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 The name is a geographic and historical reference which doesn’t stop it being plastered across the sign of every shop pandering to tourists.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.