The Daily Express - October 8, 2005
A trip with the man who turns turtles.
TURKEY'S turtles are in safe hands. As the nation on the cusp of Europe and Asia edges closer to joining the EU, DENIS MANN witnesses the caring side of Turkish beach life.
ALI IHSAN is the Turtle Daddy of Turkey. By day, he protects the loggerheads that have nested on the idyllic beaches around Fethiye since time began.Turtles, he explains, head by instinct for the first light they see as soon as they hatch. In pre-tourism times, that was the moonlit ocean. But our modern electric bulbs confuse young turtles, sending them inland - to danger. Enter the Turtle Daddy as protector.
Ali tells this story as he describes an adventure that will take our little group of holidaymakers - including my wife, teenage daughter and son - to places where few Western tourists go.
He speaks of Girdev, high in the Taurus Mountains. In the winter, it is a huge lake surrounded by snow-capped peaks. But in summer, it turns into a vast pasture, and is home to families of Turkish nomads.
It's a 50-mile minibus drive to Girdev, most of it off road, to our starting point. Near the summit of an exhilarating pass, we stop and disembark, Our driver will meet us a few miles further on and we walk the rest of the way on tracks and goat-paths that reach 6,000ft, higher than any point in the UK. The walking is invigorating, but not testing. The air is so clean up there.
When we stop to drink from a stream, many miles from the nearest house, an ancient noman woman appears with two barefoot urchins in tow. Ali points out a bird here, a hare there. From time to time he disappears off the track to emerge on once occasion with wild plums, on another with fresh chickpeas.
The return trip is long, bumpy and tiring and I find myself yearning for a sunlounger and a cold beer. Our hotel, the Misafir Evi, is in the remote hamlet of Keciler, a few minutes' drive from Kayakoy and close to the beaches of Fethiye and Olu Deniz. It has those sunloungers and cold beer, plus nice bedrooms and bathrooms, and lovely breakfasts.
My family stayed a week at Misafir Evi and a week at the Bordubet, north of the overdeveloped resort of Marmaris.
The Bordubet, however, is a world away from Marmaris, tucked many miles down a track from the main road to Datca. It has a brilliant beach club, reached by a five-minute motorboat transfer, with free windsurfers and a dinghy you can take out.
On the crossing back to the hotel one day, the boatman stops and points out a turtle.
For all our time in Turkey, we'll remember most fondly a day at Girdev...
and a blithely indifferent turtle.
Ali, your work is not in vain.
TURKEY'S turtles are in safe hands. As the nation on the cusp of Europe and Asia edges closer to joining the EU, DENIS MANN witnesses the caring side of Turkish beach life.
ALI IHSAN is the Turtle Daddy of Turkey. By day, he protects the loggerheads that have nested on the idyllic beaches around Fethiye since time began.Turtles, he explains, head by instinct for the first light they see as soon as they hatch. In pre-tourism times, that was the moonlit ocean. But our modern electric bulbs confuse young turtles, sending them inland - to danger. Enter the Turtle Daddy as protector.
Ali tells this story as he describes an adventure that will take our little group of holidaymakers - including my wife, teenage daughter and son - to places where few Western tourists go.
He speaks of Girdev, high in the Taurus Mountains. In the winter, it is a huge lake surrounded by snow-capped peaks. But in summer, it turns into a vast pasture, and is home to families of Turkish nomads.
It's a 50-mile minibus drive to Girdev, most of it off road, to our starting point. Near the summit of an exhilarating pass, we stop and disembark, Our driver will meet us a few miles further on and we walk the rest of the way on tracks and goat-paths that reach 6,000ft, higher than any point in the UK. The walking is invigorating, but not testing. The air is so clean up there.
When we stop to drink from a stream, many miles from the nearest house, an ancient noman woman appears with two barefoot urchins in tow. Ali points out a bird here, a hare there. From time to time he disappears off the track to emerge on once occasion with wild plums, on another with fresh chickpeas.
The return trip is long, bumpy and tiring and I find myself yearning for a sunlounger and a cold beer. Our hotel, the Misafir Evi, is in the remote hamlet of Keciler, a few minutes' drive from Kayakoy and close to the beaches of Fethiye and Olu Deniz. It has those sunloungers and cold beer, plus nice bedrooms and bathrooms, and lovely breakfasts.
My family stayed a week at Misafir Evi and a week at the Bordubet, north of the overdeveloped resort of Marmaris.
The Bordubet, however, is a world away from Marmaris, tucked many miles down a track from the main road to Datca. It has a brilliant beach club, reached by a five-minute motorboat transfer, with free windsurfers and a dinghy you can take out.
On the crossing back to the hotel one day, the boatman stops and points out a turtle.
For all our time in Turkey, we'll remember most fondly a day at Girdev...
and a blithely indifferent turtle.
Ali, your work is not in vain.