Turkey - All alone at Salda Gölü

The last few days have been full of impressions. We are looking for peace and quiet. And we find it at Salda Gölü. Once we arrive at the bizarre-looking salt lake, we don't find a good pitch straight away. Most of the pitches are on the so-called "salt beach", which we only enjoy to a limited extent without a 4×4. Will we ever get out of this wasteland again, should we get stuck?

So we keep looking, it's not always so easy to find a pitch, but today we want to find a particularly nice one, after all we're staying here for a few days (that's the idea). Just before "oh dear, we won't find anything today", we find a dream pitch. A bit in the bushes, with a view of the beautiful salt lake and well protected. The only downside: rubbish everywhere. Just like everywhere else in Turkey.

While Gerd drives our Felix up our little ramps, I collect dry wood and all the flammable rubbish with my little "grabber". We put the cans in a pile out of sight.

The fire is quickly lit, hundreds of tempo cloths lying around (my imagination is going crazy again, I don't even want to know why there are so many cloths here) burn and our campsite is spotless within a radius of about 50 metres.

As it gets dark and arse-cold outside, we crawl into our Felix and hear: nothing. Nothing at all. It's absolute silence. No wind, no water, no waves, no dogs, no muezzin. Simply nothing. Dreamlike.

How does it feel to be all alone here? First of all: being alone is not loneliness. We just don't have people around us. That is a conscious decision. Aloneness is about the physical state of being alone, which can be positive or negative, while loneliness is an emotional state that is typically perceived as negative and characterised by feelings of isolation and abandonment.

So we enjoy the peace and quiet of being alone. We play cards, read, knit, share our thoughts and at some point, when we can't think of anything else, it gets quiet. And the best thing about it: it's also simply beautiful.

Yes, we are curious, we want to discover the world. But it is precisely these moments that make us happy and, to use the cliché, recharge our batteries.

Balance Gölü

The lake is a closed basin with a depth of 184 metres and an area of 44 square kilometres. It is known for its high alkalinity. Incidentally, it is the second deepest lake in Turkey after Lake Van, which we are really looking forward to.

The lake and its surroundings were declared a special environmental protection area by presidential decree on 14 March 2019. Discussions were held with representatives of the UNESCO National Committee to include Salda Gölü on the provisional list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It certainly deserves it!

Sources: https://saldagolu.gov.tr/saldagolu/ & https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salda_G%C3%B6l%C3%BC

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Merci for "travelling with us

We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.

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