Travelling Hopefully - Brief History Lesson

The trouble with anywhere in Turkey and indeed the whole Middle East is that no matter how long someone has been living in a place someone else was there first. Take Lycia where I am temporarily domiciled at the moment.

Lycia has been around in some form or another as far back as Wikipedia can remember. The Hittites knew about it at which time the Lycians had their own language and government. Then the Persians turned up and dispossessed the Lycians of such foolish notions. Only not really because the Persians were quite happy for the Lycians to go on being Lycian as long as they did what they were told. Which the Lycians dutifully did.

They fought with the Persians against the Greeks, lost and wound up as part of the empire of Athens. Apparently that wasn’t to their liking so they left, got conquered by somebody else who wound up being beaten by the Persians so Lycia wound up being Persian again. Then Alexander the Great dropped by. Once again the Lycians found that siding with the Persians against the Greeks was a losing proposition.

After that lax immigration policies resulted in most of the Lycians vanishing under a tide of Greek immigrants as Alexander’s successors settled down to rule various parts of his empire. That should be enough for any self respecting society but then the Romans came. The Romans gave Lycia to Rhodes (Why? Don’t know) then took it back again and made them a self governing protectorate. Some time later the Romans converted them to a non self governing province.

Over a thousand years went by and any surviving Lycians and their Greek replacements might thought things had settled down a bit. Then Romanus Diogenes made a mess of the Battle of Manzikert and suddenly Lycia was welcoming the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks didn’t hang around long in the grand scheme of things and little over a century later Lycia was part of the Beylik of Teke. Never heard of the Beylik of Teke? Don’t worry it didn’t last any longer than it took the Ottoman Turks to become aware of its existence.

Now Lycia is an integral part of modern Turkey and surely will remain so because history never repeats itself over and over again. All we have to remember the Lycians is a bunch of looted sarcophagi with roofs that look like ships and the occasional ruined city. Why the ship shaped sarcophagus roofs? Apparently the sea was very important to the Lycians. Possibly because it constituted the only escape route from the people constantly overrunning their homeland.

Travelling Hopefully - A Little More Side a Good Deal More Sea

After the house of death we clambered back into our minibus and headed for Kas. Kas should have a little curly thing on the “s” but I don’t know how to do Turkish accents so adjust your pronunciation accordingly.

The Taurus Mountains pretty much hit the coast at this point so our journey to Kas (don’t forget the accent) was appropriately windy with towering hills on one side and the ocean on the other. The scenery scened impressively and I attempted to take photos out of the window with a marked lack of success. We stopped for lunch in a small town and dined amidst a German tour group. I don’t know if Alternative for Deutschland does package tours but I was rather glad when they left.

We paused at a lookout which gave us a view of the two eastern most Greek islands just a couple of miles off the coast. With that cultural experience under our belts we headed into Kas.

Kas is a small town with the standard fit out of narrow picturesque streets and alleys full of shops catering to/preying on tourists. I was very restrained and made only one modest purchase.

The next day we set out for a life on the ocean wave. Honesty compels me to admit that the life was very brief and the waves were very small. We piled onto a modest sized vessel and spent the day noodling from cove to cove, pausing to swim, photograph a submerged Lycian city and marvel at the turquoise waters. We also marvelled at tiny fish, storm runoff from a recent flood, random sarcophagi and a helicopter that was searching for a couple of missing persons. You name it we marvelled at it.

What does a submerged Lycian city look like I hear you cry? It looks like any other Lycian city that’s been relocated to the bottom of the sea by an earthquake. Possibly a lesson to build a little further inland in future.

Travelling Hopefully - Ho For the Seaside

 We left Konya and pointed the nose of the minibus towards the Mediterranean. First though we had to cross the Taurus Mountains. The Taurus Mountains are located between the Aries Hills and the Gemini Plains. I saw my first snow in Turkey clinging modestly to the peaks as we wound our way through. Scenery abounded and I photographed as much of it as I could through the window as it went by.

Once over the Taurus Mountains we stopped for gozleme at a family home nestled among the ruins of a Roman bath. The family have monetised cooking by selling a delicious lunch to passers by. Replete we headed on to Antalya, a seaside town famous for its Roman harbour and ceremonial gate memorialising the day that the emperor Hadrian dropped by for a visit. It’s called the Visitor’s Gate.

No it isn’t, it’s called Hadrian’s Gate because Hadrian couldn’t pass by a rubbish bin without naming it after himself. Hadrian was an emperor of the Antonine dynasty widely regarded as the high point of pagan Rome. There were six emperors in the Antonine dynasty only two of whom were actually related to each other. “Dynasty” being a rather broad definition applied by later historians.

Antalya is a pleasant town with the usual collection of old buildings. There’s a Seljuk mosque, Ottoman houses, a Roman harbour and a statue honouring the town’s founder back when it was the Kingdom of Pergamon. Even that doesn’t seem to be the beginning of the story as artefacts have been found which pre-date even him.

All this means there are lots of narrow, twisty streets and a bizarre variety of souvenirs to be hawked from every second shop. It also means people have been dying here for ridiculously long period of time.

As evidence of the previous point the next day we visited a charnel house. Sorry I mean a museum dedicated to the dead. The museum is planted on top of an ancient cemetery that appears to have been used from pre-Hellenic times until well after the Romans adopted (or abducted) Christianity. As is traditional in cities of this age the cemetery was discovered when the foundations were being dug for something else, in this case a convention centre.

The museum now occupies the site and displays selected pieces of the sarcophagi, ossuaries and grave goods that have been unearthed. There was no mention of what became of the convention centre. Presumably it was relocated to somewhere a little less corpse intensive. After our visit to the museum we were similarly relocated.

Travelling Hopefully - Giving it a Whirl

 After a few days crawling into holes and over suggestively shaped rocks we piled into our faithful mechanical steed and headed to Konya.

Konya is the fifth, sixth or seventh largest city in Turkey depending on refugee influx and who’s counting. It’s also the centre of Turkey’s wheat belt and a major car parts manufacturer. But all of this pales into insignificance compared with one other fact our guide imparted. Konya is the most conservative city in Turkey. There was a pause as that sank in then a trembling voice from the rear asked the question we were all thinking. “Does this mean we can’t buy alcohol?” Our guide dolefully confirmed that this was the case. Wisely the guide had waited to tell us of this fact until we were actually on the road. Nevertheless there was a concerted scramble for the windows as we attempted to flee back to Goreme.

Despite our tearful pleas the minibus continued towards Konya. Of course Konya has more to offer than just the sight of a collection of senior citizens undergoing delirium tremens. It is also the death place of Rumi. His full name was apparently Jalal al Din Muhammad Rumi. The “Rumi” was a nickname meaning “Roman” which he wasn’t. But he gained his fame in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum which was so called because their territory was traditionally Roman or at least it was until the Seljuks arrived. Rumi was actually Persian by which I mean he was born in Afghanistan.

Rumi founded the Mevlevi order of Islamic mystics who would become famous to people who knew nothing of Islam or Sufism as the Whirling Dervishes. Rumi’s romb is a magnificent building, now a museum, and we were able to walk through it along with what appeared to be half the population of Turkey. Rumi himself is apparently buried under a gorgeous turquoise spire. Apparently Rumi had asked for his tomb to be open to the air so he could look up at the sky but his followers hadn’t been able to resist honouring him by building an impressive pile over the top of him. They coloured it turquoise in the hopes that Rumi would still feel he was looking at the sky. It’s an interesting lesson in exactly how much people are going to honour the wishes of even the most respected person once they’ve unlikely to return and berate you.

That night we went to a Whirling Dervish performance which was a lot more elegant and impressive than my ignorant mind had imagined.

Travelling Hopefully - Pumpkin Edition

We passed through Turkey’s carrot country on our way to Cappadocia but once we arrived it was all about the pumpkins. In between the tortured rock formations, fairy chimneys and churches carved into holes in the stone there were pumpkins. Every flat piece of ground was given over to these bulbous orange plants.

You might think, therefore, that every meal would have abounded in pumpkin soup, roast pumpkin, grilled pumpkin, pumpkin with ice cream and pumpkin juice. You would have been wrong. I think I am yet to see a pumpkin adorning a dinner plate in any form whatsoever.

Pumpkins originated in Central America and have since colonised the world, including Turkey. According to my research they are one of the most popular winter vegetables in the country. Which doesn’t explain why I haven’t yet managed to eat one.

According to our guide the pumpkins in our region are harvested for their seeds or not. Apparently if the pumpkin price is not competitive then the pumpkins are simply left in the fields to fertilise the next generation of pumpkins. Essentially the pumpkins are eating their parents.

Of course cannibalising ones parents and other esteemed family members is a tradition in some ancient cultures. Painfully gained wisdom and positive attributes are thus passed on to the next generation. By this argument the pumpkins of Cappadocia must be some of the most gifted and knowledgeable in all the world. No wonder the Turks don’t want to eat them, they’re probably afraid of the uber pumpkins they have created. I give it a few more years before these hyped up psycho pumpkins erupt out of their fields and take over the world. At that point somebody is going to pay for Halloween.

Travelling Hopefully - Not Air Ballooning Edition

So the hot air balloon ride didn’t happen. The weather was inclement on the day we were due to go and we were unable to reschedule for another day. We got up early one day and watched the balloons ascending majestically into the sky while we wept and ground our teeth in frustration.

Having failed on the ballooning front our guide decided to bury us in the earth instead. The rock churches and such were a mere teaser, today we were visiting an underground city.

Here the predilection for gouging holes out of soft volcanic rock had reached its ultimate expression. Cappadocia dwellers of days gone by excavated not one but several of these underground accommodations to shelter them from the ravenous hordes which apparently swept across the landscape on a semi regular basis.

They didn’t live here full time, rather it was a place of refuge where the surface dwellers could hide when dangers such as raiders or Winter threatened. Then the denizens would retreat beneath the surface and roll sturdy obsidian plugs across the entrances to discourage ingress.

Stern warnings were issued by our guide. Were we claustrophobic? Did we suffer from high blood pressure? How about heart conditions? For a group whose average age was over sixty he might as well have said “Are you still alive?” Taking our greasy assurances of remarkable health and mental stability at face value he led us into the bowels of the earth.

Although possibly “colon of the earth” would be a better term. Narrow passage ways twisted and turned, wrapped over each other and down, always down. Carved out rooms on the sides of the passages marked where people lived, prayed and made wine. Because being driven underground by savage marauders was no excuse for the latest vintage to be tardy. Priorities guys.

Of course in these days of peace and tranquility the underground cities are merely tourist attractions and sites of archaeological interest and absolutely nobody lives in caves anymore. Well except for one lady so we went and had lunch with her. Our tour information pack mentioned a lady living in a cave and I must admit I had visions of some desiccated hag in rags squatting in a cavern. In fact she was a friendly and charming lady whose house had been built into the cave. She gave us lunch (which was delicious) and discussed the decorations she had been awarded for baklava making. She was a former mathematics teacher who had had to retire due to MS. Now she entertains guests in a cave house with magnificent carpets on the floor which looked like they had been woven yesterday despite being more than thirty years old.

Replete with lunch we heaved our sagging bellies towards Love Valley for an afternoon constitutional. Love Valley is so called because of the immense number of phallically shaped fairy chimneys that stud its surface. I guess Love Valley is somewhat more socially acceptable than “Dick Valley” which would be the only other plausible name.

By the way a fairy chimney is a spire of soft volcanic rock which maintains its existence due to being capped with a layer of much tougher volcanic rock. The results, if you are of an innocent mind, rather resemble mushrooms.

Travelling Hopefully - Tuff Guys Edition

Under grey skies we left the baklava ridden delights of Beypazari behind and pointed our collective noses at Cappadocia. Our guide informed us that the name derived from an ancient Persian reference to horses. He also informed us that was almost certainly untrue and that a more likely reference was to some Hittite god. This didn’t prevent statues of horses welcoming visitors to Cappadocia beside the highway.

Cappadocia isn’t actually an official region of Turkey. The name is a geographic and historical reference which doesn’t stop it being plastered across the sign of every shop pandering to tourists. On our way to Cappadocia we brushed the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey’s capital. Unless you’re a civil servant or work in Turkey’s defence industry there doesn’t seem to be much reason to go there and we didn’t.

Instead we went to Goreme a charming village consisting entirely of hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. What the tourists come to see is all around; a twisted landscape of soft volcanic rock abounding in cones, hills and caves. The volcanic rock is largely tuff and, despite its name, is so soft you can excavate it with a soup spoon. Residents in earlier more violent times hollowed out the caves and made churches and living quarters inside the rock.

The next day we drove approximately ten minutes to a collection of shops and cafes. On the other side of this example of opportunistic retail was an open air museum consisting of a collection of churches carved and hollowed out of the obligingly soft rock. The best was the Dark Church so called because little natural light entered it. This meant the frescoes on the walls and ceiling were still of breathtaking quality. You’ll have to take my word on that because no photography was permitted.

We scrambled around poking our heads in various places of worship that looked like they could accommodate a congregation of three at most and took photos of the outside of the churches which means essentially I have a lot of pictures of holes in the rock.

Once the amusement value of this was exhausted we were driven to a place that made Turkish carpets. More accurately women in rural areas of Turkey made carpets and these people sell them. A pleasant gentleman named Attila explained the process and the incredibly long time it took to make a single decent sized carpet. He also said it was a dying art. Apparently young women in Turkey can find less mind numbingly tedious things to do with their lives.

Still the carpets were exquisite, the hospitality was charming and raki flowed which may go some way to explaining why I will be having a silk/cotton rug I have absolutely no use for delivered to my home some time in the next couple of months. I may have to live on biscuits for a while to cover the cost.