By
this stage of the trip we were counting down the bus trips left. It was our
second overnight bus trip in a week and we really weren’t looking forward to
it. The Turkish buses weren’t quite up to the standard of South American buses
ie no lazy boy chairs, no wine and no bingo! I found it impossible to get
comfortable and sleep while Dusk just doesn’t like bus trips. So by the time we
arrived in Kahta we were pretty shattered and easy fodder for the touts and
before we had even got our bags we had given in and were climbing into a van
with a vague promise of a hotel room and tour to Mt Nemrut. We were taken to a
smelly office and served the necessary cay (tea) and after some time we found
out the hotel was full so we decided to leave, at which point our tout quickly
took us to his other cousins hotel. It turned out to be not too bad and we
managed to get a few hours sleep ahead of our afternoon tour to Nemrut.
We
were joined on our Nemrut tour by a Dutch guy we met on the overnight bus trip
and three Turkish students who were constantly late getting back to the mini
bus after stops. Our guide (who was also the tout from the bus stop) had
bloodshot eyes and looked even more tired than us. It turned out he was also a
fire man and had been up all night fighting grass fires. The tour itself was
pretty relaxed with a few minor stops along the way before we wound our way up
the mountain side to the summit of Nemrut for sunset. From a distance the peak
of the mountain looks unusually angular and when you arrive you see that it is
in fact a large pyramid of loose rock. Surrounding the pyramid are statues
(some probably 10 m high) in various states of ruin. Along with the view of the
surrounding hills and a good sunset it’s a very cool place to visit.
Next
stop was Urfa.
After a fairly uncomfortable, hot, smelly and at times dangerous mini bus trip
we were dumped out on a busy roundabout with only a vague idea of where we were
and an even vaguer idea of how to get to our hostel. Street names and numbers
are mostly non existent. We headed off toward the centre of town and eventually
found our hostel with the help of a barber and some school kids. The 40 degree
heat meant we basically relaxed in our rooms air conditioning for the rest of
the afternoon and ate baklava. We headed out in the evening to see the main
gardens with its mosques and decorative pools which were all quite nice. At the
carp pool some guy began talking to us in English (which was getting a bit
rare) and we ended up having a cup of cay with him and he told us about some
things to do and see. We were a bit weary as we thought he would at the very
least try to sell us something but seemed genuinely just to want to make sure
we had a good time in his city. The bazaar was the highlight of Urfa. It is very much a
working bazaar with metal smiths, tailors and other tradesmen still working and
making things in the alleyways. We spent a morning wandering in and out of it
but only bought scarves and some soap.
We
were now well into South Eastern Anatolia. This area has had a few troubles in
the past with the PKK (Kurdish party) fighting the Turkish government. In the
past few weeks we had been reading the travel advisories and watching the news
for any sign of trouble in the area. At one point walking down the street in Istanbul we saw a news flash on a TV in a restaurant
showing an explosion in Urfa
but couldn’t understand what it was saying. The waiter explained it as “like a
bomb - but not a bomb”, it turned out a petrol station had caught fire. We
decided it all seemed pretty quiet on the fighting front and there wasn’t too
much to worry about but on arriving in SEA we heard that the Kurdish fighters
had killed a group of Turkish soldiers which made us a bit nervous but in the
end we didn’t feel unsafe at any point and all seemed pretty normal.
Our
guidebook and the internet recommended a trip to Harran (one of the oldest
continually occupied spots in the world) to see the unusual style of houses
there, so we hired a driver/guide to head south to Harran
for the afternoon. Being near the Syrian border it had a bit of a middle east
feel to it with camels walking the streets and men in long white robes but
otherwise it is a pretty run down dump of a town and the houses were mildly
interesting at best. The guide had brought his young grandson along for the
trip who was really naughty, but the guide just let him get away with it. On
the return drive the boy was jumping all around the car and up and down on the
front seat next to the open window but the guide didn’t like telling him off
because it made him upset. Seemed a bit of a paradox that he liked his grandson
so much he didn’t want to hurt his feelings to the point where he ignored the
kids basic safety.
Our
last bus trip! This time only a few hours to Diyarbakir. The reason for heading to Diyarbakir was to see the town walls made of basalt blocks
and because there were reasonably cheap flights back to Istanbul from there. Unfortunately Dusk
started to feel unwell and spent most of her time at the hotel. I headed out to
wander around town. Being one of very few foreigners around I seemed to make a
lot of friends and drank a bit too much pistachio coffee and cay and by the end
of the day was also feeling a bit unwell. Diyarbakir
would probably be a much more touristy place if it was a bit further west and
didn’t have a reputation as a hot spot for fighting between the PPK and Turkish
army. The walls (second biggest fortified walls after the Great Wall) are quite
impressive if a bit run down and the town has several neat buildings made of
alternating layered black and white rock. It also has a couple of impressive caravanasarei
(buildings with a large internal courtyard surrounded by stalls and restaurants
looking down from balconies above) that were used in the times of the silk
route as trading posts. The flight back to Istanbul was fairly uninteresting apart from
the woman wearing full burkas with cowboy hats!?
Our
last night in Turkey,
Dusk still wasn’t feeling too well and not interested in dinner. I headed out
to find something to eat but really didn’t feel like going to a restaurant
alone. I decided to have a random dinner from what I could find from the street
vendors, sit down in the park by the Aya Sofia and Blue Mosque and watch the
tourists and locals as they bustled about. Dinner turned out to be not that
good. A hungry looking skinny stray cat turned its nose up at the remains of my
doner kebab, the corn on the cob was super salty and tough, the sticky Turkish
ice cream got a bit sickly but the cay (which I had developed a taste for in
Turkey) was good and even though the food was bad it was quite nice just
chilling out in the evening surrounded by amazing buildings while everyone
bustled about. A pretty neat end to our time in Turkey – for one of us at least.
