My National Geographic Adventure Blog Post – Skiing Turkey: Backcountry Gear for Breaking the Snow Ceiling


Photography by Cat Jaffee

Photography by Cat Jaffee

I live in Kars, a snowy, cold eastern Turkey town that author Orhan Pamuk describes as  “the edge of the world.” Sometimes when I am staring off the dramatic dropping cliffs of the Anatolian plateaus, I couldn’t imagine a place that would better fit the description. Everywhere I look, it is white rolling mountains uninterrupted by trees or roads or houses—a wide-open backcountry heaven. Going on my third year of living here (one of two permanent, registered native English speakers for more than 200 kilometers) and the only resident backcountry skier in the region—I recently came to a realization that if I am going to live out here, I better go big or go home. I should take advantage of this amazing terrain or go live in a place with a few more daily comforts. (more…)

Posted on | Image

What We Do To Feel Like We Belong: Pushing Hairlines Beyond Feminism, Comfort and Closed Doors


I am a proud and fervent feminist. But I have done some things that would go against the more traditional grains of feminism and I am about to explain how and why.

I live in a traditional remote Anatolian town called Kars. It is a town that was featured in Orhan Pamuk’s novel SNOW, in which a writer (KA) visits Kars in winter to report on women committing suicides because they are not allowed to wear headscarves in school. This story is fictional. Kars is actually not that conservative. But I am more reserved here than I am in most places. I wear baggy clothes. I keep my eyes averted when I walk the streets. I flaunt a wedding ring. I am cautious about male guests. In public I am remarkably guarded for the spirit-exploding-from-the-inside-kind-of-person that I feel I am.

But behind closed doors my world, my body, my thoughts are ripe for the picking: by women. I recently saw the full potential of this when I uttered the following four words: My. Lover. Is. Visiting. (more…)

Posted on | Image

Starting At the Street, How Do We Make the World Safer for Women?


If Turkey continues on its current peace-in-the-neighborhood trajectory – think, Mr. Rogers meets improved relations between Turkey’s regional countries and its ethnic Kurdish minority – living in Turkey may very well be the safest it has been in over 30 years. The economy is stable and growing and somehow Turkey has managed to be friends with Israel while impressing the rest of the Middle East with its edgy sitcoms. It is a marvelous feat that even the village conspiracy theorists can’t quite wrap their heads around.

But as it is worldwide, there is still one group that regardless will look over their shoulders when they walk down the road: women.  After witnessing gross sexual assault scandals from my former homes in the US to Europe to Japan – more and more I am convinced that neither religion, economic status, nor geography are great indicators for whether or not women live in fear of sexual assault or harassment. This kind of discomfort is everywhere and it can happen to anyone.

I am writing about Turkey and my experiences here because this is where I live and it is what I know. I am writing because the more horror and humiliation I live through, the more civility and bravery I experience, the more I think I have a small handle on what I can do to confront this enormous injustice that all of us face in one way or another.

Let’s start with a few stories from the last few weeks.

(more…)

Posted on | Image

BALYOLU IS BACK – Walking the World’s Very First Honey Tasting Trekking Route


As the snow melts and the rain pours, I slosh around the Black Sea in my hiking boots in search of bees.

…In search of bees…how many times have I finished a sentence with that phrase in the last three years. A Georgian man adorned in a bright and colorful ewok costume chases after me, whip in hand, while I pass through a traditional village in search of bees. I drive 8 hours over Azeri deserts brewing with mud volcanoes and cracked flowers, staring nauseously out the window, in search of bees. I fall to my knees before an ancient lake in Armenia, drinking holy water and silenced by its beauty, in search of bees. I float over flowing velvet green carpeted hill-sides in Eastern Turkey, the sounds of cowbells chorusing throughout the valley, in search of bees. I cry in a hospital, blowing my nose on sheep’s wool, wondering how so much could happen all for some great search for bees!

(more…)

Posted on | Image

Don’t Start With Why – The Advice I am Glad I Stopped Taking

Mar 9

Posted by


Image

It has been a year since we successfully completed our Kickstarter campaign. A year since we pitched Balyolu and won awards at two business plan competitions, and a year since we began venturing out into the field. And it recently dawned on me that this phrase, “a year,” means that Balyolu is almost officially past the big statistical survival hump.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Bees Keep People

7 Comments

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Posts
Newer Posts →
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 2,166 other followers

%d bloggers like this: