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Published: November 19th 2011
We have some pretty exotic tales for this post! We just returned from a trip unlike any we have taken. We knew we wanted to spend some time in the far eastern/southeastern Turkey, including Turkey's swatch of the famed "fertile crescent," where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flow. This largely Kurdish area borders Iran, Iraq, and Syria and is home to some of the longest inhabited settlements on earth. Bill saw an article in the online Seattle Times about an unusual homestay tour there. It sounded wonderful--and it truly was!
The intent of the tour sets it apart. Nomad Tours Turkey was founded by an English woman, Alison Tanik, who is married to a Kurdish Turk. After their marriage, they moved from Istanbul to her husband's tiny village, Uvacali, not too far from the border with Syria. Problems in the area include illiteracy, poverty, malnutrition, high numbers of marriage between first degree relatives, and domestic violence. Alison and her husband decided to develop a project that would truly improve the lives of the people in the village. After several false starts, they established Nomad Tours Turkey with the objective of employing local people in tourism--while offering visitors like us a
Alison and Lulu
English expat, the inspiration and drive behind Nomad Turkey Tourschance to have a really authentic window into the lives of people in this region.
Several years into the project, Nomad Tours Turkey is fully supporting eight Kurdish families in the village of Uvacali as home-stay hosts or drivers. The family where we stayed, for example, is now sending all four of their children to school, and the eldest has entered law school. This family told us they would not have been able to afford the school fees before the Tours began providing them a lot more income. In addition, the program has fully equipped a local preschool that teaches the young Kurdish-speaking children Turkish--before they enter public schools (where reading instruction is taught only in Turkish). Alison and her husband have invested a good chunk of their profits into other community projects as well: a dental hygiene program and a program to improve nutrition by offering live fruit trees to every village family.
For us, staying with this Kurdish family was a great pleasure. Their spotlessly clean home consists of two largish rooms--one where we all ate together on the floor and one where we slept on floor pads. (While we were there, the family slept in
Kurdish Family Homestay
Kurdish mother making bread for breakfast the barn!) In addition, the house has a small "kitchen" for food preparation--though the actual cooking happens on an outside grill or in an open stone oven above the barn. There's a regular shower inside, but the only toilet is a squat-privy in a shed in the garden. This family was remarkably warm and welcoming, and there was no doubt that it was sincere. My lingering impression of the five days of this trip was the whole extended family standing outside waving and calling their farewells when we left!
When we left the Kurdish homestay, we headed across the parched land with a wonderful Kurdish driver and one travel companion, Margaret Shore--a delightful Australian woman about our age who trains teachers of young children in Indonesia. The five days were so packed with drama and color of discovery that the three of us bonded quickly.
On one side trip, we drove into the Karacadag desert in search of a nomadic family in need of the handmade children's clothes we had to deliver from the Nomad Tour project. One dirt road led to another as we watched for large tents on the horizon. Suddenly, we saw one and stopped.
Breakfast with Kurdish Family
Men on one side and women on the other A stately older man in purple flowing headgear--the patriarch, it turned out-- emerged from the tent. After a brief discussion in Kurdish with Mehmet (our driver), he invited us into the main tent, where we sat on a floor mat to share tea. Gradually, other family members appeared, perhaps seventeen in all--including women of two generations and some children the right sizes for the clothes we were delivering. One teenaged boy and a son in his 30s joined us and the patriarch on the mat while the women and children peeked shyly from behind a barrier. They were clearly as curious about us as we were about them, but they weren't brave enough to come out and meet us directly. Only the patriarch's wife-- who looked to be in her 70s but was probably much younger-- soberly greeted us and accepted the bundle of clothes. For both sides, it was a fleeting, precious glimpse at folks from a vastly different world.
For our second homestay--this one with an Arab family-- we arrived in Harran, one of the longest continuously inhabited towns in the world. (The Bible mentions it in Genesis, and the Prophet Abraham apparently lived there briefly.) In
Nomadic Family Patriarch
We delivered handmade children's cloths and were invited for tea to a Kurdish Nomadic family in the desert the last few centuries, Harran has fallen on hard times but has become famous for its atmospheric "beehive" houses. Each room of these mud brick homes has its own tall, cone-shaped adobe dome with openings to provide light and air. One of the family's ten children (a bright, English-speaking high school-aged daughter) gave us a tour of the castle above the city and the ruins of the oldest Islamic University in the world, built in 800 A.D. The five daughters and their mother--all gorgeous in identical brown velvet gowns with gauzy lavender head coverings--served us a spicy but balanced dinner. We ate on a large floor mat with the boys and men of the family, presided over by a rather crusty, remote father in flowing lavender headgear.
After dinner, as we drank our traditional glasses of tea--and as the school-aged children settled down with their homework around us--we became transfixed at the television news at the far end of the room. Though it was a challenge for our less-than-stellar Turkish, we were able to understand that the recently stepped-up aggressions between the Kurdish terrorist group, the PKK, and the Turkish military along the border with Iraq was suddenly exploding
Arab Homestay in Harran
Summer sleeping platform &
tripod for making yogurt. Our driver shares tea with the family's father. into something like a full-blown war. In reprisal for the PKK's killing of 24 Turkish soldiers the day before,Turkey was sending in thousands of troops to the Iraqi-Turkey border. At that moment, we were much closer to the Syrian border than to the Iraqi border, but, nonetheless, it crossed our minds (well, mostly Carol's mind) that the timing of our visit to Turkey's Kurdish region might be... er, unfortunate. (Update: One week later the Turkish military sharply reduced its troops in the area--though after considerable loss of life on both sides.)
That night in Harran, as we three weary travelers bedded down on floor pads under the cone-shaped roofs of the atmospheric beehive house, we took comfort in the bright moonlight coming in through the openings between the mud bricks. And Carol, who had heard sounds that could have been bombs all during the previous night, listened for unwelcome blasts. But Harran was silent.
On another day, we had a jaw-dropping visit to Gobekli Tepe, thought to be the first temple in the world. Never heard of it? Neither had we--but it's a 22-acre site under excavation NOW and has the world's archeologists and anthropologists dazzled. Almost unimaginably
Gobekli Tepe
Animal carvings from 12,000 year old temple site (end of the ice age) ancient, these ruins were apparently built by an unknown race of people at the end of the last Ice Age (12,000 years ago). That's at least 7,000 years older than Stonehenge or the pyramids at Giza. The people who built it were probably hunter-gatherers and had no writing, metal, or pottery. Though Gobekli Tepe is only 1/10 excavated, what they've found so far are massive rings of standing T-shaped pillars, or megaliths, many of which are exquisitely carved with images of deadly animals (snakes, foxes, scorpions, etc.) thought to be guardians of the spirit world. According to a June 2011 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article, the findings at Gobekli Tepe are overturning earlier ideas about "our species' deep past." It's long been assumed that agriculture developed before religion, but Gobekli Tepe's temple suggests the reverse. A number of scholars believe that it has to be a key to understanding the story of the Garden of Eden. Well, there's certainly no garden there now, just a giant lump on the horizon of the ruthless, windswept desert. But it's one very compelling lump! (By the way, we recommend a best-selling novel, THE GENESIS SECRET by Tom Knox. It's about Gobekli Tepe, and it's a
gripping--but gory-- read.)
Though this little journey was chock full of astonishing and varied experiences, we'll let the photos tell most of the stories, including side trips to ancient cities of Urfa, Mardin, and Diyarkabir. However, we can't conclude this post without one final tale. Even before we came to Turkey, we'd seen photos of eight or so colossal heads (each roughly two meters high) toppled from their even more gigantic bodies high on a mountain peak. Finally, on this trip, we had a chance to go to the top of Mount Nemrut to see them. The story is that a Pre-Roman king Antiochus had the statues built to represent himself, some huge animals, and various gods--whom he considered to be his family. I think the statues themselves were supposed to prove Antiochus' godlike status and thus his worthiness to ascend above his competitors to the throne. Bill was especially fascinated that above the row of headless bodlies at the top of this enigmatic display, there is a huge conical "tumulus" of small rock that rises 50 meters above the temples. It's believed that Antiochus himself is buried in the tumulous. This man-made cone that tops Mount Nemrut forms
Kurdish Headdress
Young man from the homestay showed Bill how to wear Kurdish headgear a sharp peak that can be seen from a great distance.
Fast forward a few thousand years, and there's a certain amount of ritual involved with ascending the mountain to view these enigmatic statues. For one thing, they are to be viewed at dawn or dusk. So, we spent the night at a pension at the base of the mountain, then rose at 4:30 a.m. so that we three determined--but less-than-lithe--climbers could make it up the rather steep path to the 2150m high peak (in the dark, of course) in time for the sunrise. We did it--and were richly rewarded! We're not sure that the photos do it justice, but seeing the statues glowing red-orange against the purple night sky will go on our short list of the most memorable experiences we've had in Turkey.
But now we backtrack a half day. On our journey toward Mount Nemrut, we crossed the Euphrates River on a ferry boat. The sun was setting, and we were savoring the view when Bill's cellphone rang. It was our friend Joe in Antalya. "Are you all right?" he said. "We've been worried!" Then he went on to tell us about the calamitous 7.2
earthquake that had hit near Van, Turkey (not far from the Iranian border) a few hours earlier. The earthquake was in the same general area as we were--though perhaps 200 kilometers away--and we hadn't felt any shaking at all. What we did feel was LUCKY although we are well aware that thousands of others were not so lucky. Large numbers are badly injured and some are facing the first snow of the season with no shelter, blankets or warm clothes. And the death toll is above 600--headed, tragically, toward 1,000. It was a sad, sobering end to a spectacular trip.
As always, we're so grateful to our faithful--or occasional--followers. If you like photos, be sure to scroll through the three pages of captioned shots that will continue after the end of the narrative. (There are page numbers to help you navigate.) And may your adventures, too, be just challenging enough to be deeply satisfying.
Affectionately,
Bill and Carol
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catherine crain
non-member comment
wow!
Amazing pictures and information - thanks so much for sharing it!!! It makes me want to come back to Turkey and do that homestay thing - it's almost like a different country (the Kurdish region). I'm curious about the wedding - how is that you were invited? Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be in New York with Heather and Eric. What are you doing- I wonder if you'll cook a turkey?? Please say hi to Annie and Chloe and all the folks -- big hug, Catherine