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Published: January 12th 2007
The overnight bus from Istanbul was smooth sailing. I had heard of the good reputation of turkish bus companies and they certainly lived up to my expectations. Quality buses, no hassle. I'd even say they're a bit boring. Anyway, I got in Selcuk in early morning and quickly found my way to an ANZ hostel, the first one I stumbled upon. I got a dorm bed for a good price after only a little bargaining and even had a good breakfast. I chatted it up with a retired canadian couple backpacking around who were so friendly and interesting. The man was a career officier and had been stationed in Pakistan before Independance, he had crazy story to tell about those weekends he used to spend in Kandahar and Kabul and the stuff he found in the bazaar back when the place was a stable monarchy.
Selcuk is famous for one thing, it is Ephesus, the nearby ruins of the capital of Asia, the most important city in the Roman Empire after Rome and Constantinople. The guesthouse gave a free ride there so I took it and started walking around the ruins. I got there very early and it is low
season so the place wasn't too crowded. I walked among the street for about 2 hours, taking in various well preserved (and many not as well preserved) buildings. The amphiteater was humongous. The whole town was actually. And you can really feel it even if only a small portion of the buildings have been excavated. After I was done sightseeing I walked up the hill through the forest and managed to get to the top of the amphiteater passs a fence and got a nice view overlooking it. It was a forbidden area for some reason but really cool. The area was swarming with turkish men with big knive drawn out, because they were hunting for mushrooms of course. I must admit the first one I saw walking in the forest with a 30cm blade got me thinking that maybe going off-the beaten track alone on the forested hill wasn't a great idea.
After Ephesus, I walked around the hill to something called Seven Sisters. I didn't know if it was good but saw it in the guesthouse's book. It took a while to walk there and even though it was cold, here in the hot sun I could
Mevlana Mosque
I really love this tower/minaretwalk in tshirt... Not for long, just a short span of about 3 hours, afterwhich it was too cold. Seven Sisters was nothing. I just dont know why anyone even mentioned it. There's absolutely nothing, except for a little shack that sells pancake with cheese thingy that was quite good. But anyway it was a lovely walk on a nice road. To go back to town I decided to cut through the orange orchard. I grabbed a few oranges while no one was looking (well, no one was there so it made it easy) and got back to the main road.
There was the Temple of Artemis on the road back so I decided to stop to look at pretty much nothing. It used to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World back in the days when men ran naked in the olympics. It was bigger than the Parthenon in Athens, but all that remains nowaday is a single column, everything else had been destroyed by an Earthquake.
Spent the rest of the evening reading at the guesthouse and chatting with the korean girls who were the only other people there. It was too cold to
go outside for more than 5 minutes.
The next day the initial plan was to go all the way to Konya, but I wimped out and decided to make a stop at Pamukkale just because I couldn't be asked to spend the whole day on the bus. The korean girls were planning to go there but I had a ticket for an earlier bus than when they were planning to leave so I said goodbye, but my bus was late and they ended up in the same as me. It took about 3 hours to reach some sort of town where we got in a "servis", a van paid by the company that drives you to where you want to go since Pamukkale isn't on the main highway. The servis driver was a friendly bloke and had an hostel (surprise surprise). I ended up there because it was the best value in town. I was surprised to see that it was run by a japanese lady who was married to a local. I've seen a few of these western women married to locals in Turkey, more than anywhere else on my trip. I guess these turks know how to
Pamukkale 2
Pretty beautiful flirt.
I went to the water travestines which is a place where springwater rich in minerals comes from the ground and over the millenias formed white calcium deposits filled with travestine pools of spring water.
I hadn't planned to go there because in recent years, there's been massive overdevelopment of the place. They built a few hotels on top that siphoned the water away from the pools which makes the calcium formation look not as impressive. Since they figured out that they were destroying the landscape that attracted tourists in the first place, they destroyed these hotels but the water level still isn't as high as it used to be. Nowadays they control the flow of water so that some days the pools are full like in the good ol' days. I wasn't lucky enough to fall on one of these days however.
The place was still beautiful, and since there's also an old roman spa town (a proof that tourism wasn't invented by Thomas Cook) with a few buildings I felt it was worth the money if you're passing by (but not a detour). Wandering down the travestines in a little flow of springwater was fun,
Whirling Dervishes
Hmmm. Not quite manly but, hmmm, interesting. albeit the farther away you get from the source, the colder the water becomes so by the end it was quite freezing.
I spent the evening with the korean girls which had followed me from Ephesus and were leaving at 10PM for Goreme in Capadoccia before heading to bed quite early.
Next morning I hopped on a dolmus (minivan) to the main bus station and hopped on a bus to Konya. The ride was a stereotypical turkish bus ride: comfortable, overcaffeinated and boring. I reached Konya by nightfall and tried to look for the servis the company had promised would be there, but the conductor didn't speak any english and wasn't of any help. I did eventually figure out that there was no servis. Apparently there was a tram going in town but my LP Middle East is crap and doesn't have a map of Konya so I had no idea where to get it. Nobody spoke english and they lead me in the wrong direction for the tram. In the end, realizing that I had no map so that even if I got downtown with the tram I'd have no idea where to go for the hotel
I decided to take a cab. I usually never take cabs if I can avoid it but I was sick of it all.
The cab was expansive by my standards but got me where I wanted. But the hotel was almost empty and the guy didn't want to lower his price to what I wanted so I left and wandered about to another hotel with worse rooms (but TV with "special" channels, I was told). In the end, I opted for the first hotel because it had free internet and to take a room with "special" TV channel I have to be certain that they clean the sheets well.
When I wandered through town I met a few carpet salesman with whom I chatted a bit with who told me that there was the Devish festival in town. I knew it was due in December but I knew it was on the 17th which was too late for me but apparently they extended it because no one want to travel to Konya in December since it's freezing. Everybody told me I "had" to go see the Whirling Dervishes tomorrow evening. I hadn't planned to but figured I might
as well since they weren't too expansive and you don't see bearded men dance in white dress everyday, much less 20 of them together.
But for the first night I just wandered a bit until I found a cheap doner place, then went back to the warmness of the hotel where I tried to make the best of the "free unlimited internet".
Konya was the capital of the Selcuk turks, the first turkish empire in the middle east that came before the ottomans. They were in control of the region when the crusaders came, and were still ruling when they left. The main thing they left behind in Konya from the selcuk era is a sufi saint, Mevlana or otherwise known as Rumi, his mosque and the order of the Whirling Dervishes, formed after his death.
Rumi was a persian poet, jurist and theologian whose work is amongst the most influential of all muslim scholar. He was born in Afghanistan but died in Konya. His follower form the Mevleni Order (Whirling Dervish), a sufi sect. They believe they can achieve awareness of God through whirling.
During the day I went to Mevlana Mosque and Museum. That
Mosque is the most beautiful I've seen. I don't know why, it might not be as massive as the ones in Istanbul or Lahore but there's something about it that is different. I bought a ticket for the dervish performance and wandered town. Konya has a very different feel than Istanbul. It is much more conservative and you can see it by the proportion of women with headscarf which much reach the 80-85% here. In some places I feel I'm back in Pakistan but just when I think that I see a few remaining teens without scarf which reminds me I'm still in Ataturk's secular land. The few men I talked about this confirmed that the trend in recent years has been of increased scarf wearing, something they were happy about.
Another aspect of the increased conservatism for foreign tourist is the increased hassle. Two women at the hotel I was talking with (after I started talking since they thought I was turk and thus avoided me, they became much nicer once I said I wasn't) said that Konya was the worst place for desperate males. The most impressive pickup lines of the day was: "You single, I single,
Old School latrines
Apparently the rich men would tell their slave to go sit on their seat for a while to heat it up when it was too cold outside. Interesting stuff you learn while eavesdropping on other guides' presentation. let's have sex.". 10/10 for guts, 0/10 for subtelty. This is the kind of thing you have to get used to when travelling without men in the Middle East.
In the evening I went to the Whirling Dervish show. It was in quite a big place but I didn't see a single other westerner. There was some turkish classical music at first which put me to sleep for an hour then the whirling ceremony started. The Dervishes believe that by whirling they can communicate with god. It was quite impressive to look at them turn around hundreds and hundreds of times. Who wasn't tried to turn around a few times on oneself when you were kid and then be really dizzy? Well these guys just go on and on. I tried to count how many time they did it but stopped after 300 or so and I only counted for about 1/10 of the time. Impressive. But anyway they pretty much turn for 2 hours so it does get long after a while. I'd recommend you watch it if you can, although I'd take the sufi night in Lahore over the one in Konya in a heartbeat.
I
went back to the hotel and chatted some more with the 2 woman who refused to go out after dark as they were tired of the hassle (and of turkey in general). I was also quite tired to be honest. I was realizing that I was getting a bit tired of moving around all the time and wasn't looking forward too much to spend hours on transport again the day after. Turkey was beautiful but the cold was getting to me (below freezing point at night) and I think I was getting travelsick a bit. Hopefully Goreme would be better.
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Kim Vandystadt
non-member comment
Ephesus
Salut Victor! Je suis contente d'avoir eu de tes nouvelles! :) Me semble que ça faisait un bout de temps. Je ne peux m'empêcher de faire un commentaire sur tes photos d'Ephesus! Ça m'a fait tout drôle de les voir car je dois dire qu'elles sont pas mal identiques aux miennes! (à part pour celle où tu es monté tout là-haut et passé par-dessus des barbelés... moi je me suis contenté de la carte postale! lol) Lors de mon voyage en Grèce et mon court arrêt en Turquie je dois dire que le site de la ville d'Éphèse est le plus beau site archéologique que j'ai vu. J'en ai été bien impressionné. C'est facile de s'imaginer à quel point la ville devait être majestueuse. Sur ce, bon restant de voyage et je ne peux attendre de voir tes photos et lire tes commentaires sur l'Égypte! :) Prends soin de toi! Kim xox