About us

A family of guides, and the sites they write

Licensed Turkish guides with more than twenty years in tourism, eleven travel websites, and one TÜRSAB-licensed agency in Kuşadası.

A visitor in a wheelchair with a companion in front of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus
Ephesus, the Library of Celsus. A guest and her companion in front of the façade.

How this started

141 Journeys started with a couple of Turkish guides and one small frustration: the things worth knowing about these places were the things travelers never seemed to read anywhere. Guidebooks gave you opening hours. Tour listings gave you a price. Nobody wrote down what a guide actually tells you at the top of the theater in Ephesus, or why the seven churches of Revelation sit in that particular order.

So we began writing them down — one website for each corner of the country we actually walk. The first went online in 2012. Eleven sites and more than eight hundred pages later, we are still doing it.

Why “141”?

The name is a quiet nod to 1 John 4:1 — the verse that opens the chapter of the Bible best remembered for three small words: God is love. We read that as a travel philosophy, not a sermon. The nearest any of us gets to something greater is another human being, and the surest way to love people is to go and meet them. Every journey puts you at a stranger's table, in a stranger's city, inside a stranger's story.

That is the whole theology on this website. The rest is simply good guiding.

A tour group in the shade of tall pines on the paved path beside the Great Theater of Ephesus
Under the pines beside the Great Theater of Ephesus, on the way to the Lower Gate. Days like this one are the reason the first of our eleven websites exists.

Experience & Trust

A young name over old roots

The 141 Journeys name is new — the work behind it is not. The people behind these websites have worked in Turkish tourism for more than twenty years, guiding travelers through Ephesus, the Seven Churches, Istanbul and Cappadocia in every season, in heat and in winter rain.

Our web presence grew the same way we guide: patiently. The first sites went online in 2012; nine of our eleven domains date from 2012–2014; the oldest website in the family, infoephesus.com, first went online in 2002; nearly 25 years after it first went online, we are its proud owners and run it today. Together the eleven now hold more than 800 hand-written pages — researched on foot, illustrated with carefully chosen photographs, and kept current with weekly blogs.

Every tour on every one of those websites is operated under Gezginol Tours, a TÜRSAB-licensed travel agency based in Kuşadası. One license, one standard, eleven front doors.

About us — frequently asked

What does the name “141 Journeys” mean?

It is a quiet nod to 1 John 4:1 — the verse that opens the chapter best remembered for three small words: God is love. We read that as a travel philosophy rather than a sermon: the surest way to love people is to go and meet them.

Where are you based?

Kuşadası, on the Aegean coast of Türkiye, about twenty minutes from the gates of ancient Ephesus and a short drive from the cruise port. Our registered office is İki Çeşmelik Mah. Kirazlı Yolu Cad. İnci Apt. No:13, Kuşadası / Aydın.

Are your guides licensed?

Yes. Turkish law requires professional tour guides to hold a state license, and archaeological sites like Ephesus are strict about it. Every guide who works on our tours is licensed, and most have been guiding for well over a decade.