Steppe FM, April 1, 2022, End of a horseback journey :
The end of the journey:
After these two weeks of rain or wind, the sun finally appears. It is still cold because of the wind but the sky is blue again. We are east of Akyaka and we finally start riding again.
Our caravan of ten members still follows the Mediterranean coast. Sometimes on the asphalt of the seaside road, sometimes on the steep and badly marked paths on the cliff sides.
There was a particularly great day. We leave the road to go into the pine forest on steep paths. We climb a few hundred meters before finding a tiny path zigzagging between the trees but in the right direction. Our caravan is now walking in a tight pine forest. The trail often gets lost between the thorny tallus. The walk is slow, often trying because we have to see or move a tree blocking our way. The passages between the trees are from time to time so tight that the horses' luggage passes by centimeters when it is not completely scratched. The place is splendid but especially the sight. On our left, between the trunks, we see the turquoise blue sea glistening under the sun, and in the distance tiny islands. And while the sun is still shining, while we are sweating under the effort, it starts to snow. Big flakes are flying around and melting on the horses' sides.
The end of the day is approaching, we are about thirty kilometers west of Akyaka, in the heart of a small seaside village, a car stops at our level and asks us if we need anything. Marie answers that no, we are just looking for a place to sleep with grass for the horses. He offers to take us to their place. A young woman gets out of the car and we follow her. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at a kind of camping/hotel. There is neither tent nor room but a handful of Tiny Houses in the middle of a garden facing the sea.
The Geko Project
We were invited to spend a night here by Melda and we have been here for 10 days now. Melda & Racim are the two managers of Geko, an ecotourism project in a natural park. When we arrived and our camp was set up, they offered us tea during which we learned that they are in the middle of a renovation period before the beginning of the summer season. And obviously, we offered to give a hand! Especially since us having a fixed place and Turks around us will allow us to sell the horses more easily.
And we must admit that we don't regret our choice. We are in a beautiful place with new people to meet, the horses are free in a big paddock, there are plenty of small jobs to do (painting, repairing, cutting wood...), we are incredibly well fed and we can take showers whenever we want! On top of that, they agreed that I should set up a vegetable garden for the season!
So we spend our days in the sun helping out here whether it's painting or fixing, cooking or shopping, walking the dogs or riding the horses bareback, and, most importantly setting up the vegetable garden. We even have the "luck" to see a traditional camel fight. In truth, besides the obvious animal abuse, we are far from bullfights and other killings, and the Turks take advantage of this event as an excuse to drink and eat all day!!
So we spend our days in the sun helping out here whether it's painting or fixing, cooking or shopping, walking the dogs or riding the horses bareback, and most importantly setting up the vegetable garden. We even have the "luck" to see a traditional camel fight. In truth, besides the obvious animal abuse, we are far from bullfights and other killings, and the Turks take advantage of this event as an excuse to drink and eat all day!
Concretely, the total surface set up is about 40m², we planted about fifteen different species (free and reproducible seeds from Kokopelli) taking into account a maximum of factors (beneficial associations, sunshine, quality of the soil, quantity of available water, relief..., while incorporating in the soil topsoil, manure and carbon, and nitrogenous matter.
The objective of this garden is to obtain a small local production for the hotel's kitchen and to raise awareness of sustainable agriculture.
The sale of the horses
In parallel to all these activities, we start to try to sell the horses. Thanks to Melda, we can call in Turkish the different ranches of the region, write ads to broadcast them on the different websites, and, call the people we met along the road.
The beginning of this dreaded sale (not only because we have to say goodbye to our equine companions but also because we don't know who will take care of them), the rare people who call us back or call us again claim that our horses are too expensive, too thin or only want one. Finally, as the days go by, the offers become clearer and we agree with Elias whom we had already met and who has always worked with horses.
On the day, Elias arrives at night with a small truck. We invite him for tea where he takes the opportunity to negotiate details before giving us the money. With a heavy heart, our head elsewhere, we accompany our horses to the road and try to get them into the truck. We are in the middle of the night, the truck is small, but our three horses are mounted without too many problems. 15 min after arriving, Elias leaves with our horses. No, with his horses. We look one last time at the three horses side by side in the truck going away. Everything happened so fast. We have no more horses.
Turning point
So, since today we don't have any horses.
We don't row where we are going either. The war between Ukraine and Russia definitely puts an end to our hopes to continue to go east. To Kyrgyzstan, to Mongolia.
We have already adapted our trip a hundred times because of the Covid, so once again...
But this time it's the big turn. Everything is changing.
We don't go east anymore, we go west, and we get separated. There are many reasons that we will perhaps develop another time to explain this choice. Overall, after these three months in a caravan, we need solitude: to refocus the trip on ourselves and for ourselves. We need to find our way in this expedition, which keeps changing according to the pandemics and other plagues, we need to turn to projects that are close to our hearts, to focus on ecological projects.
The outline is as follows: We are going each on our own to the West to carry out food sovereignty projects, in October we will try separately to cross the Atlantic by boat, and once on the other side of the sea, where the borders are open, Jehol and I will try to find Rico to travel again with horses.
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