𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧

“He knows where to go. He knows where to get out,” said Avlin Erol, the head of customer relations at Metro Istanbul.

Boji is projected to travel up to 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) a day, travelling through dozens of Metro stations and taking at least two ferry crossings.

“He’s such a free spirit,” said Chris McGrath, a Getty Images photographer who recently spent a day following Boji about the city. “All he wants to do is ride on transit. Every time he walks past a bus or van or any type of transit, he just wants to get on it. It’s really quite bizarre.”

“Everybody knows him now and everybody’s seen him,” McGrath said.

For many, the dog has become a beloved member of the community.

“He went into one restaurant and two men sort of shooed him away, yelled at him,” McGrath said. “And then you hear someone else, another restaurant owner, hollering at those men going: ‘It’s Boji! It’s Boji! Don’t shoo him away!’ So he’s clearly got celebrity status now.”

City personnel are very protective of Boji, and they have been caring after him. Early this month, they took him in for some grooming and a medical examination. They also ran a behavioral study to make sure he was Alright and that all the human interaction isn’t an issue for him or people around him.

The municipality even erected a tiny cage for him at one of their Metro stations, and they feed him anytime he wants to come back.

City personnel maintain checks on Boji from afar, using a smartphone app to track his activities. McGrath teamed up with them last week for his day following Boji.

When Boji gets on a ferry, he knows precisely where to go: the side with the sun.

“He likes the water,” McGrath added. “When the ferry starts departing, he starts barking at their waves.”

“He checked one, and people were climbing on. I don’t know how he knows, but that one was heading to Eminönü. And the second one was headed to Beşiktaş. Then he checked the Eminönü one and decided no, that’s not the proper one. And then he ducked beneath the turnstiles and moved on to the Beşiktaş one. I don’t know how he knows, but he appears to adore riding the Beşiktaş ferry.”

It’s this region of the subway train where Boji gets his name. It’s known as the bogie region, in railway parlance, and bogie translates to boji in Turkish.

If there’s anything Boji doesn’t like, it’s cats. And he comes across several stray cats on his travels.

“Istanbul is dubbed Catstanbul because there’s so many cats here,” said McGrath, who’s been based in the city for six years now. “(Boji) sees a cat in the distance, and he simply pursues it up. I watched him do it three or four times, chase them up trees and whatnot. He truly dislikes cats.

Because there are so many stray animals in Istanbul, it isn’t hard for Boji to get food.

“There’ll be water and a food dish out for animals concealed discreetly in the nooks of restaurants or houses,” McGrath added. “So (Boji) knows where to go.

“He was on the way to the ferry, and there’s a taxi stand and there was a tiny housing for a cat and some bowls and he stops there and drinks. And there’s a photo of him on the subway drinking, and that’s like a municipality’s food-and-drink place for animals. He knew exactly to go there.”

But don’t expect the dog to heed orders.

“He doesn’t listen to anybody,” McGrath added. “Like if you do attempt to tell him something, he just ignores you essentially. Plenty of people say, ‘Oh, come over here, sit here,’ and he just ignores it, he goes where he wants to go.