Dubai (October 31-November 1, 2011)

We scheduled an extended layover in Dubai en route from Istanbul to Kathmandu, spending just 31 hours in this sprawling, glitzy, sandy city on the Persian Gulf. This proved to be enough time for us to see the cultural highlights and get our fix of western shopping and eating, and was about all the time our budget could afford in this land of luxury.

We arrived on the red-eye from Istanbul, spending just long enough in our hotel for breakfast and a shower before setting out on our whirlwind tour. We began in Old Dubai, walking along Dubai Creek with its modern buildings juxtaposed against the colorful, weighed-down “dhows” on the creek, which take goods up the gulf to Iran. We walked around the Deira souks (markets), the most famous of which is the gold souk, where every shop window is full of gold jewelry, from simple bangles to over-the-top necklaces and tiaras. After six weeks in Turkey, touring Roman ruins and 10,000 year old archaeological sites, the fifty-year old “Old Dubai” felt pretty modern.

“New Dubai” is all about being over the top: the tallest, the biggest, the fanciest. It consists of a relatively narrow strip sprawling along the Gulf Coast for more than 25 kilometers, and it is full of modern architectural marvels. We began our exploration of this area by taking the metro out to “The Walk,” an outdoor shopping and dining strip facing the beach where we stopped for iced Starbucks (our first non-nescafe coffee in a month), and walked along Jumeirah beach with its wide sandy beach full of (foreign) sunbathers, dipping our toes in the warm Gulf waters. Next, we headed to the infamous “Palm,” the manmade community built on a palm tree-shaped landfill jutting out into the Gulf. There, we walked around the extravagant Atlantis Hotel located at the tip of the palm – with a Vegas-like over-the-top gaudiness, and where even entering the main lobby of the hotel has an extra charge (we snuck in).

We spent our evening checking out the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building at 828 meters (and over 160 floors). In its shadow is the Dubai Fountain, which has a nightly show set to music with the water surging as high as 150m. Of course, our trip to Dubai wouldn’t have been complete with visiting some of its famous malls (we managed to visit two). The more impressive of the two, the Dubai Mall, is the world’s largest mall and is situated next to the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Fountain. Ferraris, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, and other luxury cars lined the valet parking area at the main entrance, and with over 1200 shops, an ice rink, indoor waterfalls, and a huge aquarium, you could walk around this mall for hours without ever retracing your steps. It was, in its way, beautiful and impressive, but we could have been anywhere in the world, with the chain stores making it feel more like Los Angeles than the Middle East.

Our quick trip was fascinating, and we did take advantage of the chain restaurants offering familiar foods, but 31 hours was definitely enough time for us in this Middle Eastern metropolis. In the morning we headed back to the airport and boarded our flight where we would again be transported to a completely different world: Kathmandu.

Click on the photo below to view our Dubai photo album:

Mardin and Diyarbakir (October 23-October 28, 2011)

We planned to finish our time in eastern Turkey with quick stops in Mardin and Diyarbakir before heading to the mountainous Lake Van area. When we arrived in Mardin, however, we learned that a 7.2-magnitude earthquake had struck Van, claiming the lives of over 600 people, injuring more than 4,000, and devastating the region’s infrastructure. Instead of continuing east, therefore, we extended our stay in Diyarbakir and then flew back to Istanbul early to spend our last few days in Turkey.

Mardin, where we spent just one night, lies 20 miles from the Syrian border and 100 miles from Iraq. The old part of town is sunbaked and dusty, with several pretty mosques and a large bazaar. There is definitely more of a Middle Eastern feel here than elsewhere in Turkey, no doubt due to its geography. Sitting on a high promontory overlooking the plains of Mesopotamia, it was a great spot from which to admire the vast expanse of the “fertile crescent.”

From Mardin we moved on to Diyarbakir, the heart of Kurdish Turkey. Though there are an estimated 15 million Kurdish people living in Turkey, their cultural and linguistic identities have been basically denied by the Turkish government and, understandably, there is tension between the Kurdish people and the Turkish government. Diyarbakir has a somewhat bad reputation around Turkey because people associate the city with the actions of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a frequently violent organization tied to the Kurdish separatist movement Aware of this history and reputation, we were somewhat wary of the city at first, but ultimately didn’t think it was all that different from other Turkish cities that we visited. It may have been poorer than anywhere else we visited in Turkey, it lacked the Ataturk statues that sat ubiquitously at every street corner and square in other cities, and fewer people spoke English, but the people were as friendly and open as anywhere else (though they were quick to identify as Kurdish and point out they were not Turkish).  

During our longer-than-expected stay in Diyarbakir we explored the city walls (supposedly second most extensive in the world after the Great Wall of China), mosques, churches and bazaars. We were glad to get to visit this Kurdish center and are thankful to our friend Sozdar, a native of Diyarbakir, who helped inspire our visit and recommended some lovely restaurants for us to try during our stay!

Click on the photo below to view our Mardin and Diyarbakir photo album.

Urfa (October 20-October 23, 2011)

As we headed east, our next stop was Sanliurfa. The prefix “Sanli” was added to “Urfa” in 1984, meaning “Glorious Urfa”, but most still refer to it as Urfa. For us, the city offered a base from which to explore two archaeological sites, Nemrut Dagi and Gobekli Tepe, but the city itself also had something to offer:  it claims to be the birthplace of the prophet Abraham and there is a complex of monuments and mosques dedicated to him that are a destination for Muslim pilgrims.

Nemrut Dagi is a 2150-meter mountain, whose artificial summit – a 50-meter high pyramid of small rocks – was commissioned by a pre-Roman local king, Antiochus I Epiphanes, in the first century BC. On two sides of the pyramid, facing east and west, he built temples and had them adorned with large statues of gods, including Apollo and Zeus, and himself. Now, more than 2,000 years later, the two-meter tall heads of the statues have been toppled by earthquakes and the elements, and add a surreal quality to the site as they stare out from the summit in front of their still seated bodies.

The other site we visited, Gobekli Tepe, wasn’t really discovered until the mid-1990s. The site consists of a series of tall, t-shaped limestone pillars, carved with human and animal reliefs, arranged in circles around a central pillar. Four of these circles have been excavated so far, but there are an estimated 16 more, as yet to be unearthed. They are believed to have been used for religious rituals, and the earliest of these structures has been dated to the 10^th century BC, (7,000 years before Stonehenge), making this the oldest known religious site in the world. The site is important, archaeologically speaking, not just because of its age (hunter-gatherers of this time were not thought to have the capacity to build such a site), but because it suggests that a desire to worship or practice sacred rituals, and not environmental reasons, may have led hunter-gatherers to transition into the stationary, agricultural societies that made up the earliest civilizations. A great National Geographic article describes the site and its importance better than we can. The site itself is still being actively excavated. In fact, the team of archaeologists was onsite during our visit, with several members looking very much like Indiana Jones in khakis, leather boots, and suspenders.

Nemrut Dagi and Gobekli Tepe aren’t the easiest places to get to without joining a large tour group or having your own means of transportation. In Urfa, we found a local guide to take us to the sites (and some others along the way). Yusuf, a short, 60-something, energetic man who walked with a cane, was a complete character. He was constantly joking, singing, and sharing anecdotes, and in time he had us singing along to his silly songs and speaking his own made up words (Gugugaloo!). About fifty percent of what he had to say about any particular place or site was dubious at best, but his heart was always in the right place. He took us to great restaurants that we would have never chosen, gave us hand-rolled cigarettes with raw Turkish tobacco, made us try a dish that he had told us would make us sick only moments earlier, and stopped at a roadside fruit vendor to buy us a huge melon (and proceeded to cut it for us and make us eat the whole thing). In short, he made our trips to these sites a lot more fun.

Back in Urfa, we were glad to have some extra time to explore the city. We visited the ruins of Urfa Castle, situated atop the tallest hill in town with wonderful views over the city, and the complex of mosques and monuments at the base of the hill, including the Pool of Sacred Fish (Balıklı Göl), where legend has it God saved Abraham after he was ordered to be burned by the local king, Nimrod, by turning the fire into water (and the coals into fish).

Click on the photo below to view our Urfa photo album.

Gaziantep (October 17-October 20, 2011)

From Cappadocia we headed further east into Turkey to the city of Gaziantep. This city initially intrigued us because of its reputation throughout Turkey for its cuisine, baklava in particular (fabled to be the best in Turkey). What we found when we got there was a city of delicious food, friendly and curious people, an interesting history, and a fabulous archaeological museum.

Gaziantep’s reputation for its cuisine is deserved. There seemed to be baklava shops on every corner (and we tried as many as we could in our short stay, but there are supposedly more than 180), but the city also has several wonderful restaurants showcasing regional cuisine. At one wonderful lokanta the waiter took pity on us (and our total naivety about the menu) and brought us small plates so we could try a little of everything. At a kebab and baklava restaurant – what more could we ask for – we discovered what might have been our favorite type of kebab, ali nazik: grilled ground lamb served over pureed eggplant and yogurt.

In between visits to baklava shops we found some time to visit the city’s archaeological museum devoted to mosaics from the nearby Roman city of Zeugma. Excavations started at the city in 1987 and uncovered a large number of beautiful mosaics, but there was little action at the site until 1999, when archaeologists rushed to excavate and preserve the mosaics before the newly built Birecik Dam flooded the city in 2000.  The museum has an amazing collection of mosaics saved from the ruins just before the flooding, and while about 800 square meters of mosaics are displayed in the museum, many were lost forever as a result of the flooding and, sadly, still others were looted by collectors after the discovery of the site but before they could be moved to the museum. The most famous piece in the collection, “Gypsy Girl,” is a fraction of one of these looted mosaics. The fact that only part of this girl’s image remains – her bangle earrings, head scarf, and severe stare – make the work even more intriguing.

Finally, at another city museum, we found that Gaziantep played a memorable role in Turkey’s eventual reunification. After WWI the Ottoman Empire was divided among European powers, with the French, Italians, Greeks, and Russians all laying some claim. When French soldiers attempted to siege Gaziantep (then known only as “Antep”) in 1920, the citizens resisted. The French cut off all supplies, essentially starving the city into submission; some 6,000 Gaziantep citizens died before the city surrendered 10 months later. Though they lost the battle, the city’s courageous stand was made an example of the need for Turkish solidarity and independence and held up as an example by General Kemal Mustafa (eventual founder and first president of modern Turkey). Just as this General would take the name “Ataturk,” meaning “Father of Turkey,” Antep would take the prefix “Gazi,” meaning “war hero."

Click on the photo below to view our Gaziantep photo album.

Cappadocia (October 13-October 17, 2011)

Located in central Turkey on an arid, 1000-meter high plateau dotted with dormant volcanoes, the geologically- and historically-rich Cappadocia region was one of the highlights of our six weeks in Turkey. Relatively recent volcanic activity in the region deposited a thick blanket of soft tuff (rock formed from volcanic ash) and harder lava across the area, and subsequent erosion of these rock layers has created a unique and fascinating landscape featuring tall columns, cones, and spires of rock, locally referred to as fairy chimneys.

The region also has an intriguing history: between the 4^th and 11^th centuries, Christians seeking refuge from religious persecution by the Romans carved their churches and monasteries into the soft tuff to keep them hidden. The result is a landscape scattered with the spectacular remains of their efforts. These range from small fairy chimneys with one-room churches (complete with small windows and doors) to large, multi-story churches with high-arched ceilings and beautiful, well-preserved frescoes, to complete monastic communities with living quarters, dining rooms and kitchens. The best are generally preserved and protected, but many other amazing structures are open to anyone who can find them. Meanwhile, hundreds are being used for storage by local farmers.

With so much to offer, it is not surprising that the area has become popular with both foreign and Turkish tourists. We stayed in one of the many popular “cave hotels” in Goreme that offer rooms carved into the bedrock (though much more recently). The town is surrounded by a number of valleys, each with a unique landscape, and we spent much of our time here hiking through them in the crisp fall weather.

We visited the Goreme Open-Air Museum, which protects a monastery with some of the most well-preserved frescoed churches in Cappadocia. The best was the “Karanlik Kilise” (Dark Church) – every inch covered in frescoes of the holy family and important saints. In most churches with paintings of people the eyes were later carved out by Turks who were wary of the “evil eye”. Other churches, from the iconoclastic period (when images were outlawed), are simply painted in red and white patterns with no images of people or animals.

Our hikes included a walk through the “Rose Valley” and “Red Valley” areas to the town of Cavusin, and another to the Devrent Valley and Pasabagi Valley. The Rose Valley and Red Valley trail system meandered through a series of deeply incised canyons along the face of a high plateau. We encountered numerous churches along the way, but fortunately, not many people. This hike ended at the village of Cavusin, with a spectacular abandoned old town cut into the rock face. We climbed to the top of the old town and watched the sun set over the area with our feet dangling off the edge. Our trip to Devrent Valley and Pasabagi Valley happened to be on a Sunday, and we found that locals were also out exploring in full-force. These valleys are both pretty small, so our plan included taking a public bus to a starting point, walking along the road to Devrent Valley (known for rock formations that look like animals), and then walking along the road to Pasabagi Valley (known for its mushroom shaped pillars). In reality, though, we found that we never had to walk because generous Turkish locals would pull over and offer us rides (without our even asking). One such vehicle was a mini-bus full of college-age Turks. When we got in the van they put on Turkish music and danced and sang along in the aisles, presumably for our benefit, but all in good fun. Many of the locals were equally intrigued by our presence and asked to take photos with us as we explored. One young girl and her grandfather chatted us up at the bus station and later added us as facebook friends!

The Cappadocia region is rather large and there is a lot to see, so one day we joined an all-day tour group that took us hiking in the Ilhara Valley, on a visit to Selime Monastery, and to one of the region’s several “Underground Cities." Built by Byzantine Christians in the 7th century, Kaymakli was a defensive stronghold that extended 8 stories underground and could house up to 3000 people and their supplies for several months at a time. The conditions would have been cramped, but the architecture of this structure was impressive.

On our final morning in Goreme we woke before sunrise and hiked to a view point above town to watch hot air balloons take off at dawn. This is an extremely popular tourist activity in the region, and we can only imagine that the scenery viewed from above at first light is particularly dramatic and spectacular. Unfortunately, our budget didn’t allow for a trip ourselves, but even watching the balloons light up and soar across the landscape made for a pretty sight and a nice way to spend our last morning in Cappadocia.

Click on the photo below for our Cappadocia photo album.

Pamukkale and Hierapolis (October 10-October 12, 2011)

Our next stop took us east to the town of Pamukkale (Turkish for “Cotton Castle”), home to some distinctive terraced travertine deposits and the ruins of the Roman city of Hierapolis. The tiny town itself doesn’t have much to offer (though we did find some half-decent Korean bi-bim-bap), and we spent one of our days here watching movies in our room while we waited out a rain storm. We spent the following day exploring the bleached-white travertines and the ruins that sit above them. The unusual landscape is the result of a series of hot springs along the top of the steep, 200-meter high slope that emit mineral-rich waters that deposit white calcium carbonate as they flow down the hillside, creating a series of pools and terraces.

As you walk uphill from the town you follow a path across the travertines (no shoes allowed!) to get to the ruins of Hierapolis. Here you get fabulous close-ups of this unique geological formation, nice views of the town and countryside, and can enjoy the warm waters that still flow down the terraces. Fortunately for us, few people took the time to walk up the travertines; most people, it seemed, got dropped off by their tour bus at the ruins at the top and only explored the upper 100 meters of the path through the travertines. These tourists did, however, make for excellent people watching: for some reason the site is popular among Russian tourists who pose provocatively for photos in their bikinis and speedos around the travertines; an interesting and peculiar contrast to the modestly dressed Turkish tourists (we also noticed this, to a lesser extent, at Ephesus).

At the top of the hill are the ruins of the Roman city of Hierapolis, founded as a spa and healing town in the second century BC (they believed that the waters had therapeutic properties). The site is extensive and contains the ruins of a Byzantine church and several temples, a 12,000-seat theater, agora (one of the largest ever discovered), baths and a public latrine house, and a large necropolis with hundreds of tombs overlooking the travertines. We spent an entire day exploring the fascinating site (and gaping at our fascinating fellow-tourists) then caught another overnight bus further east to the town of Goreme, in Cappadocia.

Click on the photo below to view our Pamukkale and Hierapolis photo album.

Selcuk and Ephesus (October 8-October 10, 2011)

From Istanbul we took an overnight bus south to the town of Selcuk, jumping off point for a visit to the ruins of Ephesus. Since our bus did not depart until 11:30 p.m., we watched Turkey lose to Germany in a Euro 2012 soccer match while we waited at the main Istanbul bus station. The circus-like atmosphere that erupted at the station during the game, however, did not cease when the game did. In fact, it seemed to increase. The Turks continued to beat on drums, sing, chant, and race around the large, oval-shaped station honking and hanging out the windows waving flags. The bus boarding area was swarmed, fireworks were being shot off, and young men were being picked up by groups of their friends and tossed in the air. After we pushed our way through the crowd and boarded our bus, we discovered that the celebration was for the young Turkish men departing for their mandatory military service, and the mobs of people were friends and family. Eventually, the enthusiastic young men boarded our bus, and the mob surrounded it, rocking it and slapping the sides and windows (the same scene was playing out at the other 30 departing buses). The angry driver had to literally inch his way out of the station. At one point, a crowd blocked the path of the bus, and a man lit a red torch and held it in the air as the group sang the Turkish national anthem. The young soldiers moved to the front of the bus to salute them during the anthem as tearful mothers and girlfriends waved goodbye. When we finally departed the station about 45 minutes late, we both breathed a sigh of relief. We didn’t know at that point, though, that the same scene was about to replay four more times as we stopped at different Istanbul stations to pick up more passengers, ultimately putting us about 2½ hours behind schedule!

Needless to say, we were a little tired when we reached Selcuk, but we found our way to a nice pension in town and, after a long nap, set out to explore the town. Selcuk is relatively small, but has some interesting ruins that we wandered through, including the Basilica of St. John, built by Emperor Justinian and dedicated to the Saint who is said to have visited Ephesus twice, and a Roman aqueduct, now a nesting place for storks. In the afternoon, we stumbled upon the huge Saturday market. For a ridiculously small amount of money, we stocked up on grapes, tomatoes, fresh feta cheese, and olives, which made for an excellent lunch the next day while exploring Ephesus.

Founded in the 10^th century BC, Ephesus became an important Roman port, growing to an estimated 250,000 residents during its peak in the first century BC before eventually falling into decline as its harbor silted in. The city was most famous for its Temple of Artemis, dedicated to their goddess of fertility. The temple was the largest in the world at the time, earning it a spot as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Today, however, one reconstructed column and the foundation are all that remain.

Though only about 20% of Ephesus has been unearthed so far, what exists is certainly impressive. Curetes Way, the main thoroughfare of Ephesus, is lined with the ruins of shops, fountains, baths and latrines, and even a brothel. The beautiful Library of Celsus, now not much more than a façade, was once the world’s third largest library, and the Terraced Houses of the city’s wealthy class have beautifully preserved frescoed walls and mosaic floors (currently carefully being excavated and reassembled by a team of Austrians).

We also visited the Ephesus Museum, in Selcuk, where many of the statues and artifacts found at the site are now located, including several versions of the multi-breasted Artemis herself. Other gems included Priapus, the Phallic God, an infantile head and arm from a 7-meter tall statue of Emperor Domitian, and innumerable statues of Eros.

Click on the photo below to view our Selcuk and Ephesus photo album.