Turkey was a big deal. I am a person with obsessions. I find a subject, something that makes my passion boil, and I fixate on it. On many occasions, I become jaded about the subject. In this case, with Turkey, I spent much of my adolescence obsessed with that country.
It all started with Sertab Erener, a Turkish pop diva who won Eurovision back in 2003.
I became obsessed with her music, and with the country as a whole. I wanted to go there SO badly. I even wanted to learn Turkish and live in Istanbul. Teenage dreams, which lasted a couple of years, but quite intensely.
My parents were well aware of my taste for Turkish, before the pandemic, we used to organise a family holiday for the four of us together: my parents, younger brother and me. In 2019, my parents invited us on an organised trip to Turkey. Seven days, one on arrival, four on the road and two in wonderful Istanbul.
Needless to say, it was a dream come true; when I dreamt of Turkey, back as a teenager, I didn’t have the self-confidence to enjoy such a country.
The trip started in the early stages of the first Challenge, so it was a challenge in itself to maintain the routine of the first Challenge during the trip.
The first day was quick, passing quickly between planes, exclusive seat-back movies, and transferring between flights. Arriving in Avanos, I completed the Challenge tasks remaining in the day. My father accompanied me as it was evening, and he was right to do so. There wasn’t much to see in that place, especially at that hour… I was probably the shiniest thing of the night, judging by what happened.
In the middle of the dawn, a sound woke me up, a mysterious chanting whose origin I did not know, it was the imam calling for believers to pray at the mosque.
The first day was wonderful. We visited the Cappadocia area where there are numerous archaeological remains of ancient people. The vast majority of them, history tells us, were early Christians. They were hiding from the constant invasions of the area. There are several sites, Özkonak was the first one we visited. It is a buried city and in fact, mostly unexplored, its origins are blurred.
Here, the story goes, Christians could hide for months with enough food and space. The site has ventilation shafts dug into the soft limestone rock, called toba. Honestly, it is an impressive place, there are a couple of other underground cities in the area, bigger ones, being Özkonak the most unknown, but also the most unexplored. Much remains to be discovered about these places, including their origin.
The underground tour took us through the excavated chambers and corridors. We saw a gigantic, polished rock in a circular shape, like a giant wheel, which served to block the passageways. It must have been a curious situation to be in. On the one hand, buried, under a rock. On the other, blocking the entrance to armies, mercenaries or bandits, who are unable to break through the rock. With provisions, but the torches as unique lights. It is a place worthy of good meditation, but pitifully on that occasion I was with a group of people, impossible.
The next stop was Göreme, the world-famous village carved into the curious rock formations.
It is a very special place indeed, the rock formations are called fairy chimneys. They really seem to have been sculpted by a hand with a taste for the fantastic.
Again, the Christians relied on the geology of the terrain and, I assume, the superstition of the time, so that their would-be invaders would not find them. The site is full of excavated caves, temples, stone tables, stairways and dwellings in general. It must have been a picturesque village in the past, for, in 2019, it still retained a particular charm. Exploring this place was freer, we were able to go at our own pace as it is a “closed” enclosure in which we were given a margin of time. Being a more touristy place, it was more crowded than the previous one. However, the number of people was not so obscene that we could not enjoy the place.
There were several curious signs in the chambers, which I still can’t interpret when I see them. Intrigued, I wondered what the symbology behind the traces was.
Uçisar was the last stop as far as rock-hewn cities are concerned. This imposing formation is a fortress, a castle, carved into the rock. There are corridors, rooms and staircases that interconnect all the spaces of the place. Its history is long, and it is not really known for certain when it began to be inhabited.
The earliest records date back to the 14th century, but it is assumed to have been inhabited before that.
The turbulent history of the area meant that many settlers needed to hide from possible invasions, as did the other two places visited earlier in the day. There are long-standing myths about tunnels that may have connected these sites in the past. However, this has never been verified as many of these tunnels, as well as the castle, have been eroded, looted and have deteriorated or collapsed.
On the trip, we did not actually go all the way to the site but stopped at a viewpoint to take photographs. There were many stalls selling products to tourists. As a good explorer, I decided to venture on a short hike up the mountain. It was worth it, the view was better, plus I found numerous caves, many of them inhabited by locals… one suspicious man even invited me to accompany him to his cave, an offer I quickly declined, putting more distance between the two of us. I would like to return to the area with more time, to get a real feel for the place, away from the tourist crowds.
After this visit, we went to a couple of artisan workshops, where they worked with leather and another where they made carpets. These kinds of visits were interesting, although they would have been more interesting if I had had the money to afford both leather and carpets at the high price they were offering, like 3000 euros for a leather jacket.
The second day started intensely. I don’t like to get up too early, especially on holiday, but because of the organised trip, I had to do it. I also don’t like waking up and HAVING to have breakfast. The impositions at six o’clock in the morning don’t sit well with me. Because of this, there was a small incident at the hotel buffet. One of the fellow travellers, a very glamorous one, sat in my place while I went to get food. When I came back and saw her sitting down, all my morning sweetness emerged, to make it clear to her that she should move from my place. According to my brother, a rabid pit bull would have sounded nicer than me. This got me thinking.
The bus ride was a long one, leaving central Anatolia behind, as we passed through the province of Konya, making one or two stops along the way.
The scenery on the road was surrounded by eternal plains, but always surrounded by high mountains with a biblical aura
A Caravanserais was the first stop. This was a place where silk road traders stopped to rest and trade with other travellers who were also in the area. The second stop was the Monastery of the Dancing Dervishes, a very special place, as it was home to the famous mystic Rumi. For my family and myself, it was one of the first mosques we visited as well. The place had literary pieces of great artistic value, as well as hundreds of years of history. Rumi seems to me to be an author I want to know more about, the little I have read of him has resonated with me a lot…
Well, while the visit to the monastery was taking place, I sought out the woman I had been rude to and apologised to her. She accepted and we became friends.
The journey continued, through that barren landscape, for hours, until we reached the cotton castle.
