The Lycian Way runs 540 km along Turkey's southwestern coast, and almost nobody walks all of it. The smart backpacker version mixes the best two- and three-day hiking sections with dolmus rides between them, so you get pine-forest clifftops, Greek and Lycian ruins, and a swim every single afternoon without a month of blisters. Two weeks is comfortable for this route; ten days if you push.
Fethiye and Oludeniz
Start in Fethiye, reachable by overnight bus from Istanbul (about 12 hours, 25-30 EUR). Spend a day around the harbour and the fish market, where you buy your fish at the counter and a surrounding restaurant grills it for a small fee — dinner for two under 15 EUR with meze. Lycian rock tombs are carved into the cliff right above town.
A 25-minute dolmus takes you to Oludeniz, the blue lagoon on every Turkish tourism poster. It is busy, and it is still worth it, mostly because of what hangs above: Babadag, a 1,969-metre paragliding mountain. Tandem flights run 90-120 EUR and the landing is on the beach promenade. The official start of the Lycian Way is just above the village at Ovacik.
Walking to Kabak
This is the section to actually hike. The trail contours high above the sea to Faralya, perched over the near-vertical drop into Butterfly Valley, then on to Kabak — roughly 5-7 hours of waymarked walking with the water a constant, ridiculous shade of blue below. Kabak bay has no real road into the beach, just camps and bungalow lodges terraced in the pines (25-45 EUR half board). Nights are wood smoke, saz music from someone's deck, and phosphorescence if you swim after dark.
Patara: ruins on an empty beach
Dolmus back through Fethiye and along the coast road to Patara village. Patara was the birthplace of St Nicholas and a major Lycian port; its theatre and colonnaded street sit half-swallowed by dunes at the edge of an 18-km beach — the longest in Turkey, protected for nesting turtles, no buildings on it at all. The ruins ticket doubles as beach entry. Sleep in the village at a family pension for 20-30 EUR with breakfast under the pomegranate trees.
Kas
An hour further east, Kas is the town we would live in: whitewashed lanes climbing from a small harbour, bougainvillea everywhere, and a genuinely good hostel scene from about 15 EUR. Use it for two or three days. Kayak over the sunken Lycian city at Kekova, where you drift above staircases and walls three metres under clear water (tours around 35-45 EUR); dive the wrecks; or day-hike more Lycian Way east or west of town. Evening ritual is simple — meyhane meze, then ice cream on the harbour watching lightning over the Greek island of Meis two miles offshore.
Olympos and the flames of the Chimaera
Buses toward Antalya drop you at the Olympos turnoff, with a shuttle winding down to the valley. Olympos is a backpacker institution: treehouse camps (from 20 EUR half board) beside a ruined city tangled in laurel and fig, opening onto a shingle beach. The essential trip leaves at night to Chimaera on the slopes above Cirali — natural gas vents that have burned continuously since antiquity, dozens of small flames scattered across bare rock. Sailors navigated by them; you toast marshmallows on them.
Finishing in Antalya
A final 90-minute bus lands you in Antalya, whose old town, Kaleici, deserves a night before you fly or bus onward — Roman harbour walls, Hadrian's Gate, and the Duden waterfall dropping straight off a cliff into the sea. Go in May-June or September-October: the trail is shadeless in high summer, and many camps close mid-November. Waymarks are red-and-white flashes; carry two litres of water minimum per hiking day, and download the trail on a mapping app since junctions vanish exactly when you need them.
