“A dolmuş ride is terrifying, awe-inspiring, confusing, incomprehensible, charming, hospitable and alien. In other words, it's uniquely Turkish.”

(Hurriyet Daily News.  19/01/2010.  William Zema)

The word dolmuş (pronounced ‘doll mush’, as if you were from Up North) comes from the Turkish root <dol>  which means ‘full’.  That’s because these shared minibuses, strictly speaking, shouldn’t set off until every seat is occupied.  In fact, in my Teach Yourself Turkish book there’s a unit featuring an elderly lady from Ankara who is so worried about missing her return flight home from Trabzon that she is prepared to pay for the last remaining seat as well as her own rather than wait any longer.

In practice, a driver will often set off with the odd seat empty ( boş, in Turkish, pronounced ‘bosh’), safe in the knowledge that people will be waiting a bit further down the line.   There are a number of places where you can be certain the driver will be stopping; but people just flag him down if they want to get on.  And you don’t have to wait for a specific stop if you want to get off: just attract his attention by calling out "şoför bey!” (that’s the French word ‘chauffeur’ followed by the polite way of addressing a man), adding ”inecek var", the equivalent of “someone wants to get out”.  Not only that, the driver will be prepared to make a bit of a detour, provided it doesn’t mean that he will miss people on the regular route.

As a tourist in Turkey it makes sense to use a dolmuş:  they’re much cheaper than taxis, and leave more frequently (as well as going to more destinations) than buses.  Of course I’ve been showing off my knowledge of Turkish, but a dolmuş driver - in a tourist area at least - will understand the basics of English; enough to say how much the fare is, for example.

Some regular dolmuşes just go from A to B and back.  For example, if you stay in Kalkan, as we often do, you might want to head the 20 or so kilometres along the coast to Kaş (‘cash’); it’s quite fun to visit in its own right, but is also where you can take a boat the short distance to the southern-most part of Greece, the island of Castellorizo, which the Turks call Meis.

Recently, however, we headed to an area of Turkey which was new to us: the far west.  That’s because we’d never been to Ephesus (or, as the Turks call it, Efes, the same as the well-known beer).  We based ourselves in Kuşadası (‘bird island’), a rather too busy port south of Izmir, staying in a cheap and cheerful hotel, named after its owner, Sezgin.  He told us that there were regular dolmuşes to Selcuk, with a stop within easy walking distance of Ephesus after half an hour or so.

Some friends had told us that it made sense to be dropped off by the upper entrance to the site, which would allow us an easy stroll down the rather steep hill on which much of Ephesus was built. Our friends, however, had taken a taxi there from Selcuk - quite close to the site - and the dolmuş driver told us he could only drop us off near the lower entrance.

No matter; it was a pleasant enough 20 minute or so stroll up to the site entrance (here’s Jane, camouflaged against the greenery), where we arrived about 9.00 a.m.  Once inside we found ourselves alone, except for a group of French speakers, and were the only people visiting the theatre.

Ten minutes or so later, however, about to visit the library, we looked up the hill and saw hundreds and hundreds of tourists - disgorged from a huge cruise ship, then embussed to Ephesus - bearing down on us from the upper entrance.  Ah well.  Jane said that the city would have been just as lively in its heyday; but it took a great feat of imagination to envisage these people in their Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts dressed in togas out shopping for a few bottles of medium-priced Falernian wine to go with their dormice for dinner.

Still, it was worth the trip; and when we made our way back to the side of the road opposite to where we had been dropped off we were surprised and delighted to see that there was a man stationed there paid, presumably, by the dolmuş company to help out the likes of us.  Pleased that I could speak to him, he embarked on the usual exchange of polite questions after one’s health and well-being, offered Jane the foldable plastic chair he had placed in the shade of a eucalyptus tree, then presented us with a slice of apple each.

Five minutes later he had hailed a passing dolmuş and we were off back to Kuşadası, where we had arrived two days earlier, also by dolmuş, having left the Kalkan-Izmir coach at Aydın, a town of 100,000 or so inhabitants, judged by the Lonely Planet Guide to be of so little interest that it entirely neglects to mention its existence.

I’d been told that there was a regular dolmuş service to our destination, and we were back on the road within quarter of an hour. We learned from the couple of young British women sitting behind us (both teachers of English) that it would take an hour or so, depending on which route the driver would be taking.  And, from the notice prominently displayed above the windscreen, I could see a descending list of prices depending on where you boarded, the cheapest being from the köyler, that is to say, ‘the villages’ on the outskirts of the port.

And that’s the route we took, winding through an unspoiled countryside boasting not only poplars, willows, oaks and other deciduous trees familiar to us in Britain, but also olives, vines, oranges, lemons and the pomegranates - now in high season - whose freshly squeezed juice we had taken to drinking whenever we saw it on offer.

As we drove on these last few kilometres the dolmuş was becoming  fuller than full, full to bursting, jam-packed tight, dopdolu, as they say in Turkey, the newcomers including a pair of quite stunningly beautiful teenage girls, seen off by their visibly anxious parents, though entrusted to the care of their elder brother.  Off to the city for a special event, paying no more than 30 pence for this last stage of the trip.

And here we are in our little Buckinghamshire village, with the 300 bus - our lifeline to the two market towns to our north and south - now passing two or three times a day instead of three times an hour.  Where are the British dolmuşes now that we need them!!