Fire cats and friends (January 2023)

Isa and Arne and I reunited at the next beach, which was a gathering place for campers. I enjoy these types of places from time to time, as they feel like small communities. However, I couldn’t imagine how crowded it would be during high season.

We became friends with two nice guys from Turkey. We trained with bo staffs together and had great conversations on a variety of topics. They even gifted us peppers, whisky, clay bowls, a cooling bag, and a camping table. A truly unique combination of items. And when the battery of their car had run out of power Rosinante was able to help jump start it.

There lived a beautiful and lovely cat at that spot. I didn’t know if it was a stray one or if she belonged to another camper but either way we had a good time and during one day she lived with me in Rosinante. I caught myself thinking if I could just take her with me. 

One day, I went on a hike to an old lighthouse and afterwards, I headed to a very special place: the natural fires of Mount Chimaera. It was a truly bizarre place. Flames were coming out of gaps between stones. The source of these fires was natural gas, and it was quite entertaining to blow them out and light them again with a lighter. Barbecuing there was also a lot of fun as well. I couldn’t help but imagine what it might have been like to discover these natural gas deposits in a time before human-made delivery systems for gas, fuel, and electricity existed. It would have been the perfect place to build a town in a game like Civilization.

Maybe the cats who lived there had the same idea and were planning to build their own cat civilization. They didn’t seem to be afraid of the fire ghosts that occasionally emerged from the flames, after all.

At the upper fires of Mount Chimaera, I met a nice French cyclist and we had an interesting conversation about traveling by bicycle and the differences between different forms of travel. Like me, she had already been traveling for over a year. I felt a kind of attraction between us, and when we parted ways, I thought that we might have missed something. Later, when I was inside Rosinante and searching for a place to stay for the night using my smartphone, the nice cyclist appeared out of nowhere. Although I had previously felt like we might have missed something, I felt the desire to find a place to stay on my own. And after I found a place to stay, I thought it would have been nice to continue our conversation.

A magnificent view, hammock paradise and a storm (January 2023)

After taking the ferry, I drove up a hill and from there I was treated to one of the most stunning views I’ve ever seen! It was truly marvelous and as the sun began to set, the colors changed by the minute. From the hill, I could see the Turtle Beach, the vast river delta with its reeds and lake-like waters, the rolling hills, and the large lake and mountains in the distance. It was a breathtaking sight!

When I arrived at my new home on that hill, I was pleased to see Isa and Arne were there too. We parked our vehicles next to each other, and the following day another couple of travelers joined us. They were traveling in their UAZ Buchanka, named Olga. I have a fondness for these charming Russian off-road vans. When I had been researching and comparing vehicles to live in, I came across the Buchankas and thought they would be a good option due to their reasonable price tag. However, after learning about the maintenance and repair demands, I gained a great deal of respect for these cute vehicles. It seemed that the internet was correct about their demanding nature. Especially Martin had an strong relationship with Olga and had become her designated mechanic. Although they had bought Olga as a new car, I got the impression that they had already gone through the process of fixing every part of her at least once.

The others eventually left and I spent another day taking in the beautiful view. One day, an elderly local man came by. He couldn’t speak English or German and communicating through Google Translate was not very effective, so we communicated through gestures and facial expressions. It was fun. I figured out that his old-fashioned phone needed to be charged, so I plugged it into Rosinante. We chatted and had tea and nuts. It turned out that the man had accidentally turned on the airplane mode of his phone and didn’t know how to turn it off. It was like a puzzle game. I used Google Translate’s photo mode to translate the phone’s interface and after getting lost in its complicated menu structure for a couple of times, his phone was back online and he got about 50 new sms.

I then went on a beautiful hike at Butterfly Valley. After that, I visited a remote and secluded cove. The place was stunning during sunsets, truly magical. With the presence of trees and many rocks and stones, it was the perfect spot for relaxing in my beloved hammock.

A few days later, I continued on my journey towards Cyprus and stumbled upon a vast sandy beach that stretched for kilometers. During a leisurely walk, I met Danny and his gorgeous dog. The following day, we had a long and in-depth conversation about love, humanity, life and the universe. It was enjoyable, intriguing, and a little crazy. I noticed that conversations tend to become a bit crazy when delving into topics like universal energies and the indescribable.

Danny added me to a Telegram group where people gathered to exchange information about traveling from Turkey to India. I found it fascinating that some of this information seemed impossible to find through a simple Google search. The further east I would come, the more uncertain things like border crossings and visa regulations would be. These things seemed to depend on constantly changing factors like political situations, making up-to-date individual experiences increasingly important.

Rosinante was parked at a beautiful spot on that vast sandy beach, slightly elevated with a good view of the wide, wide beach. One day, with the arrival of a massive thunderstorm everything changed. It brought wind gusts of 80 km/h, rain, hail, and a rough sea to the beach, more and more reducing the once wide beach. Living in Rosinante during the storm felt like being on a spaceship in the midst of a solar storm once again.