In Ur, the city of Abraham!
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2006
1
25
40
Trip End
Oct 28, 2006
Urfa (Sanliurfa),
Turkey
Friday, October 13, 2006
Had the most shocking night's sleep of my entire life, made worse by the constant niggle of "must get some sleep, got to wake up at 4am!" Our hotel room overlooked the main street of Kahta and it seemed as if every vehicle in the region needed to drive up and down, sometimes hooting, all night. We have never been used to traffic noises at night, having always lived in quiet culls de sac or similar. Not only that, but I think I was running a temperature because I felt hot and stuffy and uncomfortable all evening. AND just as I fell asleep on the only occasion, G sneezed gigantically and frightened any sleep out of me for good. Oh, and being a small conservative provincial town, the Ramazan-breakfast walkers-up turned out with their eerie double-beat drum at 1:30. Although I didn't mind them - it was a hypnotic and restful rhythm but perhaps I wouldn't have felt that way if I'd had to turn out for morning prayers and cooking elaborate pre-dawn breakfasts
01 Sunrise on Nemrut Dagi
.So getting up and driving up through the dark mountains was very hard. It was nice to see the donkey foals curled up like big dogs beside the road in the villages, and the villagers having their early Ramazan breakfasts before sunup. We reached the end of the road, which is seriously precipitous (although not as precipitous as the route down!) but in good condition, at about 5:15 - apparently too early and dark to start the walk up to the top. So we clustered into the shop - or some of us did, anyway. I normally feel the cold but had done the drive in a T-shirt, as had Gray, whereas everyone else was wearing thermal underwear and thick jumpers and jackets. Later, on the top after sunrise when there was a bit of a breeze blowing, we were finally glad of some of the huge weight of warm winter woolies we have been lugging so unnecessarily around Turkey. Apart from that 20 minutes, though, we have been in short sleeves and too hot in long pants.
Also jammed into the shop was a large party of Japanese tourists who turned out to be the only fly in the otherwise lovely ointment.
Graham:
What a day it has been
02 Sunrise on Nemrut Dagi
. Probably the most exciting and varied day of our whole holiday. It didn't start out so well. Mandi had slept extremely badly because she is getting a cold, because of traffic noise and because I was coughing. The drummers that drove around the town at 2.30am didn't seem to disturb her. We were woken at 4am and driven up to Nemrut Dagi. On the way I talked to Gloria from Colombia and found that she lived in St Barbara, only one suburb away from St Anna where we lived in Bogota. When we arrived at the base station we found a large party of very noisy Japanese tourists. Our guide had a better estimate of when the sun was to rise so we let them go and followed at our leisure. This was quite a steep 200m climb up a fairly rough rock path and as Mandi wasn't feeling too well, we climbed extremely slowly. When we got to the base of the Tumulus we found the famous rock heads and bodies that are the signature of the place along with a large rock platform on which to sit while we watched the eastern sky lighten. Because at 2150m we were much higher than the surroundings we had a spectacular view of all the surrounding peaks sticking through the morning mist and a beautiful sunrise. Unfortunately the Japanese tourists were still there making a racket and it got worse when they started to sing. The tumulus contains the tomb of Antiochus I which was finally penetrated in 1958 via a tunnel. The theory goes that the Archaeologists blasting dislodged the last head from the row of bodies.
03 Sunrise on Nemrut Dagi
We went around to the southern side where there were a similar set of heads, only larger, dedicated to Antiochus' mother. By this time the temperature had dropped a bit and I put on my jacket. The tumulus itself is made of small stones and is 50m high and about 100m in diameter at the base. A mammoth task in its own right.
Mandi:
At the appointed time we set off - fortunately some time after the Japanese. It was almost light enough to see our feet as we started. The cloud formations were lovely and of course changing moment by moment. I was surprised by how badly the altitude affected me - me! a Highveld meisie!
As we reached the Eastern Terrace the sky was just starting to get pink. We sat and watched the rows and rows of mountain ranges slowly, serenely, crystallizing out of the mist. It would have been magic had the Japanese not spent the whole time shrieking at one another and when the sun finally rose majestically above the clouds, bursting into what sounded like drinking songs. What a weird nation - to be able to produce those wonderful delicate paintings and have national holidays dedicated to admiring cherry blossom, and then stand on the highest point of one of the most dramatic mountain ranges in the world, under the majestic eyes of 3500-year-old kings and gods and shriek drinking songs
04 Waiting for sunrise on the Eastern Terrace
! And that after travelling quite hard for hours to be there, and slogging up a HARD climb in the dark.Fortunately as soon as the sun had actually appeared, they took the mandatory photos of one another and disappeared to the Western Terrace, leaving it to us and one weirdo who slunk around trying to listen to Zeynal's little lecture without appearing to. Having been concentrating on the sun-rise it was quite exciting to discover the famous heads in the lovely golden morning light just behind us.
The Western Terrace is supposed to be better but I felt the statues were less evocative somehow - perhaps it was the golden morning light on the Eastern side that made them so lovely but also the Western ones are better preserved so they don't feel as old.
We went down by the northern route which is unbelievably steep & precipitous - just a dirt road that the bus crept down in 1st. We had been packed into a smaller bus for the drive to Nemrut which was quite a relief as we weren't all that sure of the brakes on the bigger one! I was very sleepy which was a pity as it really was a spectacular pass. Looking back afterwards, it was hard to believe you could have come down that mountain with a sure-footed mule, let alone a 12-seater minibus!
Graham:
We drove down the mountain by a different route. This was hair-raising as the road was very narrow and extremely steep as it switch backed down to the valley. I think the route was as precarious as anything we ever drove down in Colombia
05 Sunrise on Nemrut Dagi
. Anyway I was pleased that we were in a smaller bus which was better maintained and had a competent driver who obviously knew the area. Our next stop was Antiochus summer palace which consisted of a gaol pit carved into the rock and a tunnel some 160m deep that burrows straight into the mountain at an angle of about 30deg down. Above the entrance to this tunnel is a missive in Greek and quite a nice relief.Mandi:
We stopped at the ruins of Arsameia which are on a very steep hillside halfway down the pass with a view of the fertile river valley to die for. The ruins consist of a stele, a tunnel leading to the prison, and another tunnel leading possibly to a tomb but unexcavated The latter had a nice entry with some loong story in Greek carved very beautifully into the stone. We were led around by a handsome black & white dog with cropped ears.
Next stop was a brief one at the base of a valley. On some mountainous cliffs at the head of the valley were some ruined castles - very dramatic. We're not quite sure (Zeynal's English leaves a lot to be desired at times) but think they are Mamluk. We ate some tiny wild figs, which were delicious, and some "desert apples" (the things I was suckered into buying in Beypazari) which weren't
06 Sunrise on Nemrut Dagi
.Next stop was Cendere Roman bridge. Can't believe that a graceful stone bridge, 3000 years old, is still standing and doing its job whereas the modern bridge lasted two winters before falling down. Despite signs telling us not to, we cheerily drove over it instead of the new modern one. Luckily no harm done.
Graham:
The trip down the mountain continued until we came to the Cendere roman bridge. This is a phenomenal piece of engineering. It is a single main arch that spans about 30m and has been carrying traffic for 2000 years. It spans the river on a bend just as it is exiting from a gorge.-Zeynal said that the first replacement lasted only two seasons before being washed away, so it just goes to show.
On the way back to the hotel we drove past the unexcavated tumulus of Antiochus' wife and sister. The consensus amongst our tour group is that it should remain undisturbed.
After breakfast we set out to see the Ataturk dam, but before we got there we crossed the Euphrates about 10km downstream. We stopped on the one side and a couple of us walked across the bridge into Mesopotamia. The river must be 250m wide at this point. It is also about 5m deep as best I can judge through the clear green water and very fast flowing.
After the bus stopped to pick us up on the opposite bank, we continued on until we came to a view site overlooking the dam
07 Sunrise on Nemrut Dagi
. What a magnificent piece of engineering it is. The rock filled wall is 1600m long and as far as we can understand about 150m tall. The roar of the water through the six 2.5m diameter turbine outlets was clearly audible across the 3km to our view site as we sipped the now ubiquitous cay.I know that dams are supposed to be bad for the environment and that this one almost caused Turkey and Syria to go to war, but it really is magnificent.
Mandi:
A little further and suddenly we were crossing the Euphrates into Mesopotamia! How exciting! G & I insisted upon walking across the bridge into Mesopotamia. It is very wide, very deep and amazingly clean. I was expecting some nasty little rubbish-strewn ditch. If I thought about it at all - I really didn't expect to get as far as Mesopotamia.
A few km further we turned off to look at the Ataturk Dam that caused so much trouble between Turkey and her downstream neighbours. Most of the tours go there and I've never seen the point. Until I got there. It's amazing. Of course I don't remember all the numbers but one which gives you an idea is that the wall is over 1.6 km long
08 Sunrise on Nemrut Dagi
!Over the past 24 hours or so we have all been tossing around plans for where to go next. The nice thing about this particular tour group - perhaps because of where we are - is that everyone is very footloose despite the fact that we're quite a variety of ages. Goes to show you're never too old to be a hippy! We've all had a little while in Turkey. Some of the single women are in the middle of quite long trips including all sorts of exotic locations like Romania and Russia; Himal & Laya (who have now left us and bussed back to Goreme) are in the middle of a whole year's slow wander through Asia including extensive trekking through Nepal - hence the names! So a lot of the conversation in the bus is along the lines of "where have you been? Was it worth going? How did you get there?" Only Danielle and Gloria want to go back to Goreme; Heide and Darren & Jennifer are all headed farther East; Leona wants to be in Diyabakir in a few days' time to stay with friends of friends and had planned to get off at Gaziantep with us. We have debated and dithered about where to go next over the next few days but have had the horrible realisation that we are fast running out of time and must choose one more place to visit properly or else hotel hop until we fly to Istanbul on Tuesday or Wednesday - and I'd prefer Tuesday so as to ensure we get to Topkapi with enough time to do it justice.
09 First sun on the statues
Hotel hopping just isn't an option partly because that's not why we came but also because G didn't realise I had put a whole set of dirty clothes (including one of my precious three pairs of pants) into a bag in the wardrobe at Kelebek and so I desperately need to do some laundry and get it dry! On such small issues we are planning our last few days here.So we have debated backwards and forwards. First it was Konya then somewhere else - then somewhere else finishing in Konya. Then we realised we didn't have tine for two more places, so ditched Konya and thought (following Isa's advice) we'd go to Hattay and Mersin and fly to Istanbul from Adana. But that would involve leaving the tour at Gaziantep which is also interesting, so maybe we'd just stay in Gaziantep and then bus to Adana... then we thought we'd can all that and go only to Konya... and about then the whole issue of where the people going East would leave the tour. Zeynal stared talking about taking an extra half day so that the Easterners could leave the tour at Diyabakir. We read up our Lonely Planet and thought that we would pretend we couldn't remember that Diyarbakir (and, for that matter, the Syrian border areas which is where we are as I write) is on the Australian Federal Government's web-site as an absolute no-go area. So that's what we've finally decided: we will all go to Harran in the morning, then Mardin and finally Diyarbakir, where Leona, Darren & Jennifer and we will leave the tour
10 Watching the sun rise
. The two guides and Gloria and Danielle will drive through the night back to Goreme - a trip I'll be happy to miss but at least they will have plenty of room.Before we knew it we were arriving in the dirty dormitory suburbs of Urfa (of which the proper name is Sanliurfa - just as Gaziantep and Antep are apparently one and the same. Seems strange but I suppose P.E., Joburg and Bloem must puzzle non-South Africans.) Most of us admitted afterwards that had we not been with the tour, we'd all have turned around and gone back on seeing those outskirts.
First stop was the hotel but when we and Gloria went to get our luggage out, we were told to leave it in the bus. Whether or not he just likes the mystique of keeping us in the dark or thinks of us as children who don't need to be told what's happening, or whether it's a language issue I don't know but Zeynal isn't a great one for keeping us informed about what's happening. While the others were checking in, we pressed for an explanation and were told only that we were going to a different hotel and would only check in after dinner. Only when Gloria and I went to the loo did Gray manage to extract the information that it was because the Kelebek people (who booked this tour for us) had wanted us to go to a particular hotel owned by relations or something
11 Lion
. But this didn't explain why Gloria needed to go there too... yet!We all trooped off to lunch. Everyone else had a local speciality consisting of meat & veggies wrapped up in a filo parcel but Heide and I had a very fiery chicken & veggies dish - but not chilli because it didn't burn my mouth afterwards, unlike the lovely blackened sweet red pepper I had at dinner - the first mouthful was delicious but I had to spit the second out because of how hot it was. It burned for hours and hours afterwards. I must have eaten a seed I think.
Then we parked the bus in a grotty dusty parking lot, crossed a horrible, busy, noisy Turkish street (still feeling we'd come to the armpit of the world) and were suddenly in a wonderful serene green park packed with people. The centrepiece is a magnificent rectangular pond surrounded by graceful arches and a lovely Mosque. I felt it left the Taj Mahal for dead - but then I've never seen the Taj Mahal. There seemed to be something happening in the pond and Zeynal explained that we were actually in the Ur of Abraham before he went off on his travels. We were gob-smacked - Ur is one of those places that is so much a part of one's background and culture that if I had known it still exists I would have longed to go there, but finding myself not only in Mesopotamia but in Ur quite by mistake, as it were, was just incredible. (On sober reflection the next day I wonder whether there is not a strong element of Islamic mythology and wishful thinking involved though. I'm fairly sure I have read archaeological articles about the Ziggurat of Ur and there was no mention of this in Urfa. So sadly I have to admit that, like Noah's Ark and the True Cross, probably Ur exists in some form or another in every Middle Eastern country.)
Zeynal told us some lovely stories about Abraham (who is I think more important to Islam than to Christianity because of his emphasis on monotheism.) It would seem that Nimrod was the king of Ur at the time (and not, of course, anything to do with Nemrut Dagi - that was 1000 years earlier and misnamed by German archaeologists anyway) and got so pissed off with Abraham whittering on about One God (there was a lot of breaking of stone statues in this part of the story that I didn't altogether follow) that he ordered him thrown into a fire from a very impressive pillar that stands on the city walls high above the park
12 The Queen
. However as he flew through the air, "God told the fire to be kind to Abraham" and the fire turned into water and the logs into fish. And sure enough, the disturbance on the water was thousands and thousands of fish. It is lucky to feed them which is why the pond can support them at fish-farm levels. The sides are thick with people buying fishfood from little stalls and throwing and presumably wishing. I wished to get home safely to my girls. The fish respond to an arm (or camera) waved over them and actually climb over one another or shoot straight up with yellowy mouths agape.Graham:
What a wonderful place this is, full of the history of Abraham. We had to go to see various mosques commemorating his miraculous rescue from the fire etc. There is a wonderful park below the old city walls next to these Mosques with a huge pond filled with millions of seething holy fish that one can feed. The whole area is very peaceful. A short distance away is a massive mosque paid for by Saudi Arabia. This had a number of courtyards with money-changers and the like. The girls went in but I stayed in the inner courtyard listening to the muezzin and feeling very foreign.
Mandi: Urfa is a very holy city because of the connection with Abraham - apparently second only to Konya for religious observance. Certainly most women wore headscarves and we saw many in full regalia of one form or another. The men (at least the older ones) all wore those baggy pants for catching the Messiah in. It would seem that the Islamic Messiah won't mess around with women but be born to a man, and so in case it's you, you wear baggy pants to catch him. Because of the proximity to Syria there are lots of sects that don't appear much in the rest of Turkey
13 Eagle
. We visited the mosque at Abraham's pool (us girls seeing a much less interesting women's room with small children sitting eating (!!) while the women prayed) and later the shrine at Abraham's cave (where he grew up hidden from Nimrod who was engaged in the standard Slaughter of the Innocents that seemed to accompany the birth of any important figure.) This is part of a massive modern mosque funded by Saudi Arabia and much stricter than the one at Abraham's Pool. There a sunhat had been acceptable as a headcovering but here those of us who didn't have proper headscarves had to borrow them and three of us wearing short sleeves had to borrow splendid silvery-grey jellabahs - is that the right word? Inside was a small space with a grille hiding a big tank looking like an Australian hot water cylinder - I assume some sort of purification unit. Nearby were two taps from which women were drinking and washing their faces. I'm sure the Saudis are good at water purification even from 5,000 year-old shrines but I still contented myself with just a face-splash. I'm not sure I want to do a Sarah on the crowd and have a baby in my declining years anyway!!Then we walked around the market which was great - a little like the Grand Bazaar only much better because it wasn't aimed at tourists (at least not foreign ones - I should imagine quite a lot of domestic tourists pass through a place like Urfa) so there were veggies and copper smiths and a whole "street" of shoes and socks from which I bought 2 pairs of socks because OF COURSE I was wearing my holey (as opposed to holy) socks on the day we visited two very observant mosques, wasn't I? And another "street" (much more an alley really) of scarves including piles of lavender coloured ones which are worn by Syrians both men and women
14 Dawn on Nemrut Dagi
. At the first stall I saw one which I thought Sarah would like - apparently a bride's scarf, pale pink & white, very delicate, and then had to find a dark one for Jen - but of course a few stalls down I found more very pretty ones so ended up with four. They'll be useful for presents - or perhaps I'll just keep them for myself!Graham:
We next visited the markets which were convoluted and fascinating. On more than one occasion we became separated from Zeynal and had to wait to be rescued. I tried to buy a lovely heavy copper and tin mug, but the man wouldn't accept 10YTL for it, so I didn't.
After a fairly ordinary dinner we walked back past the fish pond where Mandi bought some fruit and nut mixture which was very tasty, before distributing it to the hungry and returning to the bus. We dropped most of the group off at their hotel before driving on to ours. I had been told by Zeynal that the guys at the Kelebek had insisted that we stay at the Kelim because it was better. We wondered why Zeynal had organised for Gloria and him to stay there as well. We did suspect that he had the hots for her.
Mandi:
Zeynal is not a good guide for this sort of place because (a) he just wants to walk through and get it over and done with and (b) he doesn't stop at turns so you know where he's headed
15 Lion at dawn
. So most of us spent a long time just standing about in the coppersmiths' area because we had no idea where he'd gone. In fact in a lot of ways he's hugely irritating because he keeps you in the dark - I think deliberately. For example after dinner he and Gengis just got up and saying "5 minutes" vanished for half an hour. Now I certainly don't want to be baby-sat - far from it! But I also don't want to be responsible for holding everyone up by not being where I'm supposed to be, as Darren & Jennifer tend to do by taking endless photos of one another posing in front of something or another. But if he would just say "be back here in half an hour" then everyone could explore and take their photos and it would all be great.Anyway we did get a bit of a peek at something of the market and had a glass of orange tea in a quiet caravanserai in the middle of the market. Gengis (whose presence on this tour still puzzles me immensely - he knows no more of the itinerary than we do, does no driving or anything else, and doesn't even help out in places like the market by rounding up stragglers or staying with lagging photographers or hagglers) and G had their shoes polished by a little crippled shoeshine boy. We trudged back through the frantic streets - the afternoons are very quiet as everyone struggles with low blood sugar and thirst but as the end of the fast gets closer (and they know it to the minute even as the sunset changes from day to day) and little planks go out in the streets with the standard fast-breaking foods set out on them, everyone gets more and more frantic
16 The Tell from below
. The pedestrians jostle frantically and the traffic gets jammed tight and hoots and hoots and hoots.We sat down in an open-air restaurant overlooking a little market selling mostly post-fast treats and overlooked by the ancient city walls attractively lit from below. On the way back to our various hotels, I bought a yummy treat - a bit like a doner kebab made of dried fruit and nuts. The slice thin pieces off the great block and roll them in desiccated coconut. Very good.
The hotel was, I think, much better than the rest of the group's one - certainly Danielle said that the sheets were clean but that was about it. We discovered the next morning that after we had gone upstairs, Zeynal suggested showing Gloria the old city and "tried the old hand-holding trick" which she got out of, and tried getting her to go to his room for a drink, which she also refused. He, on the other hand, made a point of telling us at breakfast about a movie he'd watched the previous night, had she seen it? So one way and another, I suspect there was a bit of protesting too much. Who's think there was this sort of intrigue even on a three-day tour to Eastern Turkey? Well, perhaps that's why - I'm sure it wouldn't happen on a three-day tour to Blackpool!!!
17 Arsameia
Graham:
The hotel was fine, modern and clean, though it still didn't have a proper top sheet. It did, however, have wireless internet, so we spent the evening catching up on our emails. Mandi also updated the blog.
Mandi:
I'm sorry to keep harping on bed linen, but we've discovered that we should never have complained about the weird doll's size sheets in Western Turkey. Goreme was splendid, although someone had had to sew two sheets together to fit our giant rugby-field of a bed, but at least the bottom sheet tucked in and the quilt was covered in a lovely crisp white linen duvet cover. But both Kahta and Urfa had (only) a too-small bottom sheet, so every time you roll over you have to wake up enough to pull it out from under you or you're sleeping on a bare mattress - not even an undersheet! - and God only knows what's been happening on THAT!!!! On top of that was a single thing a little like one of those sort of waffly bedspreads, no top sheet or anything. I'm quite sure they aren't washed between guests, so it's all a bit iffy. I SO regret I didn't leave all my multitude of warm jumpers, jackets, thermal spencers and the like behind and bring a sewn-together sheet to sleep in!!!
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info about Urfa and Antep
The real names of the two cities are Urfa and Antep. But because of their peoples' struggle during the independence war back in early 1920's, they were given the names of Sanli and Gazi, respectively later on. Sanli means glorious, and I dont know how to say it in english but gazi is the person who gets wounded in the war (like thy myrtr, but not not dead). So basically Glorious Urfa and Wounded Antep.