Back-packing in Turkey

Back in the late 1960s when I enjoyed hitch-hiking for the first time and went camping with my best friend David over in Amsterdam, would I have believed that now well into my 60s that I’d still be willing to go travelling the ‘harder way’?

A first week in Kalkan on the Med

No matter. I am indeed still willing and half-reasonably able. Seven years ago I bought a small one-bedroom, but nicely situated little rooftop apartment in Kalkan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. That has been a mixed blessing. With my neighbours I share a decently sized swimming pool and private garden area, but find myself tearing out my hair over the in-fighting over communal bills between the seven apartments of different sizes (one to three or four bedrooms) most of which are let out to tourists for the majority of the season from 1st May to the end of October. I don’t rent mine out.

Kalkan has grown beyond all recognition from the small harbour town it was in the ‘60s. Up until 1923 most of its inhabitants were Greeks, but they left during a population exchange following the Greco-Turkish War. A few of the old, abandoned Greek houses are still standing on the edges of Kalkan’s Old Town. In addition to the fairly up-market harbour area, it is now an ever-developing, sprawling town. It lies on the edge of the bay, surrounded byt the towering inland mountains. There’s a small central area with mini-supermarkets, restaurants, banks, cafes, bars and few other useful shops. Thursday is the bustling market day and most of the residents, Turks and in-comers alike, usually have a wander round for provisions. It’s a bit ‘Little Britain’, but has not drifted too far into the lager lout territory. But even so, during the out of season months, November to the end of April, the ex-pats rattle

around three or four bars, attending their ‘clubs’ and ‘classes’ – art; zumba; bridge; canasta; the walking group; Turkish and the weekly quiz. I actually started a new activity – archery – while I was there, running one have-a-go session at a mountain barbeque and subsequently

organising some more in-depth training on Patara sand-dunes for two of the Kaya Restaurant ‘boys’ (owners, Erol and Kadir) and local, indomitable, long-term resident, Juney. At best, Kalkan is like a posh retirement zone in the sun. At worst, it could be likened to a cross between living on the set of ‘The Prisoner’ or even ‘Hi-di-hi’. I know the majority of the mostly happy ’campers’ since I’ve been visiting my apartment over Christmas/New Year for the last seven years and first visited this part of Turkey some 26 years ago.

My recent visit to my apartment was primarily to obtain an agreement between the seven sets of owners over the necessity for a complete new roof. It’s worn out. It has suffered from the ravages of the many storms over the last 12 or so years, and much more damage from workmen clambering over the roof to fix water tanks, solar panels and satellite dishes. The original Turkish builder, Numan, actually still owns one of the apartments in our block as well as a restaurant and bar downstairs and one of the adjacent villas. When I’d visited at Christmas, he’d agreed that the roof was old and tired. I’d had water leaks into all my three rooms, and not just a single leak in each. Numan told me, “Turkish roofs only last ten years if we are lucky.”

Anyway, along the tortuous route to an agreement, myself and Cengiz and Amanda, my next door, roof-owning neighbours, were called just about every name in sizeable dictionary of insults. We were told that the roof was only our responsibility, not communal. Then, we were told that we should claim on our individual insurances as the wear and tear and damage was the result of ‘single storm damage’. Anyway, with help from my resident, ex-journalist friend Rob, we have reached an uneasy agreement to get the roof fixed, with the work starting at the beginning of November.

Away to Cappadocia for adventures

For as long as I’ve been visiting Turkey, I’ve had a strong desire to visit the Cappadocia region with its surreal, volcanic tuff landscape. It is liberally sprinkled with thousands of fairy chimneys, cave dwellings and churches; underground cities even. Its original name of Katpatuka probably comes from the Persians and means, ‘the land of beautiful horses’. Its history is intertwined with early Christianity, set in the heartlands of central Anatolian Turkey, which is these days one of the centres of more traditional Islam, particularly in cities like Kayseri (Caesarea under the Romans). I’d originally hoped to join in with a group from Kalkan for the trip, but the prices I was quoted, around £600-£700, just for transport and accommodation for three nights’ stay, meant that my choice was made for me. I would travel on local buses and coaches. And that way have enough left in my meagre budget to be able to go ballooning, hiking and visit the many interesting sites in the area.

With many sighs of relief over the roof, albeit expensively accomplished, I set off at 11 a.m. on a local dolmus (bus) for Fethiye the local main town, a couple of hours west of Kalkan on the coast at the corner of the Med and the Aegean.

After a small bite of food in a dreadfully hot, airless Fethiye market, I met up with Irish-American, Pamela (who I’ve known for a few years from Kalkan and Kas), and her Texan friend, Rita. Just before 4 p.m. we bundled our luggage into

the bowels of the Metro coach bound for Cappadocia and ultimately Kayseri. This is an area right up in the central-eastern heartland of Turkey, about 200 miles east of Ankara. Pamela and Rita were bound for Avanos to the northern edge of the core Cappadocian area. The coach company seated them right at the front of the rather cramped full coach, directly

behind the driver. I was further back on the ‘male’ side of the coach, wedged in with a young Turkish man. It was a long twelve and half hours mostly spent cramped in the double seat. We made short stops about every four hours. But it had cost me under £25 for both the dolmus and the coach, so I couldn’t really complain.

At four in the morning, our coach started the descent into Goreme, with many of its fairy chimneys still lit up in the night sky. Even at night, it is magical and mystical. I already knew in advance that I wanted stay in Goreme, now I was hooked. It is the most central of the local towns for organising trips, hiking and generally absorbing the strange attractions of the Goreme National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage site). However, I’d agreed earlier to tag along with the ‘ladies’, Rita and Pamela, to meet Emin their landlord in Avanos. Rita has stayed with Emin and his previous business partner on a number of previous visits. Nearing Avenos, but not in it, the coach stopped and the three of us found ourselves out in the darkness of road intersection with our bags being off-loaded.

“This isn’t Avanos,” Rita said somewhat stridently to the coach steward. “We want the Ottogar”. The driver wasn’t a happy, but the sight and sounds of two angry American ladies was enough to get us a lift for the final two miles to the bus station (I was keeping my tin helmet firmly on and head down).

Avanos and Goreme

We walked just under a mile lugging our various luggage in full darkness across the narrow bridge into Avanos, took a left turn and Pamela located Emin’s ‘pansyon’, also in full darkness. I managed to get all our luggage up the rickety stairs and onto the outside roof terrace, but we didn’t have access to a loo or any other facilities. Pamela phoned Emin on her mobile to be told that it would take him a while to get to the pansyon from his permanent home in

Nevsehir. So, we found ourselves on the roof as daylight gradually spread around the valley. And tired as we were, there was a feeling of delight as we witnessed the first balloons being fired up for the day’s tourist flights above and round the

Goreme National Park. The sun rose lazily, spreading its rays over the hills behind the pansyon. An awesome start to my Cappadocian adventure. And I was able to satisfy my photographic passion taking my first set of pics of the balloons drifting around Rose and Red Valleys, and above Cavusin and Zelve.

After Emin arrived we had some very necessary and fortifying coffee. It also became self-evident that Emin’s pansyon was far from ready for this season’s guests. Rita and Pamela were committed to stay, but I wanted to stay in Goreme and use it as my hub for four night’s stay. The ladies told me that they were not visiting Avanos to try and visit the local sights – rather for ‘chill out’ time. Thankfully, Emin, a gentle and helpful soul, agreed to drive over to Goreme and help me find a place to stay. The ladies accompanied us and we arrived on the outskirts as the first balloons were landing at about 7 a.m. – again, a truly wondrous spectacle of swirling, colourful balloons, with many sinking into alien-esque shapes as they shrunk slowly back into the volcanic landscape.

Arriving in Goreme, it was pretty quiet apart from the returning balloon parties and the first jeeps towing balloon baskets

and gear. In one of the main streets we spotted the Hotel Atak and Emin popped in to enquire after a single room for me and haggle (I mean, negotiate) the price. Osman the owner and his wife agreed a price of 50 Turkish Lira (TL) a night and I booked in for four nights and invited my party to breakfast. Only Pamela joined me for the full Turkish breakfast, whilst Emin and Rita just had coffee. (Left: Emin and Pamela on the rooftop).

Atak’s breakfasts are great as long as you like simple Turkish fayre – cucumber, olives, tomatoes, lovely fresh breads, yoghurt with pekmez (a delicious syrup made refined from grapes) and/or strawberries and some sort of egg dish. Pamela is a tad on the fussy side, not eating tomatoes or cucumber because of the pips, but still enjoyed the rooftop setting and some of the food. The rate of exchange while I was there was about 2.7TL to the pound. Once again we witnessed the last balloons of the morning floating around Goreme. Emin and the ladies then returned to Avanos, leaving me to start getting the most out of a five day, four night stay.

I’d been up now for over 24 hours, but decided to keep going. Even before unpacking I talked with Osman and got him to book me in for a full day, Green Tour the following day including a visit to Derinkuyu, the deepest and largest of the underground cities, the Ilhara gorge valley, the Selime Monastery, and the location near Selime of the Star Wars first movie. That cost 120TL including lunch and the three admissions. Then I took another deep breath and committed myself to booking a balloon trip for the next but one day. I’d been worrying about whether I’d have the nerve as I suffer from vertigo, but I so much wanted to

experience the sensation of ballooning above the crazy rock formations of Cappadocia and taking photos on my semi-pro Lumix camera...so I paid over my money and was committed.

Around Goreme

Once I’d unpacked and showered I went straight out to explore the town of Goreme and take my first pics using my pocket-size Sony camera. It’s a town of four main streets surrounded on all sides by the most amazing rock formations and caves – many of them now cave hotels. There’s a Hamam (Turkish baths), on the corner of the road to Nevsehir, vibrant carpet shops and plenty of ethnic bars and places to eat, as well as a good variety of shops aimed at the substantial tourist trade, many of whom are back-packers from all over the world – the majority in their twenties.

Bizarrely, almost my first activity was to locate the bus station and book a ticket back, returning via

Antalya. Another 55TL and the coach would leave at ten in the evening, arriving in Antalya Ottogar before 7 a.m. I now had my six day trip mostly planned out, leaving me free for my first day forage round the town, followed by a visit the large site of the Goreme Open Air Museum later in the afternoon.

I guess I was probably a bit away with the fairies, let alone the fairy chimneys, but I made the most of my time and in the afternoon walked the two kilometres to the Open Air Museum. This proved to be a busy tourist destination with dozens of coach parties and hundreds of tourists. Cameras were thrust into my hands. “Take picture, please,” asked groups of grinning Chinese, Japanese and Koreans.

You pay about six quid for entry into the museum area. It is sited in a large rock valley and includes small and large-scale cave dwellings and a number of underground churches and chapels built by the Christians in the 10th-12th centuries, during a period when they began to have to practise their beliefs in secret. The frescoes range from the magnificent to the barely visible and you are not allowed to take any photos. The whole site was way too crowded for my liking but served as a useful introduction to the area. A problem for me though was that my now antique walking sandals started to fall apart and were dangerously without grip on the rounded tuff volcanic rocks covered in a thin film of slippery sand. I ended up on my backside twice and was lucky to suffer nothing worse than bruising and a touch of hurt pride. It was also very, very hot, being in the upper 30s centigrade – very unseasonal for a spring, early May day.

After a freshen up at my hotel, I grabbed my notepad computer and went in search of an internet connection. Unlike many of the Facebook back-packers my daily internet link up is a

virtual necessity as I am a non-exec company director for the Copyright Licensing Agency back in the UK. In governance terms, and because of committee as well as board work, as a director you are never really ‘on holiday’. Very often tricky issues concerning the UK’s creators – authors, artists and photographers, and publishers – need a both considered and swift response from all the board members. And that’s how it turned out on this trip.

Daily, I was grateful for the welcome, reasonable bottle price for a quaffable white wine plus the good internet connection at Fat Boys’ bar and cafe, owned by Yilmez and Angela with

Aussie, Mark, as their frontman. On the verandah outside are Turkish traditional cushion seats brimful with happy, bronzed back-packers. Inside was quieter, excepting when a large group of Aussie tourists appeared noisily to debate the efficacies of Vegemite, Aussie beer and even the occasional Cappadocian delight!

It was a useful early evening stop-off spot so I made it my ‘regular’ hostelry, followed by a set meal at the Cappadocian Cuisine cafe cum restaurant round the corner. All my

meals there were nice. A bowl of soup and a main course with lots of different breads for between 14 and 21TL – some unusual local dishes such as sealed clay pots encasing a spicy casserole of beef or chicken, and some strange, but tasty, local pasta dishes with lots of yoghurt. Bulent and his staff well deserve their popularity, and were always very busy, crowded with Turkish and world-wide customers.

The Green Tour

It turned out that there were just five of us on the Green Tour with Ramazan as our guide. Our first stop was a photo opportunity to take pics of the panoramic Goreme National Park (see next page). There followed a longish drive in the dolmus to the Derinkuyu underground city. Ramazan utilised the time to get to know his ‘group’ for the day. “I am Ramazan, now introduce yourselves.” First up were three Chinese students currently studying in Germany. To plenty of laughter, Ramazan pronounced, “I will call you, Li (pronounced Lee); many Chinese are called Lee.” And indeed one of the three 23 year-olds was a Li! A 28 year-old Turkish student from Istanbul and myself completed the party. After I had introduced myself as a writer from ‘Scotchia’ (which I think should read as ‘Iskocya’), Ramazan said that for today I would be ‘Dad’. More like ‘Grandad’ in terms of age – Ramazan was also 28.

Next came Ramazan’s potted history of Cappadocia and Turkey. I knew smidgeons of the Cappadocia ‘story’. Some of it is more akin to a series of educated guesses. There have been some archaeological finds in the area indicating that Prehistoric use of the caves occurred and that the Hittites developed the tunnels and underground settlements. This was followed by the Roman settlement of the area – there are some underground Roman tombs and temples. But it was in the Byzantine period, 5th-10th century AD that the underground cities were assiduously developed. Following this, the Seljuk nomads with the caravanserai used and developed some of the cave settlements for military purposes, but it was the

Christians of the area from the 7th century who found themselves increasingly persecuted by what Ramazan called the “Uneducated Arabs” (actually the Seljuk Turks, who had originated in Kazakhstan). The early Christians had a pretty bad time. The immediate valleys around Goreme are filled with churches and monasteries which were built clandestinely. Uchisar fortress (on previous page) is one of the most impressive single structures, with its hundreds of underground rooms and tunnels towering on the horizon south of Goreme.

But the troglodyte cities of Kaymakli, and Derinkuyu which we visited are the two most extensive underground cities in Turkey. Altogether there are about 200 such settlements. Many are linked by extensive tunnels up to ten kilometres long. Back in the time when they were used for protection (against the nasty uneducated Arabs!) large round stones were rolled into place at each entrance to keep the cities safe from intruders. I’ll return to Ramazan’s rant about the Turkish people today a bit later!

Arriving at the turnstiles at Derinkuyu, Ramazan asked us: “Does anyone suffer from high blood pressure, asthma, claustrophobia? If you do, don’t enter. Further down it gets very cramped, but you can choose to come back at that point.” No-one owned up to any problems, so, as we did all day, Ramazan raced us into the cave and downwards. We saw storage areas, wine making areas, ventilation shafts, places of worship and of torture, wells and lots and lots of ever-narrowing passageways. At the point where the return to the surface was marked I said to Ramazan that I was finding the tunnels a bit cramped – reminding him that I’m six feet three and 62 years old. “No, you go on. You’re OK.” Hence, I found myself nearly crawling my way down 121 steps to the final floor 60 metres below the surface. Once down, you have to come back up the same 121 steps, so Ramazan had to yell back up the stairs in order to keep it clear, as there are no passing places.

It’s an experience. I’m glad I did it, but it felt pretty cramped.

Onwards in the dolmus to the famed Ilhara Valley. But let’s listen in to a snippet of Ramazan’s take on Modern Turkey. It went something like this:

“We now welcome, and live alongside, all people and religions in Modern Turkey. Our founder Ataturk changed our

country. If you obey our rules, you can live happily in Modern Turkey. Modern Turks are educated. But here there are still some in Turkey who are uneducated. Those Turks who wear the black, the burkas, are very uneducated. And many still wear headscarves, they are uneducated. But Turkey is a Modern country.”

Humm. I wondered what the young man from Istanbul made of Ramazan’s ‘speech’.

Still moving at break-neck pace, Ramazan said “No time for photos – later”, as we started to descend the long zig-zag of wooden steps down into the Ilhara gorge. The young Chinese lady and her two companions and myself ignored him and took our holiday snaps. We only walked along one section of the Ilhara Valley and visited just one of the many cave churches, but it was an interesting one; the

Agacalti Church. I really enjoyed the trek along the valley, following the course of the river. It’s easy enough going and there are great views and photo opportunities all the way along. I also enjoyed chatting with my Chinese companions. It turned out that

they each spoke five languages minimum and did their lessons in German, French and English – they really put the Brits to shame. The entire Ilhara valley

is 14 kilometres; I’d like to return and walk it in its entirety.

We had lunch at a popular coach stop by the river at Belisirma and then continued up to the outskirts of the small village at Selime to take pics of the location used for the first ‘Star Wars’ film.

After that it was another tourist attraction – the monastery on top of the rocks at Selime. It’s meant to be a great view from the top. I didn’t get that far. My worn out trekking sandals had me slipping down the smoothed rocks on my bum. I didn’t even try to go any higher as I could see that I was going to have real difficulty coming back down. On Trip Advisor, a typical comment (from a J Chua from Singapore) warns:

“Though these caves are interesting to explore and there are wonderful views to be had at the top, we thought the climb both up and down the hill was a little treacherous as there are rarely curved out walking paths nor hand rails. Though there are often signs

to warn people from falling, I could easily imagine kids or older folks falling, so do take care!” Needless to say, I hadn’t researched Selime in advance!

Finally, the Green Tour included another panoramic photo stop above Pigeon Valley, where Ramazan told us: “The pigeon was a sacred bird for the Christians, and so they built thousands of pigeon houses, cut into the rocks of the sides of the valley.” I’d never heard that before, so checked it out on the Web when I returned to my home up in the Scottish Borderlands. Most of what I found indicated that it was the farmers who cut out the pigeon ’lofts’ so that they could harvest the droppings which are a prized fertilizer for the cultivation of the local fruits. But there are some sites that equate the dove with the holy spirit. At the Turizm.net site it says that, “In the Koran, when Mohammed is fleeing from the Qureysh, he hides in a cave. Spiders weave webs over the entrance and a dove makes her nest, so his pursuers do not bother to look inside and he is saved. In consequence, the generality of Muslims regard pigeons and doves as sacred and do not

hunt or eat them. From the same motive buildings in Islam countries often incorporate dovecotes.”

The tour ended with a quick visit to the onyx workshop and shop. The demonstration of onyx cutting and smoothing was reasonably interesting, but the shop is pretty much an archetypal ‘tourist trap’. Once again I spent my evening between Fat Boys’ Bar and the Cappadocian Cuisine restaurant and the only incident worth recounting was when some young Turkish adolescents came

over to me by the bar, and laughing, pointed at me with my beard and long hair and said, “A miracle, the Walking Jesus!”