the first step is to simplify. all of your life and existence must focus on down-sizing and lowering the standard of your living. in three months i will be man, backpack, tent and ukulele. contents of backpack take careful thinking and size of tent determines how noticable you are when sleeping in the small hills that mark the boundries of the beaten path.
the next step is to work out detailed visa information and take care of as much bullshit as possible ahead of time. i've found that visas for azerbaijan, turkmenistan and uzbekistan can be frustrating to those intend to pass slowly through by land. i'm working out a few of these details currently and i've set up a plan to meet with all five consulates (also including georgia and kyrgyzstan) while i'm here in istanbul to get all my paperwork beforehand. in both uzbekistan and turkmenistan i've learned that you need a written invitation to the country from their ministers of foreign relations and this can be taken care of in the consulates.
between the thick layers of every step along the path of preperation comes a very beautiful prospect: the final sensation of watching istanbul shrink in the distance as i begin my travels into the unknown.
i'm deeply considering bringing a companion for most of my black sea travel across turkey. a person i have in mind is one of my students who is from Rize, which is an infamous city close to the border of georgia. Rize is a must for my travel as well as the rest of the southern coast of the black sea. i'm in love with the karadeniz from the faces and smiles of the black sea people that live here in istanbul. they stand out. they have loads of character and personality. they're a little wild. music plays in their heads all day. they smile a lot. these happy people, the Laz as they are called, make living in istanbul a very curious experience. they remind us outsiders to look deeper into the people who have come to thrive in this city, we are all different.
it should be known that very very few people are "from" istanbul, at least not second generation. this is a place where people come to from all over turkey. geographically it is only a small shoulder to the large nation, and it is in the rest of the country's body that people hail from. to me, as a teacher, i find it important to encourage my students to share in discussion of where we are from. they get laughs out of when i speak in my detroit accent: yes you have an accent, and if you dont force yourself to speak clearly, nobody here will understand you. this fact and the phenomenon of learning turkish which is a phonetic language, makes you pronounce words differently than you used to. if i'm not careful (or if i've had a few beers) i begin speaking as if i am a person foreign to english; grammar gone, and emphasis on obscure syllables.
this brings us back to the present.. when i try to hide my jelly-brain when i'm in public. too much thinking about how i'm going to get to kyrgyzstan and what i'm going to do from there has made me a quiet person unless i slap my self out of social awkwardness. its all i talk about sometimes. i think i did this about samoa before i went too, its normal.
i'm going to kyrgyzstan from istanbul by land and sea. fuck yeah.
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