Mount Nemrut

Life is very hard in different ways for everybody in the world. It has never been easy, it will never be...  People in ‘’Adiyaman’’ know this very well. Life is not very generous there for them. The city doesn’t give them so many choices to make money. Most of their earnings are coming from the tourists that come to the city to see Mount Nemrut, an old mountain that was anciently used by Commagene civilization as the symbol of the empire and the gods they believed. “In 62 BC, King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene built on the mountain top a tomb-sanctuary flanked by huge statues (8–9 m/26–30 ft high) of himself, two lions, two eagles and various Greek, Armenian, and Iranian gods, such as Hercules-Vahagn, Zeus-Aramazd or Oromasdes (associated with the Iranic god Ahura Mazda), Tyche, and Apollo-Mithras.” The statues used to be 10 m tall and sitting position with each god inscribed on them. But the strong wind, the temperature difference between day and night time and being in the heavy snowy climate during winter made these statues to crumble into pieces. Today you can only see the heads of these huge statues. UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 1987. An Ottoman geologist discovered the site in 1881 and the archaeological work began in 1953.

The mountain is located near a town called ‘’Kahta’’. The town doesn’t have an airport, or the city Adiyaman. The closest airport is in Malatya, a city a one-and-a-half-hour-drive away. You can take a plane from Istanbul to Malatya or Sanliurfa. And you can have your hotel or the tour agency arrange a pick for you from the airport. 

Nemrut is one of the highest mountains, 7000 ft, in Turkey. It is around 60 kms (90 miles) from town Kahta. The road takes about an hour to drive up to the mountain. There are two things famous to do if you want to go to Mount Nemrut, to see the sun rise or to see the sunset. Therefore, you better make good plans to be on time to get there. The road to the summit is only open from mid-April to mid-October because of heavy snow the rest of the year.

My boy friend and I went to see Mount Nemrut in the middle of June, which we realized then it wasn’t the right time to do the climbing. We arrived to Kahta at around 11.30 pm. We were just traveling where the wind takes us. So we just found two bus tickets from a major city in the area where we returned our rental car. We did not want to drive since we did not really know the area well. It would be probably better if we took a bus. Well, the problem was we did not make any arrangements with any travel agencies or hotels around the area to join a tour to go up the mountain. It was the worst part of the trip. There wasn’t any available tour to see the mountain at 11.30 at night and we had to find a solution in a few hours since the time was coming close for the sunrise. We had talked to several hotels’ receptionists. The answers were always the same, ‘’all the tours are arranged by private parties by the travel agencies and they won’t accept any more people in last minute’’. Then, we crushed into a man on the side walk. We were so desperate to find a tour that the bus driver’s assistant, that’s the guy we crushed into, had offered us a solution earlier that his brother-in-law was a taxi driver and he could take us to the mountain and be our private tour guide. Since we had traveled so many miles to see Mount Nemrut and had no other choice, we just accepted the offer. The taxi driver came right away and took us to a close by village where we spent a few hours at a small café with some other European tourists that were sleeping on the floor in their sleeping bags. We had some tea and did the same thing with the other guys, slept on the floor until the take off time comes. The owner of the café woke us up at 3 am. The temperature was getting really cold. We put some more cloths on. It was summer and we did not have warm clothes with us. We both wore several things, t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. Then we drove up the mountain. The wind was blowing so hard and the temperature was so low. We had to wrap ourselves with even beach towels. We had a cup of hot tea at the café at the edge of the mountain. There were many people waiting to go up. Everybody was so friendly. People offered us some pastries with tea while we were waiting.

There was a 20-minute-climb before we got to see the sunrise and the ruins. The wind was so strong that it was very very hard to breath, and the cold was unbelievable. It took us more than 20 minutes to get to the summit. We had to stop several times because I had to catch my breath. I almost gave up and told my boy friend to go without me so he wouldn’t miss the sunrise. Anyway, we got to the top. I was exhausted. It was windier at the summit. People were wrapped up with blankets and wearing ski jackets. It was June and very hot but not at Mount Nemrut, at least at nighttime. I thought that we did not plan this well. You would have to bring something warm to wear.

Let’s talk about the wind… The wind was blowing so strong that everybody was having hard time to stand up, walk or take pictures. You won’t believe this but I felt my foot off the ground for a second. Yes, I was flying for a second. :) The wind disappeared as soon as the sun went up the sky and it got so hot suddenly. Strangest thing!

While we were up there, we could see the biggest dam in Turkey, Ataturk Dam.

We took some pictures and enjoyed our maybe half an hour there and went back down to meet our driver. The driver took us two other places, one is an ancient bridge and a tunnel that used to go all the way to Syria ones, but it got destroyed with the earthquakes long time ago. The tunnel still went so far down the ground. And my boy friend went all the way down to see what was at the bottom. I got so scared ones I lost sight of him. I kept calling him back. But of course he would not listen. We probably went down at least 60 meters in the dark using his camera flash as a flashlight.

We barely slept and were running around all day and night, and got so tired. But it was worth the trip. It was just very incredible that ancient people made such impossible things in their time, when the modern technology did not exist. Just thinking about how they managed to carve those huge statues from a piece of stone is amazing.