Blogs from Urgup, Central Anatolia, Turkey, Middle East

Photos of Three Sisters...... read more

Day 3 28th September 2010 Today we set off from Urgup where we saw all the limestone chimneys, which were stuuning to say the least, and went on for miles. On our departure at 9am it was already in the 20's centigrade and we built up more heat with the steady climb out of town for several miles. A left turn at Mustafa Paxa shortly after passing a donkey pulling an old wizened man on a four wheel cart took us up onto the plateau where there was signs of recent ploughing of the wheat stubble on the vast flatlands. Occasionally we would see fields with pumpkins scattered like giant yellow ballons awaiting harvesting. Later in the morning we stopped at a village to ask a lady if there was anywhere selling chai (tea) for our ... read more

I never knew Turkey was so scenic - I always think of it as beaches, sailing and ancient remains but in the last few days we have ridden across some great road through some fantastic scenery and we have mostly had the roads to ourselves, apart from the flocks of sheep and goats wandering aimlessly along. The landscape is amazingly diverse; alpine meadows, snowy passes, rolling grasslands, olive groves. And there are all sorts of diverse cultural bits and bobs on the ways - the perfect combination really. From Istanbul we crossed the Bosphorus leaving Europe behind and entering Asia via the suspension bridge built by Edwin (well ok, it was designed by the company where he served his apprenticeship). It doesn't really feel like Asia though as all the faces are still European and the ... read more

Hello agaın Everyone, I am startıng to figure out some of the keys on the Turkish keyboard, so hopefully the spelling is a bit better this time. The "i" is on another key position so it takes awhile to change my hand positioning for it. We ended the conference yesterday morning with great success, and İ was also able to make even more strides for One Child´s Village. All ın all, İ can already claim that the trip has been an enormous boost for OCV and ıs well worth the price of admission (which, ın fact, I did pay myself so it is no expense to OCV). It is pretty hot here and after the conference we checked out of our rooms and headed to the airport for a flight into the interior of the country. ... read more

Geo: 39.9439, 32.856I'm giving the carpet buying experience its own entry because I took a lot of pictures. Although we did not opt for the silk carpet, we enjoyed seeing how the silk threads were teased out of the cocoons, then wound together into thin threads, then wound together into thicker threads and possibly wound again, depending on how thick your thread was going to be. We also saw how the dye was mixed into vats and how the weaving was done. We also found out that the lowly silkworms, after being boiled to death in their own cocoons, were shipped off to Scandanavia to become skin products. Also, here are the two carpets we bought.... read more