I am sitting on the verandah of a family home in Etrim, a small hillside village in Turkey’s south-west and a 30-minute drive from the Amanruya hotel, where I began this journey. Sunshine hits the pomegranate and fig trees that shade the verandah, sending dappled light across the rich brocade of handwoven rugs and knotted kilims that carpet the floor, and our host, Engin Basol, waves a hand towards the olive groves and pine forests that fan out across his village.
“Bodrum [city] was once like this,” he tells me. “If you look at photographs from 30 or 40 years back, you could see donkeys walking into Bodrum. There were tangerine trees.”
