Turkey's heart; Kapadokya and Nemrut

We continue our trip through Turkey with a visit to Kapadokya (Anglicised to Cappadocia for some reason). This is an amazing region slap bang in the middle of Turkey where there were a few little volcanic eruptions 10 million years back that deposited a layer of ash about 100m thick. So what you might say. Well the useful thing about this is that this ash has consolidated into a soft stone (similar to limestone) that is easily worked even with stone tools. So imagine you are a hardworking Hititte 3-4000 years ago with a growing family and lots of marauding animals and people to guard yourself against. Do you build yourself a house of straw, a house of sticks or maybe a house of bricks? Not with the wolf at the door you don't. What you do do is make yourself a cave. This approach has continued through to the present day with every hillside, valley and ravine around Goreme looking somewhat moth-eaten. Myriad chambers have been constructed for people, pigeons (artificial nesting holes in cliffs - they were farmed for their shit!) and popes. There are 36 hidden underground cities dating back up to 3-4000 years, some capable of holding thousands of people with huge stone (Indiana Jones) wheels that roll across passages to block them off against invaders. There are huge numbers of houses and hotels carved out of rock, with the useful side effect of being cool in summer and warm in winter. And there are churches dating back to a particularly prolific period about 800-1000 years ago when every Saint needed a place to call his own. The stone continues to erode and frequent earthquakes are also a problem so they don't last forever, but a home that lasts a few hundred years ain't bad and there are still massive numbers of ruins in various states of repair to be seen.

The other feature this area is famous for is "Fairy chimneys" with lumps of hard bassalt on top of the ash layer protecting the ash from erosion and leaving hard knobs on top of tall ash-rock spires, some over 40m high with many hollowed out for houses. Fairy chimneys be damned, from the above description it should be obvious to all that they have far more in common with phalluses than fairies, but "valley of the penises" might not have the touristic pulling power they were looking for.

After a few days we took off for Nemrut mountain in the east of Turkey near Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia. This description is not entirely accurate as there are 3 Nemrut mountains in the region, all claiming to be the home ground of local lad King Nemrut (Nimrod in English) who had a good hard try at killing off the founder of Judaism, (from whence came Christianity and Islam); namely one Mr Prophet Abraham who lived roughly 3500-4000 years ago. Anyway a 12 hour ride in a minibus then up at 4am to hike to the top of the 2200m mountain (actually only the last 200m) to watch the sun rise over the tomb of Antioch. For those of you unfamiliar with the bible you might know him as the original owner of the holy hand-grenade in Monty-Python's Holy Grail. Anyway three unexcavated tombs are hidden under a 50m mound of small rocks that form the peak of this mountain, they are known to exist only from recent seismic surveying. There are two terraces with large statues of the relevant kings and a couple of Greek gods to both the the east and west of this tomb and at the time they would host occasional ceremonies and get-togethers for important personages. All in all very impressive when you realise just how remote this site is, many days travel to get to it without vehicles - think about trying to build something atop Mt Hutt in Canterbury, or Mt Ruapehu in the North Island of New Zealand or hosting a garden party in these locations and you get the general idea.

We moved on to Sanliurfa, birthplace of Abraham, and as such one of the only places in the world that is a common religious site to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Though there were only Muslims in evidence in this atypically alcohol free city. You can visit the cave where he is said to have been born and hidden for seven years at the base of the cliff where King Nimrod lived (Nimrod killed off all of Abraham's potential playmates due to an unfavourable prophecy about being replaced by Abraham that came to pass anyway). The cave was weird, partitioned into womens and mens halves with basically no cave wall showing and taps to take holy water home from, it is accessed off the courtyard to a huge mosque built by the Saudis a few years ago. Nearby is a large pool (think 2-3 olympic swimming pools sat end to end) of very well fed Carp said to have been miraculously created when Nimrod attempted to Barbeque Abraham.

Last stop on this 1500km 3 day tour was Harran an ancient city that Abraham moved to before heading south, bits of this walled city date back 4000 years (and a town at least 7000 years ago), it was the centre of empires and well looked after by successive conquerers, a truely impressive sight - until the Mongols showed up about 800 years back and kicked the crap out of the place. Not much left now but a large crumbling castle and ruined walls that were once tall and imposing, I was impressed with how high the city is above the surrounding plain. In my mind that 5-10 metres of extra height over an area of about a square kilometer has come predominantly via the bowels of humans and animals over a several thousand year period.

Now we are off to Olympos by overnight bus, we've had a great time on this part of our trip. More sight seeing less drinking. One other curiousity: In Turkey the hawkers are continually trying to start conversations with us. Standard approach is: Where are you from? Whats your name? Now buy my crap at extortionate prices. If you don't respond after the first question then they guess at your country. From this we have learnt that we are in fact from Holland, not New Zealand as previously thought. Who knew? This hasn't happened just once, but more like 10-15 times in a week.