The World Walk

I can't get enough of this Turkish coffee. Dark, aromatic and impossibly potent; it all but guarantees splitting headaches the moment I leave Turkey and lose my fix. Oh well, it's worth it in the meantime.

A top of their coffee, in this episode I ruminate on a host of other Turkish foods - some better than others. While I'm in Gaziantep, a city recognized by UNESCO for it's culinary arts, there is no better topic than food.

High in the hills of Kayseri, Turkey, I ruminate on what it's like to wander off my route. With nowhere to be and no schedule to keep, walking has taking on a strange new feeling and one I haven't quite adjusted to yet.

Learning to ride horses in Cappadocia wasn't on my itinerary, but few worthwhile things are in life. In Persian, Cappadocia means 'Land of the Beautiful Horses.' Until I reach Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, I doubt I'll find myself in a more suitable place to ride. After a week of lessons I'm achy and sore, but I've learned something I've dreamt about for years.

Sat in a cave in Rose Valley in central Turkey, I considered the landscapes of Cappadocia, Savannah's tough paws and where the road will take me next.

With a cup of coffee in front of me and Savannah snoozing beside me, this is a Sunday morning podcast. My brain is still warming up so I ramble a bit more than usual. I stumble into subjects like boredom on the road, desensitization to beauty and my growth as a photographer. 

My mattress is deflating! I'm sleeping on the cold earth in a thunderstorm. In Mexico, I set my inflatable mattress on a bed of thorns and found all the punctures with ease, why can't I find a single puncture now? 

Ramble, ramble, ramble...who knows if this makes any sense. With my tent set on a dusty hill in Central Turkey, I reflect on my first decent week of walking in months and the interesting shepherds I met along the way. An encounter with a Rocket Engineer shepherd at night and shared çay with another shepherd at noon.

The first podcast recorded in Tom's tent! He's a little delirious from walking all day, but he manages to string some sentences together to talk about adjusting to life back on the road, the terrible heat he and Savannah walked through in Costa Rica, and the things Turkey gets right which make it a particularly good country for walking.

And so it begins - the first dispatch from Savannah and Tom's walk around the world! In this episode, recorded in Istanbul, Turkey, Tom covers everything that led him to walk around the world. What better place to start?

Tom ruminates on how his friend's death at sixteen impacted his worldview, how and why 'The World Walk' remained his focus for the eight years before beginning, and the generous people who helped make this adventure possible.