The light smell of methane emanating from the fiery vents on the rocks, our breath visible as we exhaled, a silenced shutter going off from time to time and our minds wandering around time and space, as we lay around the mythical fire of Yanartaş.

According to everyone and their moms, Yanartaş is the mountain that inspired Homer to write about the Chimera monster in the Iliad.

Now, it is not often that I get a front-row seat to a place where legends were born. And although I’m not entirely certain that this is nothing but a marketing scheme to attract tourism, the simple notion of being able to warm my body around the same fire somebody else felt, thousands of years ago, makes me smile.

Something stands true, though: every place I have visited in Turkey seems to be covered in stories of ancient heroes and linked to a past I’ve read and heard about since I’m a little kid.

Now I get to say that I drank the sweetest tea brewed by the flames of a legendary beast.

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Where next?

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  If Nature was a religion, this would be its temple

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  Travel More!