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The Dordogne River flows through some of the finest country of southern France. Truffles, cep mushrooms and wild pigs occur in the woods, while huge catfish and pike lurk in the slow eddies of the river. Photo courtesy of Flickr user davidmartinpro.

Ernest Hemingway popularized the cosmopolitan lifestyle of idleness, coffee shops and people-watching on the noisy boulevards of Paris. The author wrote some decent books in the process, but I still think Hemingway missed out every day that he wasn’t walking or cycling through the forested hills of the Périgord, the large agrarian region just east of Bordeaux and north of Spain and famed for its wild truffles, cottage fois gras industry and pre-modern cave art. There is a cafe here in the village of Saint Julien de Lampon, where we have a house for a week, and we can sit there if we like, watching the church tower and the villagers coming and going from the butcher shop, but I’ve got better ideas for the next six weeks that I’ll be traveling here, like these:

Search the shallows for pike. They’re as big as logs, mean as crocs and hungry as bears: northern pike. These spectacular predators eat ducks and rodents and will attack other fish their own size or greater, and they live in the Dordogne River. In his college days, my dad spent some time canoeing in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, where he and the boys went skinny dipping in pike-populated waters and jokingly called it trolling. Here, I’m keeping my shorts on when I go swimming. Probably the best way to see a pike is to peer off bridges into the slow current or stalk along the bank while watching the sloughs and backwaters for what seem to be submerged logs drifting upstream. I’ve already seen several near the village. Climbing out on horizontally leaning tree trucks and looking straight down on a slow pool for 30 minutes is a good method—and when you see one of these monsters drift past in the Dordogne, you can be sure that you’ve met the king. Or maybe you haven’t—because we just read in the papers that a local angler caught a 100-pound wels catfish recently, and the wels isn’t just a duck-eater; supposedly, it has swallowed children.

Ride a bicycle. They’ll hit you with extra luggage fees at the airport for daring to bring a bike overseas (and if you’re especially lucky, like me, they’ll leave it in London overnight), but once you’re rolling on the solid ground of France, a bicycle will set you free. A vast network of small, smaller and smallest roadways crisscrosses the nation. Many are paved paths hardly wide enough for a Fiat that lead through the woods and past forgotten farm houses and crumbling chateaus, along rivers and up mountainsides. Forget your map and just keep rolling–and if the road turns to dirt, don’t stop. It may even disintegrate into a rutted wagon trail or footpath, but almost without fail, just when you thought maybe you were in fact lost, the trail will dump you out again onto the highway. In this scheme of exploration, there is rarely backtracking or getting truly lost. Instead, one becomes familiar with a rare but thrilling déjà vu sensation—after a hungry day of pedaling in circles on unmapped roads—of winding up by accident right back again where you started.

Walk into a Cave. People have been doing it for millennia here, and in many nearby grottoes the paintings of pre-modern people remain on the walls. My nephew, who is seven, can paint better than they did, but to see bison, mammoths and bears scrawled by human hands 150 centuries ago is an awesome reminder of the reality of a history most of us only know from textbooks. The Lascaux, Pech Merle and Cougnac caves are three of the most famous. Lascaux, closed to the public, is only viewable via a reproduction of the original art, while at Pech Merle, you can see the real thing—plus animal bones and human footprints.

Tour the farmers markets. French chefs have taken crocks of credit over the years for wowing diners with their classic sauces, bricks of pate, rustic soups, wild game and pastries—but let’s face it: It’s the open air farmers markets where French food really comes from. Even the tiniest villages here host weekly assemblies of gritty-fingered peasants selling their cherries, beets, potatoes, walnuts, berries and greens. In Saint Julien there is a regular paella vendor, and makers of cheese, sausage, fois gras and wine do business here, too. Yeah, you could eat yourself ill at any local restaurant, where roughage from the garden and stewed potatoes soak in butter and duck fat. I say forget dining out, because no meal here is more gratifying than one cooked at home from a canvas sack of market goodies and eaten on the lawn until the sun sets at 10. The Saint Julien market arrives each Thursday. Souillac’s market is Friday. Sarlat, the nearest big town, has its market on Saturdays and Wednesdays. In, Gourdon, a medieval town on a hilltop, market days are Saturday and Tuesday.

American tourists negotiate for fois gras---or fatty duck liver---at the Saint Julien farmers market. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Buy bulk wine in a plastic jug. Fine restaurants in America are now serving wine on tap for $4 a taste, but in reasonable France, they’ve been selling table wine in bulk for ages. In the rear shadows of many wine  shops (behind all the labeled commercial bottles), you’ll find a spigot coming off a barrel of some local plonk, offering perfectly decent if cheap wine by the pint, liter or gallon. Fill your jug, screw on the cap and go find a bench along the bike path or a grassy knoll above the river.

Hunt the cep. Europe’s favorite wild mushroom floats in three sing-song syllables off the tongues of Italians, but in France, the porcini is just the cep. No matter. This renowned mushroom is the same across all Old World borders—fat pig-like stumps with white stems and tawny brown caps that bulge from the leaf litter beneath chestnut trees. That blue and beaten-up Renault parked at the edge of the forest? That’s probably a cep hunter’s. Follow quietly, track him down and discover his secret patches. Better not collect your own unless you really know your shrooms, but there’s no harm in taking a walk in the woods—though you’re wasting your time if you look up. Other fungi hunting opportunities: Its season is the winter, and if you come here in December, remember that the Périgord black truffle grows among hazelnuts and oaks. You’ll need a good dog to sniff them out, although some walkers watch for vertical columns of tiny flies just above the ground—often a clue that a cluster of the world’s most pungent mushroom is hiding below. Warning: Truffle patches are often on private property, and truffle hunter landlords may shoot trespassers.

Go to Spain. The cheese is just as smelly. The rustic country cuisine is by and large the same. The people, like their French neighbors, live by espresso and wine. But the crowds are less and cost of living about half. The mountainous border along the Pyrenees is just 200 miles south of here, and three days ago as my plane landed in Toulouse, I caught sight of these peaks, still buried in snow in this exceptionally late-blooming spring. Even Hemingway ditched his beloved France for Spain. Soon, so will I.

However much one loves France, it may be impossible to resist visiting the Pyrenees---and Spain beyond. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Laurent Jegou.

Starchy staple of the tropics, the breadfruit is often fried or baked and eaten like potatoes. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Librarian in Black.

Eating locally grown produce may be the easiest way to help spare the planet the stresses of cross-global commerce, and many of us have been all but trained out of buying imported fruits (though we tend to ignore the exotic realities of bananas, coffee and cheap Australian wines). But what if we make a voyage across the world to eat their local specialties? Does that count as eating locally? Probably not—but there are some fruits so unique, so exotic and so tied up with the place and the people from which they emerged that one simply must travel to truly taste them. And here are just a few of the best, most historical, most charismatic of the world’s fruits. Go get them at the source.

Breadfruit, Polynesia. The food value of this whopper tree fruit and starchy staple of the tropics has been heralded for centuries. The fruit grows on beautiful, large-leaved trees and cooks up like something between potato and bread. The British first gave close consideration to the species in the 1760s as Captain James Cook sailed the Pacific. An onboard botanist named Joseph Banks observed the breadfruit and was impressed by its yields and quality. In 1787, Banks returned to the Polynesian breadfruit country, this time on the ill-fated HMS Bounty captained by William Bligh. The boat’s mission, before it was taken over by miscreants, was to collect breadfruit trees in Tahiti and transport them to the Caribbean to provide a new food source for slaves in the sugarcane fields. Today, breadfruit, like so many tropical fruits, has been introduced to nearly every suitable region around the equatorial waistline of the globe, and in many places the trees grow semi-wild. Hawaii is just one hotspot. In Holualoa, the Breadfruit Institute is home to the largest varietal collection of breadfruits in the world—a tidy orchard of 120 varieties. The institute also co-hosts the annual Breadfruit Festival, which took place in March, but in many places, breadfruit trees fruit year-round.

Pitahaya cactus fruit, Baja California. Not to be confused with the common prickly pear or with the pitaya dragon fruit, the pitahaya fruit is brilliant red, is prickled with needle-like spines that fall off as the fruit ripens and resembles a crimson kiwi when cut in two. The fruit occurs in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico, with the Baja California peninsula a center of abundance. The fruit grows from the long arms of the so-called “galloping cactus,” which anyone who visits Baja will see. The octopus-looking plants are a dull green and mostly unremarkable—until September. That’s when the bright red bulbs the size of apples swell into ripeness, and until December the feast is on. The fruits occur by the millions, and tequila-sipping cowboys, fishermen with the day off, families from the city and even a few tourists wearing backpacks all take to the desert to pursue the pitahaya, filling buckets and bringing them home like many northerners do with wild blackberries. October is a sure hit for the pitahaya on the southern half of the Baja peninsula. The best bet: Bring camping gear and go out a-walkin’. Beware of the sun, and watch out for rattlesnakes. The fruits should be attacked with a knife, sliced in two, and eaten with a spoon like a kiwi. A piece of pitahaya trivia: Local indigenous people historically feasted on pitahayas in the fall, and toward the end of the season they sifted the many small seeds from their communal latrines to grind into flour.

Salmonberry, Southeast Alaska. Going to the Pacific Northwest this July? Then watch the berry bushes closely. You’ll see raspberries and blueberries and blackberries—and a lesser known one called the salmonberry. As tender and soft as a raspberry, the salmonberry is about the size of a farm-grown strawberry. That is, the things are huge. I discovered the salmonberry in 1999 on Prince of Wales Island, where my brother and I spent five weeks backpacking, hitchhiking and fishing for salmon. Salmonberry thickets lined most streams and roads, and many afternoons we set aside our fly rods to pick berries. The abundance was mind-boggling, and we would fill our Nalgene bottles in just minutes, each down a full quart of pulverized salmonberries, and then return to the brambles to fill our bottles for dinner. One afternoon, we rappelled down a cliff to access a particularly thick patch. We often dodged black bears working the same patches. We ate salmonberries until we couldn’t move, and when we could stand again, we went back for more. We grilled up sockeye salmon every day for lunch and dinner, and we often drizzled hot salmonberry reduction over the fillets. We feasted on these exciting new berries until the season petered out in August. Then we went home, and we have never seen a salmonberry since—but Michael and I still talk about the summer of ’99, the summer of the salmonberry.

This pair of Italian mushroom collectors have taken about 50 pounds of porcini from a forest in the Dolomites, northern Italy. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Porcini mushroom, Italy. As surely as the apple is the fruit of the tree, the mushroom is the fruit of the fungus—and perhaps no edible mushroom is so unmistakable or such a sure find in the times and places that it grows as Boletus edulis. Called cep in French, king bolete in English and manatarka in Bulgarian, this mushroom is the famous porcini in Italy. Here, this giant, brown-capped mushroom fruits in huge abundance in the late summer and fall. The species tends to grow among chestnut trees throughout southern Europe, and following the first of the autumn rains, the forest floor erupts. Local hunters swarm the woods. Until the winter frost ends the season, households grow fragrant with the nutty, smoky scent of drying and frying porcini, much of the harvest destined for pasta sauces. Can’t get to Italy? That’s fine, because Boletus edulis spores have drifted around the Northern Hemisphere, and in China, California, New York, Greece and Russia, the porcini mushroom grows. Note: The species occurs among different trees in different places—Douglas fir forests in the Pacific Northwest, Monterey pines in Central California and mixed deciduous forests on the Eastern Seaboard. But be smart, and only hunt mushrooms with an experienced forager, and if in doubt, throw it out—not into your risotto.

Stacks of durians occupy the streets of Malaysia during the harvest season each spring and summer. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Fadzly @ Shutterhack.

Durian, Thailand. Just as a wine writer is sure to speak again and again of the tireless Pinot Noir, a writer with an interest in fruits must pay regular tribute to the durian. This spiky and musky-odored beast is called the “king of fruits” in Southeast Asia and can be found worldwide in most large cities with thriving Asian communities—but these imported durians, usually from Thailand, are generally ones that have been frozen. They’re delicious, but fresh off the tree, the durian, which includes multiple species of the genus Durio, is said to be an experience just short of heavenly—the onion-vanilla flavor of its custard-like flesh amplified in every tantalizing way. In the jungles of Southeast Asia, Borneo and Indonesia, locals keep their ears tuned to the trees during the late-spring peak of durian season. Upon hearing a heavy thwunk, they go prowling—seeking the freshly fallen fruit, which is said to lose much of its aroma and flavor in mere hours after harvest. Journalist David Quammen described the hunt for durians on the forest floor in his collection of essays The Boilerplate Rhino. Author Adam Gollner praised the durian in The Fruit Hunters while giving a wary nod to a bizarre subculture of nomads who call themselves durianarians, who camp their way through Asia following the durian season. And in the mid-1800s, durian-lover Alfred Russel Wallace famously wrote that making a journey to the Southeast Asian durian districts is well worth the weeks of sailing just to have a taste. Even tigers, though built for beef-eating, can’t resist durians.

Next week: More fruits to eat locally when traveling globally.

Few landscapes have inspired the author quite like the Picos de Europa of northern Spain. Photo courtesy of Flickr user jroblear.

Many years ago, my dad, living in the French Alps with my mom and us kids for a year, asked his own dad if he and my grandmother would come and visit us. My grandfather, who lived in Redding, California, a semi-rural city in the southern Cascades, answered, “Why would I go to France? There are still places in Shasta County I haven’t ever seen.” He was only half serious—but truly, he wasn’t a committed traveler. Like many others of his breed, he was content simply to stand in his own boots, anywhere.

But others of us can’t quit moving. Why? What is it we look for over mountains and across oceans? Why isn’t a cozy fire in the living room enough? What do we find, or hope to find, in distant locations that can’t be found at home, whether we live in New York City, in Anchorage, in Austin, or in the scrubby hills of Shasta County? To have a look into the heads and hearts of other travelers, we’re asking readers a few questions about  traveling. The eight-question survey can be accessed here. In answering them, we hope you learn as much about yourself as we do about you. We plan to publish some responses in the May issue of Smithsonian magazine.

Here is a sampling of our questions, and a few of my own replies to get us started:

What historical time and place would you most like to visit in a time machine?

It would be very tempting to book a dinosaur safari somewhere in Pangaea, but I think the most emotionally stirring experience would be to stay right where I am, in San Francisco, and flash back 600 years, well before any Europeans had even glanced at the California coast. I would stalk through the sand dunes of my future hometown, identifying the hills that today I ride my bicycle up, the ponds in Golden Gate Park I walk my dog around, the oak forests of which today only a few trees remain and other features of geography now covered by asphalt. I would tread carefully, for there would be grizzly bears roaming this prenatal San Francisco. I’d go in mid-August, and on those long summer days I’d walk the shoreline of the virgin Bay and the Pacific Coast, especially at low tide, when the riches of the ocean, like clams and scallops and abalone, lie exposed to sight. And I expect that from the shore of modern-day Fort Point, under the modern-day Golden Gate Bridge, I would see salmon—huge, silvery Chinooks—splashing their way by the thousands into the largest estuary on the West Coast. And perhaps I would try to explain to the indigenous people I meet on the bank that someday these wonderful fish would almost all be gone. And could I bring with me in the time machine some basic cold-water snorkeling gear? Because the life to be found in our local kelp beds is awesome in 2012, but just imagine in the pre-Colombian era! The lingcod as big as railroad ties, the clouds of rockfish, the halibut stacked in the sand—and the great white sharks. And could I bring a beer in the time machine, too? No—not to drink just yet. Instead, I would hike up Twin Peaks and dig a hole deep in the sand and rock, and bury an Anchor Brewing Company “Old Foghorn” barleywine. Then, after a long look around at the wild, almost people-less San Francisco, I’d snap my fingers and go back to the future. And go find that well aged beer.

What animal would you most like to see in the wild?

A big cat, for sure—but which one? A tiger or a leopard would be a world-class thrill, but these creatures are seen almost strictly by paying tourists on guided safaris, which in parts of Africa and Asia are the only allowed means of enjoying the back country. So, I’d stay in the New World and venture somewhere into mountain lion country. It could be Idaho, Argentina or, heck, Shasta County. A symbol of the American wilderness, this animal—called puma, cougar and a barrage of other common names—is so elusive that no tourist service could ever come close to guaranteeing clients the sight of one, yet common enough that hikers, on their own and without a guide leading the way, may encounter one if they look hard enough, long enough and far enough. Veteran hikers know that it can take years to cross paths with a mountain lion. And if that lucky moment should ever arrive, I must savor it, envying the puma’s stealth, strength and beauty before it vanishes, probably forever, back into the woods.

What world festival would you most like to attend?

Wild mushroom festivals, beer festivals and salmon festivals come to mind, but I think I would enjoy none more than the World Durian Festival, in Chanthaburi, Thailand. Based in the world’s center of durian orchards and culinary appreciation, this festival lasts more than a week during the height of the durian harvest season, when the market stalls and street vendors are laden with heaps of this large, spiny and notoriously fragrant fruit. Certainly, there are people who would be unable to bear the potent potpourri produced by mountains of durians. You people might go to the annual August watermelon festival in Salmanovo, Bulgaria. But for others of us who are overcome with desire when that durian smell wafts our way, Chanthaburi in May must be paradise. The festival also features other local jungle fruits, street food, crafts and jewelers—and if, after a week of feasting on creamy durian, you still want more, linger on, because in Southeast Asia fresh durians can be found all year.

What travel destination is most overrated?

Beaches are so overrated. I can’t help but frown when I see yet another listing of the “world’s best beaches.” This almost invariably means crowds of people, colorful umbrellas, resorts, loud club music all day long and lots of sand—and every time a beach makes a list, still more people will go there that summer. For me? No beach, please—just a rocky shoreline of barnacles, kelp and tide pools.

Let us know your responses to these and other questions about travel

A happy hunter, her Oregon white truffles and the dog that made the day. Photo by Andrea Johnson.

Some underground objects in Croatia will detonate at the slightest touch: landmines.

Other underground objects just smell. When journalist Lucy Burningham went to Croatia in 2007, she went looking for truffles. The Portland-based beer, food and travel writer was doing research for a book she’s writing about truffles of the world. She spent two weeks in northwest Croatia’s Istria peninsula, where she explored the local oak forests with pen and pad, fringed the secretive clan of local truffle hunters and, as she now concedes, poked her nose where not everyone wanted it.

“As a journalist working on a story about truffles, it felt like risky business,” Burningham said. “There’s a lot of cash flowing around, there’s a black market, and I felt like I was entering a world where I wasn’t wanted.”

Most truffle hunters aren’t lawbreakers. They are simply protective of their patches, which may be family-owned and passed along from generation to generation—the foundation of a wholesome industry across Europe. But lookalike truffles are sometimes falsely advertised and illegally sold, and in the dark woods of Europe and in the high-stakes marketplaces, strangers and foreigners are not always to be trusted. Burningham didn’t speak the language in Croatia, and she had just one local contact in the truffle-hunting underworld. The man, hardly a Luddite of the woods, carried four cell phones and seemed to be always negotiating a sale through one of his market connections. He served as her guide, and on one occasion as he drove into a remote truffle patch in the woods, he asked Burningham, seated shotgun in the Fiat, to cover herself with a blanket and hunker down and pose as a sack of potatoes.

“No one wanted to see an international journalist poking around in the forest,” Burningham explained.

Burningham observed the white truffle’s prominent place in Croatia’s culture and cuisine. She saw, too, that Croatian people object to the white truffle’s reputation as the “Alba truffle,” which suggests that this aromatic mushroom, Tuber magnatum, is an Italian specialty. In fact, though France and Italy have gained reputations for having the world’s best truffles, Burningham’s book project was conceived in Oregon, in the woods surrounding Portland, in the heart of North America’s very own truffle country.

Throughout the Pacific Northwest, three species of highly valued, highly aromatic, native truffles grow naturally in the soil among Douglas fir trees, though relatively few people know it. Burningham caught wind of Oregon truffles in 2006. Today an increasing number of chefs, gatherers, retailers and entrepreneurs of many makes are catching on. Though the industry struggled for several decades, demand is now growing, and prices have shot up from about $50 per pound wholesale five years ago to about $250 per pound today.

Truffle season is now in full swing, and those interested in unearthing their own truffles should contact the North American Truffling Society, a group of enthusiasts who meet in Corvallis, Oregon to discuss, study, hunt and eat truffles. The Cascade Mycological Society may also be able to help. The upcoming Oregon Truffle Festival, scheduled for January 27 to 29 in and around Eugene, will offer another opportunity to experience Oregon’s best-smelling mushrooms, both on the plate and in the woods.

Truffle hunting, whether in Europe or America, is usually conducted with truffle dogs, the best of which can smell underground truffles from 150 feet or more away. Only four such dogs, trained and certified through local truffle dog training programs, exist in Oregon, according to Leslie Scott, a managing partner of the truffle festival, where at least one of these dogs will be meeting and greeting guests. (Though truffle pigs still dwell in the lore of old European truffle hunting, the keen-nosed animals posed a problem for truffle hunters as they often attempted to eat the prize. Dogs will merely sniff out the fungus and gladly take a pat on the head in reward.)

Meanwhile, the Perigord black truffle is now under cultivation worldwide in orchards of hazelnut and oak trees “infected” at their roots with the mycelium of T. melanosporum. These orchards lie in furtive locations in California, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oregon, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Argentina and other places. Most are young and still maturing into production, and tourist hunting opportunities for the black truffle will likely grow more common in the near future. The Italian-Croatian truffle has not been successfully cultivated, but some landlords lucky enough to own a white truffle patch among their hardwood trees do host visitors to dig up this most expensive of fungi.

America's most prized fungus, the white winter truffle of Oregon. Photo courtesy of Charles Lefevre.

What’s a truffle good for? T. magnatum is favored for shaving over pasta or poached eggs. It is almost never cooked, and the raw aroma of this critter is so powerful, so intoxicating, so mesmerizing that it is said to drive some people—and female pigs—mad with lust. I’ve only smelled it once, in an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. The chef emerged from the kitchen with a freshly imported truffle on a silver platter, and the smell seemed to hit me like a gust from 25 feet away. If I’d been wearing a tie I think it would have blown up in my face, so powerful was that aroma. T. melanosporum, the black Perigord truffle, is considered almost as good as T. magnatum but is quite different and is often cooked into sauces and meats. Among the New World truffles, the Oregon black (Leucangium carthusianum) may smell like pineapple, wine and chocolate—a truffle that does well in creamy desserts. The autumn Oregon white (T. oregonese) bears similarities to its European counterpart, as does the spring Oregon white truffle (T. gibbosum). Each is piney, musky and garlicky. A favored trick with white truffles, from the Old World or the New, is to place one in a Tupperware along with an egg. The aroma will creep through the egg’s shell and flavor the yolk and the whites.

Almost wherever one goes, truffles can be found. Thousands of species grow worldwide. Most have no culinary worth. Some carry a respectable price tag, like the prized Saudi desert truffle—and just a few are valued like gold. Still others have no aroma or flavor at all but look enough like the coveted species of Europe that fraudsters slip them into the market and draw illicit incomes. T. indicum, for instance, is a worthless lump of a mushroom native to eastern Asia and which looks almost identical to the Perigord black truffle (T. melanosporum). The presence of imitation Chinese truffles in France and Italy has recently become an ecological problem: the species has found its way into the soil and established itself, posing a new threat to the already declining populations of native black truffles. Mixed deviously into a batch of the real thing, fakes add precious weight to a sale that can draw almost $1000 per pound from buyers who assume the product is legit. (T. magnatum draws even more money, often several thousand dollars per pound.) 

All of which should make for some good adventure reading, and we hope that Burningham will have a book chapter in which our heroine visits China and follow her nose into the black market for false truffles. She notes that doing so “will probably be even sketchier” than snooping around Croatia.

Safer, surely, to stay home—but sometimes there’s no resisting the truffle.

Water in the Black Sea’s northern reaches gets as cold as seawater can get—31 degrees Fahrenheit—and as warm as the 80s in summer. Courtesy of Flickr user Charles Fred.

At the University of California at Santa Barbara, where I went to college, there is a small, murky lagoon connected by a small channel to the Pacific Ocean. A resident biologist in the marine lab where I worked once told me that it takes 11 days for every last bit of water in the Campus Lagoon to cycle through the system.

In the Black Sea, the same process may take 2500 years, give or take. And so we can assume that molecules last borne by Caspian tigers, Mark Twain, Suleiman the Magnificent and Alexander the Great are still waiting for their day to exit the Black Sea, parade past Istanbul and enter the Marmara (and maybe someday the Campus Lagoon). Not that the Bosporus Strait isn’t doing its best to exchange new water for the old. Its currents move at four miles per hour and amount to a flow rate of 22,000 cubic meters per second. If the Bosporus were a river, it would be the sixth largest on Earth.

Water in the Black Sea’s northern reaches gets as cold as seawater can get—31 degrees Fahrenheit—and as warm as the 80s in summer. Its salinity is about half that of the world’s oceans, running 17 to 18 parts per thousand, due to the large influx of river water. The Sea of Azov, the Ukrainian inlet on the northern coast of the Black, runs about 11 parts per thousand.

All fascinating, but I could tolerate the Black Sea coast for only three days. Throngs of visitors come clamoring for the place and spill onto the beach and pose exuberantly under umbrellas and wrestle with colorful inflatable toys in the brown waves. I was uninspired by the traffic, the wind, the waterfront cafés and their junky dance music and the long weary miles of sand.

So at Alapli, I move inland on the road for Duzce, the next large town. I sleep in a hazelnut grove six miles uphill and resume biking at dawn. Fifteen miles later, in Yigilca, I ask several men at a village café if there is a small mountain road that cuts directly south to the city of Bolu, bypassing Duzce. (My terrible map shows only main highways.) At first the men advise me to take the main road. “It is the best way,” one tells me smartly. But actually it’s the worst way, and I manage to make it clear that I want to follow a peaceful forest route with no traffic, over the Bolu mountains. At last, the men concede that such a road exists and they describe the turnoff seven kilometers further. I find it without a hitch, and the asphalt becomes gravel. It’s all uphill, and that familiar feeling of exhilaration with altitude returns. Dry scrub becomes chestnut trees which eventually become pines. It’s cool and moist here, and shaggy mane mushrooms sprout from the moss. I catch a whiff of something rancid on the breeze and around the bend find a frothing, festering corpse of a wild pig weighing at least 200 pounds, sprawled and swollen in the road. I suspect it’s been shot and left to waste, as many people here tote guns but don’t eat pork.

Evening comes. I must be 20 miles from Bolu and I’ve brought nothing to eat. Over the pass, the Koroglu Mountains are purple beneath the red sky. Pine groves alternate with open green meadows, and there’s not a soul around. I would love to unwind up here with some cheese, figs, and a beer in my sleeping bag, but I have no food. Every mile that I descend hurts as the country passes, and my pursuit of a grocery market draws me all the way, sadly, to the valley floor, across the freeway, into the big and busy Bolu. It’s dark when I arrive, and I get a hotel room for a record low price of 10 lira.

It’s a roach pad here, with a moldy sink and no shower in the building. I crash on a lumpy mattress as a man somewhere in the labyrinth of halls coughs violently for an hour. I study my map and set my sights on the mountainous wilderness to the south, and the whole of interior Turkey awaits.