Documenting life in Turkey’s Munzur Valley by Michael Benanav
If you travel enough, every so often you get lucky and wind up stumbling into some place that’s relatively unknown, completely unexpected, and entirely magical. For me, the Munzur Valley, in eastern Turkey, is one of these places. Since it is not written about in any of the major English-language guidebooks to the country, I was not drawn there by anything I had heard about it – which was nothing. Rather, my curiosity about the area was sparked by the way it looked on an aeronautical chart, which depicted a remote basin dotted with tiny villages, surrounded by towering, jagged peaks. (I often use topographical maps to find interesting places that are off-the-beaten-path when I travel). I went, and my mind was blown, both by the awe-inspiring scenery and by the open-hearted generosity of the people, many of whom were shepherds, all of whom were Kurdish.
