Alanya → Fethiye Transfer

Alanya to Fethiye private transfer

Three hundred and fifty-five kilometres in one direction decides who books this. Nobody drives from Alanya to Fethiye and back to look at a harbour, so it is always a move rather than an outing: the second address of a two-centre holiday, the day before a gulet sails, or the switch from an Alanya hotel to Ölüdeniz, Hisarönü or a rented house above Kayaköy. A steady number of passengers are flying out of Dalaman after arriving weeks earlier at Antalya. Waiting at the far end is a working town beneath a cliff of Lycian rock tombs, with Babadağ behind it and canopies dropping off the summit all afternoon.

Two hours go by before the road even turns inland. Out of Alanya the D400 runs west through Konaklı and Payallar, over the pine headlands above İncekum and Avsallar, past Okurcalar, across the Manavgat plain and on through Side and Belek to the Antalya bypass — ground most passengers have already covered once, in the other direction, on the way in. Only then does the climbing begin: the D350 to Korkuteli, the high farmland around Elmalı, a pass near 1,100 metres, and the drop by Seydikemer into the Eşen valley. Four hours thirty-five in all, and the work is in the length rather than in any one stretch.

• At four and a half hours each way this is a one-way booking: a day trip would mean nine hours of driving for an afternoon by the water.
• The resort towns immediately west of Alanya are slowest in the middle of the morning in August, which is a good argument for a departure at first light.
• Two short breaks suit this drive better than one long one, and the natural places for them are before Antalya and again once you are up on the plateau.
• If the hotel is at the eastern end of the strip, in Mahmutlar or Kargıcak, the pickup adds a good half hour before the 355 km have even started.