Spreading Eurasia (2)

After leaving Istanbul, my plan was to first fly to Dalaman, then transfer to a bus to Fethiye. After spending a day there, I would follow the classic D400 coastal road route to Antalya. Turkey has two major famous travel experiences: paragliding in Fethiye and hot air ballooning. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time on this trip, so I could only put the hot air balloon ride into my future plans.

The two domestic flights I took within Turkey — Istanbul to Dalaman, and Antalya to Istanbul — both turned out to be unexpectedly good experiences. This was not only because the tickets were cheap, with a one-and-a-half-hour flight costing less than 300 RMB, but also because Turkish Airlines has these special headrests whose left and right edges can be folded inward, making it very comfortable to rest your head sideways. Both flights I took were early-morning flights, and on both I received a very distinctive cheese sandwich for breakfast. It was not completely to my taste, but it was still enough to count as a pleasant surprise. On the first flight, there was also a pretty Russian girl sitting next to me, and I could not resist taking a photo of her while she was asleep.

The itinerary for the first day was extremely tight, though not in terms of timing, but in terms of uncertainty. After landing in Dalaman, I followed the guide I had found and got on the bus to Fethiye, then transferred to a local minibus to reach a town slightly closer to my hotel. Because the communication was unclear — I am not sure whether the problem was more on my side or the driver’s side — I got off at a stop that was still 2 kilometers away from the hotel. Since I was worried that the next stop might already be outside the town, I dragged my suitcase for 30 minutes under the midday sun before finally reaching the hotel. The hotel was in a rather remote location, and only then did I realize that I might have been the only guest who had actually walked there. Everyone else probably came by private transfer. After arriving, I found that there were no vacant rooms yet, so I could not check in early. I then started chatting with the young woman at the front desk. The conversation began with me asking why I could not connect to the hotel Wi-Fi, though in the end we never managed to solve that problem.

After taking a noon nap at the hotel — in reality, I barely slept because I was nervous — I set off to go paragliding. I had specifically chosen a company in advance and booked through its official website, selecting the sunset flight time and leaving my WhatsApp number. However, the shop only began contacting me that very morning, by which point I had already prepared a Plan B of going directly to the shop myself. A vehicle from the paragliding company came to pick me up at the hotel entrance. It first drove to the paragliding shop beside the beach, where everyone gathered, and then we were divided into teams, each guest paired with one instructor, before taking a van up the mountain.

The van drove along a dirt road up the mountain. Along the way, I watched the altimeter on my Apple Watch climb from 0 meters at the beach to 1,200 meters at a mountain peak. The instructor said there were several takeoff points at different elevations, depending on the wind conditions that day. Since the wind was weak, they chose the lowest takeoff point. The launch site happened to be the upper station of a cable car, and at least one or two hundred people had gathered on the mountaintop. The instructor and I each put on our gear, then he released the folded paraglider. With one swing of the lines, a canopy about 10 meters across instantly opened up. Immediately after that, we ran forward and took off.

The whole process was not as thrilling as I had imagined, but it was definitely an experience one rarely gets to have in life. Looking out across the sky, there were dozens of paragliders slowly descending through the air. At one moment, I was drifting far from the shore over the middle of the sea; at another, I was floating above the town. The instructor also raised a GoPro and tried various maneuvers, including rolling in the air and dropping rapidly. In the end, we landed safely on the beach. I also spent 40 euros buying the photos the instructor had taken.

By the time everything was packed up and I walked out of the paragliding shop, I was beside the beach, just as dusk was falling. I took out my camera and recorded the blue hour at that moment. The sunlight hit the sea at a steep angle, making every ripple of the waves clearly visible. Together with the silhouettes of people on the beach, I almost felt that I had taken the best photos of my trip so far. At that moment, a cat walked across the sand and stopped beside a ladder. I quickly took photos of it. Then a tourist came over and asked if I wanted him to take the photo. He gestured for me to hand him the camera, adjusted several settings, and then took the shot. That photo captured the cat in a perfect silhouette, with the blurred sunset, sea, and beach in the background, the colors gradually shifting from orange-red to blue-green. This can probably be called one of the most unforgettable memories of the entire journey.

The second day was the D400 road trip: a chartered car from Fethiye to Antalya via Kaş. Since I was traveling alone and did not know how to drive, I could only look for a chartered car. I had posted on Xiaohongshu a month in advance and then contacted the first person who messaged me. She had also posted on Xiaohongshu, and in the end she gathered a group of nine people. When the group chat was created, I discovered that everyone except me was female, which felt somewhat beyond my imagination. I was in the same car with four others. The vehicle was a relatively luxurious Mercedes minibus, and it cost only around 1,500 RMB for the whole day, with about 15 seats. This reminded me of the time I chartered a car in Japan: a seven-seat Toyota Vellfire for one day had cost 2,500 RMB.

Along the way, we got out at various spots to take photos and check in. We also came across a beach resort and an ancient Roman theater. The road runs along the northern side of the Aegean Sea, and the sea there really was beautiful. It was a deep blue I had never seen before. In China, even including Southeast Asia, the seas I had seen were always yellowish and turbid; at most, they were a pale blue.

At noon, we got out in Kaş. I went to lunch with two of the girls, and we found a roadside restaurant with good Google ratings. We ordered several dishes and were about to start eating when two cats emerged from the bushes beside the table. One of them, a calico, stared fixedly at the fish on the table. We forked out a small piece of fish for it, but it refused to eat. Only after the orange cat beside it had left did it finally dare to eat. It turned out that it had been afraid of the other cat. After that, we wandered around Kaş. The town had a delicate Mediterranean charm. I also bought some Turkish delight and went to drink Turkish coffee.

By the time we arrived in Antalya, it was already 7 p.m. All of us found a restaurant for a group dinner, ordering various meat and seafood platters. In the end, we raised our glasses and took a group photo to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in a foreign land.

After dinner, I walked directly to the hotel I had booked. The person at the front desk looked like the owner of the hotel. He assigned me a strange room. It was on the second floor, but the building was a house with a large slanted roof, so the ceiling inside the room was sloped, and the space above all the furniture followed the same angled surface. It was quite unique. My flight the next day was scheduled to depart at 7:30 in the morning, so I had no choice but to book an Uber pickup for the next morning. The service was indeed good, but a 20-minute ride cost nearly 150 RMB. After that, I successfully arrived at Istanbul Airport again — for the third time — ready for the next leg of the journey.