Nomad Nick Tales from somewhere or other

(Turkey, 1998)

The moment you’re off the boat, the marketing hits you like a wrecking ball. Whatever you didn’t know you wanted just yet – be that a cheap room or a carpet or a postcard of a naked lady - there are guys lined up trying to hawk it to you.

The dude who zeroes in on us won’t be put off. We don’t want a room, maybe we’d like a place to eat? No, perhaps we’d like to hire a motorbike then? He follows us into Kusadasi’s maze of streets listing off services he can facilitate. While we’re fobbing him off on our left, another guy hones in from the right.

“Hey, you guys need a room?”

The first one turns to the newcomer. “Excuse me,” he says urbanely, “would you please f*%# off? I am already talking with these people.”

At first it’s amusing, then it becomes irritating, then it becomes exhausting, then it keeps going. Every second, on every corner, there’s someone brandishing a bargain your face. It feels like there’s nowhere you can just relax.

But of course that’s not true. Turkey offers everything. Relaxation, is it? Well, my friend, try the crystal springs of Pamukkale. They lie to the east, we are told, a legendary fairyland of sparkling pools and crystal formations of unearthly beauty. Just the place where naked ladies like to go for underwater frolics, if the many postcards of the place are to be believed. Sounds better than the perilous traffic and horrible ketchup drenched kebabs of Kusadasi anyway. East it is, in a car we hire from an office where the agents crowd around as we fill out the forms, as if a signature requires at least six witnesses. The “f*#% off” guy put us onto it.

Outside the heated congestion of the cities, Turkey is in fact achingly beautiful, a land of gold and purple fields and rippling mountains. We pass tractors overloaded with teetering hay bales, and motorcycles overloaded with people, whole families hanging off a single bike like contestants in an obscure world record attempt.

We are on a hot plain, semi-arid, when we see the first white flash of Pamukkale. It sparkles on a distant hill like a diamond. I can already imagine the feel of cool water.

At the crest of the hill is a magnificent resort but we ignore it, seeking the pools.

And there they are, dry as heartbreak. Empty. Not a drop of water on the whole scorched hillside. The crystal terraces lie bare, trodden under tourist feet and dotted with warning signs.

The resort is like an abandoned Vegas – baths of imperial grandeur reduced to hollow pits, marble stairs overhanging empty space where once were luxurious private spas. Not even the fabled springs had enough water to feed extravagance on this scale. This is a place picked to a skeleton by excess.

“Postcard?” offers a guy, flashing a picture of wonders no longer found here. No, mate, not today.