28 days | 1000+1km | Unobstructed

Finally, there I was on-board, in seat no.28B, next to a troubled looking türk yaşlı adam (turkish elderly man). Luggage below and camera bag above me. Double checked and secured. A "fake" entrance VISA, a passport and heavily pinned maps in my back pocket. Oh, and fragments of hope buried in my heart. Out of the oval window was the burning sun hidden behind an overcast sky. All according to plan. Vast amounts of thoughts, fears and doubts lived in my head. I am drunk while writing this quote, so I did back then, but really, who cares? Frankly, I couldn’t proceed otherwise. But why such a trip? Why 28 days? Why 28mm lens? Why shitty hostel? Why alone? Why not Paros sandy beaches, alluring babes and Mojitos? What the hell was I thinking? Six months of research and mapping and taqqing and saving and planning and...oh well. Solo I was, unobstructed to document, experience, smell, feel, taste, inhale the hookah and capture Byzantium, Κωνσταντινούπολη, Istanbul. Or was it Ara’s lost Anatolia that I was seeking after all (in vain)? And then on hard soil I endlessly wandered without my precious, so well organized pinned maps and no schedule. No rules at last and no agenda. This multi-city turned my head into a living compass. And there I lost control…I got lost. And there I clicked, waited, waited some more and then quickly clicked again. A sweet, mechanical, almost silent sound that trapped my essence. Alley after alley which led to fields and Mosques and bazaars and the Bosporus. 1001km of walking. Everything mysteriously unfolded. Unobstructed. Now here I am, back in the same seat no.28B (as awkward as it may sound) next to an innocent yunan çocuk (greek child). As for my luggage and camera bag? Not sure if they are on-board this time, but again, who cares? A New-Me steadily occupies this seat now. Homesick but satisfied, weak but powerful, skeptical but purified, died but born again-a heavily bearded newborn, a boneless wreck! In my back pocket,a few megabytes of life are trapped in a filled backup disk. 28 days were not enough, I reckon. Through the oval window, that sun finally burns my smiling, once troubled face while I can clearly hear the aircrafts engines revving. Eventually this dream-drunk child falls asleep. Unobstructed. Seni görmek – Τα λέμε – See