The Walk

My colleague in Communicaitons, David O’Regan, is widely considered the premier Irish distance walker on the faculty. Notoriously reclusive in his ambulatory habits, I felt both surprised and challenged when he asked me to accpmpany him on a Republican Day excursion.

From Sarıyer to Taksim. That’s over 20 miles. I took him up on it. I layed out my hiking shorts, my nylon sweat pants, my runner’s thermal shirt with zip up collar, water bottles, apple, banana, couple of cookies, and some cashews. My red runnign shows for cushioning on all the pavement. Set.

As I waited for David by the guard gate at the entrance to the campus, who sows up but Juli, my adopted street dog orphan. She could surmise that I had the cookies in my satchel. I broke down and gave her one, and that was my error. Davis showed up at 8:15 and we were ready to go… but he proposed that instead of catching the bus, that we walk to Sarıyer. “But that is almost a half hour’s bus ride,” I said. “I have a short cut,” he said. Okay fine…

So we take off and walk briskly up little piece of highway leadign away from Sarıyer… and there is Juli, loping after me, in the middle of the road. “Go home!” I told her, but then recalled she doesn’t have a home. She followed us for maybe 5 kilometres, even off the highway and off onto a rocky trail that wound over the crest of the huge hill that separates Koç from the urban area below. Juli’s sense of terrtorial boundaries took over, and she became visibly stressed and nervous and finally tuned tail and disappeared back up the hill. I was hoping she would make it home okay, and stay off the highway when the driver’s came careerning round the corners. Doofus, I thought. Gosh, I like that dog.

Anyway… the tour.

It took forever to get the first leg out of the way… the hill became very steeo on the way down, and the trail often disappeared. At one point we had to cut through the backyard garden of some locals, and I was watching for a shotgun barrel to emerge from the kitchen widow. We made it through clumps of brambles and thorns, muddy patches, standiing water (wet socks, rats) and steep rocky portions where we had to slide down on our butts. In the brief intersperses where you could actually look out and take in the view, the view was spectacular… the origin of the Bosphorous straight was fed by a bowl shaped body of water and there were huge freighters floating along. And out the other way, toward where we were to walk (once this tryign decent was completed), there were the skyscrapers on the business district in Levent. Their diminutive appearance along the horizon was my first direct indication of just how far we were to walk yet. I mean, our final destination usually takes a couple of bus fares, another fare onn the Metro (underground), and then some walking at the tail end. About 27 km in all, and a windy route at that almost entire along the water.

To the pictures...