Julian's Blog: Travelogue

Syria-Turkey Border Crossing

After Aleppo, it was time to leave Syria behind, and cross the border into Turkey. We'd been meant to take a bus across the border, but it turned out that wasn't available. The bus operators told us that they'd arrange for us to be taken across the border in taxis instead, for the same price, and it was here that I took my first steps into the dark, seamy world of the smuggler. The thing is that cigarettes are a lot cheaper in Syria than in Turkey, and therefore some people take any chance they can get to take as many of them across the border as they can. There are restrictions, of course, but that's done on a per person, rather than a per vehicle basis. When we reached the duty free store on the way through, we all handed our passports over to the taxi drivers and had a browse around, while waiting for them to do what they needed to do. A number of plastic bags were loaded into the taxis (1 for each of us), and the drivers were nice enough to give us each a can of soft drink for our trouble, which was actually exactly the thing I needed at the time (who would have thought that I'd sell my morals so cheaply??).

We went through the border crossing without incident, although we did all get our temperatures checked with a thermometer on the way (Swine Flu, of course). A short distance into Turkey, our newfound friends stopped the taxis for a minute or two, and the plastic bags were unloaded and given to some other people who were there to meet us. Apparently one of them got short-changed a bit because he didn't seem at all happy with the drivers, but no-one got shot, so it was all okay! After we'd gotten going again, that driver apparently pulled out some stuff he'd stashed out of sight. Oh well, you know what they say about honour among thieves/criminals. ;) We then drove through the countryside for a while, which was beautiful and green, and finally arrived at our next destination: Antakya, also known as Antioch.

Antioch

Antioch is quite small, although modern. The style of dress was a lot more relaxed than the countries we'd been to so far in a lot of cases, although the more conservative style we'd gotten used to was there as well. After getting settled in, we headed off to the main attraction: the mosaic museum, which had a lot of rather cool looking mosaics:

In addition to the mosaics, there was also a beautifully made sarcophagus:

For dinner, I got a chance to try my first-ever Doner Kebab, which was basically a normal chicken kebab, but with some stuff similar to Tabouli and a bit of chilli thrown in. It was quite nice, but almost a bit too hot for me (remembering that hot salami is about my limit!).

That was about it for Antioch (sadly, no hand grenade to be seen*), and the next day we headed off to Nigde.

Nigde (and how we drove our tour leader nuts)

After a full day's worth of travelling in the bus, we reached Nigde. After a brief orientation walk, some of us decided to try our luck with some cheap-ish bottles of red. The hotel we were staying at had a games room, and we had fun playing tabletop soccer and darts in the evening. The wine turned out to be a mistake, and very little of it got drunk! We were told later that you'd need to pay about 3 1/2 times what we did to get something decent (which worked out to much more than you'd pay for the equivalent quality; in Australia, at least). Nigde was mostly just a stop-over point, really, and the next day it was on to Cappadocia via Ihlara Gorge.

What's that you say? What about the part where we drove our tour leader nuts? Well, you see, the name "Nigde" is actually pronounced "knee-day" when you say it properly in Turkish, but a couple of us, who shall of course remain nameless, had fun deliberately mispronouncing it as "Nidge" in front of him every now and then throughout the rest of the tour. Can't imagine why he got so upset. ;)

Ihlara Gorge

On the way to Ihlara Gorge, we stopped in briefly at an old, now decaying monastery. It was relatively small, but very good to look around, with a number of small rooms, some very beautiful frescoes and a winding tunnel down to a couple of lower rooms.

On the way out, we saw a cute, tiny little turtle:

Just to put this into perspective(!):

After some more driving, we reached Ihlara Gorge. If anything sits in my mind as the most peaceful, relaxing part of the trip, this would be it. It was quiet, very green in places, with a lot of variety in the landscape in general, and had a river running through the middle of it. I love going for walks through that sort of thing in the first place, and given that it was the first time I'd been able to in a while, I really loved it. We also ducked into some small tombs along the way, some of which had impressive frescoes. The only downside to it was near the end of the walk when we were getting close to our lunch stop, and the sound of someone preaching over a loudspeaker in the distance cut through the peacefulness. It wasn't for that long, though.

After having a nice lunch next to the river, we were supposed to head on to Derinkuyu, an underground city that the people used to protect themselves in times of war, but our guide told us that another called Kaymakli would be much better, and we decided to go to that one instead.

Kaymakli

To be honest, the underground city, while impressive, and definitely a very impressive feat of engineering, didn't actually wow me all that much, or at least not visually anyway. Part of it was due to the harsh fluorescent lighting they'd used in places, which killed the atmosphere for me a bit. Also, we could only see so much of it as they hadn't gone through a number of levels, due to concerns about collapses. It was easy to be impressed when you sat back and thought about the scale of the thing, and how much work it must've taken to tunnel it all out, though. They had just about every sort of room they needed down there, even one for squashing grapes to make wine! Even so though, I can only imagine what it must've been like living down there for a few days, let alone a few weeks, or even several months. Claustrophobics wouldn't've stood a chance! It was very hard to take any sort of decent photos down there, esp. with other people around, but here are a couple (the sign you may not quite be able to read in the second one says "Stone Door"):