Not long enough to become one of those terrifyingly competent backpackers who own collapsible cutlery and somehow know which bus goes where in six different languages. Nothing that dramatic. I mean long enough that it stops feeling like an event. The first few days of solo travel are noisy inside your head. Everything feels heightened….
There’s a very specific kind of exhaustion that comes from travelling with other people. It’s not the good kind, the “we walked twenty thousand steps and earned this drink” kind. It’s the slow, steady drain of having to negotiate your own life like it’s a group project no one really wanted to be part of…
It starts hours before the actual event. Not the dinner. The idea of the dinner. You’re in your hotel room, standing in front of a mirror, trying on versions of yourself like outfits. This one looks too try-hard. That one looks like you’ve given up entirely. Somewhere in the middle is a woman who appears…
It usually begins the same way. A message, sent late in the evening, when the house is quiet and the day has finally stopped asking anything of you. You can almost picture it without trying. Someone on the sofa, glass of wine within reach, scrolling a little too long, watching someone else’s life unfold on…
There’s always one day on a trip where the wheels come off. Not dramatically. Not in a blaze of glory. Just… quietly. Like your dignity slipping out the back door while you’re face down in a pillow, bargaining with your own liver. Yesterday was that day. I’d love to tell you I was out soaking…
First things first—I’ve officially broken my own rule and I apologise. All week I’ve been smugly tapping away at these posts like some sort of disciplined, well-adjusted human being with structure and routine. And then, like all good habits, it went straight out the window the moment raki got involved. So yes—this is late. And…
You ever get woken up by a sound so aggressive, so wildly committed to being heard, that your brain just… gives up trying to label it? That was us. Next door. Something between a donkey in emotional crisis and a human being having the kind of morning that requires electrolytes and a long sit-down afterwards….
There is a particular flavour of regret reserved for the morning after a night involving far too much Rakı. It’s not just a headache—it’s a full-body, existential audit. Your mouth tastes like you’ve been licking aniseed-scented regret off a nightclub floor, your brain feels like it’s been gently sautéed, and your memory… well, your memory…
Let me start with an apology. Not a polite, British “sorry”—one of those real apologies where you acknowledge you’ve made choices, and those choices are now writing the blog for you. I am, at present, pickled. Not gently infused. Not delicately marinated. I am a full-blown raki preservation project. Somewhere between glass seven and “who’s…
Day 4 in Dalyan didn’t come in hot. No chaos. No grand plans. No heroic cultural ambitions. Just heat, a pool, and the slow, creeping realisation that doing absolutely nothing might be the most productive thing I’ve done all year. We parked ourselves by the pool like two overfed cats and committed to the art…