We travelled around Turkey together. These are the places we
visited:
Selchuk
The town is very quiet and laid back – perfect for what I
wanted after Istanbul. Rin and I had a great time exploring the ruins or a citadel
in Selchuk and the following day walking 3 kms out of town to reach the bigger
ruin complex, which hosted an impressive ancient Roman amphitheatre. The
history, which I won’t detail here, was quite interesting. But to me the point
of travelling is not to see what people were doing way back when, but to see
what they are doing now. I am usually affected more profoundly by the ordinary
as opposed to the extraordinary, though the latter can be usually be well worth
the entrance fee. That’s why, when Rin and I stumbled across a market with
locals selling veggies and homemade clothing etc., I was pleased to see the
locals living their interesting and different lives in the now. We bought some
Turkish delight and some nuts off an old lady, and some fruit off an old man.
As turkey is a Muslim majority country, the Mosques
throughout the town and the countryside in reaching the town were very
impressive, and the call to prayer (an Arabic song reciting the Koran) that
sounds several times a day makes these small towns so much more exotic.
Pamukkale
As we got closer to Pammukale, which translates to Cotton
Mountain, the white mass that looks like its snowed on just one section of a
mountain slope got bigger and bigger. Exploring the natural phenomenon, I
remember thinking it was somehow a combination of a ski slope and a cave. The
limestone feature is, as the photos show, pure white and crystalline, and looks
completely surreal in the landscape. Add the pools, which punctuate the slope,
and the streaming water which constantly flows over the slope and allows this
feature to continue to grow, and it soon looks like the set of a sci fi movie.
It was great to walk around barefoot and take a dip in the pools. And a cherry
on top is the ancient ruins just above where an ancient peoples set up shop to
take advantage of the nice pools and great scenery.
Fethiye
My first swim of months of swims in the mediterrean, and a
great place for it. Also, here we caught a bus up into the hills to visit an
old Greek town that had been cleared out and abandoned when the Turkish government
kicked all minority Greeks out of the country. To this day it remains as a
ghost town. From there we walked 10kms back into town in the 38 degree
temperature. 
Antalya
The town has a nice ‘old town’ area but trying to explore it
during the day where temperatures were a sticky and humid 38 degrees was a bit
painful. Nonetheless, there was some nice coastline scenery with waterfalls
pouring over small cliffs into the calm Mediterranean sea, and crystal clear
water. And Antalya was the place of one of my fondest memories this year; each
night we’d head down to the pebbly beach after the sun had gone down and the
air cooled off, and swim in the clear water as the sky turned pink and the
growing moon rose over the sea horizon. To make it more perfect there are
enormous mountains to the right of the horizon which were painted in soft blues
and purples that time of day, and to the left a steady stream of planes taking
off into the evening sky. It felt surreal. Floating on the dusk…(no photo because we never wanted to take valuables down to beach)
Konya
As I previously mentioned about the ordinary being more satisfying
than the extraordinary, Konya was one of the highlights of Turkey for me. There’s
not a lot to see or do here but it was a fascinating place to stop because it
was not touristy at all and Erin and I were getting looks from the locals. This
town is one of the most conservative Muslim in the country and the majority of
women cover up. I had to put on long pants in the heat and Rin had to cover herself
up a lot, just to be respectful. When we went to visit a mosque, she had to
cover everything, including her head. But hilariously, in a market place we saw
a stall selling all sorts of lingerie, some of it quite kinky, by a lady in full
black headpiece. It really makes me wonder what goes on under those burkas.
In this town we got to see a performance of the dervish
twirling dance, which is a Sufi dance that connects the dances to god as they
spin endlessly and go into a trance. It was cool to see.
Cappadoccia
The most highly anticipated stop here and it didn’t let us
down. It’s a strange landscape of white and pink rock jutting rock and ‘fairy chimneys’ pointing
into the sky, some of which people have hollowed out to live inside. We stayed
in a cave hotel and did lots of hiking. Walking through this bizzare landscape
and hearing the Muslim call to prayer in the distance just made the whole thing
more alien.
The highlight was getting up at 3.30 in the morning to do a
balloon ride over the landscape at dawn. This was extraordinary, and as I said,
sometimes it’s worth the entrance fee. We floated in amongst the valleys of the
mars like landscape and then high into the air as the sun rose and the moon
went down. That blew my mind.
The air was so calm that our driver landed the balloon on
the trailer and we didn’t get to crash land (which I was looking forward too).
The capital city of Turkey. I guess it’s like Canberra in
the sense that there’s not much going on. We made a stopover just to have a
look around and while there wasn’t much to see in terms of sights, it was nice
to walk around and see people go about their business. Also, there was still
tension between protesters and police, which made me a little concerned about
heading back to Istanbul…
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