1. Crossing Anatolia
I like my reading to match the moment. Heading out on a trip, I stuffed this walking memoir into my backpack. Someone recommended it last summer and I finally grabbed it.
Bernard Ollivier hit sixty and refused to rot in retirement. Former political journalist, lifelong athlete, widowed with grown kids—nothing tied him down. His first challenge: Saint-Jacques de Compostelle on foot, solo. Classic pilgrim stuff. 2,300 kilometers in 76 days.
That wasn't enough. He wanted something bigger, crazier. So he decided to walk the Silk Road from Istanbul to Xi'an, following Marco Polo's trail. Alone. On foot. Eight thousand kilometers across Asia over four years, broken into 2,000-kilometer chunks.
This first volume covers Istanbul to Tehran—the full east-west traverse of Turkey.
After brief stops in Venice and Istanbul, Ollivier hit the road with his pack, maps, and boots. His plan: stick to backroads, meet locals, walk thirty kilometers daily. Some days he pushed fifty or sixty (which sounds absolutely insane to me, a casual Sunday walker).
This is three adventures in one: physical, cultural, human.
The physical part obsesses him. He counts every kilometer. Tracks his pace. Notes the terrain. Watches his body like a machine. And I love how he thinks about walking itself:
"In this daily effort, this imperceptible and powerful push toward such a distant objective, these beneficial sweats, I rise toward the sky, I free myself from the chains of childhood, of fear, of received reason. I break the threads in which society has bound me, I despise armchairs and sofas. I act, I think, I dream, I walk, therefore I live."
Walking is the praise of slowness. You absorb atmosphere, landscape. You sit by a river to eat lunch. You chat with farmers plowing fields. You listen to birds and wind in branches. Walking is a drug—the more you walk, the more you want to walk. Your body releases endorphins. Pain disappears. Fatigue fades. You reach a kind of physical bliss.
The cultural adventure proves disappointing. He searches for Silk Road remnants but finds little. Turks look forward, not back. They don't preserve their glorious past. The caravanserais—those legendary roadside inns for traders, animals, and goods—have vanished or crumbled into ruins.
But the human encounters deliver everything. Ollivier chose small roads and villages, forcing him to constantly ask for hospitality. His Turkish is minimal but somehow it doesn't matter. He meets everyone: farmers and beekeepers, teachers and imams, grocers and mayors, cops, workers, beggars, soldiers.
Hospitality is a duty for Turks, for Muslims in general. Country people are curious about foreigners, love asking questions, love talking endlessly. Everywhere Ollivier goes, people treat him like a hero. His adventure seems barely credible to folks who've never left their village.
These people have nothing but share everything. Their generosity feels anachronistic to us Westerners, trained to distrust everyone, especially strangers.
Eastern Turkey is different. Kurdish country. At war with the Turks. Terrorists prowl. Military everywhere. Poorer, more suspicious farmers. Much less welcoming. Ollivier faces some unpleasant, even dangerous situations.
But he shows both faces of Turkey brilliantly—half Turkish, half Kurdish, between East and West, tradition and modernity.
I found this account absolutely gripping. Yes, the daily marches get repetitive. But I dream of this kind of solo journey, knowing full well I'm incapable of it. I devoured this travelogue like a thriller. Can't wait for the next volumes.