But we booked it early, back in Selcuk, with the magical package we bought from Jenate's tour arranger Ali, at the Tancun Pensione. Everything we are doing here in Cappadocia has cost us roughly $600 each - AUSTRALIAN Dollars. That includes the seven days accommodation at this place - the Peri Pensione in Goreme, two full day tours (Green and Red), the Mt. Nimrut tour of three days and two nights, and the balloon ride. Can you believe it?? It's an outrageously good deal. I will tell you though, that Jenate got it for us by haggling with Ali, a tour organizer and mate, and it won't be repeated. Ali was kind of cajoled into it, as a favour to Jenate. There are kick backs no doubt, but that's the way the Turks operate. It's who you know around here. For some reason Jenate really liked us and went out of his way to get us this deal. We are truly amazed and thankful.
So on to the tour. It was three days, lots of driving and sight seeing, but interesting, and the early morning start to get up the mountain to see the ancient sculptures in the sun rise was magical. To begin, a few pictures of the landscape out there...it's rolling open country, not too many trees but enough water bodies to be able to grow
plenty of fruit and vegetables. You don't see livestock much...just the occasional donkey. The cities are seemingly all high rise dots in a desert, small and compact.
The roads are really good....better than Australian roads in many instances.
Early on in the tour, we stopped at a Caravanserai, which was like a hotel/motel for the camel caravans that journeyed along the silk route between Asia and the Middle East. This was a large building with a court yard in the centre. We were shown the living quarters for the people and where the animals were sheltered. It wasn't hard to imagine the place full of the images, sounds and smells of hundreds of years ago...like something out of the Arabian Nights.
This lady kindly let me take her picture. She is typical of the women of Turkey.
Back into the mini bus and on through changing landscapes, growing in stature and having few settlements along the way...just the occasional small city that we blew in and out of in minutes. The Turks like forests of high rises, seemingly uninhabited. The farm workers live in them rather than out in the country, apparently, for the convenience of city living. The cities we see are all clean and the society organized and very civil. The religion keeps everyone in good behaviour mode and the month of Ramadan (Ramazan) continues to be observed.
We really like the Turkish people. I still have issues with the women being rare to see in the streets though. They are there, but it's almost 80/20 ratio.
We drove all day, stopping at the country's premier ice creamery, then lunch an hour later. We arrived at the town close to Mt. Nemrut (40 minutes away) and booked into a modern hotel around 6 PM. No lack of facilities here, but some daggy touches of cartoonery in the architecture out in the patio area where we had dinner. This is not a criticism....it's the culture here and there is so much to admire.
MOUNT NEMRUT
We were roused around 2.30 a.m. for the early drive out to the mountain. We had been told it would be really cold up there, sometimes down in the zero degrees but as it happened, it was fairly mild. We rugged up anyway, and headed out. It was full moon, so the clear conditions guaranteed a spectacular moondown and sunrise, we hoped. Near the top of the mountain, we got out of the minivan at the base camp and walked, following a stone slabbed footpath up to the peak. The night was growing light and expectations were high.
This is looking back down at base camp, at the stragglers coming up the path.
Then looking back up at the top, a hard grind but not so far. Presently rounding the mountain to the east side, we saw we were not alone.
Clambering over some rocks and stones, we turned and this is what we saw.
Massive stone thrones, headless torsos, with the heads lined up below.As the light in the east grew, we could view the scene as the stones slowly grew clearer.
This is a UNESCO World Heritage site, believed to be a royal tomb from the first century BCE. It was built by King Antiochus, as a religious dedication site for offerings to the gods, and to put himself in the same ranking as gods such as Hercules, Zeus and Apollo with lions and eagles represented as well.
The sculptures of seated figures were beheaded at some point, most likely through the Muslim belief that images of people and animals is pagan and not to be seen.
Graven images etc. The area is cordoned off and you can't walk around them but you can see that they are badly damaged, both by the attacks and by weathering from the heat and cold of the site. All the rocks up here are riven with cracking.
The tiny stones you see behind the thrones are supposed to have been arranged like that by Antiochus himself, however, there have been attempts to find his tomb, presumably inside the hill, The site was actually 'excavated' during the 1950's by an American archaeologist, who took it upon herself to use some dynamite to open it up. Nothing was found.
Graven images etc. The area is cordoned off and you can't walk around them but you can see that they are badly damaged, both by the attacks and by weathering from the heat and cold of the site. All the rocks up here are riven with cracking.
The tiny stones you see behind the thrones are supposed to have been arranged like that by Antiochus himself, however, there have been attempts to find his tomb, presumably inside the hill, The site was actually 'excavated' during the 1950's by an American archaeologist, who took it upon herself to use some dynamite to open it up. Nothing was found.
The sun was rising in the east, and we looked way over to the horizon, with the
Euphrates river a silver squiggle in the bottom of the valley.
This is the crew we travelled with ....a family of four gals from Hong Kong, a couple of Americans, one bloke from Singapore, the tour guide and us. We were a happy group and got along really well. You could call us a bus load of socialists....after the three days we got to know each other and had many interesting conversations on the bus and over the table during meals.
We got off the mountain after about two hours and headed off to other attractions like an old cave and early site of the Hittites nearby, and a Roman bridge that has been rebuilt, but was used by the Turks until very recently. The third day was mostly driving home, with a stop off at a Bedouin house, which is close to the Syrian border, and were lucky to get a mild day, because only two weeks ago it tipped the thermometer at 55 degrees C.
The next blog will be of the RED TOUR
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete