15 Days in Turkey
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It was totally spontaneous, a knee-jerk response to what I’d just read. I’d been vaguely looking for something for us both to look forward to after Brian recovered from his operation.
Suddenly, there it was -15 days in Turkey in a small group at a ridiculously reasonable cost that included return flights.
What to lose?
Sixty years earlier I’d spent some time in Turkey. I had changed since then of course, but so had Turkey, and in what ways? Despite the manic congestion, human, animal, and vehicular in Istanbul, the smells, and the rubbish everywhere, I’d found it exciting. Truly cosmopolitan.
Crossing the Bosporus (by ferry back then) the Asian side was comprised of a smattering of villages in hills covered by heather. Both villages and heather by now had disappeared and were replaced with densely clustered high-rise apartments and offices. Istanbul’s current population is in excess of twenty-two million.
On that trip, I’d driven across Turkey towards the Arab lands. I recall in particular Cappadocia. What a stunning landscape. The harshness of the country was mitigated by the cliffs and pillars that successive generations had used for homes and churches. Just dug out of the solid rock. Now those habitations and holy places have been made readily accessible.
On this recent trip, we inspected an underground township that had been first inhabited in the first century AD. At its peak, it housed over three thousand souls.
Turkey’s history, and the resultant culture, I found fascinating. Such a rich history, placed as it is on the junction of East and West, invaded and conquered by so many warring tribes over the centuries, and yet so much palpable evidence of sophisticated buildings and ways of life. I couldn’t resist comparing Troy and Ephesus. The first comprised the remains of ten civilisations, each built one on top of the other. It must be an archaeologist’s nightmare. Ephesus on the other hand was just abandoned, the population simply walking away from all those incredible marble colonnades, temples, libraries, baths, and theatres. Much easier excavation.
About the middle of the Tour one highlight occurred. We boarded our very own Gulet, a traditional Turkish ketch. It was ours (there were ten of us all up), with crew, for three days and nights in the Aegean Sea. We dribbled along the coast in incredibly turquoise water.
One could see the sea bottom when it was about thirteen metres deep. So many islands, Greece so very close. We stopped at a few villages, and sometimes just to explore among the steep, rocky shoreline. Swimming back out to the Gulet at anchor from such excursions was magic. Did I mention that the food was excellent?
For me another highlight was a hot air balloon flight in Cappadocia. Pre-dawn start, we went out in the countryside where the balloons were being prepared to be blown up. We were well up to observe a stunning sunrise across this remarkable landscape. Our pilot had been doing this for twelve years, and I’d have to say that he was very skilled. From being quite high he dropped us so that we passed within a couple of metres of some of those remarkable very large pillars and cliffs. On the top of one I saw a bird nest with young ones flapping, no doubt thinking we were bringing food. The bottom of the basket passed about a metre above the nest. There were one hundred and forty nine other balloons in the air in the same region. What a sight!After about ninety minutes we landed extremely smoothly and were rewarded by glasses of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice and French champagne.
So much more to tell . . . .
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