In the midst of my heartbreak from leaving Morocco, on the plane to Turkey I decided to let the second country be a digestion time of what I had seen in the previous country and a mental break before residing in Sri Lanka for six weeks.
I didn’t prepare anything for Turkey, since my research wasn’t based there and it seemed the least exotic of the three. Once some of the other nomads couldn’t contain their excitement to land in Istanbul, though, I reconsidered what it could offer.
Our six days in Turkey are a blur, a skip in the beat from the rest of the trip for me, so writing back on that week brings a mix of opinions.
I expected to spend most of my time blogging and hashing through my Morocco revolutions while doing a few tours and saving money by not going shopping.
In hindsight, all of that was flipped.
I was quickly caught up in the tourist corridor of Istanbul and was willfully being carried away by it. Even the spoils of the hotel, wifi in the room, hot showers and a western toilet, comforted me into a blissful state.
Two days in Turkey and I was resettled in my Western ways and found consolation in the vacation feel.
As we bought museum passes, went to a grandeur university on a hill, ate at restaurants with white table cloths and became regulars at one of the hookah bars, I was confused as to what I was meant to be feeling or learning there.
That’s when I decided to actually be observant of what I was doing and how it was affecting the ripples within the vast city.
If I was to be just another foreigner wide-eyed in Istanbul, I was placed there to filter something. I only needed to figure out what that was.
I gathered that if I can’t experience a country through the ground level, I only have this narrow lens, then what as a tourist can I read into the culture of those who live there. How does tourism affect or dictate their livelihood?
Also, instead of being frustrated that I wasn’t meeting with NGO’s or catching up with politicians in a café or hiking through towering forests like in Morocco, I wanted to appreciate that I was in a new place. I was traveling. I was in movement.
That means more than anything.
I didn’t prepare anything for Turkey, since my research wasn’t based there and it seemed the least exotic of the three. Once some of the other nomads couldn’t contain their excitement to land in Istanbul, though, I reconsidered what it could offer.
Our six days in Turkey are a blur, a skip in the beat from the rest of the trip for me, so writing back on that week brings a mix of opinions.
I expected to spend most of my time blogging and hashing through my Morocco revolutions while doing a few tours and saving money by not going shopping.
In hindsight, all of that was flipped.
I was quickly caught up in the tourist corridor of Istanbul and was willfully being carried away by it. Even the spoils of the hotel, wifi in the room, hot showers and a western toilet, comforted me into a blissful state.
Two days in Turkey and I was resettled in my Western ways and found consolation in the vacation feel.
As we bought museum passes, went to a grandeur university on a hill, ate at restaurants with white table cloths and became regulars at one of the hookah bars, I was confused as to what I was meant to be feeling or learning there.
That’s when I decided to actually be observant of what I was doing and how it was affecting the ripples within the vast city.
If I was to be just another foreigner wide-eyed in Istanbul, I was placed there to filter something. I only needed to figure out what that was.
I gathered that if I can’t experience a country through the ground level, I only have this narrow lens, then what as a tourist can I read into the culture of those who live there. How does tourism affect or dictate their livelihood?
Also, instead of being frustrated that I wasn’t meeting with NGO’s or catching up with politicians in a café or hiking through towering forests like in Morocco, I wanted to appreciate that I was in a new place. I was traveling. I was in movement.
That means more than anything.
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