The next morning, I woke up knowing that I was going to have to do whatever it took to work my foot back into shape. So I hobbled downstairs to breakfast and decided to come up with a plan.
Before sitting down to eat, though, I walked a couple laps around the parking lot to test my foot without the load of the pack. On my practice walks before coming to Turkey, I had made sure to walk barefoot about a mile every day, so even the tiny muscles in my foot would get exercise they didn’t get when I wore shoes.
I had been wearing shoes every day during the walk now, and I knew from experience that when I stopped walking barefoot at least a little each day, those tiny muscles only lasted for about two weeks, so I suspected that the pain was caused by their atrophy and the fact that other parts of my foot would not be getting the same muscular support they were used to getting.
I figured that I would be able to work those small muscles back into shape if I could spend four or five days doing nothing but focusing on their recovery. That meant I would need a cheap and hospitable place to work, uninterrupted, for those four or five days. I thought of Horsunlu, where I had been a couple of days before. The people had been friendly and the public park had been a comfortable place to spend the night. Most of the villagers were at work during the day, so I would be able to work my foot during the day when no one was around to distract me. Horsunlu was probably my best bet.
When I finished eating breakfast I grabbed my pack from the lobby and hobbled across the street to catch the mini-bus back to Horsunlu, covering in just half an hour what had taken me a full day to walk.
As the bus pulled into Horsunlu I asked the driver to pull over at the village’s traffic light. He got off the bus with me and went to the back and pulled out my backpack. I put it on and hobbled off the main highway and down the side road into Horsunlu.
The village was alive with festivity. It was weekly market day, and tents were set up alongside the road where shopkeepers sold items such as T-shirts, dried figs, spices, and cheap plastic kitchenware from China. I felt alone. People were milling around me everywhere having fun. I hobbled along desperately, full of self-pity, unsure of what I should do next.
As I passed the main tea garden, I spotted the familiar faces of people I’d met when in Horsunlu before. They called me over.
“Welcome back to Horsunlu!”
“Just couldn’t resist us, huh?”
“We missed you!”
“Thank you,” I replied as I pulled up a chair and joined them at the table. I waved the waiter over to bring me a cup of tea.
“What brings you back to Horsunlu so soon?” they wanted to know.
“Well, my foot hurts,” I said, “and I need a few days to rest it up. Is it okay if I stay in the public park there?” I pointed over to the grassy park where I had stayed a couple of nights before.
“Sure, of course you can stay there again. We’re happy to have you!”
I was very happy to be back in Horsunlu. I had seen these people only once before for one night, but I’d felt so welcome here that it quickly seemed a second home. After finishing my tea, I picked up my pack, hobbled the 200 meters to the park, and set up camp under the same tree as before. At the end of the day I was beginning to feel a little more confident that at least now I was in the right place, and tomorrow I would wake up and start working my foot back into shape.
—
In 2012, Matt sold off or gave away almost everything he owned. He strapped whatever was left to his back, flew to Turkey, and walked across it. Every foot, from one end of the country to the other. Along the way he slept in mosque gardens, dined with strangers, and stumbled into refugee camps.
This is the story of that journey. We’ll be publishing one chapter each week from his book. If you would like to read the whole thing at once, you can purchase his book titled Heathen Pilgrim: Walk Across Turkey on Amazon.
