Walk to Tympani Kissos

Yesterday, Mark took me on an incredible walk. Our journey was to Tympani Kissos, or the drum of Kissos. There is reason behind the name. Tympani Kissos is a place where rushing spring water comes gushing down Mt. Pelion in torential rapids and strikes the ancient rock below making the sound similar to that of mallets beating on a drum. When we arrived, the water was flowing slowly, and it made the sound more similar to a snare drum than a tympani drum, but what can you expect in july when it is in the eighties or nineties every day. Once the water rushed off the mountain it fell into a gorgeous clear pool. How refreshing this pool of ice-cold spring water must be on a hot summer's day. Unfortunately, Mark and I deemed it too dangerous to climb down to the pool because we weren't sure we could make it back up. So we spent the better part of an hour at Tympani Kissos and departed on a different route than we came on.

The route that we arrived on was quite spectacular. Mark, a seasoned hiker of Pelion told me he only discovered the route four years ago from a shepherd he met on his journey.

To be brief, we basically followed concrete channels and pipes that had been built for the purpose of diverting water from the spring to the villages of Mt. Pelion. At first we followed a concrete channel through the forest. This channel must have been hundreds of years old. There were parts of our walk were we had to balance on the channel, as we crossed the mountainside. Eventually we observed more modern channeling of the water through pipes. We continued our adventure through the forest and eventually heard the rapid rushing of water--we knew we were getting close.

On the last leg of our journey we had to traverse along a narrow path etched into a rock face where we had to crouch to avoid hitting our heads. We then heard the water rushing strong and "beating on the rock below". The last thing we had to do was to crawl through a dark mountain tunnel to get to the rock face overlooking the rushing water and the pool. This was an amazing walk and it was excellent to know that I had traveled one of the least-traveled paths in Pelion to see one of the most amazing sites in Pelion.

Jeremy Zaks, Queens New York