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Published: August 11th 2007
Kizkalesi
Kizkalesi's namesake, the Maiden's Castle
More about that later... This last one and a half week has been spent travelling around Eastern Turkey.
First stop after Annamur was Kizkalesi which means Maiden's Castle in Turkish... It turned out to be Turkish package holiday territory... But the castle on an island just of the coast was beautiful... Still as I don't like crowds that much I headed of the next day to Antakya which I found to be an interesting place... It's here that you start to feel the Middle Eastern influence seep into Turkey... The reason for visiting Antakya was to go to the Archaeology Museum which boasts one of the finest Roman/Byzantine mosaic collections in the world... And it was certainly worth while...
Next it was off to see Mt. Nemrut which is known for the funeral mound build by a little known king called Antiochus who suffered a bit of delusions of grandeur and had a bunch of huge statues of himself and the gods built around his tomb... It's quite a spectacular sight at sunset...
Than I went to the city of the prophets as SanliUrfa is known... This is because both Abraham and Job lived here... It is a
Antakya
Antakya sky-line
religiously conservative city and important to Muslims because these prophets lived here... The most impressive sight is the courtyard of the Hazreti Ibrahim Hallullah (Prophet Abraham, friend of god)... The story goes that back in the days, Abraham was going around destroying pagan gods at which the local Assyrian king took offence who had Abraham put on a pyre and set on fire at which God promptly intervened and turned the fire into water, the burning coals into fish and Abraham himself was hurled into the sky and landed safely in a bed of roses (though he probably would have preferred a soft mattress..) Anyway the courtyard is a recreation of that story with a mosque built where he was put on the pyre with a pond around it with sacred carp in it and a rose garden around the whole ensemble... It's all very picturesque... I took a day trip to Harran from here, known for it's beehive houses...
Diyarbakir was next on my route which has an impressive roman city wall made of black bassalt surrounding it... It is said to be second in length to the Great Wall of China only... Apart from the wall Diyarbakir
Antakya
Mosaic in the Antakya Archaeology Museum
also has loads of interesting mosques and old churches hidden away in it's alleyways and a lot of street kids asking for money and throwing rocks when not getting any... About an hour outside Diyarbakir is Mardin which is a gorgeous little town looking very Middle Eastern with it's mosques, beautifully carved doorways etc. Also there is a monastery just outside town which dates back to about 500 A.D.
As it had been quite hot in both SanliUrfa and Diyarbakir temperatures reaching 49 degrees I decided to head into the mountains to Lake Van... I stopped in Tatvan and visited a Seljuk cemetery in Ahlat just outside town... And now we get back to the title... Lake Van is a very alkaline lake and clothes washed in the lake come clean without soap... Perhaps this explains the big cemetery... Free laundry is a service worth fighting for!!
Well I am going to wear all my dirty clothes and go for a swim in the lake now, it's laundry time...
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