Travelling Around the World

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.

Cappadocia

Cappadocia, Nevsehir, Turkey

It is an incredible place you must see. Even the author Patricia Schultz talks about Cappadocia page 472 in her book “1000 places to see before you die.” This is a proof of this beauty. When you enter the area with your car the panaroma will amaze you. You will forget to close your mouth after you said “WOW” This is the land of "fairy chimneys". This is the land of Cappadocia. Cappadocia means “the land of beautiful horses”. The formation of this landscape is all natural cause. The erosion, water and wind… All took place in this amazing region to form these amazing structures, chimneys. Why do they call these fairy chimneys though? Old people had told for generations that fairies used to live in these chimneys. They believe that probably because the structures were too hard to be built or form. So the fairies used their magic wound and created these houses to live. Most of these chimneys have rooms carved in them and used as houses for decades by the different civilizations who passed through from this area. Some of them are rented by villagers to use as pensions and hotels today. The government holds the ownership and this way controls the use of these structures and makes sure they are preserved well while they are serving the domestic and foreign turists as wonderful hotels.

Staying in one of these cave rooms is a fantastic experience. You feel like in the time all those people lived. The rooms stay at the same temperature all around the year. It is around 15 C/60 F. The chimney/ cave material which is mostly clay keeps the humidity and the temperature stable so even when it snows in winter you wouldn’t need so much heat to keep yourself warm. Also it is a great conditioned environment for wine making. That's why you will see lots of vineyards and wineries in the region.

What can you do in this area?

The region has different towns, Goreme (which means “you should see” in Turkish), Urgup, and Uchisar. Goreme has most of these fairy chimneys. In Goreme, a balloon tour would be a great thing to start your day. Your day has to start early, getting up at 4.30 am and getting picked up by the tour operators are the first things to do. They take you to an empty space between those fairy chimneys and serve you breakfast with coffee and herbal teas and muffins while you watch them blow the huge balloons that will take 30 passengers each. You get excited by waiting. There are so many balloons and you wonder which one is going to take you to see the incredible landscape from the sky. There are two different tours with two different durations as two a.m. and two p.m. A.M. one is for the sun rise and P.M. one is for the sunset. You can take any of these tours with the option of one hour or two hours durations. Of course if the time goes up, price does too along with the altitude :) since the balloon is raised to a higher altitude. But it is worth to see. You can take pictures and enjoy the cool weather which will turn really hot if you are there in summer. But I recommend you to go there early or late Summer or the end of Spring and beginning of Fall. There are a lot to see and you don’t want to walk around these places when it is 43 C /110 F outside. There are several valleys with different formations but caused by the same natural effects. There are also many churhes in the area built in these chimneys, caves. The Ihlara Valley is one of them. This valley used to be used as a monestery area for the priests and nuns to worship and get trained. The area also was used by the priests to rest and think about their religon and God. If you take a walking tour in this valley, you will get a chance to see some of these churches with some incredible paintings on the ceilings and walls. The history and stories about these paintings are going to amaze you. At the end of this little journey you will find yourself at a restaurant that is founded on top of the river that had formed this valley. You can have traditional food here and fresh-water fish and traditional turkish yogurt drink “ayran”.

There are some farmlands in this valley. The local people say the temperature and the humidity are very suitable for farming. When it gets cold in winter and hot in summer, the valley has the perfect temperature for their crops. Local people usually have vineyards. And in Urgup, there are famous wineries that produce very tasteful wines. Again the region is very suitable to grow grapes.

In Goreme and Urgup, there are two underground cities that are built by the Hitits to fight with Romans. These underground cities were built going down two floors first to keep the food from going bad and for storage but then the villagers started to use them for protection from the wars that happened in the region. They made some changes to them though. First of all they needed more space because they were going to use this city to live for a while. They carved down 5 more floors which made it 7 floors. It goes 65 m/ 214 feet down under the ground. Then they added more rooms on the sides for families. Each family had their own room. They made rooms for making wine, rooms for animals, kitchens, praying room, even a bar and a school. Every house above ground in the village back then had a secret tunnel that connects to this underground city, because when the enemies come they would crawl in these tunnels to come to the underground city to stay safe. Today some of these tunnels are still open in some of the old houses. And this city feels like it has air conditioning because like everything else they built air tunnels so cleverly that circulate the air and creates a nice breeze inside these rooms.

The town center has several gift shops, jewelry stores, carpet and rug stores. The carpets are very unique and famous in this region so make sure to take a look and try to bring home a little souvenir.

At night, the view takes another pretty look. Most of these fairy chimneys are illuminated. And you can just enjoy this beauty while you walk around the town or having your dinner or sipping your Cappadocian wine...