R.É.E.L. Horse Trail, Problems and Tears :

1st of Mars 2022, R.É.E.L. : Horse Trail, Problems and Tears, Steppe FM :

The journey :

There are ten of us. Three dogs, three horses and four humans. Three weeks since the team got together and two weeks since we started the journey. That's right because before we managed to set off on the roads, it took us seven days to adapt the packs to the horses, to modify the bags, to wait for a parcel containing some of the equipment. Seven days during which we slept in an old abandoned building, where we had to go and get bales of straw or hay by hitchhiking and where the wait could last for hours. Then finally ready, we set off. We walk in the heart of a cultivated plain on the paths still muddy from the past week. We have been walking for barely two hours and we decide to ford a river. A rash decision in retrospect, as we know little about our horses and even less about their reaction to water. Luckily the horses followed us without protesting too much. So we continued our route (normally done in summer) and arrived at another river about 20 metres wide. This one can be crossed in summer because it is not more than 40 cm deep. Not in winter. We are thus forced to make a diversion, almost a half turn in fact, of twenty-five kilometres to arrive on the other side by passing on a bridge twelve kilometres away.

The second day passes without any noticeable worries, we realise that even if we get up early, we don't do more than 15 km a day: we lose a lot of time packing the camp and putting the luggage, which must be perfectly balanced, on the horses. At the end of the afternoon, we finally cross the bridge, the time to do some shopping for supplies, it is already time to set up camp. We find a rare uncultivated space, put the teepee there and even have the chance to take a shower in a house that a lady has lent us for the occasion.

The next day, the rain starts, we decide to stay on the spot. For four days. On the fourth day, during one of the countless walks in the drizzle to graze the horses, Jehol twists his leg. We go to the vet that evening, and the result is four days of rest.

So it takes us ten days to make 25 km diversions. And on top of the three horses to be kept on a lead, there is now Jehol to be kept on a lead so that he doesn't run. He is becoming unbearable, and by the evening I am in a state of advanced irritation from having to pull him back, call him back, bully him and above all hear his incessant whining because he is held on a lead.

The roads and other everyday worries:

The very next day, Jehol limps again. We create a kind of splint with the means at hand so that he can only walk on three legs. At the same time, we go deeper into the sometimes stony and sometimes muddy paths of the surrounding hills. The road becomes more and more technical. We have to find the signposts, which are usually badly marked, manage the horses and their load between the rocks, pines and brambles, watch out for scree and slides, send the dogs ahead so that they don't end up under the hooves and avoid falling ourselves. A lot of parameters to manage simultaneously. In other words, as soon as the path is difficult, the mental load increases and so does the tension. Everyone manages his horse as he can, tries to listen to the advice of others while avoiding the dogs or pulling out a bramble caught on the saddlebags. The outbursts are often avoided, everyone takes it in his stride, but the few metres covered sometimes require an impressive amount of energy. The passages are sometimes dangerous, the tension is mixed with apprehension when we walk on steep paths on the side of a cliff where a false step of the horse is unthinkable... or when we go down to the bed of a stream where each rock slides and where we are obliged to direct each step of the horse. And then, there is the load of the horses which is sometimes unbalanced for no apparent reason, sometimes because we had to jump a tree or a ditch, we then have to remove everything and put it back.

It is often exhausted that we set up camp. There are still a thousand things to do: unharnessing the horses, putting up the tents, finding wood to cook for the dogs and us, taking care of the horses' tethers, their feet, their grain, complaining about the wind or the rain... It is in these moments of false relaxation that small dissensions appear within the group.

Alternate custody:

We are lucky enough to be four, one pair keeps all the animals while the other pair hitchhikes to get hay, grain or provisions for us and the dogs. This makes for great encounters as well as long moments of waiting in the capricious weather, with a thirty-kilo bale of hay at our feet.

And then, there is always Jehol's lameness. We stopped again for three days but it doesn't seem to be enough. In order not to stop our whole caravan, Rico and I set up alternating custody for the dog. Rico keeps him for two days in Dalyan where we have found a warm shelter while I continue with Marie, Akim, the three horses and the two dogs and then we reverse.

The first of the two days with Marie and Akim was one of the worst and best days of the trip: alternating technical paths and dirt roads, beautiful and varied landscapes, views of the Dalyan swamps but also useless detours where we get lost in the forest on unmarked paths, hundreds of meters of uselessly climbed elevation changes, the brightness dangerously decreasing as we finally find the much hoped for red and white beacons, long and perilous descent on slippery scree on the sides of ravines as we struggle to make out the path. At last, we reach the plain as the last light disappears. Fortunately, we find a field of orange trees with enough grass for the horses and a well from which to draw water.

The next day is not easy, it is the unexpected episode of the ferry.

F(er)ry Style :

Crossing the city of Dalyan with horses and dogs. Heads stick out of windows, cops check us, street dogs follow us and bark, smartphones film us quietly. Finally, we reach the river and therefore the ferry (there is no bridge). We consider, wrongly, the ferry crossing as a formality. While Patate climbs on without any worries, the other two refuse categorically. We try to pull them, to push them... a line of cars forms behind us, the ferry driver kicks us out for the first time. We have to pass this ferry, otherwise, we have to walk around the lake, a ten days diversions on a busy tarmac road. Some locals come to us to help us. Obstinate in the idea of crossing we listen to their advice. Without thinking, we listen to one of them: blindfold them. Without thinking, we listen to one of them: blindfold them. Neither one, nor two, we walk, Patate and Marie in front, and Akim and me behind with Koko and Papy blindfolded. The ferry is on our side again, Patate and Marie get on it, Koko and I get on. Koko takes her first step on the metal clattering under her hoof. She recoils, I don't see that one of her hind legs gets caught in the chain controlling the boat deck, I pull her forward. By some miracle, her hoof unclenches and she moves forward onto the ramp and finally onto the metal deck of the ferry, which is ringing under the irons. A glance over my shoulder shows me Akim with Papy who still refuses to move. I decide to tie Koko to the rail to go and help Akim. Big mistake... Koko, still blind, feels pressure towards the front of the tether and logically starts to move forward. She passes one of her forelegs over the rail, directly over the water. Panicked, I untie the knot and pull her violently backwards, she falls backwards -unfortunately- onto the deck. She drags me with her and I fall too, luckily I don't end up under her. In a panic, she tries to get up on the slippery metal and falls several times. I get up and as she stands still in fear, "letting herself die", I get up and finally think of removing her blindfold. The ferry driver waves us off again, he doesn't want to risk the horses getting on his boat. First dangerously bitter failure. Trembling but unhurt, Koko and I find ourselves back on the dock. More fear than harm.

We will not cross the river today. As night falls, Rico and Jehol join us. We look for a camp on the outskirts of Dalyan and finally find shelter in the huge garden of a house. We are lucky, our hosts speak English. We tell them about our misadventures of the day and they put us in touch with a friend of friends of the cousin: a horse specialist.

On the morning of the next day, a Turkish man in his fifties wearing a bicycle helmet and a life jacket and riding a three-foot horse comes to pick us up... We cross the town again to go to the second ferry, our guide parades from his saddle in the middle of the astonished inhabitants. When we arrive at the new ferry, Patate gets on without any problem. Grandpa still refuses to get on. Our guide, Rico, Akim and I try to push him, to pull him with ropes, without success. Our horse expert decides to tie the lead rope to a tractor to pull him forward... We refuse, he finally attaches Grandpa's lead rope to his horse to pull him on the ferry. Two horses are on the boat, only Koko is left on the quay. Is it the fear of being abandoned by her two companions or is it the experience of the day before? Nevertheless, we manage to get her on board without any problems.

During the crossing, which lasts about a minute, the clouds break. When we reach the other side, we quickly re-pasture the horses. We find a shelter a hundred metres further on with a Kosovar who also has a horse. It was one of the worst nights since the beginning of the trek. We have no fodder for the horses, only grain, the fire we lit during a lull is extinguished by the downpour, we sleep under a metal sheet that we share with 6 dogs (three of ours and three others recently recovered badly on the side of the road by our host) who bark as soon as one of the horses, ten meters away, takes a step.

The next day, I go back to town with Jehol for his sick leave.

The strange welcome of some :

In general, there is no need to say, the welcome of the Turks is incredibly warm. The fact that we have three horses and three dogs doesn't change much. There is just one condition to respect...

One evening, with the dogs and horses in the care of Marie and Akim, Rico and I wander into a village looking for a beer to have our newly established "dissension to resolve" meeting. It is Sunday and in a very small village and of course, we find nothing. So we turn back to the vacant lot where we have set up camp when a guy sticks his head out of his double-parked truck. We don't understand anything he says in a rather aggressive way, wish him goodbye and continue our way. A hundred meters before we arrive a voice rings out in our back. The guy has followed us in the dark to here. We decide to wait for him, we don't want to show him the way to the camp, the three horses and the three dogs. He comes up to us, and from the way he walks and the smell, you don't need to be a detective to see that he's completely drunk. He yells at us, we don't understand much, we try to explain to him as best we can that we are travelling on horseback, he doesn't understand anything either, calls us a migrant or whatever... He wants us to go and see one of his English speaking friends to clarify the story. We agree, knowing that the whole village knows we are here and that there is a chance that his friend is soberer. So we follow him, through the streets of the village, arrive in front of a house, he enters, we wait outside for him to come out with his friend. You bet! He comes out a minute later with a huge gun in his hand... Great... We look at each other in the corner with Aymeric, the message gets through. We don't panic and we react well, without raising our voice, we explain as best we can that we are French, we end up showing him our passports... He understands that we are neither Afghans nor Syrians and invites us to have a coffee... An hour and a bit later, we finally get out of the reception of our new "friend".

Another evening, we find the perfect bivouac. It's Marie's birthday, we've swum across the river to get some Baklava, the horses have plenty of grass, and the fire is blazing high. We finish eating, night has fallen, all three dogs start barking. There is a light in the distance. We call the dogs back, Akim goes to meet the stranger, I follow him. We arrive at about twenty metres from him. We can't see him, he blinds us with his overpowering light and yells at us. He lowers his light for a moment and we realise that he is pointing a shotgun at us. Shit. We keep our hands visible, he continues to yell at us and signals us to move towards the camp. We shout to Marie, Rico has joined us in the meantime, to keep the three dogs inside the tepee. We try to explain to her that we are French and that we travel with horses. We arrive at the tepee, the dogs growl, he blinds us and points at us in turn. He yells again, points to an abandoned beehive a metre away from the tipi and... Bang! He shoots it! The sound of the gun echoed in the night, the three frightened dogs flee from the tent. We all probably have the same reflex, we look at the gun. It's a "one-shot", there's no bullet left in the magazine. We continue to explain ourselves, he doesn't point at us anymore, he finally understands that we are French tourists... We invite him to sit by the fire and dissuade him as best we can from reloading his rifle, we catch up with the three dogs that we put back in the tent, we show him the horses. He too is completely drunk. He finally relaxes at the sight of the horses. Phew... A few minutes later he leaves for home with Rico to get some Raki. During the ten minutes he is gone, a cop car arrives on the dirt road, probably alerted by the gunshot. We wave to them. They come to see us, none of them speaks English, we try to explain the situation to them, we explain that a drunk guy shooting at a meter from us seems to make them laugh... We also explain to them that he left with one of us and that he'll be back. They don't seem to understand and decide to check our papers instead... Well.

The guy comes back with Rico, he doesn't have his gun anymore but a bottle of Raki. He says hello to the cop, they seem to know each other well. One of them explains to us that it's Osman, a friend of theirs, that there was a "misunderstanding", he hardly adds "he took you for migrants". The police leave, and the five of us settle down, with the famous Osman, to drink Raki around the fire. It's a strange birthday for Marie to find herself drinking homemade Raki with a drunk guy who almost shot at us thirty minutes earlier.

In short, the welcome in Turkey is undoubtedly worthy of its reputation as long as one condition is respected: not being Arab. Fortunately, not all of Turkey is like that, but a recurrent question at almost every meeting is whether we are Syrians or Afghans... Not to mention the police controls at every village on our way... It's better not to be migrants these days. Would this systemic racism be exacerbated by the interference of Europe and its migration policy?

Conclusion of the diptych:

As you understood, these two Newsletters exacerbate first the good and then the bad sides of our current adventure. The reality is, of course, a mixture of both and it seems important to specify, following this second part, that we are very happy with our trip despite the few mishaps. Of course, at the moment, our shoes and most of our clothes are soaked by the incessant rain for a few days and the numerous water crossings but the horses are fine, the dogs too (Jehol has found his good mood at the same time as his mobility), we are meeting incredible people, discovering beautiful places in the heart of Turkey.

The adventure goes on, we debate about the next itinerary and struggle to find the GPS tracks of unmapped paths but lead us to fabulous places.

See you !