Leaving Cappadocia at 7am, I felt a guilty relief as we set off to Konya. Have had enough of Cappadocia. Although pleasant, it was just not my scene (see previous blog). Enroute to Konya, we passed through Aksaray which has a very well-preserved 13thC Seljuk caravanserai - the Sultan Hani.
Before Akseray however, is the Derinkuyu underground city which was used for centuries as a refuge from wars or persecutions, starting from pre-Christian times (BC). People never lived permanently in the underground city; it was always only a temporary refuge but one of grand proportions. It is a multi-level labyrinth of underground caves served by narrow stairs, some of which are so low that even with my midget height, I had to crouch down to be able to climb them. We descended down to the lowest excavated level (we were told the 7th level). The city is equipped with a well as well as designated areas on higher floors (closer to the surface) for animals (after all, it doesn't make sense to drag the animals all the way to the lowest level). Evidence of christian churches are also visible. Arriving early in the morning, we were the only ones in the underground city and one felt the atmosphere keenly being just the few of us. By the time we were on our way out, a French group had just begin its tour, so it was good timing indeed.
Afterwards, we stopped at the 13thC Sultan Hani, the highlight before Konya. Sultan Hani is a caravanserai and arranged in the traditional style. High citadel-like walls form a rectangale with a decorated entrance in the Islamic "stalactite" style. The entrance leads to courtyard with a small mosque in the middle (a "mescit"). The courtyard holds the "summer rooms" of the caravanserai with the right side being open arched halls for stables and goods and the left being rooms for the travellers. Directly opposite the front entrance is an entrance to an enclosed area which represented the "winter rooms". On first sight, the winter rooms seemed to be quite modest in size, but once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see that it was a vast hall with eight sets of arches lengthways and three sections from left to right, much larger than the courtyard. Pigeons huddled in the windows and occasionally swooped across the hall.
It was possible to climb up to the upper floor of the mescit and take panoramic photographs of the empty courtyard. Again, I was lucky with timing as when I was about to leave, a big Indonesian tour group arrived. Not unexpectedly, all they did was to loiter around the entrance and take photographs there. It seemed that either it wasn't part of their itinerary to visit the caravanserai properly, or none of them was interested. Many of the ladies seemed more keen on preening and posing and adjusting their designer bags for the photographs. Whether by design or default, it was pretty disillusioning to see people making a long trip and stopping at a significant and well-preserved sight, but having zero curisity to find out more. If that were the case, one might as well not have stopped. This kind of "tick the box" travelling really annoys me to no end.
