SE Turkey - Off the Tourist Trail

Our "tour guides" in Diyarbakır

Exactly one week ago now we made it to the first new country in 10 weeks - Turkey.  Obviously everyone goes to Istanbul, then most stick to the western part of the country.  Naturally, we decided to not even leave the Istanbul airport (or we might have never left the city), and fly straight to the city of Diyarbakır in SE Turkey.  From the moment we got to the airport it was clear that we were no longer on the tourist trail.  There was no English signs in the airport, and no one there even spoke any English.  We managed to get on a bus that was headed for the city center.  As soon as we stepped off the bus with our large backpacks, lots of heads were turning.  Tourists are not something they see very often.

We wandered into the old city which is a maze of small alleys.  Within 15 minutes, 3 older schoolkids came up to us and was trying to help us get to where we were going.  Only slight issue here, was that they spoke almost no English, and we speak no Turkish.  Amazingly though that was not too much of a hindrance, for us to spend the next few hours together walking around the city and drinking tea.  We would try to communicate using the few words we knew, hand signals, and other such grunts and gestures.  It was actually quite funny and interesting.  What was also truly amazing is that they were not at all trying to sell us anything or get any money from us.  They were just genuinely interested in us as people and wanted to spend some time with us.

Looking through some ruins at the Tigris River

Then when it was getting time for us to go find our couchsurfers (Serhat's) apartment, they offered to show us the way and walk us there.  Along the way, we had to stop and ask someone directions.  He knew the way and walked with us the rest of the way.  As we were there a little early (before Serhat got home from work), he called Serhat and organized that we'd just go to his house for dinner.  This was all done in Turkish, so we had no idea what was going on.  Muhammed, who also speaks almost no English, brought us back to his house, we met his Mom and sister, and had a wonderful meal.  We then spent the next couple hours in front of the computer talking to each other through Google Translate.

Fish Ponds in Şanlıurfa

We spent the next day wandering the city of Diyarbakır and the next day we went to Şanlıurfa, another city in that region.  These days were full of wandering around the cities, eating loads of wonderful food, and having so many random encounters with strangers, young and old, who just wanted to talk and have some tea.  NONE of them were doing that just to try to sell us stuff.  In Şanlıurfa we did get a small Turkish/English dictionary which was really worthwhile.  Cause again in Şanlıurfa, we were walking around with our big backpacks until it was time to go meet our couchsurfing host, and we ended up being shown around by a group of schoolboys (ages 11-13) and conversing slowly - them practicing English with their dictionary and us responding in Turkish.  They walked us all the way to this fish pond park, when some guy came up to us and asked us if we were couchsurfers!  Turns out Adam was also a host, not ours, but I guess most people would drop their bags off at a hotel if they had one so he correctly assumed we were staying with someone.

Having tea with Adam

Entrance to Abraham's
birthplace

Şanlıurfa is another really cool city, and in fact one of the oldest in the world.  Its history goes back some 6000 years.  There is even this one cave there that is presumed to be the birthplace of Abraham - yea, that Abraham from biblical times.

It was really great and refreshing to finally get away from the tourist trail in order to have the opportunity to have some genuine experiences with the local culture and people.  It seems one thing that had been really unsatisfying about our travels all through SE Asia and Nepal for the past 5 months was being in really touristy places.  Unfortunately in these countries, the grooves are worn so deeply that it is nearly impossible to break out unless you have a lot of time, money, and previous knowledge of the language and culture.  When people deal with thousands of foreigners a year, you are just another chance for them to make some money.  These are mostly poor countries, so you cant blame them for trying to feed their family, but it does prevent any genuine encounters with people.  The culture also begins to revolve around tourism and whatever festivals and local ways of life are adjusted so that tourists can watch and take pictures, and of course pay some money.  Now that we managed to get away from all that for a little while, it really opened up the possibility to meet "real" people and genuinely enjoy each others company.

Şanlıurfa by night