I remember visiting my father’s village for the very first time when I was about ten years old. Despite loving adventures, being that disconnected and off the grid wasn’t appealing to me during my teen years. That has changed since then.

Çaltepe village is located at the foot of a mountain pass in the northern province of Antalya in Türkiye. It is home to 450 more or less permanent residents. Raw and pure in its appearance, it is an old-school Turkish village. Yes, modern developments happened over the years. Paved roads to mention one. It also has an ecotourism motel and four assigned imams. Yet there is no school, no post office, and no health center. It is a WiFi desert and cellular coverage is flaky. Thanks to its distant location it managed to keep its rough edges and natural environment.

Life here consists of farming, husbandry, beekeeping, and lately tourism. For me it is all about picking fresh fruits from trees, seeing the Milkyway with the naked eye, having encounters with various unknown insects, and listening to sheep flocking around the house in the morning. The village demands your full attention. And that with no modern-day attraction (or more like distraction). It’s a simple concept.

There is something to Çaltepe that makes one come back to it. My grandparents moved away in the 60s, first to the city of Antalya and then as far as Germany, just to come back to the village again to spend the rest of their lives. My father was born here and left the village decades ago. Yet when he did a sabbatical, he started in the village. When my mother was feeling unwell in her mid-forties, she came here to reset her body. And now after moving from place to place I also find a much-needed peace of mind here. This place is a refuge, an escape from the endless news stream and the overwhelming amount of information from today’s modern world. A place where no ads or commercials are forced upon you. Nature doesn’t want to sell you anything.

It is a place to connect with the natural world and disconnect from civilization. All societal definitions fall away. It’s timeless. It shows that we are just alive as nature is alive: to be here and now, to be. That we do not need to achieve anything to be valid in our humanness.

The village reminds me that what we put out there, is what we receive. Like an echo in the mountains. We are the echo, existing shortly and briefly, and the mountain will be here long after, with us or without us. The clocks indeed stopped here long ago.

“It is all very beautiful and magical here ― a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake it into you. The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro, where everything is sidewise under you and over you, and the clocks stopped long ago.” ― Ansel Adams

It certainly is not an easy life in the village, and there is no need of romanticizing the struggles. Problems that do exist anywhere else, do exist here too: financial pressure, climate issues, providing food and education, relationship issues, and political affiliations to name a few. Yet especially during the pandemic more than ever (young) people flocked here and bought land and built houses. Not to live but to have a refuge, to hit the pause button, to have a fallback plan if shit hits the fan - whether that’s personally or collectively.

Traditions

Giving nicknames is a strong tradition in Turkish villages. My grandfather’s nickname was “Süslü” (stylish), my grandmother was called “Tokalı” (the one with hair accessory), then there is a villager named “Organik Ahmet” because he grows organic veggies, and one of our relative's nickname is “Kuzucu” (lamb herder). These people are not called or remembered by their real names. My dad is still called Süslü’s son to this day - note that my grandfather passed away a decade ago.

I’ve been working with my camera in the village for a few years now. Nowadays, some villagers stop in their tracks and invite me smilingly “You can take a photo of me” before I even say a word. And since my reputation precedes me now, or so it seems, I sometimes wonder if I’ll have a nickname and what name I’ll be assigned to. Because you don’t get to choose, the villagers choose it for you.

Every year I learn something new, about the village, my father and his family, their past, their upbringing, about my past. This is an ongoing project.