Well, it’s only taken six months but here is the last installment of my Fez tour blog. It makes me nostalgic for Turkey and everything I left behind there – great friends, fun students and all that delicious Turkish food, but it’s exciting to start on a new adventure for 2008. I only hope we have at least half as much fun in the Czech Republic as we did in Turkey. (And if only the temperatures were comparable too…)
SanliUrfa, the final destination of our Fez Tour.
We made it to this city the same day as Nemrut, so our day began at 4AM and continued til almost 9PM. I was exhausted and hot, wishing only to return to a (different) hotel for a mid-afternoon siesta but didn’t know when or if that would happen. Once again, there was a complete lack of communication about where we were going. I only knew that Urfa was listed on our basic itinerary, but really had no expectations or knowledge of what we would see there.
We arrived just in time for lunch, (although since our day started at 4, it seemed like it should have been dinner.) It was immediately apparent that we had entered another Turkey than the one we were so familiar with. I noticed that we were the only tourists in town and that the people didn’t seem too accustomed to visitors because they were staring at us like we had just walked off a UFO. Little boys congregated around us as our guide gave us a bit of history about the place. When we walked through a city square to the restaurant, they followed us, staring and pointing. A couple times, our tour guide had to shoo them away as if they were flies buzzing around our heads.
As we made our way through the twisting streets, I had the feeling that we had really made it to the Middle East. The town looked like it was the movie set from some biblical epic: the women in full, black veils glaring at my semi-exposed arms, the men in traditional Muslim dress and hats, the blacksmiths in the bazaar working over open flames and the fact that no one was speaking a word of English to us in the markets. The population is, in fact. made up of not only Turks, but many Arabs (we were only a few miles from the Syrian border) and Kurds.
In Istanbul, the Grand Bazaar has a very exotic, Middle Eastern quality to it, but is simultaneously a very modern, cosmopolitan place. Every person who works there knows some basic English phrases, and usually a handful of other languages. But this market, while similar to the Grand Bazaar, had a totally different vibe. The stares we got from the locals made me feel really nervous and out of place. Despite the 40C heat, I had wrapped my scarf around my neck and my upper arms, yet still felt very exposed (and also increasingly warm.)
SanliUrfa is a very holy place for Muslims. It is the site of a cave that is reportedly the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, and a spring inside is supposed to have miraculous properties. And it was even open to visitors, so of course we had to go inside. Because it is a “holy” place, Jon and I had to be segregated as if we were going to mosque so I went through the special women’s entrance. Apparently, I was not dressed appropriately, despite the scarf covering my head, chest and upper arms. The woman at the entrance handed me a long overcoat which covered my whole arms and went down to my feet. Now, even more overheated than before, I entered the cave. It was quite crowded inside with many women kneeling on the ground in intense prayers. I felt uncomfortable for watching them in such a private moment, and also was sweating from the heat and the crowd, so I quickly left the place.
It was now about mid-afternoon but our extended day wasn’t over yet. I was happy to leave SanliUrfa and remove the sweaty scarf from my head and neck, but sad that my camera batteries had not cooperated with me and that I would have no pictures to remind me of this uncomfortably beautiful place.
Our final stop before the much-needed return to the hotel, was a place called Harran. Harran is another border town, where we could actually see land that was part of Syria. Our guide pointed out a hill in the distance, said that we were only about 10 miles away, and that the hill on the edge of the horizon was Syria. I thought immediately of the scene from Lord of the Rings, with Frodo and Sam looking over the horizon onto Mordor and felt an irrational sense of foreboding. I half-expected to see the Eye of Sauron searching us out, or sudden lightning strikes on the hill as the Syrians carried out their evil deeds. But there wasn’t any of that and I was a little disappointed. And actually jealous as two Australians on our tour told us they were going to Damascus the next day. If only we weren’t ugly Americans…
But Harran is better known as the home of the beehive houses, than as a lookout point to the Gates of Mordor. These houses are traditional mud-brick, adobe houses like those that have been built for thousands of years. Our tour took us to one where a family were living who opened their home to visitors. It was another surreal experience. Here, the family members spoke perfect English and gave us tours around their home. Usually I would avoid being led around by a child, but they were so sweet that I let them show me around, and a good way for them to practice their English. Only to find out at the end of my minute-long “tour” that they wanted a tip for it! So much for just being sweet kids and trying to improve their language skills.
It is difficult to describe this place, both the physical aspect and also the people there. It was like one of the beehive houses, but much bigger. Inside there were many traditional costumes, which seemed to be there only for tourists to try on. One of them got Jon into this sheik outfit (which luckily my camera came back to life for!) and didn’t even ask for a tip.
Mostly, we just hung around and talked to the large family. There was a hint of sadness around them, but I can’t place exactly what was the cause. Maybe that to support themselves, they have to invite tourists to invade their home. Maybe the women who I spoke to, seemed to have no real hopes or dreams for the future. They seemed to be stuck in this time and place with no hope of escaping. There was a real dream-like quality to this place where I can’t separate what actually happened from what could have been a surreal daydream I had while napping on the bus. Maybe we ventured closer to the land of Mordor or Oz than I thought.
Finally, we left this strange place to watch the sun set over the hills. This single day that seemed to be at least three was exhausting, exhilarating, terrifying, wondrous, uncomfortable, but absolutely unforgettable.
We still had the long journey back to Istanbul, via Cappadocia, via Ankara, with a growing sadness that our time in this crazy and fascinating country was almost over.
Although we were excited about Nemrut, it was sad to think that our amazing trip was almost over. The Nemrut tour didn’t start off so well. There was a lot of confusion, starting with our tour guide. We had one, but he ended up leaving us at some awful road-side restaurant for another tour guide. There was no information about our lunch here – was it included or extra? They told us we could choose from a set menu, but not whether we had one choice – only rice or chicken kebab with rice? We sat down in this fly-infested, dank place and the waiters brought me a lovely chicken kebab. But as I tried to bite into it, it was all bones. I’d had close to about 600 chicken kebabs while in Turkey but NEVER, EVER had I been served bone kebab.
It was going to take a while to drive to Nemrut, but not because of the distance as much as the infrastructure. Once out of Cappadocia, you really felt like you were leaving civilization behind. A highway would start off paved, only to disintegrate into gravel and dirt for several miles, then back to pavement. There wasn’t a sign of a tourist trap bus stop where you could buy overpriced water and Turkish knick knacks. But perhaps the biggest change was the complete absence of the “modern” toilet. I cringed upon entering bathrooms with nothing but a hole in the ground, and usually avoided using them. Here, there was no alternative.
We made a quick stop at another caravanserai, and then continued on to the foot of Nemrut. We learned from our tour guide that we would be visiting the mountain before dawn in order to see the sunrise. That was a wonderful idea, but the thought of leaving the hotel at 4AM wasn’t so appealing. The hotel was the closest to the site, and apparently they felt this was enough of an amenity and that they could have shabby rooms with no ventilation and no one would complain. What a dump. The funniest part of it was that this was an actual hotel, and we had been staying at $25/night hostels that put this place to shame.
A knock on the door at 3:30AM woke us out of our not-so-restful sleep. Despite the fact that we were halfway up a mountain, and that there was an abundance of cool nighttime mountain air just outside our window, none of it seemed to penetrate into our stuffy, overheated room. Grouchy, hungry and exhausted, we trudged from our despised room to the waiting minivan. It was too dark to see much, which I was thankful for because of my fear of heights. The less I saw of how far from the ground we were, the better.
We got to the gates and it was still pitch black. However, from the gates we were told that there was a 15-20 minute “climb” up to the actual site. They told us to be careful because the air was much thinner 6,000 feet up and that we could lose our breath more easily. The path was also not paved, but just lots of rocky gravel, which was difficult enough to walk on, much more so in the complete darkness. Heights are one of my main irrational fears and I was close to terrified as we made our way slowly up the mountain. Luckily the path was wide, at least until we reached the summit, where you had to hop over this narrow part with (what I imagined to be) a sheer drop just beside it. Legs shaking, I managed to make it over and was treated with my first glimpse of the magnificent Nemrut.
Were the heads really that small? I felt a bit of disappointment at first. While it was still a really interesting site, I remembered looking at pictures of the “giant” heads on the menu of the Turkish restaurant in Granada – named Nemrut of course – and they had appeared so much bigger. So, after this underwhelming first impression, I took a seat on one of the rocks, peered out over the Euphrates River and waited for the sunrise.
It was a beautiful sight to behold, but it did take a long time! I don’t really know why we had to be woken up at such an early hour only to wait around for another hour for the sun to come up. But, in hindsight as I write in my heated, sun-lit house, I am glad I braved the cold and the height to see it.
Our guide began to tell us a bit about the site. It was the tumulus of King Antiochus, blah blah blah and then he mentioned something about another terrace, where ANOTHER identical but larger sculpture was. This is when my disappointment began to dissipate and I realized the true magnificence of the place. The smaller side we were on was impressive after the initial viewing, but to learn that there were TWO sides was what made it unforgettable.
Nemrut, Side One
We walked along another gravelly path to the western terrace and – behold! – there were the larger than life heads I had gazed at while eating doner kebabs in Granada! Unfortunately it had gotten a bit more crowded now that the sun was up and some rude tourist got in my way as I was trying to photograph the heads. So unfortunately, the shot of me and the head didn’t work. But here is the next best one, although the scale is difficult to make out from the picture alone. It was about the same size as me.
With more bad luck after the rude tourist, my camera battery, purchased just two days before, had started to die. I was able to get a few shots of the remainder of our day. There was a cool old bridge built by the Seljuk Turks,
another cool bridge built by the Romans and still in use today (!)
and the impressive Ataturk Dam, one of the biggest in the world.
The next part of our trip was the strangest, the most interesting, the scariest and the most memorable. This is when the camera decided to die completely, so unfortunately, I have no pictures of the intriguing city of SanliUrfa, the next and final blog of my Fez Bus tour…
We arrived at Cappadocia at sunset, which granted us really cool views of the shadows playing on the crazy rock houses and fairy chimneys. Cappadocia is really a place that one needs to visit to truly appreciate. It sounds a bit lame to keep writing about the cool rocks, but there really is an air of mystery to the place that doesn't come across in pictures, or by describing the weirdly shaped landscape.
This time we stayed at another great hostel, the Rock Valley. It was a little disappointing because they didn't have a cave house to stay in, which is one of the main attractions of the region, but it was cozy, comfortable and had 24-hour hot water (quite a luxury in Turkish hostels!), so we were happy. Our time in Cappadocia was actually split by a side trip to Mt Nemrut and some other places in Eastern Turkey, but more about those in my final blogs.
We got to our hostel just in time for Turkish night! I was looking forward to this because I had done it on my last trip to Turkey in 2003 and it was such a fun, memorable night filled with unlimited alcohol, Turkish folk music and belly dancers, all set in an old caravanserai that had been transformed into a restaurant. They had made some changes since then. We were treated to some Whirling Dervishes (but no live band, unfortunately) as well as the usual dancing. One of the novelties was, surprisingly, the belly dancer. I've seen quite a few belly dance shows after the several months of living in Istanbul, and on two separate trips to Morocco, but this was the first time I had ever seen a male belly dancer and he was simply spectacular. He managed to outshine his inferior female counterpart. Unfortunately, Jon's nose got in the way of my best picture of him.
We struggled to get up in time the following day for a tour of southern Cappadocia. One of the places we visited was an area called Yaprakhisar, which looked a little bit familiar, not because I had been there before but because it was used as a background in the Star Wars films. Maybe that was part of what added to the mystical quality of Cappadocia – the fact that you could almost expect to see Luke Skywalker in his speeder come flying through the desert-like scenery.
One of my favorite things about Turkey is its apparent identity crisis. There are many Turks who long to be part of Europe. They wear blue jeans, listen to Tupac Shakur and study English. You could drop many of them into the middle of Manhattan and it would be hard to immediately identify them as a "foreigner." But for all the Turkish aspirations of modernity, there is still such a rustic, simple side to the country, which is most evident while traveling in the east with the omnipresent sheep herders. There was something so quaint, yet exotic about seeing a herd of sheep crossing an otherwise modern road and shows that Turkey hasn't yet lost touch with its traditional way of life.
After our brief venture into the fantasy land of a galaxy far, far away and some more sheep sightings, we headed to the Ihlara Valley for a pre-lunch hike. Unfortunately, I was again suffering from slight heat exhaustion, so the idea of trekking two miles through a gorge with no bathrooms or refreshments before lunchtime wasn't too thrilling. Luckily, the Valley was beautiful, filled with gentle streams, more sheep,
and great vistas of the surrounding mountains. And again, with no regard for safety, our Turkish guide walked far in front of the tour group, never stopping to count to make sure everyone was there and no one was left behind with a twisted ankle or keeled over from dehydration. But we made it to lunch with no major calamities and enjoyed some nice conversation with our fellow travelers.
The highlight of the day came after lunch as we pulled into the parking lot of the Derinkuyu Underground City. Cappadocia is filled with these subterranean abodes because of the soft volcanic rock that permeates the region. This is where the Christians came to hide from the Romans, the Arabs, and anyone else who happened to be persecuting them at the time. Whenever they were threatened, they fled to these labyrinthine underground cities, complete with stables, wineries, and a defense system of large stones that could be used to seal off an entrance for an advancing enemy. Although I'm not really a claustrophobic person, the thought of living underground for weeks or months on end is quite frightening. There are plenty of air shafts and places where the sun may shine through, but there was a real sense of fear that still permeates Derinkuyu.
Cappadocia is home to such an interesting and diverse set of attractions. After the excitement of our southern tour, we decided to spend the next day on our own at the Open-Air Museum of Goreme. It's another fascinating, one-of-a-kind place that showcases monasteries and churches that were carved out of the rock. It was surprisingly crowded too! In the summer, I would have thought most tourists would stay along the coastal areas and not venture into the dry, waterless Anatolian plains. We had to wait in line to get into some of the more popular churches.
There are some amazing frescoes in these places that were painted by the Christians living there at the time. A lot of them are quite crude compared to something you'd see in Constantinople or another European cathedral, but it's really the location that makes them interesting. Some are faded and barely discernible, while others, like the Dark Church are amazingly well-preserved.
Like Saklikent, one of the most fun things about Goreme is the complete lack of safety. While some of the caves have steel steps leading you to the upper levels, there are still many caves just outside the main complex that haven't yet been "tourist-ized." You can climb around these caves as much as you like, safety be damned. This was another time when I found a nice, shady spot to sit as Jon played Indiana Jones and climbed on the rocks.
We had planned on spending the whole day at Goreme so we were kind of surprised to be finished at 1PM or so. So we decided to do some exploring. We wandered along some of the hiking trails, taking in some amusingly-shaped rocks
and some breath-taking views of the area.
As we kept walking, Jon wanted a novelty shot of him standing in what the Turks called "Love Valley." (They do have a great sense of humor!)
It was a hot day so we stopped for some ice cream on the way back to the hostel and enjoyed a delicious barbeque dinner there. Once again, we were preparing to leave. This time, it was for the final leg of our journey. We were on our way to the slightly dangerous region of Southeastern Turkey and the legendary Mt. Nemrut.
Turkey is quite a large country, so the schlep to Cappadocia took about two days, with some stops in between. The first stopover was Olympos, which sounds so fantastic and mythical from its name alone. Unfortunately, there is no heavenly abode of the gods in this place, just some treehouse-style hostels, which we came to call the "Hippy-Dippy Treehouses" because of the obvious clientele they catered to. Olympos was the hottest place on our journey. We were still close to the Mediterranean, but it was in a valley surrounded by high mountains, meaning there was NO air movement, no wind, no refreshing sea breeze. So whoever thought of putting accommodation in trees, where the heat RISES, was probably smoking too much nargile. Because of the insufferable heat, paying extra for a treehouse with A/C, and the communal nature of the place that caused Jon to go into Cartman-esque anti-hippy tirades, this was far from an enjoyable day. The one attraction the place does offer is the Chimaera eternal flame but we were so frustrated and exhausted that we stayed in our overpriced 30YTL air-conditioned treehouse instead.
We spent the day driving to our next overnight stop at Lake Egirdir. This town was quite the opposite of Olympos. The air was cooler, the atmosphere more relaxed and quiet. There wasn't much to do apart from walking around some lovely gardens. We used the time to rest up for the last leg of our journey towards Cappadocia, via Konya.
My planning skills failed me the following day. Knowing full well that Konya was a conservative Muslim town, I pulled my cute blue halter dress out of my luggage to wear and spent the day trying to keep my knees and shoulders covered in the 40 degree heat. But they did let me in to the Mevlana Mausoleum with no problems, where we saw some interesting religious artifacts. We also snuck a peek into the nearby mosque, although I was never quite sure of the protocol – do I use the women's entrance, am I covered up enough, etc. But the mosque and mausoleum/museum were a fascinating look into the lives of the Mevlana Whirling Dervishes.
We were back on the bus after a few hours, with one more stop at a large caravanserai and then another several hours of driving. The thought of being along the Silk Road was so exotic and fascinating. We did have to pay a small fee to get inside, but you could really get a feel of what the Silk Road traders experienced so many centuries ago.
You might think a tour with so many hours on a bus would be boring, but the landscape is so interesting and always changing. From the olive groves of the coast to the scattered caravanserais on the Anatolian plains and finally to the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, there was always something new to see. The Turks even had fake police car cut-outs along some of the stretches of highway to discourage speeding, which were really amusing, We drove by farmers selling their fruits, veggies and nuts, craftswomen with specially-made dolls bought mostly by tourists, and many sprinklers that appeared to be watering the pavement, which considering the drought-like conditions of the area, was actually a bit disturbing. Finally we began to see the landscape change yet again with some unusual rock formations, and knew we had finally reached our destination.
Now that I am planning my next trip to Prague in a few weeks, and am no longer working, it is probably time to finish up my blogs about my Turkish adventures. Such terrible procrastination…
After our Greek city adventures, we began heading south. We stopped for the night in quaint Koycegiz and then made our way to Fethiye. Before we arrived in the city, we had a four hour stop in Saklikent Gorge. Saklikent Gorge was formed during one of the many Turkish earthquakes when a mountain literally split in half.
This is one of those places that you just can't find at home. In safety-obsessed America, no one would be allowed to go hiking through a mountain with no sturdy paths where you had to cross a rushing, glacial river that was about waist-deep (for short people like me, anyways!) and then clamber around, climbing up rocks, trudging through muddy water.
But the highlight was a tubing ride down the frigid river. The water was quite shallow, which made it easy to get stuck, which of course I did. Apart from the one incident where I couldn't stop my tube and plowed into a poor fellow tuber who had also gotten stuck, it was great fun!
At the end, there was a natural mud bath that we played around in and put all over our bodies. It may have been a great natural cleanser, but I was finding caked bits of mud for days afterwards.
We had planned to spend quite a few days in Fethiye to spend time with our lovely friend Jane, who we had lived with for a brief time in Istanbul and was our unofficial guide to the city when we first arrived. Jane showed us true Turkish hospitality by driving us around, arranging Jon's paragliding and scuba diving trips, taking us on a lovely gullet cruise, and going to fabulous local restaurants where you order by weight and cook your own meat at a little grill by the table. Tesekkuler Jane!
Fethiye is a gorgeous Mediterranean harbor town in southern Turkey. We were treated to yet another coulda-been-a-five-star-hotel hostel. This hostel's main problem was the steep, mountainous climb to get to and from the city center.
But there was air-conditioning, which was absolutely essential in the humid, 40 C weather.
Jon had a great time scuba diving and para-sailing,
which I gladly watched from a safe place on the ground. We also had time for a day-long gulet cruise, where, again with no regard for safety, you could jump off from any part of the boat into the warm, Mediterranean sea.
We docked in some shallow places too where you could gently wade into the water, which was more of my preference. It was so relaxing and wonderful, except for the actual boarding on and off the boat. Apparently, some Turkish law prevents the building of docks in this area, so you had to board the boat in the waviest, most turbulent part of the water. They had a catwalk that would bounce up and down in the air as you tried to get on,
which was luckily quiet when we got on, but decidedly more violent for the disembarking. We watched as fellow cruisers fell head first into the water. When my turn came up, I stupidly brought my purse along, waiting for the Turkish boys who were helping people off the boat cry "Gel! Gel! Gel!" (Come! Come! Come!) and while I managed to get off somewhat gracefully, I then got hot by a wave and fell with my purse into the sea. My camera somehow escaped unharmed but my faithful cell phone didn't make it.
There was so much to see and do here. We hiked up to the Indiana Jones-esque Lycian Rock Tombs at the edge of the city,
visited the ghost town of Kayakoy, which was abandoned after a forced resettlement agreement between Turkey and Greece,
sunbathed on the unbelievably beautiful beach of Oludeniz
and wandered around the typical Turkish bazaars and markets. I was sad to leave behind the beautiful coastline of Turkey as we made our way inland to the mysterious region of Cappadocia.
