Built in 1616, the Blue Mosque complements the equally imposing Hagia Sophia Mosque which faces it across Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul.

September 1-8:  Istanbul, Turkey  The Magic Bus driver let us know that we were arriving in Istanbul during the final week of the annual Ramadan Muslim Holy Month during which much of Turkey shuts down.  He also noted that our next country, Iran, was experiencing violent protests and army suppression which made border crossing into Iran more tenuous.  We eventually learned that the borders had closed periodically, that there was martial law and strict curfews that prohibited night travel across Iran, and we heard rumors of massacres of civilians in some Iranian cities.

The Pudding Shop: The central meeting and gathering place for young travelers in Istanbul was the “Pudding Shop”.  By 1978, it had grown in size to have a large self-service cafeteria and was known for having relatively high standards of hygiene.  Backpackers gathered inside and outside in the square.  On the inner walls of the cafeteria were huge bulletin boards where travelers posted thousands of notes and flyers—notes to friends they hoped to reconnect with, recommendations on places to stay along the Hippie Trail, flyers for cheap hotels that were recommended for future stops on the journey, requests for rides and offers of rides in private vans, and recommendations for music and events in Istanbul.  It was so amazing and so fun just to people watch and to scan all the information on the bulletin boards.  I noted a number of the “best cheap hostels” listed in notes about destinations I planned to visit and one, in particular, totally captivated me and I would stay there for a week at the end of my trip on Phuket Island in Thailand.  That note said: “Best Place on Phuket Island.  John’s Restaurant and Bungalows on Nai Han Beach. Amazing sunsets. Bungalows–$1 per day.  Omelettes for breakfast—50 cents or 75 cents with magic mushrooms!”  It gave the general instructions on how to get to “Mr. John’s” and recommended a place on Phuket to rent a motorcycle by the week for next to nothing.  It all turned out to be true including the magic mushrooms for breakfast!

The Pudding Shop was also a central spot to make connections to buy and sell drugs though drug use was not legal in Turkey nor did people smoke hash in public.  The word was out that using drugs in Turkey was super high risk.  Drug use was often overlooked but once authorities decided to crack down or once they saw someone using, it at best resulted in having to pay a large bribe to the police or, worst case, you might rot in the brutal Turkish prisons the images of which was burned in the mind of every traveler who had watched the movie, “Midnight Express” which came out in 1978.  Additionally, we were warned that using drugs during the Holy Month of Ramadan was particularly risky since all of the Muslims in Istanbul, including a lot of police, were pretty edgy since they had spent an entire month obligated to fast every day from dawn to sunset.  Fasting for Ramadan requires abstinence from sex, food, drinking, and smoking—enough to make anyone edgy.

Delayed departure from Istanbul was a pretty dramatic change in our plans.  Both Cath and I had expected a 1-2 day stop in Istanbul which was typical for the Magic Bus.  The first night, we got adjoining upper bunk beds in the large dormitory of the Hotel Turist—a very cheap, large hostel near the square where the Magic Bus arrived/departed and where all the young travelers hung out.  Beds were only a dollar each and the bathrooms, which we found to be revolting, were simply gentle introductions to just how repulsive bathrooms would be during most of our trip.  “Squatty-potties” didn’t seem to be nearly as sanitary as western toilets, most of us travelers had to learn new skills to use them, stomachs were often sour from the road combined with the sketchy food and sanitation, and there just always seemed to be lots of shit and flies everywhere around the toilets.  Showers, when offered for an additional fee, were very rough gang-style, concrete or stone rooms that were always moldy and disgusting.  Water was always cold and my dear mother had warned me not to ever let local water touch my lips or my toothbrush so I made very limited use of showers and sinks.  It is amazing how quickly and how dramatically a human being’s standards and expectations regarding hygiene can plummet.  I was and remain a germaphobe so I remained steadfastly more cautious about food and hygiene than most travelers and my general health remained much better than most.  I rarely even drank bottled water or soda because there were many stories that it was all bottled locally (often in the backroom of a restaurant) using untreated water—I drank a lot of hot tea for months.  I got the shits pretty bad in Herat, Afghanistan and had one bad cold while saying by the Lakes of Band-i-Amir in Afghanistan but otherwise was quite healthy until I developed a brutal case of the flu or jungle fever on my flight home from Bangkok to Manilla in the Philippines in December.

Cath and I spent our first day in Istanbul between the Pudding Shop (where we tried to gather information about the revolution in Iran, about the Magic Bus schedule, and about onward destinations) and the Grand Bazaar. We literally got lost in the massive ancient covered Bazaar and spent hours just walking around the strange covered market–originally constructed in 1455 after the Ottomon conquest of Constantinople, it is the first “mall” in the world. The roof structures cover 61 streets and over 4,000 shops and there were literally hundreds of thousands of people crowded inside–guide books said 250-400,000 visitors daily. The Bazaar stretches between two mosques and has numerous gates of various architectural designs and intricate decoration. Once we decided we had “had enough” of the Bazaar, it literally took us more than an hour to find an exit, to re-orient ourselves as to where we were in Istanbul, and then navigate through side streets around the Bazaar to get back to our hotel.

We then spent another day or two doing the usual touristy things in Istanbul—Blue Mosque, Saint Sofia, and the Topkapi Palace Museum.  Much of our time was simply spent adjusting to culture shock—Istanbul is an amazing mix of “West meets East” and the main city is actually on the European side of the Bosporus.  Though it was only a taste of the culture shocks to come, Istanbul was unlike anywhere we had ever been—the haunting wail over massive loudspeakers of the mullah calling Muslims to prayer five times daily, the ancient surroundings, views of the incredible harbor and Bosporus shipping activity, adjusting to a new currency and finding it almost impossible to exchange money in banks due to Ramadan closures, and adjusting to each other. 

Decision-making on the Hippie Trail: A key adjustment for all travel companions is the dance of taking turns being the “decision-maker”.  Travel in Asia is simply exhausting and uncertain at best—nothing is easy and we mostly were on foot so agreeing on a place to visit or dine was one discussion but then jointly getting there was always much more time and effort than expected–winding through the formidable maze of narrow and poorly marked streets on foot, getting distracted by amazing sights or convincing locals who constantly approached us trying to sell things, using printed “tourist” maps and frequently asking strangers for directions.  Cath and I were getting fairly friendly with each other, so we both went out of our way to cut the other one some slack and to avoid harsh comments, but it really was pretty stressful.  Neither of us wanted to spend money on cabs or even local buses, so we almost always walked every where and that added time and complexity to every outing but it also introduced us to so many sights and experiences that we otherwise would have missed. On the Hippie Trail, “we often woke up with nothing to do and by evening we had gotten less than half of it done!”

Vegetarians on the Hippie Trail: Cath was a vegetarian which was both a blessing and a curse.  Her diet greatly restricted our restaurant choices because all of Asia is heavy on meat.  This became one more “decision factor” each day and I initially wasn’t always patient about it.  On the whole, it was a blessing on many levels.  Finding vegetarian places was a big topic of discussion on note board postings and Cath found us a lot of nice vegetarian travelers we became friends with.  Having “fewer choices” was often welcome as it limited our decisions.  Most importantly, I quickly concluded that eating meat in Asia is a certain ticket to dysentery and I started to appreciate the cooked spiced vegetable dishes Cath loved.  Finding food that looked safe and was appealing was pretty difficult the entire trip.  Fairly quickly, we both pretty much just ate an evening meal and subsisted on delicious Asian breads like Nan and the occasional safe pieces of unpeeled fruit we found along the way.  I started the trip weighing around 165 pounds in February and weighed in at 132 pounds on the bathroom scale at my parent’s home when I returned in late December.  I don’t recall ever weighing myself in between as there were no scales.  I didn’t realize how wasted I looked until I compared “before and after” pictures.  In fact, I remained quite healthy and vigorous throughout the trip and often have wished I could revisit the days of weighing 132 pounds!

By day three, we both had had our fill of Istanbul and of the creepy Hotel Turist.  We heard about the resort area of Silivri and decided to take a 60 kilometer bus ride there where we hoped to camp in some sort of Agricultural Camp we heard about.  Located on the beautiful Sea of Marmara, Silivri was just starting to develop as a resort area.  All of the lodging we checked out seemed too expensive so we made the stupid decision to just “sleep on the beach” and we found an area where there were two guys from Corfu and a few other sketchy travelers.  The sleeping was really bad—we opened up my sleeping bag and laid it on the beach but small biting sand insects were an issue and we just plain didn’t feel safe on the beach.  We later would hear that the place we slept a couple of nights was known for robberies but we were fortunate and no one bothered us….probably because we didn’t look like we had much to rob.