We parked the van above ancient Lycian ruins and swam in water so clear we could see the bottom fifteen metres down. This is Turkey away from the resorts.

The D400 coastal road from Marmaris to Fethiye is one of the great driving roads of the world. It winds along cliff edges above a sea that is genuinely, absurdly turquoise — not the colour you see in edited travel photographs, but the actual colour of the Mediterranean in a place where the water is clean and deep and lit by the Aegean sun. We drove it slowly, very slowly, stopping at every viewpoint.

Ruins & Ruins

The Lycian coast is strewn with ancient ruins. Not behind fences, not in museums — on hillsides, in olive groves, half-submerged in coves. The Lycian people were extraordinary builders; their rock-cut tombs are carved directly into cliff faces and appear, from the water, to be windows cut into the mountain. Kayaköy is an entire ghost town, abandoned in the population exchange of 1923, its stone houses slowly returning to the hillside. We parked at the edge of it and walked through in the late afternoon when the tourist buses had left.