Central Turkey (15th - 21st Nov 07)

On our way from Izmir to Ankara, the capital of Turkey, we had the pleasure of catching a overnight train. Turkey is currently revamping its train network, putting new lines in and buying new trains. Our near new sleeper carriage was one of the best we have had on this trip. The journey itself was very scenic as we moved away from the coast up on to the central anatlian plateau. The landscape of rolling grassy steppes reminded us of mongolia.

We only spent a brief but busy day in Ankara where we visited the Anatolian Civilisations Museum, which is a fantastic museum housed in an old Caravanserai displaying objects from Anatolias numerous historic groups. It is amazing to read about how many different people have at one time or another ruled in modern day turkey. The greeks, persians, alexander the great, romans, ottomans, and the anzacs tried....

After Ankara our next stop was Cappadoccia, a region right in the heart of turkey. The draw here is the amazing landscape and unbelievable rock formations (that got nick going....). There are huge rock chimneys of soft volcanic rock that have been preserved by a hard rock cap that stops erosion while the surrounding rock was worn down. But on top of that the early christians (2000years ago) in turkey carved extensive houses and churches into the rock chimneys. In the churches are well preserved frescoes that decorate the walls. We hired a scooter one day to see some distant sights such as the underground cities that were built to hide in during attacks. These cities are often 10 levels deep and have granaries and pits for storing important things like wine. They also have huge rolling stones used to block doorways to trap intruders.

Rock Chimneys


Frescoes in the Cave Churches


We spent another couple of days doing some hikes around some of the valleys. We were accomanied by spotty the guide dog who belonged to the owner of our guesthouse. Spotty lead us through all the poorly marked paths, took us to a few water wells, found some old biscuits then lead us home after a few hours walking. Fantastic...

We then headed south to Konya, a strongly religious city which has some of the best mosques in Turkey. We enjoyed the suprisingly laid back and young people here and got to see some beautiful old mosques, which were located about everywhere we looked. Come prayer time the muzzin rang throughout the town from every direction.