Who in the World is Evliya Çelebi?

Til now, I'd never heard of Evliya Çelebi, the son of the imperial goldsmith, Dervis Mehmed Zilli, in Turkey.

According to Wikipedia, Evilya was born in 1611, in Istanbul, as the son of a jeweler of the Ottoman court.

He seems to have been a Sufi. Evilya loved to travel and he loved to write. In 1640, he traveled from Istanbul and logged notes about the architecture, culture and people he encountered in 10 robust volumes called the Seyahatname (Book of Travels).

Separated by almost 400 years, Evilya and I still manage to have a few things in common. He was most likely a Sufi and I am a student of the Vajrayana, a mystical sect of Buddhism. He liked to write--or at least he wrote--and I do, too. He liked to go places, and I can't think of a better way to spend the day than wandering around some remote and dusty corner of the earth.

Of course we are also probably quite different. I am a woman, an American. I was born into the working class, not nobility, and my father was a logger, not a jeweler. I've been on a horse more than once, but I'd hardly call myself a rider.

I've never been to Turkey, but I lived in Nepal for a few years. I wonder if Evliya loved tea as much as I do--if he loved to sleep under the stars and build a fire by a river and listen to the wind as it crosses the hills.

I wonder who he was, really, just like I wonder who I am. Maybe in Turkey, I could meet us both.