The Story about the traveling band Caspian Caravan, part 1, Turkey - The Beginning

So this is the story of a band that formed in Turkey and traveled 6 months through 8 countries together, paying for all the food and visas with music.

It is quite a long story with many adventurous side stories, so I am not sure how I am gonna wrap it all up, but let's see how it unfolds! Let's start with the beginning!

Maybe you already read my post about 2 months living in caves in Crete - That was most of the members of the Caspian Caravan, being;

Me, Freja from Denmark (Melodica, mandolin and guitar):

Sparrow from England (accordion):

Matt from Australia (guitar and mandolin) (Photo by Ravshan Kazakov):

and on/off "manager", juggler and egg shaker until Georgia, Pete from Wales:

But the group was never a band before the addition of violinist Jeff from The States (as it is so beautifully illustrated here):

Jeff joined us in Marmaris, Turkey. Sparrow and Jeff had met in India a few years before and when Jeff, whilst being in India himself at the time, heard about our plan to come to India overland, he thought it logical to fly to Turkey to join us on the journey back to India over land :) And it was all our little group needed for the creation of Caspian Caravan.

It was the beginning of a really fun adventure. We almost entirely went through places and countries that don't see many westerners in the first place, so we were often treated as celebrities, driven around and invited to play at bars and cafés. I don't really know if we were any good, but for sure we were fun and I am proud to have felt the impact we left on the people and places we went through!
So sometimes we felt like celebrities being treated with food and luxury, but always in between we were hitchhiking and sleeping rough in the most bizzare places sometimes. It was an extremely funny roller coaster of experiences of all sorts and the most adventurous and crazy times of my life.

But to stay with the beginning, Turkey was our first country, the year is 2011 - March - and this must have been the first performance and group photos taken, in Antalya:

Sparrow and Jeff were the main musicians of the band, writing pretty much all the songs. That being said, all of us were new to our instruments and were just kindof going for it! I guess we were trying to go for some balkan gypsy style with a little hint of folk and bluegrass.
The name came because of our plans to cross the Caspian Sea on our journey towards India. And it sounded somewhat catchy ;) Nothing about the band was really taken too seriously!

Us with our first host in Antalya:

Our first host we found on couchsurfing, but we very quickly abandoned those kind of "modern" approaches and just stuck our thumb out and went with the wind. Sometimes we were invited home with the people that would pick us up, like here in Adana:

But mostly we would come to a city, start playing music and often people would approach us, ask who we are, where we are staying and very quickly invite us to their homes. The hospitality and trust of people in Turkey is almost overwhelming and something that will always stay in my heart.
Yet other times we would make do with whatever space we could find.
Hitchhiking, even being 5 of us with instruments and bag packs were no problem at all! People willingly would squeeze us all into one small car or more conveniently there would be space in the back! Travelling with the wind in my hair is one of the feelings that I connect most fondly with freedom and adventure!

almost always we would wake up to a breakfast table like this

And here with the workers of a petrol station we were hitchhiking at on our way to Cappadocia in Central Turkey.

It was so hilarious for us how everybody wanted a photo! Sometimes fun, sometimes horrible that we could almost never just relax and be ourselves, but we really tried to see the fun side of it. One of the Caspian Caravan songs thereby goes "You can have a picture if you dance for me, if you dance for me tonight!"

And I think this is about the end of the beginning, so the next part about Cappadocia and East Turkey I will safe for the next part, since it is really a whole story in itself!

Thank you for reading and hope you will stay tuned for the next part of the story!