Lycian Way: One of the Most Beautiful Walking Paths in the World

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to walk the Lycian Way for a long time. Even though I walked some of its routes piece by piece, the idea of ​​starting from one end and finishing at the other always attracted me. If you walk the entire 530-kilometer Lycian Way at a steady pace, you have a chance to complete it in 21 days. But 25 kilometers a day is quite ambitious. We, me and my close friend Hacı caught a gap of 10 days and were taken by Fethiye. Lycian Way walkwe set out with the philosophy of what we start and go as far as we can go. Here is the story of that journey… 

Likya wayYou can choose the beginning of Fethiye or Antalya to walk. The starting point in Fethiye is Ovacık, and the starting point in Antalya is Geyikbayırı. There is no obvious reason why we prefer Fethiye. We had only heard that the Fethiye side was easier. 

In addition, there are many walking routes marked in these circles, you do not have to follow the Lycian Way route. Of course, if you have the time and energy, it is best to follow this ancient path. 

Sources for the Lycian Way 

Before walking the Lycian Way, it is useful to do some preliminary research and route work. You can see the mobile applications and guidebooks that will be useful in these researches below. 

Mobile Applications for the Lycian Way

I tried to explain a few phone applications below that you can use while walking the Lycian path.

• WIKILOC: You can use the wikiloc application to see the distances and difficulty levels of the routes. In this application, you can download the map you need and use it offline. Wikiloc is a very useful app if you are thinking of going hiking on your own. You can see the routes of people who have walked this route before and follow those routes, and you can see the difficulty or slope levels of the route. 
• MAPS.ME: Maps.me is the offline map application that I use everywhere. Before we arrived, we marked the accommodation places and water sources on our route on this map, you can see it while following the map even if you don't mark it. During the walk, we mostly benefited from maps.me. We also marked the water resources that are not on the map on our own map. 
• LYKIAN WAY: There is also a free mobile application called Lykian Way, prepared by Kate Clow, who marked the Lycian Way. There is a section on this application that describes the endemic vegetation of the region in addition to water resources and accommodation. I can say that I have never used this application because it seems very useless to me. 

Lycian Way Guide Books

You can get the path from the guide books describing the Lycian Way before walking. Thus, you can decide on the route you will walk much more easily. 

• The Lycian Way book by Step by Step by Altuğ Şenel,
• Metin Tuzun's Guide to the Lycian Way,
• The Lycian Way book by Kate Clow, which marked this route for the first time and brought it to tourism. 

What should be in the backpack for the Lycian Way Hiking? 

Let me say the last word first; If you do not have long hiking experience, have not taken long walks with a heavy backpack, or are not in good condition, do not come to the Lycian Way with heavy bags like us. 

While we were hiking on the Lycian Way, we thought that we would be able to stay in a tent and cook our food and drink ourselves. We took with us appropriate items and our backpacks weighed 12 kilos. We, who have not experienced long walking with heavy loads before, realized that we had made a big mistake when we first started.

Would you like to set off with less stuff? Would it be lighter? Definitely yes! If you're wondering what you would do if I went for a walk with my current mind, here's my suggestion, keep reading:

• My tent, mat and sleeping bag total 3 kilos. We could have saved this burden by making the accommodation in the hostels on the route. Hostels are around 100-125 TL. 
• We take utensils and stoves with us in case we cook our own meals on the way, so we don't look for tea and coffee. However, there are pancake shops and coffee houses in the villages on the way. Pancake is 10 TL, menemen is 15 TL, tea is 3 TL, ayran is 5 TL. We have thermos glasses, we can get hot water from the places where we drink tea and make our coffee easily, there was no need for a stove. We couldn't find a camping tube anyway. So we've wasted all the utensils. In addition, the hostels provide breakfast and dinner included in the price, so there is no problem with food.
• For 10 days, I packed 5 short-sleeved T-shirts, 2 pants, 2 towels, 1 fleece, 2 long-sleeved T-shirts, lots of socks and laundry. 2 short and 1 long sleeved t-shirts are enough, wash in the evening and dry in the back of the bag in the morning. 1 towel is enough. 
• By the way, the baton definitely saves lives, I recommend you to have it with you.

When we reduced all these, our load would already be halved, and we would be able to take a light and easy walk. As a matter of fact, we left our surplus in Faralya and continued on our way lightly. 

Remember that the lighter you keep your bag, the more you will enjoy walking. Prepare your bag accordingly. 

Lycian Way Walk Video

You can watch my Lycian Way walking video, which is one of the most beautiful walking paths in the world, below.

Lycian Way Walk

Before we set off, we took our books, downloaded the applications to our phones, and waited for our time to go. We were going to do our Lycian Way trek as a backpacker and carry our tent materials and food supplies with us. We had decided to start the Lycian Way walk from Fethiye. We bought our flight tickets to and from Dalaman Airport.

Lycian Way Day 1

Without doing much research for the Lycian Way, I would have loaded my 12 kilo backpack, and then realized what a mistake it was, and we arrived at Dalaman Airport from Istanbul on Tuesday morning. There are Havaş and Muttaş from Dalaman Airport to Fethiye. Both are 17,5TL and they are moving at the same time. 

First, we were going to go to the center of Fethiye and have breakfast and buy food on the way. There are minibuses going from Fethiye bus station to the city center. You can reach the center with those minibuses. We walked to test whether we can walk with bags on our backs. It takes 20 minutes. When the road was straight, we thought our walking training with bags was successful, how surprised we were. 

After we had our fill, we took a tour in the central beach of Fethiye, and we thought we should not miss it by the way. We bought our travel food from Carrefour, we preferred foods that could be light in load and high in energy, we think we can make it on the road. But our camp stove does not have a tube for cooking. They don't take camping tubes on the plane, so I bring the stove head and buy camping tubes from the places I go, I did the same in the Black Sea last year. Although we searched a lot in the center of Fethiye, we could not find a camping tube even though we visited the tube manufacturers. These were always signs, but we did not understand.

On the first day, we think that we can start our tour with a beautiful ruin and take a short walk, and we turn our route to the abandoned Greek village of Kayaköy. For details about Kayaköy “Abandoned Greek Village KayaköyYou can take a look at my post. There is a minibus from Fethiye center to Kayaköy every half an hour, whoever you ask will show you the location. 

I knock on the door of Kayaköy Art Camp, which I have visited a few times before to pitch a tent in Kayaköy. They haven't opened the season yet, but the owner of the camp, Mutlu, says we can set up our tent wherever we want in the garden. We leave our tents and take a long walk in the abandoned city. There is no place to eat in the village, except for a few pancakes and a few very expensive restaurants, which are not really season open. We order herbed pancakes at one of the pancake aunts. When she sees that we are taking care of her son İsmail, she also offers us a chocolate pancake. Thank you. 

All the grocery stores in the village sell tubes, but there is no camping tube again. Looks like we're going to set off without our camping tube. 

While we were preparing our bags, when we looked at the weather forecast, it was around 23 degrees during the day and 14 degrees at night. Trusting this, I took my sleeping bag with a comfort level of 12, so that it would be light. The situation of my fellow traveler is not different from me. 

Lycian Way Day 2

In Kayaköy, there is a village cafe close to Art Camp in the morning, and a pastry shop right next to it. In the morning, we take our bagels, cheese, eggs and pastries, sit in the coffee shop and have a good meal with our tea. Meanwhile, we are chasing the Ovacık minibus, where we will start our walk, the minibus stop is right in front of the cafe. Fethiye minibuses go from Kayaköy to Ovacık, so there is a minibus every half hour. 

There is a minibus every 5 minutes from Fethiye to Ovacik. But when you get off the Ovacık minibus, you have to walk 1 kilometer to reach the starting point of the Lycian Way. Instead, if you take the Faralya minibuses, which depart every half hour, you can get off the minibus much closer to the starting point of the Lycian Way. Those who walk the Lycian Way usually stay in hostels in Ovacık to start walking early in the morning. Since we wanted to see Kayaköy as well, we made our route a little different. 

Our goal on the first day was to start from Ovacık and reach Faralya. The account at home did not match the bazaar, but you can do this route under normal conditions, I will explain why we couldn't. 

When we set off from Ovacık, the road starts between pine forests and continues as a tractor road for a while. Shortly after the tractor road ends and the path begins, the ancient road begins. As the slope of the road rising from the slope of Babadağ increases, our 12-kilogram chubby bags are starting to get heavier on our backs.

It is written in the source books and applications that there is a cistern where you can drink water on the road, but my advice is to carry your drinking water with you as much as possible, because the water in the cistern was quite muddy.

When we finish climbing the ridge, our eyes shine when we see the "Vitamin Kafe Pancake 80 meters" sign, but the pancake is closed because the season has not started yet.

We are happy when we realize that we only have a short walking distance to Kozağaç Village, because there is also a pancake shop there. Besides, I'm about to run out of water. One of the most important issues in the Lycian walks is water, you must take enough water with you to take you for a long time. Although there are frequent fountains on some routes, some routes do not have clean drinking water for a long time. 

The first fountain after Ovacık is in Kozağaç Village. We sit in Halil's Place, the pancake, to fill our water first from the fountain and then to feed our hungry stomachs.

Even though pancakes and tea take some of our tiredness, we have already realized that our heavy bags will cause us problems. We're not even sure if we'll be able to go as far as Kirme, the next settlement. When we check the route, we see that the distance between Kozağaç and Kirme is mostly straight, and we continue. Now our steps began to slow down and even crawl.

There is serious beekeeping around Fethiye. There are beehives on all the roads we pass, and there are aunts selling honey in the villages we stopped. Frankly, I am happy that we still raise so many bees. The bees did not cause us any trouble during the walk, but it may be good for those allergic to bees to carry ammonia with them.

When we come to Kirme Village, we take a tea break at Sunset Cafe. We ask where we can camp in the village. The aunt in the cafe recommends us a few places, and she says "wherever you want to set up here, no one will say anything". Camping places in Kirme Village: 

• The garden of the old school: this is nice as a camping place, there is a pancake called Sugar Cafe right across the street, feed your stomach, drink your tea and coffee. Come see that there is a bad wind right at the top. We skip this place because we got cold in the tent the night before. 
• Fountain head in the pit: the place called the pit is opposite the Faralya route, we went down a bit, we looked at it, there is still a lot of descent, we said that there will be a way out, and went back. 
• A camping area on the Faralya road: we saw this place the next day on our way to Faralya, it's really nice, but we couldn't go down here. 

We chose neither of these options. If there was a hostel in the village, we would have stayed, but there is none. We threw the tents and ourselves on the first plain we found while descending from the village towards the Faralya path. We didn't feel our toes at all. After my social media posts, “were your shoes uncomfortable?” questions came. Let me explain why we're so tired and our feet hurt so don't do it or be careful. 

• Heavy backpacks push you from behind especially on descents and you have to use your feet as brakes, so our biggest crime bags are heavy. We both used our walking shoes for long walks and there was no problem, the only thing that changed was the bags. 
• While I was preparing the bag, I made a mistake and thought that Fethiye would be hot in the middle of May, so I bought everything thin and summery, including my socks. However, it is a well-known rule that it is necessary to wear thick socks suitable for walking in nature walks. When my socks were thin, my pinky fingers collected water with the friction. My left little finger nail will probably fall off because blood has settled all around it. 

As the price of these two big mistakes, we tired our feet and legs badly. Lemon Cafe in Kirme Village was only 150 meters from where we set up our tent. We almost crawled there. We ate our dinner there, drank our tea, stretched our feet and rested, thanks to them, they were very interested. When it got dark, the weather got cold, and they gave us a blanket that protected me from the cold, while my companion would be sick the next day because she was without a blanket. 

Lycian Way Day 3

When we woke up on the third day, all our muscles were aching separately, as if we did not cut the ice at night. After we had our breakfast at Lemon Cafe and borrowed a blanket, we agreed that we wouldn't be able to walk long today, and we set ourselves a short route. Our only goal today was to reach Faralya. An easy route of 4 kilometers from Kirme to Faralya. After a short steep descent at the beginning, it has a beautiful path that goes through mostly flat forest. There are often clean water sources, namely fountains, on the road.

Even though the distance to Faralya was short, our feet were so bad that when we arrived in Faralya, we wanted to stretch our feet as soon as possible. I saw the sign of Onur Motel right at the entrance on the pathway, it said it was a tent area. As soon as we saw it, we went inside, looked at the tent area and decided to stay. We didn't have the cure to take one more step with those bags anyway. Fortunately, Onur Motel turned out to be very nice, we stayed in the tent area, but there are 8-10 bungalow rooms. We paid 100 TL per person for the tent + breakfast + dinner. In the family-run motel, dinner was prepared by the owner's mother, and while we had pancakes for 2 days, various kinds of salads, vegetable dishes and mother's hand were delicious. I think it deserves the price.

When we left our bags where we camped in Faralya, we decided to go to Butterfly Valley. However, we received so many warnings that the descent was so dangerous that we stopped descending and wandered around the village to see where we could see the best view of the Butterfly Valley.

• If you follow the "George House" sign from the road that enters the village, there is also the Butterfly Valley sign after a point. You can see the valley from the top, before descending, this path is the one that goes down to the bottom of the valley, but let's say it again, "I definitely do not recommend it".

• On the way to the first road, you will see a "view point" sign. The most beautiful valley view from Faralya is here. You can also set up a tent here. There is no water, but the house just behind the campsite provides electricity and toilets for a fee. Phone charge was 2 TL, WC was 1 TL. 

Lycian Way Day 4 

We left our tent materials, utensils and excess clothes at Onur Motel where we set up our tent in Faralya. Lightly, we determined our end-of-day route as Kabak. Our intention was to arrive in Kabak by noon and swim in the sea in the afternoon. 

It is an easy 7-kilometer route between Faralya and Kabak. Now that our bags have become lighter, we arrived in Kabak in 2 hours. The scenery along the way is so beautiful that we stopped and watched the scenery all the time. Pine forest on one side and the deep blue sea on the other… The Lycian Way certainly deserves to be called the most beautiful walking route in the world. 

We settled in the Full Moon pension, which we saw on the way down to Kabak Bay and said it had a beautiful view. But we had a small problem; My companion's throat was swollen. Soup, herbal tea, cold medicine, etc., did not work, Haji slept all day. I'm also at the beginning in case he needs anything. 

Lycian Way Day 5

Unfortunately, Haji woke up worse this morning. Black pepper honey, linden, parol and all that hadn't worked. We decided to stay at Kabak and see if it would get any better. While Haji was falling asleep after breakfast, I went for a walk towards Kabak Bay. There is a steep descent from the village to the cove. If you do not want to walk, there are service vehicles that take off as they fill up. Of course I chose to walk. Seeing the bay, I gathered thyme and sage from the pine forest and went down to the beach. As you get closer to the beach, it is a little annoying that there are construction sounds everywhere. 

When I went down to the beach, people started to swim, but it was still cold for me, so I didn't try at all.

I thought I'd eat something on the beach and enjoy the view, unfortunately that pleasure was interrupted by loud music. There was a trail going west from the bay, I walked a little further following that trail and taking in the amazing views of the bay. This side is much calmer and the view of the sheep is much more magnificent.

There is a tented area five minutes' walk from the bay. This is not an official camping area, but especially those who walk the Lycian Way set up tents here.

When I came back to the base again from the beach, I found my companion a little heavier. Even if we made tea or something from the thyme I collected, it didn't work. 

The cold had descended into his lungs, he needed a good rest. The next day, we decided to finish our Lycian Way walk to return with the most suitable plane. Health comes first, Haji couldn't walk like that, and I didn't want to walk alone. The slightest mistake on such roads can cause you to fall, and if you are alone, it may be too late to be found. No need to take risks, Lycian Way here we will come again…

Excursion Costs for the Lycian Way Walk

We were asked a lot about our spending items and their amounts for the Lycian Way walk. Below are the general figures, you can see our total trip cost.

• We bought our Istanbul – Dalaman flight tickets for the Lycian Way walk from Pegasus a few weeks ago for 270 TL. When we brought our flight day forward, an additional cost of 61 TL was found. We spent a total of 330 TL for plane tickets.
• We spent 17,5 TL for transportation from Dalaman Airport to Fethiye center, and 35 TL for round trip transportation. 
• We have given 17,5 TL to the minibuses we use for intermediate transportation. 
• Along the way, we did a mass shopping at the market for food. The amount per person is 48 TL. 
• We spent 200 TL per person for everything we ate and drank on the way. This figure does not include meals included in the accommodation. 
• It was around 100-125 TL for hostel accommodation. We paid 100 TL for the tent including meals in Faralya and 125 TL in Kabak. Since we stayed in Kabak for 2 nights, we paid a total of 350 TL per person for accommodation. 

Our 5-day journey cost a total of 980 TL per person, including all our expenses. 

Our journey, which we started with great enthusiasm and excitement, took a much shorter time than we planned because first our bags were heavy and then we were very cold in the tent. 

Wait for us Lycian Way, we will come again! 

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Stay on the Road!