Kadinhani to Konya Outskirts – 1st October
Distance: 45.7 km – Elevation +310 m -320 m
Weather: Sunny. Temperature: High 27 degrees
I still have close to 60 kilometres left to walk to reach the centre of Konya so I knew I needed to find somewhere to stay on route. I use Google maps to find accommodation in Turkey and it showed an hotel around 15 kilometres ahead so I was expecting a short day. I had slept well and It felt warm when I left the Belediyesi Oteli at 7.00 am after a breakfast of a banana, peach and grapes purchased from a local stall in Kadinhani last evening. It was another beautiful day, clear blue skies with warm sunshine with temperatures that rose to 28 degrees as the day progressed. The golds and browns of the landscape vibrant in the sunshine. Around 10.00 am I came to a service station with a handwritten sign displaying the word Çay in large letters so I decided to stop. The service station was run by an elderly man and when I said “çay lütfen” he walked into the filling station office to brew fresh tea and returned with the tea without a word, he replenished my glass a couple of times and when I offered to pay he just waved me away and that was it, no words at all. A little later I met a couple of traffic policemen who were checking cars in a layby, and again so friendly and genuinely interested in what I am doing, on parting they gave me a delicious Turkish bagel.
Around 11.00 am I arrived at Ladik and the Insu Otel and what I hoped was my destination for today. The hotel was there as shown on Google but it was closed. On the ground floor of the hotel building were a cafe and a shop. I knew that the next hotel was 30 kilometres ahead. So after reflection and a couple of glasses of tea, I mentally prepared myself for the onward journey.
I had several tempting offers of lifts along the way including a coach driver who offered me a free ride to Konya and I met a lot of individuals along the way including an enterprising man who had set up a tea house next to a freshwater spring in a roadside layby. I stopped for tea and he prepared a light meal for me and charged me a relatively high price of 50 tl.
I was continually lost in thought and with the beauty of the landscape, the hours seemingly passed quickly. I came to the Konya boundary sign at 6.30 pm after completing 41 kilometres and as I continued on I could see a tower block rising in the sky before me and soon I could see the words displayed on the tower “Grand Hotel”. It is the first hotel on the approach to Konya, a 5-star relative skyscraper. I arrived at the hotel at 7.30 pm after a distance of 46 kilometres. One of the advantages of arriving late is that you can negotiate a good room rate, so I have a luxurious room on the 14th floor with magnificent views for £27 per night and it has a bathtub!
So after a refreshing bath, I treated myself to a three course meal with wine in the hotel restaurant and sat reflecting and congratulating myself having walked 120 kilometres (75 miles) in the three days since leaving Aksehir – that is very near three marathons in three days. Tomorrow I have just 12 kilometres to walk to the centre of Konya which is the completion of the fourth stage of my pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the end of the Sufi Trail.
