Morning Hikes Are the Best

When I'm out walking in the morning for the most part I am sharing the sidewalks with three kinds of people, children waiting for the minibuses to take them to school, young professionals who don't have cars, and these really great old Istanbul men. These guys are great, they usually wear three piece suits that match in a peculiar, grandfatherly way, and they all have bushy mustaches. They stroll the sidewalks in the morning, greeting eachother, buying newspapers and bread, or simply walking along quietly, clicking prayer beads between their fingers or jabbing a thumb at a cellphone. They are one of those first indicators that say to me every morning, "You're in another part of the world! This isn't America!"

Of course I know I'm not in America when I wake up, but those little reminders, like the call to prayer before I hop in the shower every morning, really make this experience exciting. If people, streets, buildings, and trees are all you see composing a place, you've been in the same place too long.

Everyone go read these dispatches from Azerbaijan and Afghanistan written by Ben Barrows, an old friend of one of the uKnow ladies who I had the pleasure of meeting when he came to Istanbul for vacation.