Dispatches - 19 October 2025 - Exhausted in the Back Half

Jack Rogers
Oct 19
4 min read

In this Dispatch

Weekly Dispatch

It has been a rainy day today, and thank God for that. I am absolutely exhausted. I have been jetting through Turkey for a month (tomorrow). Izmir, Mardin, and Diyarbakir seem forever ago. My pace has been brutal, which is why I swore the last time I was here (January 2024) that I wouldn't fly thorough the country on my next visit. Promises made, promises broken. It's not so much the moving that is wearing me down, it's the mental toll that new cities every few days takes (when it comes to learning the area, finding restaurants, figuring out local transport, etc.) and the fact that I have given myself two to three days per city to soak up as much of its history, culture, and religious significance as possible. When I tell people later that I will have spent two months in Turkey this year, they will probably think that I must have gotten really comfortable and learned a lot of the language while here. Those people would be wrong. I'm basically holding on for dear life on the crazy ride across the former Ottoman, former Seljuk, former Islamic, former Byzantine, former Roman territory that is Turkey. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely loving learning this country's rich history and religious significance. I'm just exhausted. And I still have about two weeks to go before I settle down in Istanbul for a few weeks.

Catching up on where I've been and what I've been doing since my last update. I sent my last one from Afyonkarahisar, which was descried to me as "nothing there but sausage." Well, from a historical and cultural perspective, that's probably right, but it was a nice, decently-modern city. It reminded me a lot of non-Manhattan New York City or the outer neighbourhoods of Madrid. I found myself thinking several times that if I was Turkish, Afyon wouldn't be a bad place to live. I enjoyed walking the streets and visiting the old Afyon castle, which is basically in ruins today with archaeological excavations taking up the rest of the site. It was a steep climb to get up the hill, which is understandably why it was chosen thousands of years ago as a defensive outpost. Granted, I wouldn't have wanted to be one of the soldiers that had to haul all of that brick up there.

From there, I actually backtracked to Aksehir. It was about ninety minutes back towards Konya, but that's just how the hotel rooms worked out. Aksehir was one of those cities you drive to, spend a day, and then go back to the bigger city. Still, I had two full days there. It was once home to a large castle, but that castle and its ruins have disappeared in favour of modern development. There were tombs, old madrasas, and centuries-old mosques, all worth seeing, but the rest of the town was, well, a town. If I would have felt exhausted then, it would have been a great place to relax for a few days. Alas, I had a bus to catch, this time to Eskisehir.

Which is where I am now, although I leave tomorrow for yet another city. My Airbnb is quite a way from the historic city centre, so I walked there yesterday (about an hour). I would have used public transport, but, again, I had no idea how it worked, and there weren't maps anywhere (not even online). The city's website only asked you which line you wanted to know the timetables for, which I didn't know. Looking back, I probably could have taken the tram had I paid more attention on the way in from the bus station, but I didn't so I didn't. Like Afyon, Eskisehir is a great city to live in. There are plenty of modern areas, a riverwalk, beautiful parks, and restaurants of all kinds (plus coffee shops to get some work done). The historic city centre is well-kept. It has clearly been renovated and restored, but that's fine by me. I've always found it interesting that some people don't like that. What would you do if it was your house or church falling into disrepair? You'd fix it! That same principle applies to centuries-old neighbourhoods, mosques, and madrasas. I was surprised that there wasn't an Ulu Cami (literally, "Grand Mosque") in the historic area. The town's Ulu Cami is typically my first stop (if there's not a castle), so that there wasn't one was interesting. But this wasn't the first city like that; there wasn't an Ulu Cami in Harput, either. The Kursunlu Cami (literally, "Leaded-Dome Mosque") was really nice, though.

Tomorrow starts the final stretch of my Turkey leg. Bursa, Istanbul, and Erdine are all that are left. Hard to believe I'm almost to the end!

Check out this week's YouTube videos!

Wayfarer Vlog: Camino de Santiago | Reflecting on the Camino

Wayfarer Vlog: What's Next? | Moving on to the Second Leg on the Expedition

And these from The Great Gallivanting!

Travel Vlog: Petra | An Ancient Wonder After October 7th

Travel Vlog: Amman | Ancient History, Scam Central, and Why I'll Never Return