Posted by Seth on September 11, 2008 under Uncategorized | 
As we drove from Goreme to the Ihlara valley one of the repeating scenes on the roadside were the farms. Mostly they seemed to be gourds of various sorts growing in the fields, but there were also many, many patches of sunflowers interspersed. They weren’t particularly large, and I’m not sure if they were there for commercial or other reasons, but they were quite amazing to see.
At one point I decided that taking some pictures of them was a good idea. Well, I decided that as soon as I saw one, but finding one where I could pull off the road easily was a bit harder. We finally found one here (worthless link unless you want to see the GPS coordinates) and I managed to pull off the road and into a driveway pretty easily. I wandered the 50 yards or so into the field and started snapping away.
As luck would have it, I managed to pick a field where there were actually a few guys out working and tending to the gourds. One of them spoke English and we had a great conversation. He gave me a sunflower to take home with me and we exchanged email addresses, too. All in all a very nice experience. Plus, I got some great photos out of the deal.
More of the pictures can be found here.
Posted by Seth on September 3, 2008 under Trip Reports |
I will fear no troubles and need no guide.
If you happen to find yourself in the Cappadocia region of Turkey there are a few things that are not to be missed. There is the Goreme open air museum and the Valley of the Swords right next door, both of which show off some of the amazing cave dwellings that have withstood the sands of time. There’s also the underground cities that are pretty amazing to wander through, but don’t wander too far. If you get lost finding your way out may prove difficult. And don’t go if you’re claustrophobic or particularly large. There were some halls that we were struggling to get through and we’re both of reasonable size if not a bit tall.
And then there is the Ihlara Valley. Ihlara is a small town about an hour or so from Goreme and it represents the base of a beautiful hike along the side of a river that rests at the bottom of a gorge thousands of years old. It isn’t the Grand Canyon at all, so don’t go expecting something like that, but the canyon walls reach up a couple hundred feet and the area at the bottom is plenty wide for the river as well as hiking paths and, in some areas, fields for farming. It is the canyon walls that are half of the attraction for the hike, for within them there are churches that were carved in the 11th-13th centuries that still exist in various states of disrepair, but all of them well marked along the path and reasonably accessibly.
Hiking the Ihlara Valley is a cornerstone component of most of the day tours in the region, so you can always get to see it that way, but better than that is to do it on your own. It is incredibly well traveled so wandering off the path is virtually impossible. It follows a river, so you can’t really make a wrong turn. And it is great to be able to move at your own pace and take breaks when and you want to along the way. We hiked from the put-in just north of the Ihlara village all the way to the top end of the trail at Selime in about four hours. And that included a stop of about an hour in Belisirma (the middle of the three towns along the path) for a morning tea taken in a bungalow set up in the middle of the stream. Plus I stopped to take plenty of pictures. So really, the hike isn’t all that long, and it truly is beautiful.
The only down-side of doing it on your own is getting there and back. Ihlara is not in the same bus service region as Goreme, so that means you need to take a bus up to Nevsehir and then over to Aksaray and then down to Ihlara, a three-hour or more adventure, or you need to rent a car, which is what we did. Certainly not the cheapest way to do it, especially with fuel at over $10/gallon (YTL$3/litre) here, but it gave us the flexibility we needed and time was a bigger issue for us than the cost at that point.
So make the hike and do it on your own. Way more enjoyable than doing it with a guide, in my opinion.
Also, more pictures coming when Internet service is a bit more reliable, but hopefully these will help whet your appetite for the hike.
Posted by Seth on September 3, 2008 under Uncategorized |
We got a kilim instead.
I really thought that we might make it. We didn’t even stop at the carpet shops as we passed through the Bazaars of Istanbul – we just weren’t all that interested. In Cappadocia we actually stayed one night in the pensione attached to a carpet house, but again not all that interested. By the time we made it to Kayseri we still weren’t particularly interested (at least I wasn’t).
A young man chased us down to “practice his English” and escort us on a tour of the city as we did some wandering through the old town here, and it just happened that his uncle is a carpet merchant, and somehow our tour ended up in that section of the Bazaar in Kayseri. As an aside, the bazaar in Kayseri is way better than the one in Istanbul. People actually shop there, rather than just putting on the show for the tourists. Anyway, back to the main story. We had tea and talked about the history of the carpet industry and the various types of finished product they produce – there are four. We talked about where we live in New York and how he travels across Turkey working as a wholesaler to the various regions with his 80-90 employees working on the manufacture of products for him in the outskirts of town. We talked about why they couldn’t share tea with us (Ramazan) and how the guy was featured in a book (From Here to There) that was a travel memoir of some guy who passed through about 20 years ago.
After all the talking and a rather delicious glass of apple tea he finally started in on the sales process. It was everything I expected, with the guy going through quite a few of the kilims in the store to show us a variety of options in various colors, patterns and themes. And I was completely ready to walk out without buying if none of them met my fancy. One of them, however, did. It is apparently made of undyed yarn with the various colors coming naturally from the sheep. And I like the pattern, as an added bonus. Finally, as we eliminated a couple dozen of the other options and got down to the two carpets we’d consider some prices were tossed about. They were in the ballpark and I figured that the piece was nice enough that I’d take a stab at the negotiations. He started with the asking price and I came in at about half of that. He started to come down and I inched up a hair, but really not much at all, guessing that I was probably already over the minimum he’d accept and knowing that I’d be OK walking away without the piece. The end of the negotiations went something like this:
Him: What’s your absolute maximum?
Me: Nnn <Number omitted to protect the innocent>
Him: I’ve come down 200 and you’ve only come up 50. Be reasonable.
Me: I started at Zero. I’ve moved further on the number than you have. And that’s my maximum.
Him: Shake my hand. Let’s go to the cash machine to get the money.
And then the deal was done. I’m still not completely sure that I can get it packed into my suitcase to make it home without carrying it as a brown paper bundle on the airplane, but that just adds to the fun. And it really is a beautiful piece, even if I did pay more than I had to for it. Besides, the rug it is replacing is vile, so I’m happy to be able to get rid of that.
Other than the kilim, nothing really all that impressive to recommend Kayseri as a destination while in Turkey. We probably wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for the 6:45am flight out tomorrow. And it certainly presents challenges for tourists, particularly those who don’t speak much Turkish. We managed to get by at dinner and it was actually quite delicious (Iskander, if you’re ever here and looking for something to eat), but if we hadn’t already been here a week I fear that the results would not have been so positive.
