About NESRİN KARSAVURAN

A Lifetime of
Walking Turkey

I was born and raised in Manisa, a city at the foot of Mount Spil, where the plains of the Aegean begin their long conversation with the interior of Anatolia. As a child I watched the mountains from my window and wondered what lay beyond each ridge line. That curiosity never left me. It simply found longer legs as the years went on.

My first serious routes were local — the terraced orchards above Akhisar, the dried riverbeds south of Salihli, the Byzantine remnants on hillsides that most residents had long stopped noticing. Gradually I pushed further: the limestone plateaus of Denizli, the coastal paths of the Datça peninsula, the pine forests of Kastamonu, the frost-cracked volcanic plains of Erzurum in early spring. Over the decades these journeys accumulated into something I barely dared to call a collection.

What I noticed — again and again — was absence. The absence of reliable, honest documentation. Popular guidebooks recycled the same ten routes in the same ten regions, written by people who had visited for a long weekend with a hired car. Entire trail systems that shepherds had maintained for generations, ancient caravanserai supply roads, seasonal footpaths used by local farmers — none of it was written down in a form that a curious visitor could actually use.

In 2019 I decided to change that in whatever small way I could. I began systematically walking and documenting — not for any publisher, not for any tourism board, and not for any financial return. The project, which became nesrinkarsavuran, was conceived entirely as a public service: free to access, free to share, and free of the commercial pressures that distort so much travel content today.

Every route description on this site has been walked by me, in person, in real conditions, at least once and usually more than once across different seasons. I write about the ground underfoot, the signage (or absence of it), the water sources, the light at certain hours, the mood of the landscape. I do not write about places I have not visited. I do not accept sponsored trips. I do not link to affiliate programmes or embed paid recommendations. The routes are the thing — the rest is noise.

Turkey is a country of staggering geographic variety compressed into a single landmass. Aegean olive groves give way to steppe within a two-hour drive. Black Sea forest descends to semi-arid plateau within a morning's walk. The Taurus Mountains contain gorges that feel like the bottom of the world. Documenting even a fraction of this — honestly, carefully, with the traveller's safety and experience as the primary concern — is the work I intend to keep doing for as long as my legs and my notebook allow.

This site is not finished. It probably never will be. Turkey has thousands of paths left to walk, and I am already planning the next season's routes. If you find an error, a changed condition, or a path I've missed entirely — please tell me. This is a living document, not a monument.