got ponies.

Ponies who like frozen water.

Ponies who pose, oh so pretty.

Ponies who endure high winds and frozen manes.

Ponies who smile.

Ponies who laugh.

Ponies who guffaw.

Ponies who photobomb each other.

Ponies who would mock me for being inside on a day as lovely as this one.

Making friends and witnesses in Cuzco

Normally being forced to walk an unnecessary U might annoy me, but not in the Cuzco airport, where the circuitous walkway is lined with plate glass windows that display the verdant Andean mountainsides, divided up by red dirt roads into blocks of homes, towns, and fields with a tidy precision normally only seen in Farmville.

It's Cuzco. Why would there NOT be a llama on the street?

Atahualpa has lost a llama, can you help him find it?

Everyone loves Cuzco, and with a view like that, I could see why. Literally. So I loved Cuzco, now it was time to make Cuzco love me.

Problem: who are the first people you meet when you leave an airport? Taxi drivers. Not easy people to pal with, especially when you refuse to pay their tourist fare x2.

But the taxista who accepted my fare chatted with me on the way in, warming, and was won over when I told him about the Brazilian fart monster that fumigated my room last night. In my experience most males love a good fart joke, and Latin American men even more than average thus far. Ha! I'd won over a taxista via a Brazilian's digestive disorder. Victory! Almost worth the stench.

The hostel staff were lovely (how did we end up talking about Nijmegen?), and the people around town responded politely and kindly in every interaction, from the restaurant kid to the lady in a bowler hat who sold me two cactus fruits. Dang, Cuzco and I are on our honeymoon!

“Masaje señor?” I habitually ignore offers made in tourist-saturated plazas, but while I waited for the incessant stream of cars to hiccup, she added “30 soles for one hour.” 30 soles is about ten bucks US. For an hour massage? Vamonos!

The table was handmade, the face-hole an uneven gap that you reached through Xs cut in sheets, but I was a happy camper. The honeymoon continued. Except for one thing.

My feet stank. I apologized in advance, explained that my shoes were old and I'd been walking all day... She assured me that they are used to such things. Professional. The honeymoon was back on. Except...

When she pulled the sheet back to get to my lower back she saw my undies. Tired old backpacker skivvies, handwashed and wrung out a thousand times over the miles, fraying elastic and formless droop. Not great. Then she noted: “Te los pusiste al reves.” I was wearing them inside out.

Face pushed into the hand-cut hole in the sheet, I explained to the ground that I caught an early flight this morning, so got ready at 5:00 in a dark bathroom. This excuse makes little sense, but she let it slide. Gracias, amiga.

The writing says "I love so much". Why yes.

They had Enya on loop, so I watched The Fellowship of the Ring on inner Dvd, followed by a flashback to middle school for the courageous and terrifically awkward performance of Caribbean Blue by a girl in my 7^th grade class at the talent show. So good, so awful. “If every man, says all he can, if every man were true” sang the 12 year old.

I've only gotten a few professional massages, but if they were all $10, I'd be in there daily. It was lovely, and I came out so relaxed I'd kinda forgotten how to talk, so when they asked if it was okay, my answer was a sort of boneless jig, forearms flapping. I realized this may have been an odd response and turned to see how it was received.

“Your fly is open” said the matron.

I don't know how to say “blush” in Spanish, but I know how to do it in Cuzco.

Lavender squirrels smoking cigarettes. (See, commas are important.)

I still forget, or maybe just don't believe, that I actually live here now. Live someplace now. How is that different from visiting it? Should I buy a map and study the streetplan? Do I walk around it less than if I was a visitor, or more?

In all honesty I can't imagine I will walk as much here as I did in Bangkok, Kuala Lampur, or Istanbul (I wanted to say “BangkoKuala LampuReykjavik” but that didn't turn out as intelligible as I'd hoped), but I can still take a wander around town.

Especially while the weather is this divine.

I'm not sweating, but I can still wear shorts and flip flops.

I never realized how little of Earth's surface permits this behavior.

Does it mean I'm getting suburban, that I want to talk about the weather?

The sun of an Indian Summer looks good on ginko leaves and lavender stalks, keeps hip art students warm while they take smoke breaks on their “Tobacco free” campus, and glows on the squirrels gathering nuts on the streets of Rockridge.

I can't remember what a Bay Area winter is like, but for now, this place is mighty comfy.

Is that a good start or a bad one? Jungle birthday Part 2.

I'll just come out and say it: I was wearing flip flops. Old ones. This may surprise you, given that I was hiking six hours each way to spend the night in the muddy equatorial rainforest of Taman Negara in Malaysia, but I had two reasons.

Warning sign as you leave the boardwalks of the
easy tourist area for the real jungle.

First, previous experience with leeches showed that flip flops allow the best access for removal of the little bloodsucking bastards.

Second, they were pretty much my only option after I retired my (somewhat notorious) oversized sandals after they became Grade A Disease Vectors in Myanmar (don't ask).

They worked well for the first 4 hours on Day One, then their age became apparent, as the anchoring thong in the front popped out with increasing frequency. I bought the things two years ago in Nepal, and they had served me well, but in hindsight, for perhaps too long.

I didn't mind sticking the little plastic plug back in, it was the fact that doing so meant stopping, which gave a much longer opportunity to the vampirous tube-beasts who were swarming around, doing their little head-waving leech aerobics as they smelled the approach of something tasty.

Have you ever seen them do this? It would be cute if it wasn't so sinister. They look like tiny hyperactive Ray Charles impersonators...who feed on your blood.

There was time to stop and admire the scenery on Day One

Since leeches don't spread any diseases or do any real harm, my plan had been to just let them do their thing and drop off when they were done. How very Buddhist of me.

Yeah, no. That plan lasted until I saw the first one squirming out from my ankle, where it had attached and bitten through the skin. But the leeches weren't the worst thing.

This was the world's oldest rainforest, where intense competition has driven evolution for 130 million years (the area is just slightly above the equator, so even the ice ages didn't disrupt things). What do you think rules this forest?

Elephants, monkeys, or tigers? Only on the postcards. All of these are reportedly found in the park, but to my eye it was clear who dominates this dense world where a single hectare holds 14,000 plant species, 200 mammals, and 240 types of trees.

One of the construction workers
alongside the normal workers

Ants rule this place. Mean ones.

I stopped to take a picture of the first river of tiny black bodies, but by the tenth I was just stepping over the glossy stream. It was when I got careless that I learned more about them. To my disappointment I have been unable to find exactly what the little buggers were (hell, maybe they were termites!) so I'm going to make some shit up that makes sense to me.

There were tiny workers in superhighways half a dozen lanes wide and stretching for unbelievably long distances, which I learned when they commandeered a guide rope left to help me climb a steep slope.

Don't grab that rope.

Don't grab that rope

Then there were the construction workers, unbelievably larger than the workers. At first I thought these were soldiers, and feared them mightily, but now I suspect their job is to clear fallen leaves and sticks that obstruct the path. They seemed to pace the edge of the stream, and they're not the soldiers because those, I definitely met.

The soldiers. Assholes! I took off my sandal the first night to find four or five ants stuck to its edges, legs waving furiously. Curious. They were much larger than the workers, but not nearly as big as the construction workers. It took me a minute to figure it out.

They'd bitten my sandal, and they weren't letting go. I flicked at them. Brushed at them. Still there. I flicked harder and the bodies fell away...but the head stayed put, anchored into my thin sole with insectile tenacity.

So when my sandals would come off anywhere near an ant stream? (And everywhere is near an ant stream.) It hurt. They're good at getting you right in the tender spot on the bottom of the arch too. You have to lift your foot and rip them off, sometimes coming back for the head.

I wasn't enjoying this process much as I started walking through the mud. Then I reached a nice clearing by the river. It was pretty...and I definitely hadn't passed it on the way out.

Crap.

I backtracked, took another path and came to a wide shallow river...that I also did not cross the first day.

My sandals had given up completely and the thong was coming out every couple steps in the sucking mud, so I had to just take them off and go barefoot. In the jungle. Where billions of members of two particular species were very ready to go right through my skin, and I didn't know what else.

Someone left these bloody footprints in the hide
after their own meeting with the leeches

I backtracked. Bled. Sweated, stepped, and slipped. And bled some more.

Getting lost in the jungle sucks. Especially during the daily Leech Feeding, which is 24 hours long.

The girls and the German were long gone, so I was very much on my own, and sound just doesn't travel in vegetation that thick anyway.

I tried another path and ended up at the stream again, mirrored by tiny red seeps from my feet. I considered walking out via the water, trusting it would lead to the main river, but if that didn't work then I'd have a hell of a time finding where to start looking for trails again.

I turned back again and started jogging to give the biters as little chance as possible. Left hand on my shoulder bag, bulky with camera, journal, long pants and raincape thing, my right held the quickly-decaying plastic bag that held the remnants of my food, and my elbow pressed the water bottle pressed against my side.

When I slipped down a slope it gave the leeches a chance to climb all over me, but I think I escaped unscathed. I kept running. I was pouring sweat, feeling incredibly stupid, and lost in the jungle on my birthday.

Is that a good omen or a bad one? Whatever it is, I decided “Screw this, I'm taking the boat.”

I finally found the right path, jogged down it, and half an hour later reached the river at Kuala Trenggan, but instead of a village I found abandoned houses with broken windows. Not stopping to think about what would happen if it was totally deserted and I had to start the six hour trek back, I headed to the water...

Where I found the girls. They were surprised to see me. Literally within a minute or two the boat showed up. If I hadn't jogged, had gotten lost once more or fallen a few more times, I would have missed it and there was no way to call for another. But I made it.

THAT, I'll take as a positive omen for the year ahead.

Just your average jungle birthday

I'm not sure when midnight snuck by in the near-perfect darkness to officially begin my birthday, but I'm guessing it had already started when I got up, back sore from the bare wood planks of my bunk, to chase the cute little rodent out of our food bag.

I listened to the multi-layered cacophony of insects outside the large wooden room, knowing we were surrounded by them in our hide, about 30 feet up into the canopy of Taman Negara in Malaysia, the world's oldest rainforest. A 130 million year old forest has a way of putting a human lifespan into perspective.

Knowing it was pointless, my eyes rolled over in the direction where I'd seen the massive spider before going to bed. As always in jungles, it was the size of my open hand, and hairy, but this one was interesting since three of its legs were skinnier and shinier.

Arne-the-German and I agreed that it had probably lost the legs somehow and was growing new ones. Amazing little undoubtedly venomous beastie. After a day spent hopping leeches and various skittering things, the backs of my eyelids were a montage of insectile legs, half-seen as they skittered about.

But since I was awake now anyway, I used Arne's bizarrely powerful flashlight to look for critters in the semi-open space in front of the hide. A few days ago some bird watchers saw a tapir at 3:00 AM.

But no eyes glittered back at me, just fireflies drooping around the thick foliage, like stars on listless vacation from their nightly performance, so I lay back down on the bird-poop-spotted boards. My head on the meagre pillow of my rolled up shirt, I could feel the gap in the boards against the back of my head.

It was silly of me to wait for the second rodent visit to move the food bag. This time Arne woke up, sitting half upright on his luxurious 1 cm mat, to look into the eyes of the little fella, about two feet away from him.

“Vas is das?” You only speak your mother tongue when you're that sleepy.

His question woke the two English girls on the other side of the small room. “What's going on?” The nervous one asked.

“Nothing. Just a little mouse. No worries.” I reassured them. “It's all good.”

Apparently I was soothing enough, because even the twitchy one went back to sleep until morning, when we shared the remnants of our backpacker buffet for breakfast. My peanuts were a big hit again, both roasted and spicy-something coated.

We avoided the crackers, given how thirsty they make you and the fact that they were drinking shallow-creek water, which was pretty murky even after purification and clarification tablets. I was more worried about purifying the healthy bacteria right out of my system, so stuck to the water I brought.

We decided the two styrofoam containers of noodles that the girls brought were no longer a safe bet at their ripe old age of 24 warmly humid hours.
We were each taking different routes back to civilization, so we fared each other well and set off.

Just a nice easy walk back to town now...

So nasty. So beautiful. Kasankeyj Part 1

It's 12:21 AM and I would love to go to sleep, but this hotel room is crawling with bed bugs. I pulled the sheet back on each bed to see if one was clean. Well, one is cleanER, by virtue of not having a massive mold/blood/feces stain creeping in from one corner.

Did you know long-term travel is not actually as glamorous as it may sound?

So I'll tell you about today, which was fantastic (up until about an hour ago), and see how many bugs I kill in the time it takes to write this.

When I left Mardin I didn't know where I was going. I had two possible destinations, Midyat and Hasankeyf, and conveniently enough, you have to go to Midyat first either way. It didn't look like much as we drove through, some nice monuments and undoubtedly nice people, but nothing crying out to be visited.

I've spent most of my time in Turkey in medium-to-large cities, so a smaller town sounded good anyway. Onward to Hasankeyf!

I was expecting a small, potentially sleepy town, but I stepped off the bus into a tourist carnival. Vendors were selling cowboy hats, bow & arrow sets, and plush dolls of the Gangnam Style dude. I admit, all three appealed to me.

My first try, bear with me

A dude with a hotel on the corner pounced (it all seems so obvious in hindsight) and showed me a room that was not too cigarettey (it is Turkey after all) and with a good price, but it was the view out the back that sold me. He recommended I start walking through the souvenir frenzy, and his friend has a restaurant just past the mosque.

Of course he does.

Hasankeyf has a 15^th century mausoleum, a mosque from 1409 that apparently included a harem, and the ruins of a bridge built by the Artuqid Dynasty somewhere in the 11^th or 12^th century, probably on a Roman base, which spans none other than the legendary Tigris River.

But it wasn't any of those that made me ask myself “Where the hell am I?” in wonder. That came first from the medieval citadel perched on the absolute edge of a 135 meter-high cliff, and then from the cave houses.

Cave houses! Who? When? What happened?

There was no information, just Turkish tourists and goats, all scrambling over the rocky scree in search of photos and roughage. (According to the map given to me by the president of Bed Bug City, the caves may date back to the Iron Age civilization of the Urartu. I will pause for a moment while you practice saying that.)

I was in love. Cave house ruins with a vista over the Tigris! They call it the Dicle Nehri here, but that's one of the two rivers that flowed out of Eden, which is less mythologically potent than the spell cast by such exotic names when studied in grade school. If only Mrs. Hallas and the rest of my fourth-grade class could see me now!

(And I can still do long division too! Mrs. Hallas must be so proud.)

The story's about to get better, in my opinion, but I hear tell that readership declines rather precipitously after about 400 words, and this is number 590. Since I actually want y'all to read the next part, I'll split it into two.

It's time to risk the bed bugs, but assuming they don't bleed me dry, I'll tell you tomorrow about reaching the Edge of the World, and the friends I made there. Good night.