Rain in Istanbul

About 5 days ago, Nico and I made another overnight journey from Kapadokya to Istanbul.  Finally we are arriving at what was meant to be our original and most looked forward to destination in Turkey.  There is so much history in this city which is the crossroads of Europe and Asia... Ottoman Empire... and all that which most likely you know more about it than I do.  I really didn't like my world history classes in 9th and 10th grade.

Anyway, the first day we booked a hostel to have somewhere to crash.  And that is pretty much all we did that first day.  Nap, went out for a walk down to the water (Golden Horn and Bosphorous Straight), and then bought some veggies.  For the first time since leaving New Zealand we actually have a kitchen.  It was really nice to put something together, not to say that I don't like going out for Turkish food (which is really really really good) but its also a bit on the expensive side.  Especially when coming from Nepal and SE Asia where I'd complain about paying $4 for a meal.

in the archaeology museum

Next day we went to meet our couchsurfing hosts, Efecan and Duygu.  They are students, into film and photography, and showed us some awesome videos that they've recently made.  Although, also cause they were students and its near then end of the year they were a bit busy.  These few days we did a bit of wandering around, although it really was not all that nice since it was cold, windy and rainy.  There is so much to do in Istanbul... if you feel like paying.  The cheapo's that we are, we ended up skipping out on much of it.  We still did go into the Blue Mosque, check out the AyaSofia, and go to a couple museums.  Yea, the weather was that crappy that I willingly went into two museums that were totally non-science related.  The archeology museum was actually kinda cool with loads of tombs and sarcophagus' from up to 5000 years ago.  Many of them were amazingly well preserved too which was kinda neat.

Blue Mosque by Night

marble slab in the hamam

Probably the highlight of my time in Istanbul and the high point in experiencing Turkish culture was our visit to a Hamam on our last day in the country.  Efecan told us of a good local one on the Asian side of the city that very few tourists go to: Çinili Hamam.  Yea, I paid 37 Lyra to have some really large Turkish man scrub me down.  It was gender separated, so Nico and I just planned to meet at a certain time.  I walk into the building (which is about 400 years new – for a Hamam) and about 10 men who work there look at me, then one gives me a key to the changing room and give no instruction.  One guy comes up and asks, “massage?”.  I ask how much, “Kach para?”, and then they all start laughing.... Looks like I am getting the massage too.  I am really glad that I did a little bit of reading on how these things work, cause no one there speaks any English.  I drop trau, put on the given towel and go sit in the 137ºF sauna in order to get warmed up.

I wasn't totally sure if that is what I was supposed to do since no once else was in there at the time.  After about 10mins I could no longer stand it and went to sit in the main room which has a big marble slab in the middle and is surrounded by a few benches and individual partitions with wash basins in them.  A few minutes later the big Turkish man in nothing but a towel comes in, pulls me to one of the basins and motions for me to sit down.  He then rinses me down, and pulls out what looks like a big mitten shaped brillo pad.  An immense amount of grossness came out along with maybe a layer or two of skin.  He then pulled me over to the giant marble slab, laid me down and started rubbing me down with soap.  I guess this part was the massage, since he rubbed with quite a bit of force.  Then once or twice kinda just pounced down on me with all his mass, cracked a few things, smiled, and said, “extra!”  We went back to the wash basin, and not before determining that I was a tourist from America, he quoted the price for the hamam, 27 Lyra, and then basically told me that I was also paying a 10 Lyra tip.  I wasn't really in a position to argue, so 10 it was.  He then washed my hair, rinsed me down one more time and showed me the way out.  I still had about 50 mins before meeting up with Nico, so I relaxed, cooled off and took a nap in the private changing room.  It was overall a really interesting experience and I might even agree that it was worth it to clear out the grime from traveling in dirty developing nations for the past 5 months.  I really do feel so much cleaner.

From the ferry across the Bosphorus

Anyway, once the rain finally stopped and the sun came out on the last day it was really pleasant there and nice to just wander around.  I think I've realized that for me, a city is just a city, and there are some nice things to do but nothing that I am super excited about.  Now get me in the mountains somewhere, or the canyons of Kapadokya, and I just want to explore everywhere and climb up everything. :)

Kapadokya - First Snow

From the Southeastern region of Turkey, Nico and I took an overnight bus to basically right in the middle of the country - to the Kapadokya region.  Now we've gotten used to some long 10 hour bus rides, but it is a totally different story here in Turkey as it was in Nepal.  Theses are some nice buses.  Way nicer than any Greyhound you can find in the US.  And after you get going, there is even an attendant who comes by offering drinks and little snacks!  It still is a bus though, and I am terrible at sleeping sitting up.  We were both exhausted by the time we got to Göreme (the main town from where to go hiking) and so we spent much of the rest of our first day sleeping.

Our cave dorm!

Fairy Chimneys, and snow!

Kapadokya is a really interesting region.  Most of the rock there is some sort of soft deposit left over from volcanic activity.  Then over the years, the elements have carved all sorts of interesting formations - big gorges, tunnels, and these "fairy chimneys".  The fairy chimneys are these cone shaped freestanding formations up to about 50ft high, in which people carved houses and lived inside.  Not many people live in there now, but at least in Göreme all the hostels have cave dorms that are actually cut into the rock.

It is pretty obvious that now we are back in a touristy region, although at least it is not tourist season.  There are tons of hostels in Göreme and you don't get invited in for tea by everyone.  We were there to do some daywalks and less for the culture so it was all good.  I'm quite glad that we were there in the off season though.  With all the accommodation, I can imagine that it would get quite busy and there'd be tons of tourists all over.  As it was though, it was almost like a ghost town.  We were the only 2 people in our hostel for 2 out of 3 nights, and we barely saw anyone on our walks.  And of course there was snow... which just makes everything much better.

Göreme in snow

Like I mentioned in the title - first snow.  Our first full day there, it was sleeting/snowing/raining for much of the morning, so it was looking like it might have been an indoor day.  But then it got just a little bit colder.  The perfect temperature to turn it all to snow and stick to everything and be really pretty.  Suddenly we had a lot more energy and were really excited about the prospect of going for a walk.  We wandered out and planned on hiking Pigeon Valley.  We followed a small road in a little ways, but then the road stopped, the valley split, and the trail was covered in snow.... so we had no idea where to go.  We found one set of footprints heading up the right side valley and ended up going that way.  Went in a ways, but turned out that was not the right one... but we still got to climb up some cool stuff and see some neat formations.

The next day we decided to come back and take the left valley this time which goes to a nearby town.  All over in the sides of the canyon walls were these small holes carved into the rock (you can see them in the picture above).  Apparently they were for the pigeons, cause they used to collect the pigeon doody for fertilizer.  I've got no idea how they possibly got up there to make the holes and collect stuff, cause they were sometimes about 3/4 the way up a 100 ft cliff!

Luckily it remained cold enough that this day everything was still covered in about 4-5" of snow and the sun came out making everything super beautiful.  Still the trail was covered, so it took a few wrong turns to eventually find our way out of the valley, but at each wrong turn was just more really beautiful scenery.  You really should check out the pictures, cause they are sweet:  http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/Cappadocia#

caves and tunnels

Alrightty, from there it was another rough night on a bus to Istanbul!  I'll probably write more about this place later.

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