Four Kilometers, a tractor ride, and endless tea: A day trip off the beaten track in south west Turkiye

I arrived in southwest Turkiye after many repeated visits across the vast country, mostly to its eastern side. I settled into a quiet village near Pamukkale, in the southwest of the country between Antalya and Izmir, and visited the famous thermal pools together with hundreds of tourists at the same time. When I finished, I read about an interesting cave with flowing water inside it, located in one of the nearby villages.

The next morning I took a minibus to the provincial city of Denizli, and from there toward that village. Shortly before we arrived, the driver stopped and told me that if I wanted to reach the cave, I would need to walk four kilometers along the other side of the road. The walk through the village’s unattractive industrial area was filled with garages, freight trucks, and large piles of garbage and construction waste. After five minutes I passed a café full of workers and asked them about the cave. The café owner invited me in for tea, and I sat talking with him and a group of men at the next table. Trucks and tractors constantly passed back and forth along the road.

After about fifteen minutes, someone from the nearby group told me he would take me to the cave. I was immediately excited—until I saw him climb onto a tractor. It was my first time ever hitching a ride on a tractor. I sat on the side, and along the way he explained the crops we passed—cherry trees, apples, peaches, and vineyards. Because parts of the road were flooded and I was sitting on the side of the tractor, he made a real effort to drive along the drier edges to avoid splashing me with mud and water. After about fifteen minutes he dropped me off near the cave, and I paid him a small amount.

At that time there were very few visitors in the cave. It consists of an outdoor pool with fish swimming in it and an underground section. There, flowing sulfur water creates white stalactites, pools, a small waterfall, and vegetation. Although the cave is short, I was happy to find it truly beautiful. The entrance fee was about a shekel and a half.

Inside the cave I met a family from Kazakhstan who asked me to take their photo. Two minutes after I exited the cave back onto the main road, they also drove out in their car. I asked if they would be willing to take me back to the main road, and thankfully they agreed. I had read about a hiking trail with a waterfall in the mountains near a village that lay on the way back to Denizli.

The family dropped me off on the main road near the turnoff leading uphill to the village. I crossed the highway, and less than a minute after I began walking uphill, a 74-year-old man in a very old car stopped and took me toward the village. Even though the place I wanted to reach was farther than the village he was heading to, he still drove me all the way to the more distant village, refused to accept any money, and even insisted that I have tea with him at a café. After fifteen minutes we said goodbye, and I began climbing toward the trail.

The road passed through Mediterranean woodland full of pine trees. Occasionally a car or motorcycle went by. After half an hour I reached a picnic site with a spring-water tap (in Turkiye, when you go into forests and nature, in many cases you don’t need to buy water—there’s almost always a tap with excellent water in every village, grove, or rural road). I continued uphill for another hour until I reached the waterfall.

When I arrived, I was disappointed—only a small amount of water was flowing, with little vegetation around it. Not even a proper pool had formed. I sat there for half an hour and decided to head back to the village.

At the picnic site on the way back, there was a family there, and next to the water tap another woman was cooking a huge pot of red fruits over a fire. I filled my bottles, and she insisted on giving me food. I agreed, and she called her husband, who came from the village, and we talked. He had completed 35 years of service as the imam of an ancient mosque in the village that had once been a Greek church. Meanwhile, two young men and children joined the conversation. Although I initially thought everyone was somehow related, I later learned that this wasn’t the case—they had no connection to the woman and her husband, but were simply having a picnic, and were Kurdish villagers. They were extremely kind and friendly, bringing me Turkish tea, wild rose tea, potatoes from the fire, and more. Our time together passed pleasantly as we talked about Turkiye’s deteriorating economy, cigarette prices, migration to Germany, and other topics.

After exchanging phone numbers and saying goodbye, the woman’s husband—the mosque’s imam—drove me back to the village, showed me around, and took me to see the church that had been converted into a mosque. It turned out to be small and very beautiful, and they had preserved elements from the time it functioned as a church. When we arrived, a prayer was taking place, so I waited aside, and then the current imam and my host explained the structure to me. Afterward, he introduced me to his son and then took me to the central station so I could catch a minibus back to Denizli, and from there to Pamukkale.

What a day. I returned at 8 p.m., carrying yet another day full of experiences.