Aydin Kudu is a distinguished tour guide and a travel expert, photographer and documentary film maker. Born on a Black Sea hazel nut farm and educated as a linguist at Hacettepe University in Ankara, he now resides in Istanbul.
 
He has been an active tourist guide in all over Turkey since 1987 and is a board member of IRO Turkish Guides Guild. He is the photo director of Heritage, a quarterly magazine on culture in Turkey. His photographs have been exhibited in Istanbul and Philadelphia and Boston
 
He is National Geographic’s local expert. When writers, photographers or filmmakers work in Turkey he guides them, interpreting Turkey’s culture, history and language.
 
He has completed a documentary film on Cepni ethnic tribe in the Black Sea mountains. He shared their life for weeks during four summers and recorded their annual migration to the high pastures; Forsaken Paths (36 min.) was completed in January 2006 and since won awards in two international documentary film festivals.

He has been working on his second documentary film based on the undergoing highway construction along the Black Sea coast. Environmental effects of the ill-planned project may have irreversible and deadly results on the culture, people and wildlife in the area.