This journey started on a rainy morning in March, when I left my parents' house in southern Germany to take a train to the Munich airport and a flight to Izmir in Turkey. The temperatures in Turkey were some agreeable 20°C, compared to the typical 8°C in German spring time, making the arrival a pleasuresome experience already. It was my first time visiting Turkey in any other month than August and I was happy to see how green and colorful the country could be, in contrast to the dried out brownish grasslands I remember from my earlier camping trips.

The train further south slowly wound its way along to the coast to the city of Selcuk, then following a fertile valley further inland to Aydin, where I arrived in the evening and spent the night in a cheap hotel. After stocking up on provisions, I took a Dolmus to Cine, followed by another one to Karpuzlu.

After only a few steps, I was already in the middle of huge ruins, featuring a nice theater built neatly into the hillside and grown over by olive trees. From there, the path follows an ancient road through olive trees and colorful flower patches up to the village of Yahsiler. As I entered the village square, a quite big market was taking place and I bought some more food from the locals, making my backpack even more heavy...

The rest of the day I continued following the well-marked path (lost the markings only once) until I found some nice patch of grass beneath a big pine tree, directly above a small stream. While I set up my tent, a farmer and his daughter passed and offered me to stay at their place further up the hill, but I declined as politely as I could since I wanted to test my new tent and the language barrier was infinitely huge (only sign language possible).

During the day it had already rained shortly for a few times, now in the evening it was getting more and more cloudy and soon I could hear the sound of raindrops hitting my tent until I fell asleep.