Ölüdeniz, southern Turkey

Woke up with SUN in the window and light shining on the little balcony attached to my room next to my bed. First thing I saw from the balcony door were two parachutes, in the sky!!



Went straight to the beach, a minute's stroll away. I've never seen such waters- the colour of the sea is a vivid, light, untethered blue, like that in swimming pools. So light and ethereal and almost unnatural to my unaccustomed perception. And cool in May- not warm yet, but easy to swim in as long as I'm moving. The beaches here are pebbled next to the water, and although the area further from the water consists of finer sand particles, it is not compacted and moist- so either section is slightly challenging to walk on for an extended period of time. Either you crunch deep into the pebbles with your footwear on, or you sink barefoot into the sand on every step.

From the sea, the view is that of low mountains, lines of beachfront restaurants and stores, and not-too-distant cliffs jutting into the ocean. Lots of parachutists- I counted two dozen in the air at 10 am. They occupy all heights and look very peaceful, flying around.

As I was swimming, an azure bird flew by- an extraordinary colour, almost fluorescent blue, like the sea, and I realised that it was really a white bird, like a gull, but reflected the sea below it! I bet that when birds go fishing, it helps for them to have highly reflective undersides, to disguise their shadow. I know that predatory fish have lighter coloured undersides partly because they become less conspicuous when viewed from below against a bright sky. Similarly, with many fish, having a darker top surface aids in camouflage against the bottom.



I brought my goggles; the water is not transparent, so when underwater, all I see is a pure 'ocean' of light turquoise blue, and every breath is accompanied by gentle mountain ranges. Wearing goggles opens up new avenues of perception. I don't wear them too often so each time I put them on for the first time after a long break, as I swim, I suddenly experience a very fleeting moment of panic!

It happens thus: when we are above water, we see reflections on the water. But this reflective phenomenon occurs when we're submerged, too- as I do the breaststroke, when my head is submerged and I'm in the process of pulling my arms to the side just prior to surfacing, I can see reflections of objects that are underwater, against the surface, but from underneath.

So at a certain point in my stroke, I can see the underwater reflection, and suddenly two objects loom unexpectedly above me, on either side, just before my head breaks the surface. It takes a split second to realise that they are the reflections of my arms!!

Next was a brief return to my hotel, where I stood at the balcony, plucking ripe orange-coloured fruit from the tree next to my room, and sat on the floor, peeling the fruit and trying not to get too stained by the juice. At one point, I stood at the railing whlie peeling a piece of fruit, when it slipped from my grasp and shattered onto the ground below! It seemed such a dramatic event for that small piece of fruit! The flesh is arranged in multiple segments, like a orange, loosely held together with flimsy strips of cellulose, so upon impact, it split apart neatly and left a starburst-like pattern on the ground. I was amused to experience a slight sense of loss- the bountiful branches nearby notwithstanding! I continued to harvest the fruit monkey-like, until I was very sticky indeed.



The most famous stretch of beach in Ölüdeniz- the subject of many intensely glamorous and spectacular photos- is located towards the western end of the strip along which my hotel was located. The local authorities have sensibly made it a protected nature reserve, so entry requires a small fee. It’s evidently well-spent, as the place has paved paths, prettily planted with flowering shrubs and small trees, and well-kept. There are numerous little cabins with changing rooms and toilets.

Facilities aside, the landscape is truly stunning- it’s quite varied so cannot be summarized easily- it is defined primarily by a spit or sandbar of sorts, projecting into the ocean and extending the coastline. The sandbar stretches towards a range of low-lying hills, enclosing a lagoon of calm, relatively warm water. Hence, when one walks along the sand bar, a sheltered stretch of sea lies on one side, and a lagoon lies on the other!

I waited till afternoon to visit the nature reserve as I had no cash on me in the morning, and was amazed at the lagoon when I finally saw it. The sun had warmed the bay of water and it was very comfortable and relaxing to swim in. There were beachfront hotels and little harbours dotted around the edge of the water, as well as occasional fishermen and boats on the water. Several platforms were positioned near to the beach and some swimmers paddled out and dived off the platforms; most people lay draped lazily on the beach. Paddleboats intermittently entered the lagoon, circled round, with chattering bundles of pleasure seekers, veering vaguely towards the rocky cliffs in the hope of spotting exotic fish, before exiting the lagoon again.



I inspected some rocks in the middle of the lagoon, near to one of the platforms, and then headed towards a sandy landing spot in between some low cliffs. While climbing caterpillar-like on the rocks, I observed several fantastic fish!! I was idly watching a shoal of palm-sized fish nibbling at vegetation on the rocks below me, when suddenly a BIG fish loomed into view- by big, I mean about the length of my lower arm from my finger tips to my elbow, excluding its tail. So maybe half a metre or just shy of that in total. And its width (from top fin to lower edge) was substantial so it wasn't a narrow tubular shape but a boxy oval. I found this soo exciting!!! It had big eyes and quite a presence! I've never swum amongst anything larger than one or two dozen cm long, so seeing it lurking non-sinisterly in waters I'd just been in was very thrilling. I gasped when I saw it! Almost immediately, I saw a second one, the same type and size.

They looked rather awkward, feeding off the rocks- they had to turn sideways in order to access the vegetation and seemed so unwieldy and block-like. (This applies to smaller fish too- earlier on I had seen a fish that I’d thought was dead, lying on the sea floor- it was merely feeding.) I watched the large denizens till they evaporated into the blue void, and shifted my attention to the smaller fish.

Then, I saw a psychedelic-looking fish! Slightly larger than palm-sized, with a base coating of fluorescent yellow, brushes of blue, and more restricted splashes of purple. Eclectic colours! I wonder what these patterns convey to other animals in their ecosystem. Most of the other fish were masters of disguise, like cheetahs in the savannah, perfectly coloured with markings to break up their form and blend them against mottled rocks. These, on the other hand, popped out like flamboyant stage performers.



Finally, while sitting on the pebbled beach and watching the sunset, I realised more forcefully than ever before that the earth looks extremely different when vision is rotated 90°- I looked at the horizon and its vast strip of water, flanked by island clumps- and recognised possibly for the first time how we are stuck to the earth with gravity and when we lie down, it's as if the surface of the earth is vertical and we should ordinarily expect to fall off it- if we took the location of our feet to be indicative of 'down.'

And I wondered if there are animals that do not perceive 'up' and 'down' as 'sky versus earth' as we do. The thing is, gravity affects virtually every organism, and to locomote and navigate efficiently, organisms have sensory organs that usually jut out away from the earth. The sensory organs are also often positioned asymmetrically, nearer to one end of the body (on the head, in our case, away from the feet), thus generating a functional behavioural percept of 'up versus down.'

I cannot think of a good example of a complex organism that does otherwise- even creatures that live largely in a two-dimensional space, like sole fish, have distinct 'up vs down' orientations. Only creatures that are so small that gravity has proportionately little effect on them (relative to other forces, such as the motion of the medium they move in, for instance) might be freer of this percept. Things like bacteria that have to fight to propel themselves through fluid, and hence will not be able to rely heavily on gravity to make them 'fall' in the direction they want, etc.



The next day, the sky was overcast and I returned to the nature reserve, now almost deserted. I swam all around the lagoon; it was very peaceful and the water was calm- the surface was almost completely flat! It reminded me of the sea one day in Thailand a couple of years ago, when I felt as though I was swimming in liquid glass. The deep dark blue colour of the water and the minimal perturbation one makes within it give the impression that the substance is very viscous.

Half way across, I looked at the hills all around me, dark-tinged in this subdued light, and it felt as though I was in an enchanted lake, from an Arabian Nights story about a sorceress who transformed seven cities into seven black hills around a lake, and turned the local people into colourful fish! I reminded myself that on this occasion, I had little reason to worry about sharks or jellyfish, or ocean currents- though I wasn’t sure about sea snakes. I had seen tubular dark yellowish brown creatures on the ocean floor the day before, with little tentacle-like appendages on one side, and wasn’t sure what they were. I had asked a local, but he didn’t know either. They did seem animal to me, rather than plant- maybe a marine worm of some sort, and fairly static.

It drizzled sporadically. My goggles misted up after a period of swimming and I occasionally took them off to obtain a clearer view of the world- a more cheerful one as well, as they were tinted and made everything seem darker. In fact, I realized that they made the surroundings look distinctly ominous in comparison.



Next, I went for a dip in the ocean, within an area sheltered by a string of little islands and rocks. As I explored some rocks around an offshore island, I noticed a shoal of small fishes darting away, and followed them gleefully. They looked bluish but I wasn’t sure whether they were actually that colour, or whether they were silver with blue reflections. They didn’t seem too alarmed and only swam far enough to lie just beyond reach. They formed a semi-united body of darting quivers.

After a while, I suddenly realized that the fishes I had been pursuing on my right were accompanied by flocks on my left. I was surrounded by a super-organism which had silently enveloped me without my knowledge- and I experienced a mild sense of horror at this alien phenomenon! It seemed so irrational as each fish was so small and innocuous on its own- and yet I couldn’t help thinking that if they wanted to attack me, all at once, I would dissolve into oblivion- and that someone should produce a ‘Fish’ version of Hitchcock’s ‘Birds.’ A single shark-like predator is bad enough, but imagine a mysterious cloud of sinister underwater agents, dispersing and darting out of reach, only to reassemble in lethal formations, operating automaton-like in perfect synchrony. If military applications of flocks of robots are in our future, I can predict the sense of panic that people would experience when surrounded- entirely engulfed- by such a foe.

I guessed that the clouds of fish probably congregated along the rocks when feeding- as I swam, I seemed to be surrounded by endless masses of them. Eventually, my imagination got the better of me and I struck out towards the centre of the bay, towards land, and away from the rocks!

During a boat trip to nearby beaches and scenic spots, we visited an extraordinary place- St Nicholas Island, sprinkled with ruins and remains of 4th- to 6th-century churches. The views are absolutely spectacular- vibrant blue waters with edges scalloped by hills; verdant slopes with yellowish-red tufts on rocky boulders; sun-bathed monastic ruins with arches and crumbling walls framing azure pools. My favourite site by far, during this trip.