http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~pf/travel/turkey.diary.5 (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
August 11, 1995.
Merhaba everybody:
Here is my "Diary of a Foreigner Living in Turkey (Part 5)". It
contains reports of a variety of (very) short trips I did in
1994:
1. Trekking in the KaCkar DaGlarI
2. Trips to Cappadocia
3. Nemrut DaGI
With Part 6, I will return to more "ethnographic" issues, on
which I have a huge backlog, although some of these themes are
already tackled in this edition.
Enjoy,
Pierre
1. Trekking in the KaCkar DaGlarI (mid-August 1994)
------------------------------
(or: Ecology and Medicine in Turkey)
After my aborted trip in Central Asia (see the previous "special
edition" of this diary), my friend TuGrul didn't need much con-
vincing power to talk me into joining him and the METU Moun-
taineering Club for an eight-day-trek in the KaCkar mountains (at
the Black Sea, near Georgia). So we stock up on food, pack our
gear, and hop onto a night bus to Rize (the Turkish capital of
tea), together with 30+ students from METU (Middle-East Technical
University).
In the early morning, Nesrin, our logistics coordinator, talks
the bus driver into continuing all the way up to Ayder, one of
the villages at the trail ends. The scenery is alpine with lush
pastures, tea plantations, a thick forest (almost a rain forest),
tumbling rivers, waterfalls, summits roaring up to almost 4,000m,
and villages of wooden chalets. This is a little-known area of
Turkey, and foreigners seeing photos of it tend to think they
were taken in Switzerland, unless they see a mosque somewhere!
We don't set out immediately as we have a "mission" to fulfill
first, so we check into a very spartan hut and have breakfast in
a nearby "lokanta".
The METU students now wear T-shirts and start distributing stick-
ers and posting fliers regarding that mission, so as to enroll
some locals to help out. The mission is called:
"Temiz bir KaCkar iCin ilk adIm"
(A first step towards a clean KaCkar)
Indeed, Ayder is straining under its popularity as a Sunday picn-
ic spot, and, today being a Sunday, we get a first-hand illustra-
tion of what this means. Bumper to bumper traffic creeps up and
down the narrow roads to and through Ayder, and eventually grid-
locks the entire village. Cars are parked absolutely anywhere,
and spill out entire families and their picnic gear onto some
nearby grassy patch. It's all a very Turkish tradition (if the
word "picnic" didn't exist, the Turks would have invented it),
right at the core of their intact family values. They barbecue
and eat what they brought along, drink streams of tea and "rakI"
(a Turkish aniseed alcohol), smoke themselves into oblivion,
listen to music from radios and tapes, and sometimes even perform
the music themselves. The music in this area is by the way very
different from other music in Turkey, especially due to the very
characteristic tunes of the "kemenCe" (lap fiddle) and "tulum"
(bagpipe). Indeed, there is a colorful quilt of people living
here: Turks, HemSin, Laz, Georgians, ..., both Christian and
Muslim. The same holds for fashion, well, at least for the way
women dress, as Muslim men are rarely the most colorful dressers:
the local headdress ("poSu") of women is one of the most beauti-
ful I've seen anywhere in the world. The children are enter-
tained, football and volleyball are played, there is endless gos-
siping with neighbors, and so on. Go to any city park or grassy
patch in Turkey on a Sunday afternoon to get a lesson in family
values! Taking a walk is not at all popular in Turkey, because
walking (and cycling) for one's own pleasure is largely frowned
upon as a useless waste of energy.
Now, unfortunately, this nice tradition is endangering Turkey's
nature since recent decades, because of the paper, plastic,
aluminum, and glass that come along with modern picnics. Average
Turks seem to have absolutely no concern about the cleanliness of
nature and even of the immediate vicinities of their own houses:
trash is left where it occurred, with often no effort of collect-
ing it or using (mostly inexistent) trash cans. This is no prob-
lem with biodegradable trash, but "modern" trash amounts to so
much more than that. Only water, wind, and time will "take care"
of it, and I don't tell you what the surroundings of villages
sometimes look like. I have seen "official" picnic spots that
looked like dump yards to me, and if it weren't for people happi-
ly picnicking in midst of this waste, I would have decided they
*were* dump yards! I have seen people drive their trash a few
hundred meters out of their village and dump it at curb-sides of
tremendous natural beauty. Now, I know that such abuse of Nature
exists back home as well (idiots doing such things are called
"rednecks" or something similar), and I also do *not* mean to im-
ply that Turks live in dirt. On the contrary: Turks *do* have a
sense of cleanliness, and of pride about it, but only *within*
their homes! Anything outside their houses is irrelevant, it's
the inside that counts (I ignore whether this is a consequence or
a cause of their spiritual values)! But, I repeat, in these
times of not-so-quickly-degradable trash, it is an absolute
necessity that Turks learn how to take care of Nature, lest their
entire country will soon resemble a dump yard.
Anyway, back to my story: at 2pm, we start moving through the
village with trash bags. Only a handful local volunteers actual-
ly join us, the rest of the locals and picnicking visitors just
stare at us, in total disbelief of our stupidity: it has always
been like this, they probably think, and the trash has always
disappeared with time (guess where!), so what is the point of
collecting it now? As our procession slowly moves up the vil-
lage, the enormity of our undertaking becomes clear: there is no
way we can collect all the accumulated trash that hasn't been
"taken care of" yet by the elements. Our bags soon strain under
their weights, but airborne plastic bags are somehow always at
hand to keep us going. Eventually, after many cubic meters of
trash, most picked up right under the noses of bewildered pic-
nickers or from the slopes and bushes just beyond their picnic
spots, we stop, in front of some pension. Its owner is so
enthusiastic about what we just did that he invites us all for
dinner tonight! And the municipality offers us a free trip to
the village "hamam" (which is fed by natural hot-springs) in the
evening! But somehow we can't get rid of the feeling that this
is a Sisyphus Battle, and that it will take many more such
demonstrations before the right habits pick up!
After idling in the "hamam" for a while, and enjoying the dinner
offered by that pension owner, and a good night's sleep in the
cramped quarters of the rented hut, we set out in the late morn-
ing of the day after. One truck transports all our backpacks and
some of us up the hill to our trail head at the last "yayla" (see
the fourth edition of this diary for a definition), and another
truck loads the rest of us for the two-hour-ride. We are packed
like sheep in there, and amuse the villagers by an appropriate
concert of "bah-bah" grunts. The scenery is spell-binding, and,
as we creep higher, the daily afternoon mist (we are on the
northern, Black Sea slope) descends on us. At the YukarI Kavron
"yayla", we get off, collect our backpacks, sip a last hot tea,
and set out in a thick fog and drizzling rain. A villager leads
the way across the pastures and over little rivulets of water, as
we'd probably never have found the uninhabited pasture further up
in the mountains, where we shall spend our first night. He shows
us the wild orchid from the roots of which "salep" is made
("salep" is a very tasty drink made by grinding that root into
hot milk and topping it all with cinnamon; it can be found every-
where in the winter, just like "boza", which is a mildly ferment-
ed millet drink, but served cold). By the time we get to the
meadow, we are all soaked to the bones, so it fortunately doesn't
matter much to those unlucky two girls who slipped into the water
during the trek. As the night falls, the relentless rain contin-
ues and the cold creeps into our clothing. Keeping the
territorial-minded domestic bulls at bay, we pitch our tents,
crawl into our sleeping bags, and cook dinner inside our tents.
Morale is low, but we all hope for better weather tomorrow.
The sun is out in the early morning, so we stretch out all our
wet stuff on rocks so that it become dry while we have breakfast.
Then we set out, in small groups of six to eight, each led by one
of the most experienced mountaineers of the club. We have walkie
talkies in order to keep in touch. Way off any beaten path, as
the objective is to take a huge shortcut by taking the ~3,100m
pass between the KaCkar and Mezovit summits (about 3,900m each),
we slowly creep up over the stone rubble at the end of a glacier,
then over the glacier itself, and finally up a steep slope to the
pass. It's all very hard work, with lots of minor falls and
self-induced small avalanches, but eventually we haul ourselves,
one by one, onto the rocky platform at the pass. As we have
lunch, Damla takes our pulses and blood pressures so as to make a
list of the less fit, on which she shall keep a close eye in the
future. PInar gives the less experienced of us instructions on
how to walk down a glacier, and how to use our ice-picks in case
we start hurtling down the icy slopes.
WARNING: This true story contains, from now on, some gory details
that are not for the faint-hearted. You may only continue read-
ing under your own responsibility! But there won't be any
corpses either.
OK, so down the other, southern slope of the pass now, that is
finally on the sunny side of the KaCkar range. The glacier des-
cents are mostly speedy, as everybody soon gets the hang of it,
although some actually have to use their ice-picks to prevent
super-fast body-surfing descents. Crossing the rocky parts
between glaciers is slow and painstaking, and I remember saying
to TuGrul that it was quite a lot of fun on the glaciers, and
that I felt like finally being sure-footed again (after my recon-
structive knee surgery in 1991).
I should have knocked on wood, as, a few minutes later, I slip on
a rock and fall half a meter down and land, legs in jackknife po-
sition, with my knees onto a stone, carrying a 14+kg backpack. I
can't get up by myself, because of the weight on my back, and
when they lift me up, I examine my knees and say: "It's OK! Only
a minor cut on my left knee..." Fractions of a second later:
"Sh*t! It's a *deep* cut...". Upon closer inspection, it turns
out that I fell onto a razorblade-sharp cutting edge of that
stone, which sliced open my pants, the skin just below my left
kneecap, and partly severed the tendon as well. No bone damage,
though you can see everything at work through the gaping hole,
which makes some casual spectators among us nearly faint, but
luckily little blood loss as there are no blood vessels in that
area. We clean the wound as well as we can, but it's obvious to
me that I need it stitched, although many of those who haven't
seen it before the bandaging try to encourage me by saying I'd be
back to the group the day after. Sure, but we are in the middle
of nowhere! And I need to keep walking, as long as the muscles
and tendons are warm, because nobody could carry me through this
rubble and on this kind of slope.
We work out an evacuation trail, which will fork off to the left
just 500m before the end of today's stage. But until then, it's
another hour of painstaking descent. Fortunately, the adrenaline
rush prevents me from panicking and from feeling any serious
pain. At every step down, it feels as if the wound were becoming
larger, but skin is fortunately not like paper. I would have
preferred having to move up this slope with this injury. TuGrul
then leaves his pack with the others, and carries mine from there
on, as we walk for another three hours down a string of "yay-
lalar". They are mostly unoccupied yet, and without any medical
facilities or even road access. At sunset, we stumble into a
"yayla" with dirt-road access, and the "imam" of the mosque
directs us to a pension, after telling us that the doctor is on
vacation but that there is a "dolmuS" at 6am to the Yusufeli vil-
lage. While TuGrul cooks the best dinner I had in ages (or so it
tastes by now), I relax on the bed and feel the leg stiffen, now
that the effort is over. I must also say that the entire walk of
the day was through incredibly beautiful scenery, which is prob-
ably my most lasting memory of the trip.
I don't close an eye throughout the night, due to the growing
pain. In the morning, I insist that TuGrul return to the group,
as it's all a matter of hours now until I get medication, and as
I'm on the verge of urban "civilization" now that the "dolmuS" is
there, especially that I know sufficient Turkish to solve the
problem alone from now on. The 60km ride on the bumpy dirt-road
takes about three hours (I could have done it faster with a moun-
tain bike), and I agonize on every bump. Again, it's the stupen-
dous landscape that helps me keep my mind off the pain.
In Yusufeli, there is a medical dispensary, but since it's "only"
nineteen hours since the accident and since stitching is ap-
parently recommended within one day (I was later told that six
hours is a maximum!), I feel like taking right away the daily
"dolmuS" ride (another three hours) to Erzurum, which is a big
city with hospitals. The people in Yusufeli are very friendly to
this foreigner (even though they don't understand why I was walk-
ing in the mountains in the first place): they actually carry me
to the other "dolmuS", and feed me with fruit on the ride to Er-
zurum, which is again through a truly spectacular countryside.
In Erzurum, the "dolmuS" driver personally takes me to the hospi-
tal of my choice: "The best," I croak. So we wind up in the em-
ergency unit of the AtatUrk University Hospital (well, I wouldn't
like to see the second-best hospital...). I'm taken care of im-
mediately, with great humor and lavish rinsing of the wound be-
fore the stitching. When I finally manage to convey that I'm not
a tourist, but a foreigner working in Turkey, they even let me
walk out without paying. Luckily, as I wouldn't have paid for
what they did: I'm not entirely convinced they did the right
thing, as I forced myself to look on throughout the operation,
and didn't oversee the slightly yellowish complexion of my
flesh...
The last daily flight to Ankara being gone, I board the next bus
(normally fifteen hours) for Ankara. Again, I can't sleep, but
everybody is very friendly to me, especially my admirable Kurdish
neighbor, with whom I manage to discuss the entire night in Turk-
ish, without him getting bored of my struggling for words. Even
the very numerous army posts on the road (searching for PKK sup-
porters) leave me in peace. At dusk, the bus stops at the
nearest village, and about a third of the passengers scramble
through the fields to its mosque. Just before Ankara, the bus
gets a flat tire, but the driver decides to drive on at 20km/h.
Altogether twenty hours on the road now. I hail a taxi home,
where I sleep and rest for almost one day, before setting out to
the private BayIndIr Hospital to check whether everything is OK.
They throw their hands up in despair, as the flesh is very in-
fected and the wound should never have been closed in that state.
They do another local anesthesia, cut the whole wound open again,
clean it and cut out a least one cubic centimeter of flesh, and
keep me for twenty-seven hours under observation, hooked on IV
antibiotics. When the nurses and physicians hear about my (for
Turkish standards: adventurous) life-style, they issue me a fre-
quent patient card... (No need for "geCmiS olsun" wishes: I have
fully recovered a long time ago.)
As a conclusion, Turkey has once again proved to me that it has
many hidden treasures and that its people are *genuinely* friend-
ly, especially way off the beaten tourist track. That recycling
and trash disposal will soon be an acute problem in Turkey was
nothing new to me; I just took the opportunity here to wrap the
problem up (using recycled bits!) within a larger story. Most
importantly, I learned not to venture out again into the middle
of nowhere without sufficient medical supply and experts, as the
corresponding cut on any other part of my body could have severed
(possibly vital) blood vessels. I heard about local mountaineer-
ing clubs losing members to absolutely silly injuries, as fast
evacuation and adequate medical expertise are hard to come by
outside the biggest cities in the western half of the country.
2. Trips to Cappadocia (throughout 1994)
-------------------
The region of Cappadocia (about 200km southeast of Ankara) is one
of the geological wonders of the world. I haven't seen much of
this planet, but Cappadocia is the most beguiling place I've ever
visited (ex-aequo with Petra, in Jordan). Cappadocia is unique,
Cappadocia cannot be described in words, you have to go there to
see it. I feel strongly tempted to stop my story here and send
you first to the nearest Turkish tourism office in order to get
some pamphlets on Cappadocia, so that you can imagine the
landscape. If I had a scanner, I would digitize some of my best
pictures and make them available on the Web, but then you would
accuse me of having drawn science fiction sceneries on the com-
puter. Knock, knock on my door... Oh, it's you! Let's go to
Cappadocia!
Well, let me try then--with the limited (!) English vocabulary--
to create a sense of understanding of the mystique of Cappadocia.
Eons ago, three volcanos erupted and covered a sandstone area the
size of Luxembourg with lava. Throughout the millenia, wind and
water erosion would carve out of these lava and sandstone layers
the most bewitching rock formations you can possibly imagine:
multi-colored canyons, mesas, free-standing rock needles, and,
last but not least, the trademark of Cappadocia, entire "gardens"
of the so-called "fairy chimneys" (up-ended cones of sandstone,
with a large slab of brown lava delicately balancing on its top).
Hence the Turkish name for Cappadocia: "Peri BacalarI", the Fairy
Cones. The view of this should be enough to make you travel
around the world to see it.
But let's now have a closer look at these rock formations: yes!,
they are/were inhabited! Many of them are hollowed out, featur-
ing doors, windows, kitchens, living quarters, bedrooms, shelves,
storage rooms, corridors, stairs, chimneys, ventilation shafts,
"telephone" tubes, churches! The view of all this is guaranteed
to cut your breath away, and you should call your travel agent
right now...
During the last few millenia, people have indeed recognized the
fertility of the lava layer and discovered how easy it is to
carve the rocks into whatever shape is suitable. Entire hills
and canyon walls have thus been transformed into troglodyte ci-
ties, and entire fairy chimney gardens have been transformed into
villages of one-family houses. And there is more than meets the
eye: over the last few decades, about forty underground cities
(of capacities of up to 20,000 people) have been re-discovered
(the locals having all but forgotten about them) and some of them
cleared of their rubble to make them accessible by visitors. It
was probably the Hittites who started carving out these houses,
but the most famous inhabitants were definitely some early Chris-
tians who used and extended them as a hide-out from Arab raiders.
The whole area is unbelievably beautiful, and makes for an excel-
lent open-air museum about early Christianity, not to mention the
fantastic hiking and cycling opportunities.
Due to its proximity to Ankara, I went to Cappadocia four times
last year. I consider it my backyard by now. And I can't wait
going there for the next time. There is no point relating what I
did there specifically, as understanding it needs seeing it, so
I'll just tell a few anecdotes involving contacts with the lo-
cals.
In late June'94, I check into a pension in CavuSin, with my
friend Serge from Belgium, using it as a base for hiking around
the area. The lethal PKK attack in the Covered Bazaar of istan-
bul in early April'94 has so far totally wrecked the tourism sea-
son, and the area is almost devoid of visitors. Our pension own-
er (those who know the area will guess whom I'm talking about!)
had invested in restoring and extending his house, and he is
quite gloomy about his financial prospects. But he is of course
happy to have some company, and we are invited to the family
dinner table. The football world-cup is on, and Serge is quite
excited about it, as Belgium plays tonight against the Nether-
lands, its neighbor and arch-rival. So we ask Ahmet which
"Cayhane" we should go to in order to have the best atmosphere to
watch the game. And then happens the unexpected and almost
unthinkable: Ahmet tells us that he is (of course) also interest-
ed in football, and that he is sick and tired of having a too
feeble TV antenna to capture the adequate channels for watching
the cup. He grabs the phone, and orders from some shop in nearby
Avanos a (huge) antenna plus enough length of cable. And every-
thing is set by the time the game starts! Only in Turkey!!!
(Belgium wins 1-0.)
When I return in mid-September'94 with Guy, another friend from
Belgium, everybody seems to recognize me, due to my previous
trips in April and June, making Guy think I'm kind of a local
celebrity. As we pay our lunch bill at the excellent "Tafanna
Pide Salonu" in Avanos, Guy rips open his tired shorts right
where you wouldn't like to have a hole. Again, although Guy ini-
tially despairs at his misfortune, as this is the only short he
brought, being in Turkey rather than back home provides us with
an instant solution. A little boy guides us to a tailor's shop
tucked away in some side street, and the friendly tailor disap-
pears for half an hour as Guy waits in his underwear. As we
wonder what he is doing with the shorts for such a long time, he
finally reappears, and, with a broad smile, shows us the half a
dozen other repairs he's just done in order to prevent future
damage! And he only wants the equivalent of 1.25$, which I be-
lieve to be a realistic price, and definitively not a foreigners
price!
Another unforgettable encounter occurs when we drive from Derin-
kuyu to the Ihlara village, in order to hike through its fantas-
tic canyon. The countryside is just sparsely inhabited, so it's
only natural to pick up hitchhikers. I actually do so systemati-
cally throughout Anatolia, and the following anecdote is
representative of the many similar ones I have. For Guy it was a
"first time", and he remembers it very fondly. So there is this
farmer waiting for the next "dolmuS" to his village about 25km
away, and who flags us down for a ride. My pleasure, of course,
but I don't tell Guy what's going to be the course of action.
Indeed, hitching being just a faster alternative than waiting for
the next "dolmuS", every hitcher is prepared to pay for his ride,
because otherwise s/he wouldn't have been out there on the road
in the first place. I always gently refuse such payment (and the
very fact that it is even being offered to me, a foreigner!,
shows how unspoiled these peasants are, because there are places
where some people would almost ask *you* for money for having the
honor of offering them a ride), and either I get an incredible
number of blessings from Allah, or some produce from the market
(apples, grapes, ...), or I wind up in a village tea house. The
latter is what happens this time, much to the delight of Guy and
the other male villagers who all congregate around us and appre-
ciate my minimalistic Turkish. There were European Cup games in
football the night before, with Turkish victories, so there is
quite a bit to discuss. And, as usual, the fact that I am a de-
clared Trabzonspor fan generates quite some aaahs and ooohs, be-
cause virtually the whole country supports one of the three
power-houses from istanbul. That's why I picked Trabzon: I want-
ed to support a team that is not from istanbul, but that plays
very good football and that has some character and continuity,
unlike the spoiled brats playing and coaching in istanbul. My
other favorites are Bursa Spor and Ankara GenClerbirliGi.
In early November, I return with TuGrul for a weekend mountain
bike tour. After a first gorgeous day, we wake up the morning
after in our chilly fairy chimney (yes, some pensions rent them
out! and whatever the season, they are much better than regular
rooms, because of their meter-thick walls: cool in the summer,
not as cold in the winter) and find all of Cappadocia under a
thick blanket of snow. This way it's very beautiful as well.
But we prefer to drive the second half of our trip by car, and
set out to MazIkOy, whose underground city had been highly recom-
mended to us by Serge, as it is not touristed at all. When
entering the village, we see huge locked doors on rock-cut
depots: due to an ideal natural temperature, this is where lemon
is stored until winter time and from where it is then transported
to all of Turkey. It's bitter-cold, and everybody is indoors
(the men in the tea houses, the women at home), with occasionally
somebody hushing across the street to the nearest grocery. After
some asking around, the ticket man to the underground city is lo-
cated in a tea house, and half a dozen teenagers magically pop up
as well, spontaneously joining us and providing useful explana-
tions. In fact, this underground city is unlike most others, in
the sense that you enter on the first floor at the bottom of a
hill, and then proceed upstairs, inside the hill!, in order to
exit from the top floor on top of the hill. In Derinkuyu and
KaymaklI, you descend into the first floor from a plain, and keep
descending until the eighth underground floor, from where you
have to work your way up again. Also, whereas you could almost
navigate by mountain bike through the latter two cities, here
there are no such things as stairs or ramps: you literally have
to haul yourself through chimney-like affairs in the ceilings,
using foot/hand marks, until you reach the next floor! It's all
extremely interesting and pretty much indescribable. However, to
our huge dismay, these kids have the guts to try to charge us mo-
ney for the guidance, when we exit the site, and a ridiculously
high amount at that. So there we are, in the middle of touristic
nowhere, in a completely dead touristic season, with a Turk among
the two visitors, and we both assumed all the way that these kids
were your genuine disinterested Turks, as I have encountered so
many in similar situations before. I tell TuGrul that there is
no way they will get a single lira, considering that they didn't
announce their intentions. But he wants to do it a bit more di-
plomatically, so we wind up in a tea house and lecture them on
how to do "business" with visitors and how to do marketing. I
don't think they understood such long term reasoning, but to hell
with the idiots who spoiled them by giving them outrageous
amounts of money in the first place!
Until the population exchange between Turkey and Greece in 1923
(due to their new borders after Turkey's successful war of in-
dependence), Cappadocia was predominantly a Greek and Christian
place. This can be easily observed by looking at the architec-
ture of older houses, not to mention the zillions of churches
(some of which were converted into mosques). The main tourist
attractions are in/near villages where these remnants are not so
visible to the casual observer, but once you stray off the beaten
path, it becomes very obvious. Villages like MustafapaSa and
ibrahimpaSa are essentially unchanged by tourism, although they
have some quite interesting sites and definitely more charm than
the tourist magnets. At a "Cayhane" in ibrahimpaSa, a very old
man once sidled up to me and asked me whether I was Greek, or was
soon going to Greece, because he'd like to join me! It turned
out that he grew up near Thessaloniki, and moved over to Turkey
in 1923, but has never been back, although he would clearly love
to go!
3. Nemrut DaGI (mid-September 1994)
-----------
Nemrut DaGI is one of the those mountains in the world that one
has to be on before dying, along with Mt. Sinai in Egypt, Machu
Picchu in Peru, Mt. Olympus in Greece, and some others. The un-
forgettable sunrise and sunset from this highest mountain at the
western edge of the Kurdish homeland are by themselves worth the
detour. But, two thousand years ago, King Antiochus I of the
little kingdom of Commagene increased its mystique a thousandfold
by decreeing that he be buried under a 50m high tumulus extending
the 2150m high summit. This grandiose site is further embel-
lished by terraces on the sunrise and sunset sides, featuring
colossal statues of sitting gods from the Macedonian and Persian
pantheons. Due to earthquakes, the heads of these statues have
fallen off their shoulders, and now stand on the ground, provid-
ing one of Turkey's most famous postcards. The 2m tall heads
watch over the site like guardians, adding an incredible sense of
mystique to the place, and the tomb itself is still un-found.
The access road from Adyaman features some other nice sites, in-
cluding the tombs of Antiochus' wife and father. But on this my
second trip to Nemrut DaGI (the first being in 1986), with my
friend Guy from Belgium, I again choose to access the summit from
Malatya.
After a long drive from Cappadocia, interrupted by an interesting
lunch stop in Kayseri (that's unfair to that nice city: I'll re-
turn one day to spend more time there), we pull into Malatya. At
the first hotel, we are told the place is full, and that we will
most likely not find any bed at all in the whole city, as the
next day the provincial police entrance exam will be held here.
After a desperate loop around many hotels, we take up that first
receptionist's offer of returning to his place, as he said he'd
improvise some solution. And indeed, he sets us up on the roof-
top with plenty of blankets in lieu of mattresses. Abuzer is in-
credibly friendly, directs us to a popular (hence good) restau-
rant, and only charges us a trifle for the stay itself. Ah Tur-
key, I'll never forget you!
The day after, we decide not to risk the integrity of my car on
the rocky dirt roads, because the municipality's "package tour"
turns out just $2 total more expensive than the gas and accommo-
dation for two. There's six of us travelers on the hired
"dolmuS": a Flemish couple from Belgium, two Brits, and us. The
driver "orders" me to sit up front, so that he can chat with me:
he doesn't often have travelers he can sort-of converse with.
And, sure enough, before even leaving the city, we wind up at his
brother's "Cayhane", in order to show off with the "catch of the
day". Ah Turkey, you'll never get bored! And then off we are,
high up into the mostly barren hills, through great scenery,
picking up the occasional hitching peasant, and eventually making
it to the "gUneS Moteli", just a ten minute ride from the summit.
And then off to the summit for sunset watching. In 1986, it was
very cloudy, and thus a major let-down, not to mention the very
strong storm that almost blew us (also six travelers) off the
platform during the night (back then, in the good old times, one
could actually sleep there): I'll never forget the impassive
faces of these stone gods being illuminated by lightning, while
we tried to save our tents in-between! This time, it's all pic-
ture perfect: the view west is incredible, the sun and horizon
take all shades of red, and very few people are there. Just
another five travelers or so, including three sun worshiping Ger-
man motor-cyclists (later, our "dolmuS" driver asks me whether
all Christians are sun worshipers!). Everybody takes the manda-
tory set of romantic pictures, but with great discretion and
respect for each other, the silence being complete as we stare in
awe at how the waning sunlight illuminates the faces in always
differing tones.
Back at the motel, the "dolmuS" driver and some peasant (picked
up in a village on the road) dish up a hearty dinner for us six
(I suspect the other five had camping gear and just dissipated
into the night), and they even have beer. We go to bed early, as
sunrise is very early. Just like in 1986, hordes of *real* pack-
age tourists (coming from Adyaman) invade the sunrise terrace,
clicking like mad, obstructing each other's photos, talking
noisily, etc. Except that this time the sunrise is really worth
our long detour: the red disk rises majestically over the barren
hills and is reflected in the waters of the nearby AtatUrk Bara-
jI. There isn't as much mystique, though, with this crowd, and
we eventually board our "dolmuS" to return to Malatya. Nemrut
DaGI is well worth a visit, but make sure you go slightly off
season, and definitely for sunset, as the Adyaman influx is then
very small, if not nil.
Malatya being famous for its dried apricots and copper handi-
craft, we take an extensive stroll through its very interesting
bazaars, before heading west again, towards KIz Kalesi (near sil-
ifke, see my promise in the fourth edition of this diary), for a
relaxed evening at the beach, viewing the wonderfully romantic
Maiden's Castle on an island just a short swim off the shore.
Well, "bu kadar" (so much for now)!
I hope you liked it.
Take care,
- -- ___@
---- __T\ \_
Pierre (pf@cs.bilkent.edu.tr) - -- / /\_>/\ \
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